He’s no fool, Dominic Green. A Jazz musician, a lecturer in politics, and a lively and witty writer, Green is what used to be called a man of parts. It’s rather disappointing, then, that in “America, meet Tommy Robinson – if you must,” his August 1 column in Spectator USA, Green engages in facile moralizing and indulges his class snobbery toward Tommy Robinson where an exacting consideration of hard issues would be far more fruitful.

Those issues, in Green words, are “Europe’s crisis of Islam and immigration.” Tommy Robinson, says Green,

​​On August 1, Robinson was released from prison on appeal. Green gives the background of his imprisonment:

​​Robinson’s behavior, we are to take it from Green’s account, has been admirable in some respects but mixed on the whole. The man has been heroic where police and mainstream media were cowards, as indeed they remain, and he has suffered considerably for that. Yet he has also repeatedly broken the law, actions in which there were moral evils besides.

The full story is not so simple, however. “Broadcasting the names of people who are still legally innocent might prejudice a jury”—yes, very true—but a regular practice in British media, even so. When Robinson was charged with contempt of court, the BBC and the Daily Mail were still broadcasting the names and photographs of the accused in the case. In fact, it was from this list on the BBC website that, during the second trial, Robinson recited the names of the alleged rapists and sex traffickers on Facebook Live. Why no outrage toward the mainstream media? Probably because these are “respectable” sources—that is, politically correct—while Robinson is not. He was a vociferous agitator, too. No wonder he was subjected to a ‘a fundamentally flawed process’ and received only a four-minute hearing in court.

Given the manifest failure of British politicians and police to deal with “Europe’s crisis of Islam and immigration,” one may fairly ask, who if not the uncouth Robinson and his rabble of supporters should provide resistance to “the mass grooming and rape of underage white girls by gangs of men, almost all of them of South Asian Muslim extraction”? The madness of political correctness may be even worse in England than it is here in these States, where Green, a British export, now lives and writes, and with the usual fear of being thought “racist,” the police chose not to protect the most vulnerable among them. Lizzie Dearden, in a February 23 article in The Independent, reported:

​On July 17, in the same magazine, Dearden gave us more disturbing details:

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“Britain’s politicians and policemen,” Green observes,

​But for all that, Green does nothing to hold the British elite accountable for the policies that resulted in this parlous situation. “In a recent Sunday Times poll,” he writes, “24 per cent said they would support a new hard-right party that promised to halt all Muslim immigration.” Well, no wonder, one might respond, because however objectionable the new “hard right-party” may be, the mainstream right has been utterly incompetent in regard to “Muslim immigration;” and as Peter Hitchens has long documented, incompetent in general.

Green’s own response reveals much about how his character, and how little serious he is as a writer. “Who,” he asks, “would want to be associated with Tommy the free speech martyr?” “When a ‘Free Tommy’ rally marched on 10, Downing Street,” he goes on, “Robinson’s supporters were filmed giving fascist salutes, shouting ‘Sieg Heil’, and fighting the police.” Green’s general laziness and irresponsibility are well evidenced by this easy deflection and silly assumption of guilt by association, as if the characters of “Robinson’s supporters”—with whom he may or may not identify ideologically—proved anything about the man himself. Nice work, Mr. Green! Jacobin or The New Republic couldn’t have done it any better.

For all one can tell, Green is not troubled by the “‘blatant’ failures” of the British politicians, police and mainstream media. Nor does he explore what Lord Burnett, who freed Robinson on appeal, called ‘a fundamentally flawed process,’ or in other words, “the haste with which Robinson had been arrested, sentenced and imprisoned at Leeds.” Defending England, when those who are supposed to do so have evaded the most vital task—this is a project for which Green, so busy moralizing, shows no sympathy or appreciation. Though he doesn’t say so, the very difficult present situation in England—namely, the group conflict between Brits and Muslims—didn’t have to come to pass, because after all, it was never necessary for there to be any mass immigration of Muslims into England in the first place. Brits could have chosen to do what was best for themselves, a wise judgment that, before recent (read: exceedingly weak because so moralistic) times, would have gone without saying. Instead, they made the easy, the weak, the “moral” choice.

What certainly bothers Green, his column shows, are the unseemly elements in what he accurately describes as “the revolt of the majority.” Nor is that surprising, because like the “respectable” people who are culpable in this mess, Green himself is a politically correct empty suit. Thus, instead of assuming the hard work of substantive analysis of the issues—Islam and mass immigration—Green tells us that Robinson is

Well, by his own account, Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson, took on his pseudonym after a football hooligan of that name in order, as Green relates, “to spare himself retaliation from Islamists.” On July 25, 2011, the BBC reported that Robinson

​Robinson, however, claimed that

​It is because we are evaluating animals, it is well to observe here, that journalism, like the life of the mind generally and indeed life itself, is so very difficult. The sort of person we are—the result, to a significant extent, of our personal history and culture—inevitably determines our perceptions and therefore beliefs and moral judgments, usually unawares. Of this essential bias—which, I have argued, is intrinsic to reason itself—Green’s simplistic, moralizing perspective on Robinson is an instructive example. Get ready, America, he informs us, Robinson is “an ex-football hooligan”! Boston College, where Green is an adjunct lecturer in politics, may wish to have him do double duty, for as we see here, he would make a fine leader of bias response teams. With his profound sensitivity to racism and other evils, Green might plant himself at the university square during busy hours; there, at the sight of any microaggression, he could dispatch the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion by blowing a hearty burst of his characteristic hot air into his saxophone.

