Western civilisation inching Mecca-wards: Muslims govern London, soon NY

In November, the world will learn whether its second great Anglophone city is to be governed by a Muslim, following the decade-long triumph of Saddiq Khan in London. I nearly wrote “will fall to a Muslim”, and though technically that would not be correct, culturally and spiritually it’s not far off the mark. Zohran Mamdami’s victory over former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary on June 24 clearly had Byzantine overtones in a city that in just over two months’ time will be commemorating the 24th anniversary of the Islamist atrocity of 9/11. Moroever, Mamdami is unapologetic about his position: He wishes to “globalise” the Palestinian intifada. Some may think that his nomination is a sign of New York’s kindly soul, for the city had already allowed mosques to broadcast their muezzin call without further permissions. Others would maintain that it shows how stupid, supine and spineless Western societies have become. I belong to the latter group. 

So time, and the gentle slope of history, would appear to be favouring Islam, with much of Western civilisation gravitationally inching Mecca-wards. On the far side of the USA, California’s Governor Gavin Newsom – who appears to be Justin Trudeau’s conjoined twin, their separation at birth having been tragically accident-free – could give masterclasses in civilisational capitulation  to Pétain.  The phrase, “the heart sinks”, is usually a metaphor: But with the prospect of New York, London and Los Angeles falling within the domains of two zealously anti-Israel Muslims and a doctrinaire liberal halfwit, there’s nothing remotely metaphorical about the plummeting coronary arteries of people who fear for the future of Western, Christian values. 

Admittedly, Western societies have long been under sustained-assault from within. Cuomo was the barbarian who as governor six years ago ordered the One World Trade Centre to be floodlit with pink light to celebrate the passage of a New York state law permitting abortions up to nine months. This is usually done by beheading the baby in the womb and dragging out the broken carcase and the remains of the skull with barbed hooks. Then,  almost to the day, as Cuomo lost to Mamdami, Westminster legalised full-term abortion in England. 

But London, being determined not to be out-liberaled by anyone, next approved  a law permitting the so-called “assisted-dying” –  or more accurately, assisted-killing. It is hard to say which was the more terrifying: The relative lack of awe at abandoning fifteen hundred years of Christian teaching on these matters, or the idiotic selfie-taking revelries on the streets of London by aerobically-skinny women sporting baseball hats over tie-dyed blond hair. But maybe not so idiotic after all; possibly their grannies are being a little too tenacious about both their longevity and life-savings. Time to have a wee chat in private with their GPs.

What New York and London also have in common is that they are now both culturally foreign cities in two great countries. If Iran ever wanted to test-fire its ballistic missiles, I would happily give it the coordinates for the liberal bastions in New York’s Manhattan and London’s Greater Highbury area. The former even has its “Commie Corridor” alongside the East River, while the second has “Quislington”, ie, Islington, the home of many self-styled “human rights lawyers”. The residents of both boroughs are scholars of the complementary theologies of Gramsci and balsamic vinegar. Needless to say – or should that be needles? – both have hyper-active protest groups, “Queers for Palestine”. Byzantium probably had a similar faction chafing within its crumbling walls.

Could I be making all this up? Oh, would that I were…

Sometimes history seems intent on steering our species inexorably towards disaster, whatever choice we make. We cannot know the historical alternatives to Hitler, but his most fervent opponents, the devoted Stalinists Ernst Thalmann and Willy Lang, of the KPD (the German Communist Party) and their paramilitary organisation, the Roter Frontkämpferbund were in their own way nearly as depraved as the  Nazis.  Merely because communists preached brotherly love doesn‘t mean that they eschewed the Gulag of mass-murder that was the cleansing, intermediary step on the glorious path towards a Marxist Elysium. 

