“History,” wrote Edward Gibbon “is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.” One can well believe that his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire contains many lamentable tales wherein, for instance, after a barbarian attack the citizenry would take some random woman of the same tribe and humiliate her in a misdirected act of revenge.
French police make woman remove clothing on Nice beach following burkini ban
Photographs have emerged of armed French police confronting a woman on a beach and making her remove some of her clothing as part of a controversial ban on the burkini.
Authorities in several French towns have implemented bans on the Burkini, which covers the body and head, citing concerns about religious clothing in the wake of recent terrorist killings in the country.
The images of police confronting the woman in Nice on Tuesday show at least four police officers standing over a woman who was resting on the shore at the town’s Promenade des Anglais, the scene of last month’s Bastille Day lorry attack.
France, like the rest of the liberal West, gets this exactly and lethally wrong. First we forbid individuals their natural right to set the rules within their own property, to exclude and admit who they choose, to demand the burkini or to ban it. Then we set the law on people for the crime of wearing too much cloth on the public beach. A photograph is reproduced worldwide showing three armed male policemen standing over a Muslim woman and making her remove the clothes she considers necessary for modesty. Whatever your opinion of Islam and its clothing taboos, does anyone in the world believe that this makes the next jihadist attack less likely? To call it “security theatre” would be a compliment. The popular entertainment it calls to mind is that of the mob stripping and parading une femme tondue.
1. Whatever your opinion of Islam and its clothing taboos, does anyone in the world believe that this makes the next jihadist attack less likely?
No. More likely ? Also, no. The only action we could take to reduce the jihadists’ keenness to kill us, would be to submit to the will of Allah.
2. They’re just enforcing the law, not humiliating a woman for the sake of it or engaging in revenge. It may or may not be a sensible law, but she knew perfectly well that she was breaking it.
3. Do we really know that they “forced” her to remove clothing ? Or did she have the option of leaving the place where her clothing was not permitted, and declined the option ?
Reporting sounds fishy. Wouldn’t she just leave or be asked to leave?
They wouldn’t force her to strip.
I expect they said she had to go and she chose to remove it.
Lee Moore,
I added an additional sentence to this post just before I saw your comment, so you may or may not have seen it. The point I felt the need to add was that everyone should have the right to make rules for their own property regarding what people wear. But this was a public beach.
It just is not true that “the only action we could take to reduce the jihadists’ keenness to kill us would be to submit to the will of Allah.” Yes, we are engaged in a worldwide, generational conflict and I absolutely agree that appeasement will only encourage them. But all that was true of the great struggles against the Nazis and the Communists too. Fortunately in those struggles no one believed that it was futile to at least try to avoid actions that would make it easier for them to inflame people against us.
The whole burkini kerfuffle is a pathetic diversionary tactic by politicians who wish to be seen to be doing something to counter islamic terrorism without naming it as such.
Douglas Murray says it better than I could: –
“We shall see whether the next terrorist attack in France or Germany comes from a lady on the beach wearing a burkini. Or whether the next terrorist attack does not, more likely come from allowing millions of people from Islamic cultures to enter your society unchecked and un-vetted and allow foreign (often allied) governments to pump money into these countries to teach the worst versions of an already not very peaceable religion.”
So this is the enforcement of a stupid and counter-productive local rule (this is not a French law, but their equivalent of a by-law), presumably exploited by someone for the sake of inflaming the situation. Great – idiots on all sides.
Interestingly though we do not see feminists flocking to Nice to wear burkinis – apparently this is not opression of females, despite the fact that unusually for the modern west it is a clear attempt to regulate female clothing by male politicians. Which is a pity, as that would be the only currently widely shouted about (I originally typed popular… thank God for the review option) opinion that might actually be valid in all of this.
