Watch what you are saying

MP Lee Anderson, former Tory deputy chairman, has the strength of his convictions. What he doesn’t have – and neither do any of us – is the right to free speech.

That point was hammered home to him when he said the other day that London’s mayor Sadiq Khan was “being controlled by Islamists.”

You can’t level such accusations if they are false – and especially if they are true. True or false, that’s Islamophobia, a crime as heinous as other similar phobias, such as ‘homo-’, ‘trans-’ or ‘xeno-’. Hence Mr Anderson instantly lost his Tory whip, although he was told he might regain it if he apologised to Mr Khan.

That the pugnacious politician refused to do, saying he wouldn’t apologise to that… mayor “while I’ve still got breath in my body”. Which may not be for long if the events that prompted Mr Anderson’s remark are any indication.

Not to cut too fine a point, a mob of Muslim extremists is taking over London and threatening to supplant the sovereignty of Parliament with the sovereignty of violence.

Mr Anderson responded to major riots in the course of which smoke-engulfed Tower Bridge was brought to a standstill by pro-Palestinian thugs wearing masks, firing flares, screaming into megaphones, beating drums and waving banners saying “Palestine has a right to armed resistance”.

Even more menacingly, the mob projected an anti-Semitic slogan on Big Ben and exposed MPs to vile abuse, harangues and death threats. Fear of violence succeeded in manipulating a Parliamentary vote, which brought back the fond memory of Col. Pride and his Ironsides.

Several Labour MPs have requested police protection, while incongruously demanding that Mr Anderson’s political head be delivered to them on a platter. How dare he impugn the probity of a Labour Muslim mayor! So what if all that mayhem resulted in not a single arrest? That still doesn’t excuse stating the blindingly obvious, which is what Islamophobia means in this case.

Not many people know this, as Michael Caine never said, but Mr Khan wears two hats. He is not only the mayor of London but also its police commissioner. Hence he is doubly responsible for the impotent response by the Met to the threat of undermining the constitution of this realm.

This vindicates the point I made the best part of 30 years ago in my book How the West Was Lost. Britain – and the rest of the West – is ruled not by democracy, autocracy or theocracy, but increasingly by glossocracy, government by the word.

Glossocracy is a power mechanism based on manipulating people’s minds by controlling their language. That mechanism was first activated on a massive scale when the Paris mob began to bay Liberté, égalité, fraternité as heads rolled off the block. That slogan was desemanticised. It was merely the birth cry of a nascent modernity and a shorthand expression of visceral hatred for the ancien régime.

As the post-Christendom political institutions developed, so did glossocracy. It has now become so mature that it threatens to supplant the other mechanisms of governance. All those ‘-phobias’ are desemanticised too. Whatever their literal meaning, they are merely bullets in the magazine of the anti-Western gun.

‘Islamophobia’ is one such. This particular bullet is fired at any Briton who dares to protest against an alien mob using violence and civil unrest to impose fundamentally anti-British tenets on Britain.

This accusation of an inordinate, uncontrolled fear of Muslims (I’m being etymologically literal here) is enough to end careers, including political ones. Standards of proof don’t matter. If someone says you are an Islamophobe, that’s what you are. Off with your head, but not because you may hate Muslims. You’ve committed the unpardonable sin of sticking up for Britain qua Britain, and accusing you of any ‘-phobia’ is a way of spelling out the indictment.

Even people who try to combat this blight have to dilute their message of defiance with mandatory disclaimers. For example, the other day Charles Moore wrote a typically thoughtful article on this very subject. Yet even he had to emphasise the difference between ‘Islamists’ and any old Muslims (as for that matter did Lee Anderson).

I’m aware of the distinction, but less aware of the difference.

At present, Muslims make up 15 per cent of London’s population. Since they tend to vote as a bloc for any Muslim candidate, such as Sadiq Khan, they have the power of the vote. And since their scripture mandates hatred of Christians and Jews, they have the power of the street.

Their activists are the core around which all haters of the West can coalesce into a powerful destructive force. Yesterday I mentioned the Welsh singer Charlotte Church, who added her vocally trained voice to the mob singing “From the river to the sea!”. Miss Church then denied that the verse is anti-Semitic.

Could have fooled me. The river in question is the Jordan that borders Israel on the east, and the sea is the Mediterranean bordering her on the west. That slogan is therefore a call to exterminate Israel and every Jew there, which brings into question either Miss Church’s honesty or her knowledge of geography.

What she should have said was that the song isn’t just anti-Semitic. It’s also anti-Western and anti-British, deflecting such sentiments to a seemingly unrelated subject.

It’s true that far from all Muslims go out to sing subversive songs, harass MPs and block public thoroughfares. By the same token, only 10 per cent of the Soviets belonged to the Communist Party and only five per cent of the Germans were active Nazis.

However, these were the leaders drumming up passive support for the ruling party, which in Germany kept at a steady 60 per cent (no data on the Soviet Union are available). My guess that about the same proportion of London Muslims share the sentiments of that song even if they are unwilling to strain their vocal chords in public. Likewise, not many Gaza residents butcher Israelis, but most of them rejoice when that happens.

The distinction between Islamists and Muslims is thus nothing but a woke disclaimer, and Mr Moore ought to be ashamed of himself. Then again, Lee Anderson’s example shows that not pulling one’s verbal punches spells career suicide.

I’m friendly with a few Muslims who are monogamous, never open the Koran, laugh at jokes about Mohammed and can drink me under the table (I’m getting weaker in my dotage). They are good friends – but bad Muslims. In fact, one could argue they aren’t Muslims at all, and the individuals I have in mind would perhaps agree, if only begrudgingly.

In other words, the only good Muslim is a bad Muslim, ideally a borderline infidel. However, if Lee Anderson were to say something like this in public, he’d lose more than his Tory whip. Glossocracy rules, and it’s despotic.

Nor does it limit itself to the list of proscribed phobias. The other day, Glasgow Celtic manager Brendan Rogers responded to an interviewer’s question by saying “good girl”.

As I write this, Mr Rogers is hanging on to his job by the skin of his teeth. The ensuing outcry is rich in words like ‘misogynist’ and ‘dinosaur’, accompanied by demands for a sacking or at least an abject apology. The besieged footballer tries to defend himself by saying that in his native Northern Ireland that expression is common currency.

“So much the worse for Northern Ireland!” comes the thunderous reply. Glossocracy is demanding its pound of flesh, and it won’t be denied.