Fish Fingers

The progressive left is morally bankrupt. Who knew?

There’s an old guy who goes to my gym. (TBH We’re all old guys at my gym.) He’s a bit of a curmudgeon. (TBH We’re all curmudgeons at my gym.) He likes to ask your opinion on a topic and then, when he doesn’t like your answer, gets really cross with you. He was openly contemptuous when I shamefully admitted I wasn’t much taken by Shakespeare. And then got incandescently angry when I said I preferred the films of Tom Cruise.

I like him very much.

He’s clearly originally from India, or thereabouts, and he is one of the most pro-British people I know. A true patriot. He thinks Britain has been in steady decline since the 1960s.  And a lot of you might concur with that assessment. But where you might not agree, is with his list of the three main causes of that decline.

Not the Profumo Affair in 1963, the establishment of comprehensive schools in 1965, or even the lingering after effects of the Suez Crisis way back in 1956.

No. He believes fervently that the blame lies squarely with this Unholy Trinity.

The Beatles. Jeans. And fish fingers.

I’m not sure that fish fingers were the actual catalyst which set Britain on her current path of self destruction, although I do concede that Captain Birdseye might have played his part.

But I certainly agree with his broader point. That our country is on the path to self inflicted oblivion.

We are currently struggling under the weight of multiple self imposed catastrophes. An uncompetitive broken economy. A bloated useless state. A divisive and cancerous identity driven cultural revolution. Our suicidal (and unilateral) sprint to Net Zero.

And now this.

In the wake of the barbarous October 7th attacks on Israel by the terrorists of Hamas, (now teamed up with Vladimir Putin), our streets have become filled with people, gleefully celebrating the murder of babies, the systematic rape of women and the slaughter of entire families in their homes.

And they are not alone. Before the blood had even begun to dry, great swathes of our media, our political class, and our cultural elites started to reframe the wanton and systematic slaughter of innocents into something else entirely. Something less horrific. Something more, if not exactly justified, then at least understandable. An attempt to take the murderous instinct behind the premeditated killing of 1400 Jews, and present it as somehow ’relatable’.

Because if not openly on the side of the killers, there is a clear intention to downplay the true brutality of Hamas’ rampage in favour of a more ‘balanced’ perspective.

This was simply Palestinian ‘militants’ striking back at the Oppressor. Finally breaking out of the open air prison which is Gaza to seek justice from a corrupt apartheid state. Sure there was violence. But this is war, and war is a bloody business.

But this wasn’t a military operation gone wrong. It was a military operation gone right.

The rapes, kidnappings, torture and murders were not collateral damage from the mission. The rapes, kidnappings, torture and murders were the mission.

It’s brutally simple really.

Hamas and its affiliates in Hezbollah and Iran have a long term goal: No more Jews.

The strategy they will pursue to achieve this long term goal: Kill lots of Jews.

Using these tactics: Kill Jews.

That’s it. That’s the plan.

And now people in the UK are taking to the streets in their thousands not to protest against the slaughter. But in defence of it. And in many cases not even in defence. In celebration.

I believe in Free Speech. And as much as it hurts to say it in this instance, if you want to march in support of a death cult that’s up to you. At least we now know who you are.

After all we allow Just Stop Oil to protest their brain dead nonsense. And if their desperate desire to abandon modernity and return us all to the living standards of the Stone Age isn’t an orange splattered death wish I don’t know what is.

But Just Stop Oil isn’t calling for the death of an entire people. That would just likely be the unintended consequence of their war against common sense.

Instead of attempting to limit the scope of these demonstrations as they sought to do with the Lockdown protests or the immediate outpouring of revulsion at the murder of Sarah Everard, our authorities have, for the most part, simply stood by and let them happen. And in some cases helped facilitate them, making sure they go off without a hitch.

There has been much said about the inadequacy of this approach.

I’m no legal eagle. I’m not going to get into the ins and outs of hate crime laws, anti terrorism acts and what does and doesn’t constitute incitement and harassment. I’ll leave that to the properly qualified.

But yet again it seems clear that the law is not being applied equally.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley assures us he would love to properly police the marches. But he simply lacks the powers to do so.

It seems Sir Mark is claiming that it’s not that his forces are treating the protesters with kid gloves. It’s that their kid gloved hands are tied.

He said

“The law ……hasn’t taken full account of the ability of extremist groups to steer around those laws and propagate some pretty toxic messages through social media’’.

