The Anti-Racist Witch-Hunts

From The Anti-Racist Witch-Hunts
From the desk of Fjordman on Wed, 2008-10-08 13:53

The leading Norwegian blog Document.no tells the horrifying story about how two decent white men in 2007 were attacked by a media lynch mob for their supposed "racism." As it turns out later, the mainstream media didn't present nearly all of the information relevant to the case at the time, which didn't prevent them from nearly destroying these two men. This happened at the same time as there is a growing wave of crime and violence targeting the natives. The response of the authorities to rising levels of racist violence targeting the natives has been to increase crackdowns on "racism" – by the white natives. In 2005 the Norwegian parliament – with the support of 85% of MPs – passed a new Discrimination Act, prepared by then Minister of Integration from the Conservative Party, Erna Solberg, who had earlier called for the establishment of a sharia council in Norway.

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 The Anti-Racist Witch-Hunts
The leading Norwegian blog Document.no tells the horrifying story about how two decent white men in 2007 were attacked by a media lynch mob for their supposed "racism." As it turns out later, the mainstream media didn't present nearly all of the information relevant to the case at the time, which didn't prevent them from nearly destroying these two men. This happened at the same time as there is a growing wave of crime and violence targeting the natives. The response of the authorities to rising levels of racist violence targeting the natives has been to increase crackdowns on "racism" – by the white natives. In 2005 the Norwegian parliament – with the support of 85% of MPs – passed a new Discrimination Act, prepared by then Minister of Integration from the Conservative Party, Erna Solberg, who had earlier called for the establishment of a sharia council in Norway.

A spokesman for the right-wing Progress Party, Per Sandberg, feared that the law would jeopardize the rights of law-abiding citizens. Reverse burden of proof is combined with liability to pay compensation, which means that innocent persons risk having to pay huge sums for things they didn't do. If an immigrant claims that a native has somehow discriminated against him or made a discriminatory remark, the native person has to mount proof of his own innocence. This harsh law was passed despite the fact that most immigrants themselves claimed they had encountered little discrimination.

I have later discovered that similar laws have been passed across much of Western Europe, encouraged by the EU and the Council of Europe (CoE) in cooperation with international Islamic organizations. The Norwegian law followed an initiative from the CoE. There was virtually no public debate about this law, which was passed in relative silence prior to the national elections that year. Not a single journalist genuinely criticized it, and most barely mentioned it at all before it was passed. The same journalists otherwise tend to be very concerned about the legal or "human rights" of Islamic terrorists, but apparently not of their own people.

The Equality and Anti-discrimination Ombud Beate Gangås, a white lesbian feminist, before the municipal elections in 2007 warned all political parties against making "discriminatory" remarks regarding immigration policies, but called for actively reducing the number of white, heterosexual men in politics. There was little real debate about immigration in the heavily left-leaning media that year, but an all the more passionate witch-hunt looking for racists, and by that I mean whites only. The left-wing coalition government, after a meeting with immigrant organizations, announced that racists, apparently meaning white natives only, should be "smoked out" of all public sector jobs.

The same government in October 2008 funded a conference in Oslo involving "dialogue" with a number of hardline sharia-sponsoring groups from the Middle East, including the Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The section Fred og Forsoning ("Peace and Reconciliation") of the Foreign Ministry financed the research project "Fault Lines of Islamism" [pdf] led by Bjørn Olav Utvik of the University of Oslo. Gry Larsen from the Labor Party, representing the Ministry, was scheduled to meet with representatives of these groups. The left-wing government can thus meet with radical Islamic groups, but want to silence those among the natives who don't want Muslims with such views to settle in their country. No "dialogue" with them.

Two ambulance drivers in Oslo, both of them white native Norwegians, were in August 2007 involved in what became a massively hyped case supposedly involving "white racism." The ambulance had arrived to pick up an African man who was injured. As ambulance driver Erik Schjenken months later explained, the man "pulled down his pants and urinated on my colleague's leg. My colleague was surprised, pulled away and called him a pig. That's when we viewed the man as a problem, and decided it was best if the police took him to the clinic." Ali Farah, the Somalian man in question, had more severe head injuries than the drivers assumed at that point. "We made a mistake, because we interpreted his urination as willful and a provocation, but NOT because we had racist or discriminatory motives," Schjenken wrote.

Based on weak suspicions of "racism," the mass media, leading intellectuals and politicians launched what can only be described as a witch-hunt against the two ambulance drivers. "This would never happen to a white man," said the prominent Norwegian-Pakistani lawyer Abid Q. Raja, representing Farah and his family. Author Anne Holt, who once served as Minister of Justice for the Labor Party, wrote an essay in newspaper Aftenposten which in my view amounted to a verbal execution of the drivers. Both of them were suspended from service and became the target of widespread, negative media coverage. They were later cleared after an investigation of the incident by the Norwegian Board of Health Supervision. However, the Equality and Anti-Discrimination Ombud, or the Multicultural Inquisition as I like to call it, ruled that Farah was a victim of discrimination and that the ambulance personnel broke the anti-discrimination laws. As noted before, the anti-discrimination law states that natives are guilty of "discrimination" almost as soon as they are suspected of it.

