We can’t fight terrorism if we’re scared of being called Islamophobic - "Birmingham City Council has just made a very important announcement. To keep people safe while visiting the local Christmas market, it’s installed “Hostile Vehicle Mitigation” bollards. “These measures,” explained the council in a cheerful video for social media, “stop hostile vehicles from entering pedestrian areas, so you can enjoy the famous Frankfurt Christmas Market with confidence.” Good to hear. All the same, I do find one aspect of this statement surprising. I didn’t know vehicles could be hostile. I wonder what’s made the vehicles of Birmingham behave in such a frightening way. Are they like the car in Stephen King’s horror novel Christine, which zooms around killing people because it’s possessed by evil spirits? Alternatively, perhaps the vehicles have been radicalised by watching Andrew Tate videos. If so, I hope Jess Phillips – herself a Birmingham MP – will order these nasty vehicles to sit through lessons on toxic masculinity, along with the nation’s schoolboys. Of course, I suppose it’s possible that the vehicles themselves aren’t hostile. It’s the people driving them. But if that’s the case, why did the council use this peculiar phrase “hostile vehicles”? If the danger actually comes from people, shouldn’t it specify the type of people it thinks might carry out a terrorist attack on a Christmas market? Is it, say, flower arrangers? Stamp collectors? Netball players? Such coyness is puzzling. After all, when Maccabi Tel Aviv visited Birmingham to play Aston Villa, we were left in no doubt as to the identity of the potential trouble-makers. Horrid, violent Israelis. On this occasion, though, we’ve for some reason been left in the dark. So we have no way of knowing which group of people is thought most likely to plot the slaughter of Christians at Christmas. Maybe the council fears that singling these people out would make them angry. Almost as angry as their vehicles. Even so, I would say one small thing. I’d have more faith in our leaders’ efforts to tackle terrorism if they weren’t so petrified of being called Islamophobic."
Britain's unofficial blasphemy laws have been decades in the making - "We already live under unofficial blasphemy laws enforced by fear. In a survey that surprised no one, research conducted by Ipsos UK found that talking freely about Islam is ‘feared more than any other religion’. Thirty-eight per cent feel they have to self-censor when talking about Islamic topics. At the same time, around 71 per cent of British Muslims feel that people should be sensitive about causing offence when discussing their religion. The reluctance to speak openly about Islam partly stems from a people-pleasing instinct not to ruffle feathers. But it’s largely because the threat of violence, even death, stalks blasphemy against Islam. There’s the Batley Grammar scandal in 2021, where a religious-studies teacher at the West Yorkshire school, keen to spark a conversation about religious extremism, showed his pupils the 2015 Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad... Headteacher Gary Kibble apologised ‘unequivocally’, which is ironic given the school motto is ‘bravely not cowardly’. Tracey Brabin – then Labour MP for Batley and Spen, now mayor of West Yorkshire – welcomed the apology and condemned those who sought to ‘fan the flames of this incident’. Teaching unions were shamefully silent... Violence was avoided in Wakefield, but it seems only by surrender to seventh-century Arabic notions of blasphemy. Freedom of conscience was thrown under the bus and death threats went unpunished. Such incidents have a profoundly censorious effect, rippling across society. This culture of fear has been decades in the making. In 1989, a chill wind blew across Britain when Ayatollah Khomeini condemned Salman Rushdie to death for writing The Satanic Verses. Fast forward to the present day. We have networks of anti-blasphemy activists. We have schools and councils capitulating to mobs outside the gates and issuing grovelling apologies. We have police forces that would rather go after the blasphemers than the people threatening them with death."