And I think Natalie is right that this can help the Islamicist recruitment drive, as it can be portrayed simply as victimisation of Muslims and more sensibly and subtley as showing attempted integration (the point of the burkini was to allow Muslim women to respect dress requirements they (or their men) wish to follow whilst still going out to the beech) is not going to happen, and this is them versus us (or as this is the French and the Muslims, to me them versus them…). It is not those wishing harm we are considering here, but those who are on the cusp of accepting the views of radical political Islam.
You defeat Islamism by refusing to tolerate intolerance – that includes admitting migrants with odious views – while heaping mockery on this belief system instead of walking on egg shells.
The refusal to publish the Mo cartoons for example was a declaration that we are weak and they are strong, which is patently ridiculous but perceptions matter to the young and easily misled.
Seriously? How far would you be prepared to take that piece of logic?
That is very likely – and if so, I’d say more power to her. Let the French remove all Muslims from France, not just their women from the public beaches (do they have private ones?) – at least that would be honest.
Precisely.
It is against the law to dress in those clothes that on that beach in France.
Just as people have to respect local dress laws in many middle eastern countries, this woman should respect the ones in France.
If she is a French citizen she will at least have a vote, and so have a say in the dress laws in her country.
The Roman civilians of the late Roman Imperial period could not fight actual Germanic warriors – they had been taught for centuries NOT to fight. That fighting was the province of the professional army alone.
The late Imperial Roman civilians could not hope to take on the soldiers of General Stilicho – but they could massacre the wives and children of his soldiers when the soldiers were away. Of course this did make the Germanic soldiers rather annoyed with the Roman civilians (in much the same way that the people of Venice swore revenge against Constantinople – after the Byzantines plundered and slaughtered the Western “Latins” in the city, pro Byzantine historians tend to leave this out of their account).
Could the ordinary people of France take on the warriors of Islam? I doubt it.
In Islam (as in Republican Rome and the cities of Classical Greece) “everyone fights”.
It is not like Imperial Rome or the Byzantines – where only the professional army fights.
Americans should not laugh – and neither should British people.
After all in much of the United States “liberals” seek to ban military weapons and training among the ordinary population – and the fertility rate is collapsing.
Like the people of the late Roman Empire – we are weak and getting weaker.
We rely on governments to defend us – and we do not even have children any more.
Perhaps the warriors of Islam are correct to despise us.
“But we have got all this technology” – yes indeed and so did the Romans and Byzantines.
The Middle East under the Emperor Maurice in the 600s was more advanced than it was under the forces of Islam in the early 1800s.
In the West the Germanic barbarians were baffled by virtually everything Roman (such as a drain or toilet – or military artillery).
But in the Germanic tribes “everyone fights” and among the forces of Islam “everyone fights” – and that is what matters.
As for the removal of the Islamic population of France…..
Well the Christian population of Algeria (who had built the country over more than a century of French rule) had to flee in 1962 – no one shed any tears for the Europeans who had to flee from an area they were born in (and where their parents and grandparents were born).
But there is no chance, none, that the Islamic population of France will be kicked out. The French population are weak (picking on some lone woman – not marching into the suburbs of Paris to reclaim them) and the politicians wedded to the idea that the Islamic population can be “integrated” (with no idea how this might happen).
And the same is true in Britain.
Do not expect a Charles Martel (who drove the Muslims from France) or an Alfred the Great (who converted the pagan Vikings to Christianity) – no such figures are on their way.
Conversion is what strong cultures do – they do NOT kick people out, they convert them (naturally – without any government action) to their own beliefs.
But the West (including much of the United States these days) has no real beliefs – nothing to convert the forces of Islam to.
And before anyone mentions pop music, pornography and sports – if that is what you think “beliefs” are, you are a fool.
The German translation for “just enforcing the law” is “Befehl ist befehl”.
I’d give a small cheer for a Muslim woman who now showed up on a French beach in a pre-1920 Western woman’s bathing outfit.
I’d give a small cheer for a Muslim woman who now showed up on a French beach in a pre-1920 Western woman’s bathing outfit.