It should be mentioned here that this African man was injured in the first place because he was beaten by another African man, from Ghana. In Norway, a country straddling the Arctic Circle and with no colonial history, one African man beats another African man, and the result is that the white ambulance drivers, who have dedicated their lives to helping other people, become the targets of a lynch mob led by the country's media. Driver Erik Schjenken needed professional help as he was brought to the brink of suicide.

According to Hans Rustad from the major blog Document.no, the ideology of anti-racism in some cases resembles what we have seen from Communists regimes. The term "racist" is similar to being called a "class traitor" under Communism. The mere accusation is powerful enough to destroy lives. Rustad fears that anti-racism in some cases leads to lawlessness. Ambulance driver Schjenken was a well-regarded employee who had performed thousands of calls and saved many lives, yet because of one error of judgment, which in my view was understandable given the situation, his life was ruined. All because he had a politically incorrect skin color while the other person was non-white.
 
What makes this even more absurd is that in Norway, as throughout the Western world, white-on-non-white violence is exceedingly rare. The vast majority of racism and racist violence comes from non-whites against whites, or between different groups of non-whites. In Oslo, young girls are raped; schoolchildren are threatened with death, robbed and assaulted. The police have warned against "an alarming rise in street violence" in urban areas across the country. This is directly caused by mass immigration, which is nevertheless still championed by the very same media who attacked these two ambulance drivers.

For instance, a 17-year-old Somalian was convicted of the rape of a young girl in Oslo. The court stated that the rape was unusually brutal and lasted for several hours. The man choked the girl for so long that the medical doctor who examined her said that she could have died. The girl suffers from severe psychological problems in the aftermath of the attack. The African youth was sentenced to four and half years in prison. This sentence included another rape, where his Norwegian-Moroccan friend raped a 13-year-old girl whilst the Somalian helped to threaten her and keep guard. She has naturally been traumatized from the incident.

Numerous natives have had their lives ruined by similar attacks, yet anti-white racism is rarely mentioned as a problem by the mainstream media. Whites are apparently fair game. The more vicious the rapes, muggings, and stabbings targeting whites in their own country get, the more aggressive and hysterical the witch-hunt on "white racism" becomes. French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut has warned that "the lofty idea of 'the war on racism' is gradually turning into a hideously false ideology. And this anti-racism will be for the 21st century what Communism was for the 20th century: A source of violence."

Professor Sigurd Skirbekk of the University of Oslo notes that "In 1994, the German periodical Focus pointed to opinion polls taken in Germany, France and England in which 55, 52 and 50 per cent, respectively, felt that their countries accepted too many immigrants. From Norway we have a representative study from 1987 which showed that 51% of the people felt that the country should accept fewer immigrants; 25% felt that politicians should stick to current practice, while only 8% wanted to accept more immigrants. A similar study in Sweden, made a couple of years later, showed that 54% of Swedes felt that too many people were immigrating to Sweden. In later studies the figures have varied somewhat; but there have always been more people who have favored a restrictive policy than those who favored liberalization." Thus, according to Skirbekk, "the extent of recent immigration cannot be explained on the basis of popular opinion [my emphasis]."

Skirbekk wonders whether there is a quasi-religious undercurrent to the anti-racist movement, and that it is quite literally the equivalent of the witch-hunts of previous ages:

"A number of researchers have come to see that certain issues in the migration debate has religious connotations. The Norwegian social anthropologist Inger Lise Lien, for instance, has written that 'racism' in the public immigration debate has become a word used to label the demons among us, the impure from whom all decent people should remain aloof. We have every reason to believe that the use of the term 'racist' in our day has many functional similarities with the use of the word 'heretic' three hundred years ago….It is presumably fully possible to join anti-racist movements with the sole motive of identifying with something that appears to be politically correct, or in order to be a part of a collective that entitles one to demonstrate and to harass splinter groups that no one cares to defend." But "behind the slogan 'crush the racists,' there might well be something more than a primitive desire to exercise violence. The battle also involves an element of being in a struggle for purity versus impurity. And since racism is something murky, anti-racism and the colorful community it purportedly represents, becomes an expression of what is pure."

The Norwegian left-wing author Torgrim Eggen warns against "race wars" brought about by mass immigration yet continues to support it. Questioned about what we can do to avoid this scenario he states: "That's a very stupid question to ask to an author. This presupposes that I want everybody to be happy, have a good time and don't have any problems. If so, what do they want me to write about?"

I will give him credit for his honesty: This is the most frank admission I have seen of the fact that some people don't WANT society to be harmonious; they think it's boring. There is no worse fate for a self-professed intellectual than to live in a nation that is by and large prosperous, peaceful and well-functioning because nobody will care about his advice or follow his guidance, as is befitting a person of his intelligence.