Ministers accused of ‘stitch-up’ over Islamophobia definition - "certain “hand-picked” organisations have been invited into the department to view and discuss the definition behind closed doors. Lord Young, the general secretary of the Free Speech Union, said: “It’s a bit rich of MHCLG to refuse to disclose the definition on the grounds that ministers need ‘a safe space to consider policy options in private’, given that ministers and their aides have been showing it to various hand-picked groups of supporters. “Either it’s confidential or it isn’t – and if it isn’t, why can’t they share it with us? “The FSU is Britain’s leading free speech advocacy group, so if ministers want some informed feedback on whether the definition will have a chilling effect on free speech, they really should share it with us. The whole process feels like a giant stitch-up.” Fiyaz Mughal, the founder of Tell Mama, which monitored anti-Muslim hate incidents on behalf of the government for more than a decade, said he had also been locked out of the process. Mr Mughal, who has previously warned that the Islamophobia definition that was adopted by Labour in opposition would “curtail free speech”, believes he has not been allowed to take part in the process because of his critical stance... A spokesman for the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said that, should ministers go ahead with adopting a definition, “this should be subject to a full public consultation so that all the potential risks and benefits can be considered”. The watchdog was not formally invited to submit its views to the working group during their call for evidence, The Telegraph understands, despite the issue falling within its regulatory remit of equality and human rights. The EHRC described the call for evidence as “extremely narrow”, adding that it failed to cover the “many complications arising from the existing law”."
Muslim peer working on Islamophobia task force 'hosted extremist who celebrated attacks on Israel' in Parliament - "Baroness Shaista Gohir held the event alongside Muslim-led arts organisation Waw Creative Arts earlier this month which was attended by Haleem Kherallah, owner of Palestinian eatery Shakeshuka in Marylebone, London. Mr Kherallah was seen at the restaurant in a video posted to social media in June appearing to celebrate attacks on Israel."
Home Office on X - "Violence against women and girls is a national emergency – we'll halve it in a decade. We’re tackling offenders as part of the largest crackdown in history and providing early intervention services to combat harmful attitudes – so every woman and girl can live free from harm."
Allison Pearson on X - "Dear @ukhomeoffice Violence against women and girls is a national emergency because of your abject failure to keep thousands of young men from misogynist countries out of our decent, tolerant land. You even grant asylum to sex offenders! Sorry, this disaster is on you."
Too bad pointing out a major source of misogyny is islamophobic, which will soon become crypto-illegal, and probably eventually really illegal. So it's time to demonize white men even more
Labour’s Islamophobia definition ‘will harm women’s rights’ - "Baroness Falkner of Margravine, who finished her term in charge of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) last month, suggested the term could be used to silence people who “dare” to warn Muslim women are being suppressed... The latest warning from Lady Margravine comes just days after she accused Labour of abandoning women over issues like trans rights, because ministers are “terrified of their MPs”. She also claimed the Government had failed to stand up for “oppressed and vulnerable” women and girls over the issue of grooming gangs, in an interview with The Times."
Thread by @NJ_Timothy on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "The Government has finally produced its official “Islamophobia” definition - rebranded as “anti-Muslim hostility”. It’s even worse than feared. ๐งต bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…
As with the last definition endorsed by Labour, this dangerously elides concepts:
- The protection of people from harm v the protection of ideas from scrutiny
- Racial identity v religious belief
- Actions that are already illegal v behaviour that a free society should permit
The inclusion of this language is especially problematic: “The prejudicial stereotyping and racialisation of Muslims … to stir up hatred against them.”
First, “racialisation” is a nonsense term used to in this instance to make something not about race - beliefs - about race. Of course Muslims cannot be a race. It is morally wrong to hate somebody for what they inescapably are - black, white, whatever. Being a Muslim is about choosing to follow particular ideas. And in a free society we must be free to scrutinise and challenge ideas. Activists want to elide race and religion in this way because they want to shut down scrutiny and criticism of what they believe by calling other people racist. If the Government signs up to this definition ministers will be encouraging and facilitating exactly this. An example of why this matters. In Australia Muslims acting in the name of Islamic State killed Jews in an antisemitic attack. Now read this Hadith - believed to be a saying of Muhammad. Some Islamic scholars say it’s inauthentic. Some use it to justify antisemitic violence. Whether it’s authentic is moot. We should be free to discuss it - not least because moderates who disbelieve the Hadith should be supported in doing so. But with this definition, it’s obvious: even raising this point would be said to be stereotyping and racialising Muslims. And who decides what stereotyping is? Nobody believes all Muslims are terrorists or abusers. But are we allowed to say that Islamist terrorists carry out their atrocities in the name of Islam? Are we allowed to discuss religiously aggravated rape? Or is that stereotyping? Now take this: “the creation or use of practices and biases within institutions … to disadvantage Muslims in public and economic life.” This is a recipe for claims of supposedly invisible forces holding back Muslims. Look at this case. Michaela bans ritual prayer to encourage togetherness. A Muslim student took the school to court to say this was an act of discrimination. She lost. But this definition would empower her at the expense of the school - and other pupils.