She would not have to go to a historical costumiers to get the same effect, an ordinary wetsuit would do. People who like to swim in all weathers have long worn them. Also there are quite a few non-Muslim women who wear burkinis as protection against the sun – apparently in China there is a craze for “facekinis”. Not that a facekini appeals to me, but because I burn easily I am often to be found on beaches with most of my body covered. Ironically I often wear a salwar kameez. Would that be OK for me, a non-Muslim, but forbidden for them?
“But in the Germanic tribes ‘everyone fights’ and among the forces of Islam ‘everyone fights’ – and that is what matters.”
It’s rather more complicated than that — that is far from the only thing that matters. If that were the only thing that mattered, it would be difficult to what was going on when e.g. the Germans fielded relatively effective armies in the twentieth century. The fall of France was not primarily about how the ghosts of Germanic “everyone fights” marched with the Wehrmacht.
How well can you control corruption and factional backbiting? How well can your officers read maps, and how well can they do dozens of other force-multiplication basics? How well can your NCOs read maps, etc.? Does your army have the motivation to reform a unit on the fly and fight again after taking serious casualties? Is it possible to organize your army so that officers take casualties at at least as high a rate as their subordinates? Is it possible to organize your army to promote to a useful extent on merit, and to encourage performance to be evaluated on something like a “mission orders” basis instead of a micromanaged-obedience basis? Can you maintain a useful level of common loyalty and purpose even across specialist units, so e.g. air units will do difficult dangerous unglamorous things like close air support for ground units, or similarly engineers or artillery or comms or translators or whatever?
I think “everyone fights” does matter, and Europe does suffer from the lack of it, but (1) as above it’s not as overwhelmingly important as you make it sound and (2) it is only one aspect of a larger pattern of dysfunction, in which the national and EC rulers make it a high priority to harass, expropriate and humiliate their internal rivals for status and legitimacy, and make it a dangerously low priority to preserve (much less increase) the total external strength of the organizational unit that they rule, and I doubt the one “everyone fights” aspect is as important as some other aspects of that pattern.
Paul, I hope you understand that I was not considering the removal of ‘Islamic population of France’ as a good idea.
When you spend 23 hours and 59 minutes a day refusing to see the reality right in front of you, it is no surprise that last minute involves a performance from the theater of the absurd.
This is merely a continuation of the discussion of the other day about banning the burkini, and I think everyone here has already made his opinion on that known.
I think Lee Moore and Chip have it about right. Alisa, of course that woman knew that she was breaking the law; she couldn’t be living in Nice (or anywhere in France, for that matter) and be unaware of it. And while we don’t have the full story behind those photos, I have little doubt that the police informed her that she was breaking the law and told her to leave, comply or be arrested. If she were truly making a political statement she would have chosen arrest. My guess is that this was a publicity stunt, with a friend standing by to take those photos in a calculated effort to make the hapless police officers (who probably had zero interest in making her disrobe) look like bullies. That is precisely the sort of thing apologists for Islam would do.
Wearing a wetsuit, or even Victorian bathing attire, would be neither illegal nor objectionable. Wearing a burka or burkini, however, is tantamount to wearing gang insignia and is an overt and intentional incitement to violence. Nice is right to ban them. It is a small thing, but is a step in the right direction.
As I said at Tim Worstall’s, the law is stupid, and I suspect the authorities are doing this because they don’t want to tackle the real jihadists which are in their midst. But I also suspect the reason this law is not unpopular in France is because for once Muslims are not having things their way and invoking the full might of the state by wailing “racism”. It’s a pretty shit state of affairs and politicians have themselves to blame for it coming about, but at this point I think Europeans would turn a blind eye to just about any action taken against Muslims, fair or not.
Yes Laird, and if you read my comment, you saw that I have already conceded to that possibility, and added ‘more power to her’.
Rather than irritate Laird with my usual view, I will repeat what was posted before this august body a couple of days ago.
