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Irish. Atheist. Liberal-right. Anti-jihad. Pro-West. Pro-Israel.

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Politics - Islamic Fascism - The left and Islamic fascism - People who let me down


  Richard Dawkins

Open letter to Richard Dawkins

Other scientists

Intelligence and politics

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People who let me down after Sept 11th

I don't feel I have really changed since Sept 11th. I still believe in human rights, free speech and freedom of religion for the whole planet (not just for westerners). And now we are in a war against the fascist enemies of human rights, of course I support that war, just as I would have supported the 1939-45 war.

The left, it seems to me, has betrayed me. I always thought they hated fascism, and would support any war against it. And yet the test came and most of them failed it. It makes me doubt that these people would have supported the Allies in the 1939-45 war either.

There are many people who are against the war who I never really admired. This page is about the people I really admired who let me down.




The Observer tries to cram 9/11 into a pre-existing left-wing framework, Sunday 16 September 2001.
Who will dare damn Israel? Every nutter in the world will.
My reaction to this kind of thing was ultimately to leave the left - and to stop buying The Observer.
Note that Richard Ingrams was the Editor of Private Eye from 1963 to 1986.




Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins is a significant thinker.

He has the best definition in history of what religions are - powerful memes. He has the best explanation of why the ideas of Islam, for example, can gain millions of followers.

And his first reaction to 9/11 in 2001 made me think he was going to stand up against Islamic religious fascism.

But the moment passed. Here he is, one year later, attacking Bush and praising Robert Fisk. He is anti-Israel, following the unthinking line of the left. And in 2003, Dawkins really succumbed to the collective madness that gripped the world over Iraq. His writing on this topic in 2003 has seriously damaged my respect for him. Like Bertrand Russell, Dawkins is so good on science and religion, yet hopelessly naive on politics.




  

Open letter to Richard Dawkins (separate page)

  


Other scientists

This section is on scientists with bad politics in any time period, not just after 9/11.





2009: Stephen Hawking visits China. He never proposes boycotting it.
2013: Stephen Hawking boycotts Israel.
Raheem Kassam writes a fine Open Letter to Stephen Hawking, 8 May 2013: "Sadly, however, I now believe that you are the latest in a line of celebrities, academics and politicians who are being misled by the closed-minded, closed-shop style of debate that I know you to have rejected over the majority of your life."




Ted Honderich

OK I never admired Ted Honderich anyway (or knew anything about him) so he did not "let me down". But I include him here because as a scientist, atheist and "humanist" you would think he would use some logic when it comes to terror. But no. He is an open apologist for Islamic religious terror.

Climate change causes terror!

An even funnier theory than Ted Honderich's idea that Bin Laden is angered by African poverty!


Intelligence and politics



Fiction writers



Comedy



Technology



Other people

These are interesting times. Many formerly sensible people have gone mad:




The Irish Times and the Guardian let me down




Awards (separate page)




After Dawkins' offensively rude letter to Bush, I feel the need to quote a far more pleasant letter from a man who has not changed since the epic, heroic struggle of the Cold War:

Dear Mr President,

Today you arrive in my country for the first state visit by an American president for many decades, and I bid you welcome.

You will find yourself assailed on every hand by some pretty pretentious characters collectively known as the British left. They traditionally believe they have a monopoly on morality and that your recent actions preclude you from the club. You opposed and destroyed the world's most blood-encrusted dictator. This is quite unforgivable.

I beg you to take no notice. The British left intermittently erupts like a pustule upon the buttock of a rather good country. Seventy years ago it opposed mobilisation against Adolf Hitler and worshipped the other genocide, Josef Stalin.

It has marched for Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Andropov. It has slobbered over Ceausescu and Mugabe. It has demonstrated against everything and everyone American for a century. Broadly speaking, it hates your country first, mine second.

Eleven years ago something dreadful happened. Maggie was ousted, Ronald retired, the Berlin wall fell and Gorby abolished communism. All the left's idols fell and its demons retired. For a decade there was nothing really to hate. But thank the Lord for his limitless mercy. Now they can applaud Saddam, Bin Laden, Kim Jong-Il... and hate a God-fearing Texan. So hallelujah and have a good time.

Frederick Forsyth
Novelist

and a stunning, and totally unexpected, letter:

Dear George,

It is a universal truth that those born with democratic spoons in their mouths will rail against the ruthless removal of a barbaric tyranny. Most of the people demonstrating against you will be the latte-rati - people whose experience of oppression is having to wait four hours for the cable guy to come round. I am the child of two refugees from totalitarian regimes; (*) for this reason, you need not fear a comedy terrorist attack against your intervention in Iraq.

I don't care why you got rid of Saddam, and neither does any Iraqi I know.

Aaron Barschak
The "Comedy Terrorist" who gatecrashed Prince William's birthday party at Windsor Castle

(*) His mother is a Jew who fled the genocide-state of Croatia. His father a Jew who fled the genocide-state of Austria.





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