Other examples are obvious. Could a judge instruct a witness or defendant to remove their veil? Could a school enforce a ban on hijabs for prepubescent girls? Could a politician argue for a ban on the burqa in public places? And what about “harassment and intimidation … directed at Muslims”? Harassment is a clearly defined criminal offence. What does intimidation mean? And who decides whether somebody has felt intimidated? We know how this would be used in reality. The 2018 definition said it was “Islamophobic” to discuss the rape gangs. Of course those behind that definition would say legitimate political debate about the rape gangs was felt by some to be an act of intimidation. There are countless other examples. The MCB’s Centre for Media Monitoring claimed it was “Islamophobic” when the media reported a terrorist “shouted Islamic slogans.” Consider how organisations like that would use this definition.
And let’s remember this. The people who produced this definition supported the 2018 version. That said we couldn’t talk about important issues like the entryist tactics of the Muslim Brotherhood. And it suggested supporting Indian sovereignty in Kashmir was “Islamophobic.” This is old wine in new bottles. A terrible idea pushed by activists and extremists rebranded as a compromise. If Labour agree it - meaning the public sector, the police and the courts start to follow it - we will no longer have free speech. Already the police and CPS are prosecuting people who desecrate the Quran and say things offensive to some Muslims. Already the mob intimidates schools, the police and private businesses into de facto blasphemy laws. And who wins? The extremists who spew hatred and incitement. Criminals - like the rape gang members - who win themselves an extra defence. And the Muslim Brotherhood and its front organisations - subverting our country unimpeded. We cannot accept this abject surrender."
The Free Speech Union on X - "๐จ A teacher was sacked and branded a risk to children after telling a Muslim pupil that Britain is a Christian country. This is the second example in less than 48 hours of local authorities manipulating safeguarding laws to silence people whose views don’t align with theirs. The teacher simply noted that the King is head of the Church of England, told pupils not to wash their feet in the boys’ bathroom sinks at the non-faith school where playground prayers had been informally banned, and emphasised the British value of tolerance. Police were called to investigate a potential hate crime, and the teacher — after three years at the school — was suspended and later sacked. He was simply stating the objective fact that the UK is a majority Anglican country. General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, Lord Young of Acton, stated: “Things have reached a pretty pass in this country if a teacher can be branded a safeguarding risk because he says something that’s incontestably true. If he’d claimed that Islam is the official religion of England, even though that’s not true, I doubt he would have got into any trouble.” This case not only reveals how authorities are abusing child-protection laws, but also highlights the consequences that an official definition of Islamophobia — a de facto blasphemy law — will have. The Free Speech Union is supporting the teacher — who wishes to remain anonymous — in suing his local authority. Read more in the Telegraph ๐"
nyara on X - "There is no “left-wing grift” There is no left-wing equivalent to:
> being racist and raising $200k
> saying “God :)” in a shitty essay and getting state recognition
> pretending to be a detransitioner to sell anti-trans
books > exploiting the ignorance of uneducated people"
Seamus (FreedomToons) on X - "Here are left-wing examples of everything you listed:
-Murdering a white kid and raising 500k
-Writing #blacklivesmatter 100 times on an application essay and getting accepted to Stanford
-Pretending to be a woman to compete in women's sports
-Your tweet"
Axios on X - "Guardrails against racist, xenophobic or dehumanizing rhetoric have all but vanished on the American right. What was once disqualifying — or the exclusive domain of online trolls — is now a fixture of national political discourse."
Black-Guy™️ on X - "The entire history of how gamer words became normalized.
The Left: “Punch all the Nazis (everyone is a Nazi but us)”
The Right: “You are using those labels wrong and on the wrong people. The meaning and impact of them WILL be lost. Please stop being retarded.”