French laws are policies piled on top the detritus of former policies in layers that display the nature of what the process of the power (kratia) of the people (demos), the democracy of the French people, IS, as historically replayed from the Jaquerie through the second Fronde, the Vende
and as cited here by Natalie as Femme Tondue.
The policies are to mollify that recurrent French expression of “democracy.”
The natives are restless.
Issue a policy.
Re Les Femmes Tondue, a similar thing happened in the Netherlands. One father, finding a mob out for his daughters, stood them at the top of the front steps (which were many and high) and stood with them armed with an axe- explaining that the second man up the steps might get them. Nobody tried. Story from my late father in law who was there.
Funny how one brave man can change things.
Submitting to the will of Allah doesn’t work. For every Western Devil the fanatics have killed, there must have been at least a hundred Muslims-of-a-different-flavor. Does the Iran/Iraq war count as Shiite-vs-Sunni? You have it right there. And lord knows the Islamic State is building up a much higher body count than they could if they were only to work with the local supply of Western Devils.
The head clothing for the fierce sunlight and dust of the Middle East has much going for it.
Can you go naked on the street?
So like the Burka or Burkini is a moral ban.
Ive been to Nice/Juan Les pins for as long as I can remember (my father’s family originates from there) and I don’t recall seeing with women in burkinis (or whatever they’re called) very often, as in never.
So it’s not like it’s been something usual or common, despite the large presence of immigrants of North Africa.
I’m not comfortable with the concept of some mayor able to ban something like that, or anything much for that matter, but the sheer insensitivity of wearing such a garment after what happened last month in Nice can only be explained in terms of a political statement and therefore it got a political response.
A lot of people condemned Charlie hebdo or the mo cartoons as being gratuitous insults which didn’t contribute anything useful, and freedom of speech notwithstanding, they had a point (which I didn’t share), so the actions of these women in the current context are just inflammatory and could not have attracted any other reaction from the public.
People have had enough, and there comes a point when the official discourse becomes so remote from reality that these are the reactions you get.
Ataturk knew what the headscarf meant, and so do Moslems today.
Religious war is a challenge, isn’t it?
Yes, Ataturk knew – do you want your country ran by its military?
Paul Marks,
Can I suggest you don’t comment on first millenium history without getting a better understanding of it. You’ve managed two major misconceptions (and one minor one) here. Firstly, the strange idea the Roman civilians (Romans) did not fight, but only their army (who were in fact mainly German or Berber speaking in the western Empire by the end – the Germans who destroyed the Empire were probably of mixed ancestery, and mostly where tracable where born in the Empire). The reason the army was different from the population was that the rulers (themselves mainly from the army or the senatorial aristocracy) needed a force capable of counteracting the violence of the people. If you read any contemporary texts, you don’t end up feeling that civilians were safe – aristocratic writers were scared of the commons and their potenital for violence. But there was an expectation it would serve – the Visigoths were held back from northern Spain and from the Auvergne by local forces (raised by aristocrats, but clearly composed of their clients and workers) and when Britain was told around 410 there were no soldiers to help them, the citizens were told by Emperor Honorious to take up arms themselves – previously illegal, but clearly not seen as a radical suggestion.
Secondly, Charles Martel did not throw back the Muslims, but defeated a raiding army (that had actually already turned for home most likely) with his own raiding army – both the Muslims from the South and the Austrasian (that is not a spelling mistake – Austrasia was a Frankish kingdom) Franks from the north were seeking to extend influence over Aquitaine in the 740s, and they came to blows here. As it happens the Arabs in Spain lost their hold on the Pyrenees to the Basques and the proto-Castilians around this time, as the local population adapted and established new structures, so the Battle of Poitiers (probably not fought near Poitiers…) was fairly irrelevant. Not that Arabs were able to occupy Narbonne and even occasinally places such as Nice and (wierdly) Saint-Maurice-d’Auguane for much of the rest of the eighth century – Charles Martel’s success is a historiographical myth.
