بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
The United Kingdom is a Strange Land where Dumb People Believe Dumb Things and Smart People are Bullied into Acquiescence with them
News:
An opinion piece headline for the Guardian on the 16th of February 2024, written by Gaby Hinsliff, stated: "Learn this from the Rochdale debacle: society faces peril when smart people believe dumb things.”
Comment:
How true it is that society faces peril when smart people believe dumb things, but in such cases at least, smart people may see the truth and change their minds. The bigger danger is when dumb people believe dumb things and smart people are bullied into acquiescence with them, and that is what is happening in the UK where any criticism of the destruction and butchery of civilians in Gaza is being stamped out with inquisitorial vehemence. For several days, the UK media has obsessed over a Muslim Labour Party electoral candidate, Mr. Azhar Ali, who was heard in a leaked private discussion with fellow members of his Party saying: “The Egyptians are saying that they warned Israel 10 days earlier ... Americans warned them a day before [that] ... there’s something happening. They deliberately took the security off, they allowed ... that massacre that gives them the green light to do whatever they bloody want.”
Mr. Ali made those comments very soon after October 7th, when the world, and especially the Muslim world, was stunned by the scale and speed of the collapse of the so-called “Israeli” Defence Force (IDF) around the perimeter of Gaza. The myth of “Israeli” invincibility was shattered in an instant and many found it difficult to believe that the Zionist entity did not know about the impending assault from Gaza. As a side note, the IDF was only twice in its history needed to actually defend the Zionist entity, and twice it failed. The Zionist entity has relied upon the neighboring Arab regimes for its defense, so that it can focus on subjugating Palestinians, and its insidious role as a mass indoctrination camp for its own youth. In a mixed gender atmosphere of camaraderie, overlooking a dehumanized ‘other’, impressionable young Jews absorb the mythical colonial fantasy of self-centered political Zionism and have an adventure sharing in the violent colonial occupation of Palestinian lives, so that thereafter, rejection of political Zionism would be a painful rejection of self. The few that fail to imbibe the indoctrination are left ashamed and emotionally damaged from the experience, according to testimonies from former IDF soldiers. Many have criticized this colonial culture without wishing any harm to Jews.
The incredible thing about the UK media and its political establishment is the way that it takes not only such an unjust and one-sided stance but is mercilessly purging all dissent. The Labour Party, for example, expelled hundreds of its members for antisemitism and even its former leader, Jeremy Corbyn, fell victim to the purge, and thousands more were sent for forced re-education in the months that followed. Despite all this ‘re-education’, we now have more members being punished for expressing ‘wrong thoughts’. Surprisingly, Jews were five times more likely to be charged with antisemitism than non-Jews, according to a report by Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) in 2021, which ought to make any intelligent person question the prevailing dogma. With the genocidal actions of the IDF in Gaza, criticism of the Jewish entity has increased, and the antisemitism purges have begun again. Politicians have been punished, doctors and other professionals targeted for expulsion from their jobs, people wearing Palestinian cultural items or calling for Palestine to be free have been threatened. All this because, first, antisemitism has been redefined perversely as meaning criticism of the Jewish entity and second, the UK has become a police state where lobbies and billionaire media owners determine what people should think, and armies of parrots write articles bemoaning those who deviate from the new orthodoxies.
Gaby Hinsliff makes an interesting point in her opinion piece in the Guardian that “the hallmark of conspiratorial thinking is a quasi-religious conviction that nothing ever happens by accident, only by grand design, and that only people too naive to know how the world really works could think otherwise. When challenged, believers revert indignantly to that one original fact, before insisting they are entitled loudly to draw whatever conclusions they like from it.” She advocates for people to be “challenging dangerous junk when they hear it and thus setting the social norm”, but no one can challenge anything anymore in the UK because the ‘social norms’ have been set in stone and even though sadly Mr. Ali was bullied into recanting his opinions, he was punished anyway.
Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Dr. Abdullah Robin