Moreover, those “liberals“ who today promise  diversity, equity and inclusion seem to be allied with the insidious co-pilots in our laptops that assure us that they are there solely for our sake. It’s not paranoid to wonder about the intentions behind such uninvited, adhesive companionship; indeed, not to wonder would merely confirm that madness has taken root, and in quite complex ways. So Silicon Valley is apparently entwined with Quislington and Commie Corridor, and yes, Queers for Palestine, while the generic  source of the software that enabled the B-2s to strike Iran’s nuclear centrifuges also inserts the copilot-stalker inside our laptops. This dystopian nightmare revels in the bizarre; some spectators thought a strange flag with squiggly symbols in last Sunday’s “Pride“ march in London belonged to the beheaders of ISIS, which weirdly made sense, sort of. In fact, it was a banner displaying “butt-plugs“ and dildoes, these apparently being ideal subjects to discuss with the kids on Pride’s big family day out. 

Yes, indeed, Byzantium.

Remember, the oft-forgotten outcome of Churchill’s 1930’s prescience about Hitler was that in 1941 he became Stalin’s most fervent ally. Thus by 1945, the NKVD was able to extend its reach as far west as Erfurt, once the home of Lutheranism, and now just 200 kilometres from the North Sea and all of 2,000 kilometres from Moscow.  Churchill finally woke up to Stalin’s schemes, but only when it was – here follow the two most deadly words in the English language – too late. 

Is this the eleventh hour of Western values, meaning that something can still be done, or have we already heard the chimes of midnight? Mmm. Apart from halal cooking, growing everywhere, all of Europe’s metrics of economic viability are falling, as too are its native populations. The bellwether of such matters is Germany: Excepting the Covid Year of 2020 – useful only for revealing the undiluted malignance of our dear friends in Communist China – every single industrial index there is down from the past decade. Quite as significantly, the only fifth-generation jet fighter available to Europe today is American. The continent that invented the jet engine and gave us Avro, de Havilland, Hawker, Supermarine, Saab, Dornier,  Messerschmitt, Fiat, Hispano-Suiza, Dassault, Sud Aviation and Bregeut is now barely capable of hammering together an all-weather, high-altitude biscuit-tin. 

Moreover, even to assert some basic truths that the five great countries of Europe — England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain — were defined by the ethnicity of their native populations would be denounced as racist by any EU court, and probably criminalised. Nor is this disease confined to the Old World. One can acclaim the racial component of black Americans, and be applauded for doing so: But doing the same for WASPS would definitely result in  isolation, and probably even boycott and ruin. Indeed, the only occasion when UK Prime Minister Starmer rhetorically addressed the horrors of uncontrolled immigration – that Britain had become ‘an island of strangers‘ – subsequently became his greatest regret. Yes, he deplores reality: The death-cry of a genuine liberal.

University campuses, the most powerful vector of this disease of inverted racial-apartheid, are rightly the targets of President Trump’s wrath. Why is depriving his opponents of government-funding for projects intended to scupper his projects implicitly a violation of academic freedom? Such campuses began their war against academic and personal freedom long before Trump even dreamt of running for the White House: Indeed, they were one reason why he began his journey. It is absurd (though educational) for leftists to argue about “academic freedom“ when their intended outcome remains a neo-Marxist, sexist, anti-Semitic, Caucasophobic, heterophobic paradise of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or if you like, Zionist Transgender Queers for Palestine & Byzantium. 

Liberals today  draw parallels with the 1930s, linking  Trump with Hitler. This is as meaningless as comparing Shirley Temple with Greta Thunberg. One thing that this epoch and the 1930s certainly have in common are supposedly insoluble world-crises. Back then, they were in Abyssinia, Palestine, China and Central Europe. Today, they are, well, pretty much in the same places, though in north and west Africa the skittles are falling with terrifying speed.  Could any of these crises lead to war? Yes. Which one? Ah, this column is an attempt at deliberative retrospection, not a foresightful crystal ball. What one can say with reasonable certainty is that Europe is now unable to stop a single skittle falling, even in  Berlin, Paris or London. But the USA still can. Will it? Not a chance if the Democrats of Commie Corridor have their way.

Kevin Myers is an Irish journalist, author and broadcaster. He has reported on the wars in Northern Ireland, where he worked throughout the 1970s, Beirut and Bosnia.