And Alfred the Great is known to have sponsored the baptism of one Viking (Guthrum, King of East Anglia, who was presumably baptised to help him rule an Anglian kingdom), and was the recipient of a grumpy letter from the Pope about not actually doing enough to promote missions to the Danelaw.
None of which is particularly relevant to this thread, but it really gets my goat when people assume that the history taught around 1910 (check it out – all three of these myths would have been current then – and were known to be wrong by the good historians – Stenton for example never portrayed Alfred as a missionary king, just the first king of England) is a useful thing to cite now. It didn’t exactly do wonders for promoting freedom and humanity back then after all. Maybe those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them by not being aware that what they have learnt is wrong…
Watchman,
Regarding the Charles Martel victory at Poitiers, it is now becoming slowly more evident, that the so-called invaders were essentially Visigoth arianists, which colluded with the Arab arianists (Ommayads) to recapture the previous realm of the Visigoths in Gaul. Franks and Visigoths were rivals in the conquered Roman lands. Towards the 11th century, in the context of the Crusades, these raiding parties were called to be of moslem nature.
Speaking of femme tondue….
In East Europe, at least ( I think also in Italy), thousands (of men) were murdered or summarily executed in the immediate aftermath of WW2, because of collaboration with the Nazis. In Romania, for example 60,000 were thus executed. Romania, under the fascist dictatorship of General Antonescu, was an ally of Germany, and some Romanians (soldiers and civilians) committed pogroms and atrocities and war crimes. So, those 60,000 probably got what they deserved. Nevertheless it is said that many were murdered by communist partisans or cadres, preparing the way for communists to assume power by murdering opposing figures. The same happened in Slovenia, probably in other places too.
I don’t know about executions of French collaborators (men), though there sure were many who deserved to be. For example: Francois Mitterrand who served as a police officer under the Vichy regime and helped round up Jews for deportation. (he tried to hide this episode, and later said he only obeyed orders).
But the valiant French picked on women to vent their anger….
ajf @ August 25, 2016 at 8:54 pm:
Westerners can get along fine with Moslems, provided the latter know their place – i.e., not on top of everybody else.
It also helps if they are not from backwards and reactionary cultures. We also have problems with non-Moslems from such backgrounds.
If the only thing that would get rid of rule by a woman-enslaving priesthood were the army, then yes that would be my preference.
I meant, of course, that some symbols are so powerful that they become battlegrounds themselves. The removal or ubiquity of the symbol becomes a victory or defeat all on its own. Doing away with the veil or chiseling the King’s name off the buildings says things are different now.
You can’t wear a swastika in France, a Klan robe in the U. S., or a skirt in Tehran. If you do, you’ll be jacked up by the population and the authorities. We all know why.
(I think the burkini ban is stupid. It’s unenforceably imprecise and contrasts with our message that women are free here. No religious symbols in school, on the other hand, works fine.)
I’ve seen plenty of people wearing klan robes in the US on television.
Yes, Ataturk knew – do you want your country ran by its military?
Yes. What do you want yours run by, its demagogues?
Sometimes military regimes are better than the alternative – take Egypt as an example. You can’t always have the ideal regime you wish for, so you have to live with what is available.
fcal,
Arab Arianists? Whilst the Berber troops who invaded Spain (and possibly fought Poitiers) were probably not Muslim in the main (only the Arab aristocracy was clearly Islamic), and whilst it is likely that many of the Poitier raiders would have been Visigothic (in the sense that a few years earlier Iberia and Gallia Narbonnis were the Kingdom of the Visigoths – not sure this was ever a universal ethnic identity) rather than Arabic or Berber, since we know many of the ‘conquered’ people rapidly sided with the new regime, the Arian bit is a problem. Arab Christians, who existed in large numbers and seem to have spread with the Arab invasions, were generally of non-Orthodox eastern sects (whose origins normally related to the Monophysite dispute), much as they are now. The Arab advance across Egypt covered Orthodox and Coptic Egypt and Roman Catholic (not really that distinct from Orthodox at this point) and Donatist Africa (the north African provinces). Nowhere in this were there any Arians – the Arian Vandal monarchy appears to have converted to Catholicism before it was taken out by the Byzantines, and the Arian church has shown no signs of continuing.