The Left: “Shut up Nazi”
*Fast forward one whole decade of this conversation being repeated*
“Calling people accusatory slurs is now meaningless.” -Axios"
Gad Saad on X - "Let us suppose that 85% of Jews eat shrimp. However, Kosher laws forbid the eating of shrimp. Should we conclude that True Judaism allows the eating of shrimp or is it that 85% of Jews ignore this tenet? Could you apply this analogy to another religion as relating to genocidal and supremacist violence for well over a millennium?"
Allie Beth Stuckey on X - "My book, Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion, came out 14 months ago. Every month since its release a new, dishonest article is published that claims to be uncovering this secret, dangerous plot to get conservatives to abandon kindness. My argument is straightforward and obviously true: empathy can lead people to support destructive behavior and policies. Yet it has been maliciously misconstrued in every way, month after month, in an attempt to discredit it. Why? Because toxic empathy is the most effective tool in the progressive toolbelt. Without it, progressives lose their moral authority over women, and if they lose even a sliver of women, they lose everything. They can’t have women thinking logically when the survival of their party depends upon us mindlessly supporting the murder of babies, the unmitigated importation of the third world, and the release of murderers from prison. The destruction of the West rests upon the useful idiocy of women, which is accomplished by manipulating our empathy for bad ends. True love, compassion, and kindness are interwoven with truth. Truth requires thought, not just emotion. Wake up, women: toxic empathy is destroying the country."
ITVPolitics on X - "Starmer hits out at 'racist rhetoric returning to politics' which 'makes people feel very scared' 'As a brown person I’ve never felt more unsafe in the country I was born in', @DrAmirKhanGP tells the PM 'To be British is to be tolerant and compassionate', PM says @lorraine"
Leo Kearse - on YouTube & touring on X - "How come if a Muslim feels unsafe because of me, that's because I'm racist, but if I feel unsafe because of a Muslim, that's also because I'm racist?"
Drew Pavlou ๐ฆ๐บ๐บ๐ธ๐บ๐ฆ๐น๐ผ on X - "British woman was admitted to hospital after being physically assaulted. She ranted to a friend that the man who assaulted her was a “faggot” so she was reported to police for a homophobic hate crime and convicted in court"
British Australian Community on X - "The Burke and Wills statue was taken down in 2017 with a promise it would return after tunnel construction. Eight years later, it's clear this was just a cover to remove it with limited backlash. The Royal Society of Victoria President, who looks to be receiving the statue said, “Have we got enough statues of old white men? The answer is yes,” He noted the statue’s return (in a downgraded location, IF at all) now depends on the guidance of Aboriginal advisory groups. One of the architects of the new City Square, Craig Guthrie, openly stated that removing Burke and Wills would “sharpen the focus on First Nations history in the square”. Burke and Wills were the first to cross the continent from Melbourne, up to the Gulf of Carpentaria, while mapping the interior. The removal is part of a deliberate campaign to strip away every major public symbol of Australia’s British heritage, until the descendants of those who built the nation are left with no visible claim to the nation their ancestors founded, nor any understanding of the greatness and heroism of their own people."
Vice was the epitome of liberal hypocrisy – working there was like being in prison - "Vice was the biggest media story of the 2010s. Originally a skate magazine, at the peak of its powers, in 2017, Vice had a valuation of $5.7 billion – more than the New York Times. It was the 10th most valuable private company in America. As the old publishing world collapsed in the wake of internet disruption, its founders convinced the old guard of newspaper and TV magnates – the likes of Rupert Murdoch, WPP and Disney bought substantial shareholdings – that they had a bead on the emerging online landscape. And, crucially, that they had the full attention of the already hard-to-reach millennial generation... Alvi and Smith seemed like the future because of their casually sleazy model of journalism. They sought to outrage, titillate, disrupt. They made documentaries about Bolivian donkey sex initiation rites. About trepanation – drilling a hole in the skull as a sort of wellbeing hack. They sent their intern off to do stand-up comedy high on LSD. And mixed the lighter stuff with crude but brave news pieces – reports from the frontlines of Syria, of Donetsk and Liberia that were first-person, intimate slices of life beyond the plummy objectivity of a Kate Adie figure. The typical reportage was a host watching Afghan regulars high on heroin shoot their rifles into the air mid-fire fight with the Taliban, whispering into his microphone: “Woah, this is nuts.” A decade later, though, and Vice is broke. In 2023, after four years of listing at the waterline, its assets were finally flogged off in a fire sale. That $5.7 billion collapsed into $1.5 billion. Along the way, they made a lot of dreams come true – a whole generation of presenters, producers and journalists were minted into the media and told to reach for the moon. But the fast and loose cynicism of its senior executives could only be sustained by breaking lots of things along the way. They were notoriously noxious employers. Smith used to boast of the “22/22/22”… that they would hire 22-year-olds, work them 22 hours a day and pay them only $22,000 a year. For those who took the bargain, implicitly there was meant to be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that would one day make up for the privations. Many were given share options to keep them on the treadmill. Now worthless. I myself had to win a County Court judgment against Vice UK. And this wasn’t even in the bankruptcy era – it was just an average day in 2019, when I’d been working for them for 11 years. They would employ new hires at fantastic rates, and kept others on subsistence wages, even as the paper profits stacked. To suck in the big media giants, they juiced their traffic statistics beyond any reasonable level of cynicism. Many felt bruised by their encounters, even those ostensibly winning. That’s certainly the flavour that comes across from Eddie Huang’s new documentary: Vice Is Broke, debuting on Mubi on Friday. Huang has been stiffed a sum of $250,000 in unpaid royalties: now, he is on the trail of his money, and by way of that, to tell the story of the rise and fall of what was once billed as “The Millennial CNN” (yes, millennials were the future once)... “cool is a one-time resource,” as legendary early editor Jesse Pearson tells Huang. “You can sell it once. Then you’re done.” And by the end of 2014, Vice was on the cusp of cashing out its cool. It had probably done about 80 per cent of all the great work it ever would. Vice’s problems arrived a couple years after the big investments. It’s a story as old as time; suddenly, that high valuation implies high profitability; that means traffic targets; that means brand-incompatible advertisers must be seduced. Now, what began as an honest dialogue with your audience becomes metricised to within an inch of its life – and the targets quickly become impossible. To meet them, Vice needed women: the other 50 per cent of the millennial demographic, who were less keen on the cackling gross-out libertarianism that McInnes had pioneered. So Smith pivoted towards the new style of progressivism bubbling through US campuses. The new vibe was about personal essays, and the “problematisation” of ordinary things."
Opinion: Race-based anti-poverty programs don’t work; Most poor people are not visible minorities and most visible minorities are not poor. Federal policy should stop pretending otherwise : r/canada - "As someone who grew up with a very damaged and unstable white family, since I was a child people in the position to help often urged me to find evidence I was native or to sign off on intake paperwork as native because then I would be eligible for more help. It didn't feel appropriate to do, so I didn't - but even as an adult during intakes for mental health and addiction resources there have been moments when staff want to help and are like "Just sign off as indigenous, you don't have to prove it you just need to say it to get in the program." The amount of times people in government programs have suggested I fake having indigenous heritage in order to access better care is really discouraging. I remember being in the ICU waiting for discharge to a women's shelter, and my case worker was at her wits end because they almost got me a bed but it didn't work out because they assumed I was native and then quickly realized I wasn't and I lost eligibility for the bed. Very strange feelings. I'm fine now, things are a lot better - but I'm going to admit that during my teen years (13-18) I was beginning to grow feelings of racism because I was just so jealous that I couldn't get access to support or resources that I felt locked out of. I felt like people were blaming me, blaming my family - like because we're white we should know better or have more familial support? It felt like I was being hurt by white supremacist ideas that white people only struggle if we're bad or something, but minorities are "allowed" to struggle - just weird teen angst shit that radicalized me during those times. I felt like if I had more options I wouldn't have had to sell my body as a teen, and I felt like idiot white-saviour types wouldn't help me as a kid because it didn't make them look good. I'm getting better about realizing that those feelings are wrong and I was wrong to feel that way, but knowing that I developed those awful beliefs due to lack of help made me wonder how many other people develop these feelings but never question it - who remain with this hatred due to feeling like they weren't worthy of support due to their skin. I will say that this experience in my upbringing caused me to develop racists attitudes that took years to peel back and face directly. I feel a huge weight of shame that I ever felt those feelings, but the root of it was feeling like I was unworthy of support as "myself" - not anything that any minority ever did."