Yeah. But they’re not marching through Roblox, Instagram and Tik-Tok, Sir Mark. They’re marching down Whitehall.

These people aren’t (just) calling for the death of Jews on the Dark Web, they’re calling for their eradication on the streets, in front of actual police officers. ‘From the river to the sea’, that’s what that means.

But what can the boys in blue do when murder loving genocide fans call for Jihad against Jews? It’s all so nuanced and tricky, Jihad can have so many meanings, in this context it can mean anything from ‘Kill all Jews’, to ‘Kill Jews’, to ‘All Jews must die’.

So let’s not rush to judgement, and give these lads the benefit of the doubt.

Sir Mark wants a change in the law. He’s demanding more powers (obvs) He wants a new legal definition of “hateful extremism”.  Sounds great. Oh hang on. Who do you think might fall foul of such a powerful piece of subjectively applied legislation?

Islamic militant group Hizb ut Tahrir calling for Jihad on the streets of London?

Or a woman taking a photo of a gender critical sticker in Hebden Bridge?

Hmmm. It’s certainly a tough one.

But let’s keep things in perspective. The real problem of course isn’t the 100,000 people dancing in the streets in support of a massacre.

It’s middle aged white guys.

‘Police sources told The Telegraph they were most concerned about Right-wing and nationalist groups seeking to provoke Palestine supporters.’

They simply can’t help themselves can they? Here are mobs lionising kid killers and rapists.

Yeah but…The biggest threat to public order are Britain’s legions of imaginary Brownshirts.

It is not a ‘gap in the law’. It is a gap in the willingness to apply the law.

If the police wanted to stop, or restrict, the most inflammatory parts of these protests, they could.

It is more than nasty words and flag waving.

At least four Jewish schools in London closed on Friday over fears of a “Jihadi threat”.’

And a Jewish community planned ‘prayer walk’ through the Jewish area of Golders Green, far away from central London, was called off after the police warned the organisers that it could lead to violence after they received intelligence that the ‘brothers’ were intending to travel there.

How can this be acceptable?

Keep the schools open. Send in the army if you must. Arrest anyone who spouts their cancerous anti-Semitic bile in front of the kids.

And the same for the vigil. If we uphold the right of protest for the majority of pro-Palestinians, then we must uphold it for the Jewish community. Send in enough forces to ensure people’s safety.

This is how you fight racism. It’s been done before. Thousands of miles away. In a different time.

Send a message. Clear and simple. This is not right. It shall not be tolerated. This is not Britain.

How did we get here?

How did we get to a point when literally thousands and thousands of people think that it’s OK to take to the streets of our major cities to tear down posters of kidnapped children, and support the wholesale murder of entire communities?

‘No’ they say. ‘You’ve got it all wrong’.

‘We don’t support Hamas. But we do support the Palestinians. We don’t hate Jews. We just hate Israel. We are protesting the events that forced oppressed people to kill those babies. We just want Palestine to be free’.

‘Look at the history. It’s nuanced. Difficult. Complex. Isn’t it time the Jews stopped weaponising the Holocaust?’

The ever balanced Guardian certainly seems to think so.

The truth is the progressive left has lost the plot.

‘This is what decolonisation looks like’ they Tweet/post on X

Look at the images of 100,000 marching through London. The Palestinian flag flying in Westminster, Birmingham, Cardiff and Manchester.

And ask yourself who exactly has colonised who?

We have imported this hatred and intolerance. And have given it sustenance and succour, under the guise of tolerance and liberalism.

But it’s our own fault. How can we expect people from other cultures to ‘respect our values’ when our own society does little but look at itself, and recoil in disgust?

When our elites and media decry literally every aspect of our society as racist, corrupt, exploitative, venal, backward, nasty and hateful.

From our people to our history, to our art, to our heritage, to our institutions, and our sport, our literature and our politics, everything is tainted.

We are constantly told that our culture, (not that we even have one), is dogshit. That we are morally bankrupt. That our society is built on the bleached bones of the oppressed.

Now, not only has the ‘be-kind’ crew turned a massacre into a culture war issue. It has come down firmly on the side of those doing the massacre.

It’s like going along to see Star Wars and the entire cinema cheering when the Death Star turns up.

They cannot simply condemn these acts of terror for what they are without leaping to their defence. Quick to concoct some sliver of justification. Wallowing in whataboutery.