Indeed, by the eighth century the Visigoths had not been Arian for almost 80 years (again, the church was linked to the kings and the aristocracy, who converted to the Catholic faith of most of the population), and they had eliminated the possibly Arian (and very badly documented) Suevic kingdom in Gallicia soon after. They had then worked with the Catholic church to produce a programme of secular and religious laws banning Arianism, which again has left no trace. So it is unlikely the Visigoths were Arian either.
The Poitiers raid was clearly led by someone with an Arabic, and therefore probably Muslim, name, if later sources from Al-Andulas can be believed. But as you say the actual raid was probably an attempt to establish authority by a leader with a fairly mixed base of followers, a consistent story for the Iberian penisula for another four hundred years (see El Cid for example). I just am not sure any would be Arian, which was a different struggle.
Staghounds: I haven’t seen them lately, but I’ve seen plenty of folks in Klan robes out in public…usually standing at highway intersections collecting donations. Here in the States, we still allow freedom of expression – even if some may not like the message.
Well Erik, I’d rather my country was not ran by anyone, but I’d take civilian demagogues over military ones any time.
I take your points, Staghounds (although make sure you see Fishplate’s remark).
The military running things in Thailand seems to have brought about some improvements, particularly in Bangkok and in some ways in my stomping ground of Phuket. Although this says more about the rather benign nature of the Thai military than military governments being a good idea.
It also says something about the previous situation. Conversely, it says absolutely nothing about the future (good or bad), other than if things do get worse after they got better, there may be less room left for yet another improvement. Double-edged swords and all that.
When’s lately? I’ve lived in the south for forty years and I have never seen someone in public wearing a Klan robe. I just did an informal poll of four people I know, same result, but that’s only a hundred and sixty years of experience, your mileage clearly varies. In my particular state, being masked in public is a crime. The only time I have ever seen press pictures of Klan robes, they have been coverage of specially permitted and heavily guarded parades where it’s clear that only reluctant and disgusted police protection keeps the crowd from removing the outfits and a little skin too.
Alisa, you might want to do some historical rethinking about that- Franco and Pinochet are all waaaay behind civilians and faith-based initiatives in the mass slaughter/enslavement league stats.
Staghounds, see my last comment to Tim above – historical thinking (or re-thinking) has to at least begin within a context of a particular country, and a particular period. To remind you and everyone else, this discussion is about a law recently passed in France. Ataturk was probably good for Turkey at the time, and someone like him would probably also be good for it now. Would someone like that be good for France, or the UK, on the US – today? I doubt it, but at least lets have a discussion about that, and not immediately compare apples with oranges, and previous-century Chile or Spain with contemporary France.
Indeed, it does.
True, but the coup took place in 2014 and it was their 12th(!) since 1932. Which is why most Thais just sort of shrugged their shoulders, they knew there wouldn’t be any massacres and eventually they’ll hand back power to the bunch of kids who masquerade as civilian politicians in Thailand.
Staghounds: North Georgia, within the last ten years. And it wasn’t uncommon, either. I haven’t seen it lately; whether due to the places I go or a lower Klan profile/membership, I can’t say. But I don’t see how anyone could live in this area for forty years and avoid having seen them.
Well Tim, in that case, sure – whatever works.
@ Watchman,
Islam is a christian heresy in the line of Arianism, which turned violent and oppressive in the 10th century. In the 12th century, Peter the Venerable saw Muhammad as “the successor of Arius and the precursor to the Anti-Christ”. In Arianism Jesus was considered to be of human nature. In early Islam this was also the case.