Emil Kirkegaard on X - "Comical critics attack behavioral genetics trying to leverage replication crisis arguments. It's one of the most replicated fields, and the only thing that didn't replicate was the left-wing related claims (GxE stuff). ๐ I do applaud Jay Joseph & Ken Richardson for sticking to their arguments decade after decade even after the war was lost. Reminds me of the Japanese holdout soldiers. The Bell Curve at 30: A Closer Look at the Within- and Between-Group IQ Genetic Evidence"
Atal Agarwal ๐๐๐ on X - "What went wrong in America in the last 2 years that Americans become so racist? It was never like this before. Americans felt abundance in the past in all aspects of life. What gave rise to such scarcity of basic resources that Americans became so racist recently?"
Eve Keneinan ๐☦️ู on X - "In brief, we were all forcibly signed on to a program of race-blind racial equality, which we grudgingly went along with. And then the rules were changed and Whites were told they are actually going to be at the bottom of a brand new race hierarchy. And no, fuck that. You were ALWAYS lying, so no more of it."
Pirate Wires on X - "NEW IN PIRATE WIRES: ‘Heather Cox Richardson Stole My Wife’ Heather Cox Richardson (HCR), a top writer on Substack who tells her devoted followers that Trump is a dictator, has vastly more followers than Jimmy Kimmel has viewers. After we profiled her in October, a man emailed Pirate Wires to tell us HCR was partially responsible for his divorce. For years, this man’s wife would forward him HCR’s newsletter while he kept quiet. Eventually, his wife became so angry, embittered, and ultimately afraid of an imminent Nazi takeover, that — shortly after the 2024 election — they had an existential fight. Tired of constant divorce threats based on his fairly conservative views, he ultimately confronted her about her one-sided information diet... and she started packing. Below, a rare view of how that abstract thing we call The Information Ecosystem affects actual human beings, by @dodgeblake ๐"
Time to censor social media to protect people from right wing extremism
Skeptic Research Center Team on X - "~ 1 in 3 Americans identifying as "very liberal" have severed ties with friends AND family over politics. "Very liberals" cut ties with both friends and family at twice the rate of "liberals" and "very conservatives." "Very liberals" cut ties with both friends and family at about four times the rate of "moderates" and "conservatives." (see graph below) These data come from the American Political Perspectives Survey (APPS) collected from August 3, 2025, to September 26, 2025, with 3,000 American adults who speak English. All respondents needed to pass (1) attention checks, (2) a duplication check, (3) time-to-completion checks, (4) fraud and (5) bot-identification checks. For more information, see: https://research.skeptic.com/american-polit"
Cults seek to separate you from family and friends, so
Eric Kaufmann on X - "NEW: big 2024 drop in bisexual identity among young Brits, via official figures. Mirrors America’s post-‘23 decline in alternative sexual and trans identity. My latest @unherd:"
Bisexuality plummets among Gen Z in UK
Wilfred Reilly on X - "It was incredibly clear - to any 2000s kid who had multiple campus-bisexual girlfriends that wouldn't even eat sushi, fey buddies who "were a girl" for three weeks, etc - that 90% or so of youth sexual identities were pure affectations. Littman and other elite scientists in fact documented this, but it became oddly taboo to say."
Of course, the cope is that this is due to queerphobia and is equivalent to societal conversion therapy, because the only sexuality/identity people lie about being is straight/cis
John Rain on X - "For the left, when it comes to criticizing white people or accusing them of the worst vices, “white people” exist, it's a relevant notion that everyone understands. On the other hand, when it comes to saying good things about them, or defending their interests, then all of a sudden “white people don't mean anything, we can't define what they are, it's an obsolete notion, etc.”. The left simply hates white people, and doesn't want them to see themselves as a group with their own interests to defend."
Mitra๐ on X - "why are white people so afraid of becoming a minority? does the US treat minorities poorly or something?"
Ben Luigi on X - "White people have treated minority groups better than any society in the history of the world, that’s why they flock to our countries in droves. We literally gave the indigenous their own territories after conquering their land, NOBODY in history has done such a thing. In fact, we’ve treated minority groups so well that it is now to our detriment, our nations are being destroyed as a result of our charity."