During the Multicultural craze of the 1990s, Eggen in an essay entitled "The psychotic racism" warned against turbulence caused by mass immigration. The solution to this was not to limit immigration, but to limit criticism of immigration. According to him, xenophobia and opposition to mass immigration should be viewed as a mental illness, and hence "the solution to this xenophobia is that you should distribute medication to those who are seriously affected. I have discussed this with professor of community medicine, Dr. Per Fugelli, and he liked the idea." Mr. Fugelli suggested putting anti psychotic drugs in the city's drinking water.

This may sound too extreme to be meant seriously, but Fugelli has continued to chastise those who are critical of national immigration policies. Eggen warned that arguments about how ordinary people are concerned over mass immigration shouldn't be accepted because this could lead to Fascism: "One should be on one's guard against people, especially politicians, who invoke xenophobia on behalf of others. And if certain people start their reasoning with phrases such as 'ordinary people feel that,' one shouldn't argue at all, one should hit [them]."

Thomas Hylland Eriksen, professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo, heads a multi-million project sponsored by the state trying to envision how the new Multicultural society will work. He is a career Multiculturalist and intellectual celebrity in his country, a frequent contributor to the public debate and lives, according to himself, in a boring, monocultural part of the city, insulated from the effects of cultural diversity. Hylland Eriksen has proclaimed the death of (Western) nations as if he derives pleasure from it, and has stated that the Nidaros Cathedral (Nidarosdomen), the most prominent church in the country, should no longer serve as a national symbol in our Multicultural society.

Mr. Eriksen has clashed with Ole-Jørgen Anfindsen, who runs the bilingual quality website HonestThinking.org and warns against the effects of uncontrolled mass immigration. According to Hylland Eriksen, "Cosmopolites insist on a world comprising of more colors than black and white. In such a world, the problems presented by Ole-Jørgen Anfindsen are not just petty, but irrelevant."

What are the problems presented by Mr. Anfindsen? Well, he has published numbers indicating that if the current immigration continues, native Norwegians will be a minority in their own country within a couple of generations. Given the fact that ethnic groups who become minorities in their own lands usually have a hard time, and always get persecuted when the newcomers are Muslims, one would assume that this would be interesting information. But for self-proclaimed "Multicultural cosmopolites," it is "petty and irrelevant" to even consider that this could represent a problem. Eriksen calls Anfindsen "stupid and ignorant," and hints that "Maybe Anfindsen's agenda is inspired by a kind of perverted Christianity (he has a Christian background)."

"He has a Christian background." Is that supposed to be an insult and disqualify a person from worrying about whether his grandchildren will be persecuted? Mr. Eriksen, like other Western Multiculturalists, worries about Islamophobia but is more than willing to mock Christianity. A newspaper essay co-authored by Eriksen states that: "Is he [Anfindsen] asking us to once again repeat the obvious in that the murder of Theo van Gogh, various acts of terrorism and death threats against newspaper editors have nothing to do with Islam?"

Nothing to do with Islam? Really?

Mohammed Bouyeri, born in Amsterdam of Moroccan parents, killed Theo van Gogh as he was cycling in Amsterdam on Nov. 2, 2004, shooting and stabbing before slashing his throat and pinning a note to his body with a knife. "I did what I did purely out my beliefs," he told judges while clutching a Koran. "I want you to know that I acted out of conviction and not that I took his life because he was Dutch or because I was Moroccan," but because he believed van Gogh insulted Islam in his film criticizing the treatment of Muslim women.

So a peaceful Christian man is accused of having a dark, secret agenda, while a Muslim murderer who brags about his Islamic motivations has nothing to do with Islam? A Serbian doctor from the former Yugoslavia, where a Multicultural society recently collapsed in a horrific civil war, warned against the effects of unchecked mass immigration. Thomas Hylland Eriksen responded by chastising her for her "lack of visions."

Apparently, your worth as an intellectual is measured in how grandiose your ideas are. The greater your visions, the more dazzling your intellect is and thus the greater prestige should be awarded to you. Whether those visions actually correspond to reality and human nature is of secondary importance. In fact, many a self-proclaimed intellectual will be downright offended by the petty considerations of his more pedestrian fellow citizens, concerned with what effects his ideas will have in real life. The fact that some people could get hurt from his ideas doesn't discourage him. Truly great advances for mankind can only be accomplished though sacrifices, preferably made by others than himself.

Those who champion mass immigration take no self-criticism for the violence their policies have brought. On the contrary, they want more immigration. Following the release of a UN population report in 2007 which indicated a global population increase of several billion people over the coming decades, Marie Simonsen, the political editor of Norwegian left-wing newspaper Dagbladet, which has spent decades denouncing the right-wing Progress Party for their "racist" policies of limiting mass immigration, wrote that it should be considered a universal human right for people everywhere to migrate wherever they want to. This would mean virtually certain annihilation for a tiny, wealthy and naive Scandinavian nation. Ms. Simonsen thus endorsed the gradual eradication of her own people, no doubt congratulating herself for her tolerance. Not a single word of protest was voiced by any other journalist to this statement.

"Human rights" was a concept originally intended to ensure liberty. Now it's used to eradicate an entire civilization, in the name of tolerance and diversity, and the natives are specifically banned from protesting against this.