From 10th century onwards he became only one of the many prophets preceding the mythical last prophet the very Arabic Mohammed. Of whom nothing has been found. No coins nor other relics. This is also the case for the so-called righteously guided caliphs such as Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali. I consider these persons to myths invented in the 9th and 10th century to bolster first certain Abbasid caliphs and later the oppressive and actual version of Islam.
The ‘battle’ of Poitiers has to be seen in such a verifiable context. The Visigothic dynastic troubles lead to the coming to power in Spain by the Ommayads (of early Islam persuasion akin to Arianism). The latter seem to have found lots of collaborators among the nobility.
Probably just piling on here, but in my near-sixty-year existence, based in Minnesota but encompassing frequent and extensive meandering in a rectangle roughly bounded by NYC, Miami, San Diego, and Seattle, I have never – ever – seen anyone in klan robes, headgear, or commemorative tee shirt.
I did find items about a few Klan rallies, or at least a Klan rally, in Georgia, with the Klansmen in their sheets. Search string: 2016 KKK
–then change the year to 2015.
There’s also an item about a difference of opinion between the Klan and the Panthers that occurred in July, 2015, in South Carolina. But I didn’t see the sheets in the photos from that.
O/T, but of course there are all these attack ads and stories about the Klan’s supporting Hair. However, among the 2016 search results is
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/08/video-kkk-grand-dragon-endorses-hillary-clinton/
in which Jim Hoft, the Gateway Pundit, writes,
Point missed again.
The French wish to demonstrate that France does not welcome those strictly observing the muslim faith. Because those are the ones reluctant to integrate with French culture. If this story has dominated the world’s press, job successfully done.
You can argue whether this particular measure is counterproductive. As I have. But there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with the logic. France intends to discriminate. And doesn’t particularly care if the world approves.
Huh. Must have been an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato…
I’m sure I must have imagined it, every time I saw it, since none of ~those~ guys ever saw it.
Fishplate, I’m certainly not impugning your memory. I don’t question that you’ve seen them. I just didn’t want non-USA types to get the impression that we all see klan types wandering about everywhere on a daily basis. I’ve read some foreign press that does seem to imply just that, and that’s not an impression I’d care to see widely held.
Of course. I thought that was clear in my original post. But the post to which I was responding made the claim that they would be arrested for appearing in robes – it was that point which I was refuting. Instead of being “jacked up by the population and the authorities”, a Klan member’s rights will be protected just like everyone else’s rights. That they freely parade in “uniform” was just evidence of that equal protection. Somehow that got lost along the way by comments that some had never seen such a display, despite a quick Internet search turning up recent photographic evidence of just that phenomenon.
And of course, while some don’t see them every day, or ever, it’s important to note that they do exist – as similar groups exist almost everywhere.
Fishplate is of course correct that the KKK does exist, and that on rare occasions they do wear their robes in public. However, it is not a regular event (even for them); it’s reserved for when they’re conducting some sort of public demonstration. And yes, their rights to do so are generally protected by the police, and usually they are far outnumbered by anti-Klansmen shouting ugly epithets and threatening (or, usually, pretending to threaten) mayhem.
That said, I’ve lived in South Carolina for almost 20 years and never once seen a Klan sheet. (Lots of Confederate battle flags, though!)
I would also note that, Hillary’s remarks notwithstanding, the KKK was formed by, and for most of its existence consisted solely of, Democrats. Sen. Robert Byrd himself was a Grand Wizard. The KKK was a reaction to Republicans trying to allow freed slaves to integrate into society after the Civil War. Democrats (who were a pro-slavery party, and who controlled most local politics across the South until the last 20 years or so) were responsible for the Jim Crow laws and most other efforts at black repression (voting restrictions, gun prohibitions, school segregation, etc.). So it’s only natural that the current Grand Wizard would endorse Hillary; she’s one of their own. And for her to attribute KKK sympathies to Trump is typical leftist projection (and, of course, typical Hillary lying).