Which leads to the bizarre spectacle of our enlightened elites, the same people who could see fascism in the eyes of every Brexit voter, failing to see nazism in the killing of actual Jews.

This is the direct consequence of wokism, progressive leftism, idenitarianism, post liberal anti colonialism. I don’t know, call it what you like. But we all know what we mean.

It’s a consequence of standing aside and conceding our culture and institutions to the forces of divisive identity politics, intolerance, and idiocy.

An ideology which can, it seems, define ‘justice’ as anything from looting shops to killing children.

And why not?  They stand by and applaud the mutilation of live children here in Britain. So perhaps it’s not such a stretch to tolerate the mutilation of the dead ones in Israel.

Their instruction to lesbians who refuse to have sex with a ‘woman with a penis’ and Jews whose families are murdered by terrorists, is exactly the same. Suck it up.

The tolerance for these atrocities, and the equivocation that surrounds them, the mealy mouthed ‘impartiality’ of our news media, the tacit approval we sense in many of our elites, speaks to an virulent anti humanism which is fundamental to this twisted belief system.

It is an ideology which seeks to categorise, pigeon hole, sort, rate and grade every one of us.

Their aim is to turn people into living Top Trumps cards, assigned different values literally for the colour of their skin, their number of limbs, their victim status, the orthodoxy of their thought, and the purity of their politics.

Of course this compulsion is then projected back onto the rest of us in baseless accusations of our own universal racism and ‘hate’.

Under these rules the only way to judge the morality of any given act is not to assess the actual act itself, no matter how depraved or barbaric, but instead to consider who is committing that act. And who is on the receiving end. 

Which means it doesn’t matter what atrocities have been committed. The Palestinians are the goodies. And the Israelis are the baddies. Everything else is irrelevant.

It’s dehumanising and wrong.

Ultimately we are left with the same bossy busy bodies, who’ve spent the last few years scolding the rest of us for one imaginary moral transgression after another, making excuses for actual terrorists.

In the past I have sometimes been shaken by the uncompromising self righteousness of their vision, and in moments of self doubt asked myself, could it be that they are right, and I am wrong?

Perhaps I really am an awful racist and simply don’t know it. Could it be that I really am blinded by my own privilege, lying to myself, hoodwinked by some self serving patriarchy?

Well no more.

I will take no more lectures from people telling me that simply having white skin makes me a racist, being a man makes me misogynist, voting Brexit makes me a ‘gammon’, being English makes me an oppressor, wanting a smaller state and lower taxes makes me a fascist, wanting an alternative to the woefully inadequate NHS makes me a killer, expecting equality under the law makes me intolerant, taking pride in my country, its achievements and history makes me a coloniser.

Demanding free speech for all makes me a hate monger, refusing to accept the chemical mutilation of healthy children makes me a ‘transphobe’, going to the gym makes me ‘far right’, questioning the apocalyptic claims of climate extremists makes me a ‘denier’, having no interest in their grubby and narcissistic sexual posturing makes me a bigot, and holding a different opinion to them on pretty much every issue makes me a monster.

If you marched in support of the killers of Hamas. Felt that those Israelis families somehow ‘had it coming’. Or if your immediate thought on seeing the photos of shot up Israeli nanas at a bus stop was to think ‘Yes but let’s put this in its proper context.’

Stop lecturing the rest of us on our moral failings.

You have nothing to teach us.

80 years ago this country sacrificed blood, empire (booooo!) and fortune to defeat fascists, murderers, authoritarians and racists.

Now we erect a scaffold for them to spread their hatred on the Cenotaph, the actual memorial to our Glorious Dead.

Hamas and its murderous affiliates do not simply pose an existential threat to Israel. They also pose a real and existential threat to our entire civilisation and culture. Because by tolerating it here, we acknowledge that our civilisation, our values, and our nation, de facto, no longer exists.

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Thank you for reading Low Status Opinions.

To be honest I didn’t want to write this article. I am suffocating under the unremitting grimness of this story and I am sure you are too.

I actually had some lighter, jolly topics lined up. Like how Labour’s tax plans will put us all in the poor house, and how the forces of intolerance are seeking to criminalise dissent and put us all in prison.

But I just found myself writing this instead.

But maybe I’ll get onto those other, fun topics next time.

As ever please feel free to comment. And if you liked this article please do share it. Even better, please subscribe, it’s free, and I won’t bombard you with spam.

Thanks again.

All the best to you and yours.