Of course Alisa – I certainly did not accuse you of wanting to remove the Islamic population of France. Although the “liberal” international elite had no problem with the Christians being forced out of Algeria in 1962 – and they had been there a lot longer than the forces of Islam have been in modern France (contrary to the lies of Al Jazeera and co – Islam was virtually unknown in France even in the 1950s).
Even in Jerusalem (assumed by the young to have always been a Muslim city taken by evil Jews in 1967) every reference work I have seen shows Muslims to be a MINORITY of the population at the start of the 20th century.
William Newman – I accept your corrections, I should have made these points myself and failed to do so.
Watchman – I do NOT accept your “corrections”.
If you are going to make light of (for example) the Islamic invasions of Europe then you are, at best, an idiot.
“The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise” may not tell Spanish speaking historians anything they did not already know – but many English speakers (at least since the 1960s) seem to have forgotten everything of real importance – and they clearly need reminding.
Islam seems to depend upon getting women to wear the veil as a necessary and open symbol of its power. Very well, since that’s so, we should oppose it. Just as we opposed book censorship and racial segregation in schools. I reach for historical examples because there are few current ones- people don’t wear klan robes or swastikas in public now, not because they are illegal, but because social pressure prevents it. The laws might have been necessary once but they aren’t any more.
Fifty years ago in Europe, the veil was not a problem. Conditions have changed. As I said before, I don’t support this particular regulation. I do understand why it is important.
And I use Ataturk because it’s the only time, as far as I know, that public, de jure Islam was driven from power in an Islamic country by non genocidal means. And outlawing/shunning/shaming the outward signs of a competetive enemy’s power, or even of being of that enemy, are essential.
To pick an example ripped from the headlines, that’s why you get yelled at if you wear Trump gear. Democrats understand it too.
Fishplate- I’d like to see a GoPro of someone wearing a Klan robe out in Ringgold or Ellijay. I’m 30 miles from there and I do not believe it would end well.
Like I said, I hadn’t seen it lately. We can speculate on the reasons why.
You are aware of the recent (last 30 years) history of Forsyth County, and its warning signs? Attitudes like that don’t die quickly, they just go a little deeper underground. But they still peep out every once in a while.
Were there ever laws in place prohibiting the wearing of Klan robes or swastikas?
No offense Staghounds, but you are not making any sense now.
If a nation is going to go as far as to ban articles of clothing that default on the side of modesty, then why don’t they just pull the trigger and get it over with…ban the koran.
No koran?…no muslisms.
“Fifty years ago in Europe, the veil was not a problem.”
50-70 years ago in Iran, women were wearing “normal” swimsuits on Persian Gulf beaches.
“And for her to attribute KKK sympathies to Trump is typical leftist projection (and, of course, typical Hillary lying).”
Not only is she ‘projecting’ the KKK onto Trump when the KKK really belongs to the Jackass party, she’s also pretending that Trump is in cahoots with Putin, when it was SHE who took tens of millions of dollars of “donations” into the Clinton Foundation in an obvious pay-for-play to OK the sale (and mining rights) of Uranium One to Russia, who presently as a consequence owns the rights to 20% of America’s uranium ore production. To call Shillary a snake is an insult to snakes.
BTW, in regard to those who suggest that women WANT to wear burkas and hijabs, here’s an eye-opener.
MILLIONS of women protest being forced to wear the hibab in Iran in 1979, in the wake of the Islamic Revolution.
Pic
Tim,
The reasons this coup in Thailand was a “bloodless” one is because after the last one, people faced serious charges, even murder or so I understand.
BTW, Pattaya is my ‘stomping grounds’ over Phuket. It’s dirtier in all the bad ways…but in all the good ways too. 😉
‘Love Bangkok too, but not the traffic and smog. I get a sore throat every time I spend any amount of time in BKK.