I would not, of course, deny that Robinson is “an ex-football hooligan,” nor do I think his culpability in the football fight is implausible. But there is something pretty curious about Green’s account: Although he notices that “the police, the BBC, and much of the mainstream media seemed unwilling to cover…the mass grooming and rape of underage white girls by gangs of men, almost all of them of South Asian Muslim extraction,” he nevertheless does not allow for the possibility that Robinson, who was willing to cover this thorny issue, might have been a victim for precisely that reason. Green does not consider the possibility that, just as “the police, the BBC, and much of the mainstream media” had failed to do their actual duty, as it were, lest they should be “racist,” so the police who dealt with Robinson at the football match on August 24, 2010, as well as District Judge Carolyn Mellanby, herself an agent of the State, might have been biased in their treatment of him. After all, it is surely not unreasonable to believe that the same politically correct motivation which kept “the police, the BBC, and much of the mainstream media” from investigating and prosecuting the evils in question,” might have prompted these persons to treat Robinson unfairly, to suppress and punish the pesky fellow. I am not saying that this is necessarily what happened. It may or may not have happened. My main point is that the situation is more complicated than Green gives us to understand. He is too confident in the truth of his assertions. He lacks rigor, a full sense of context, and most of all, a proper epistemic skepticism.

Contra Green, there is little connection between football players—or rather, “hooligans,” so offensive to his delicate nature—and the British National Party. There was a two-or-three-year period when the British National Party’s predecessor, the National Front, recruited at football games with some success, but that was in the late 1970s, before Robinson was born. Robinson did spend a year as a member of the British National Party, in 2004. About that time he has said: “I was looking for a way out, I was looking [for] somebody to be addressing this Islamic extremist problem….I didn’t Nick Griffin was in the National Front, I didn’t know non-whites couldn’t join the organisation. I joined, I saw what it was about, it was not for me.”

Young men, God knows, have a knack for making big mistakes. Laudably brave as Robinson is, it is still prudent to be somewhat skeptical of his explanation. It is a safer bet, I think, that his efforts with the English Defense League (EDL), which he founded in 2009, reflect better intentions on his part. Although the British mainstream press misrepresents it as a matter of course—akin to how the liberal press misrepresents Trump supporters and the Tea Party here in the US—the avowed purpose of the EDL is to defend England against what Green inaccurately calls “Islamism” (more on that shortly). Nevertheless, Robinson left the EDL in October, 2013, having become concerned about “the dangers of far-right extremism.” For by that time the EDL had been in a number of violent altercations with groups which the mainstream media tends to refer to as “counter protestors” or “anti-fascists.”

Here it is absolutely necessary to take a detached perspective and resist any quick and easy moral judgments. Only in this way can we grasp the immense complexity of the circumstances. First, we must be clear that these are group conflicts: Brits and other Europeans versus Muslims who, having immigrated to England, are abusing and sexually assaulting Europeans, mostly young women and girls. Further, Brits and Europeans themselves have protested against the EDL, thus providing another source of potential conflict, an in-group kind. We must also recognize that throughout history, for a group to abuse and sexually assault members of another group has always been a source of brutal violence in response, especially if the victims were women and children. Recall, moreover, the gross failure of the British police and politicians to endeavor to rectify this situation. Now, with all this in mind, I think the only reasonable conclusion is that engagement—violent, if necessary—by a group such as the EDL was necessary, and therefore, justified. This belief, I stress, should not be interpreted as “a rationale” for the “moral evils” of Robinson and his allies, because in the circumstances such a moral judgment is a categorical error. It does not apply. For again, group assertion was the only effective recourse; therefore, it would be irrational and self-destructive to refuse that recourse for “morality’s” sake. It is only too easy for Green to moralize concerning Robinson and the EDL, while not asking or answering the question, what is to be done? and doing nothing himself.

History, let us be clear, is constituted by group conflicts. Though today few of us may want to recognize it, people have always defined themselves and their interests by virtue of their opposition to other groups, that is, their competitors. Nor has this agon ceased, as our vexed time increasingly shows. And again, we know from the events that reliance on the law did not avail, the law’s agents having failed the citizens. The only alternative, then, to popular resistance, with people being willing to engage in violence if need be, would have been submission. And what an apt word that is in context, the word Islam itself denoting submission, and the religion itself aiming, by its very doctrine, to achieve world domination. For women, life under Islam is de facto sex slavery. “The mass grooming and rape of underage…girls by gangs of men, almost all of them of South Asian Muslim extraction,” is by no means ideologically inconsistent with the general treatment of women under Islam. What is more, there is abundant historical evidence that for centuries, Muslims have treated European women as an especial good to be acquired and enjoyed, first by means of the slave-trade, and now by sex grooming, which is obviously no different in kind from the former method. The sex trafficking and sexual assault epidemics are European-wide phenomena, and for England as for other European nations, it would be quite absurd and self-destructive to resist engagement and violence for the sake of not being “racist” toward your enemy.

Besides, EDL members include blacks, Asians, and other non-whites. For such diversity Anders Brievik, a wicked mass murderer whom Robinson has expressly condemned, has called the organization “naïve fools.” Robinson rejects being labeled a racist and anti-Semite. He considers himself a Zionist, in fact, and counts blacks and Muslims among his friends. Not to simplify or pardon the man in general, however: Robinson does have a history of crime independent of his activities with the EDL and the like nationalist movements. “I am a working class man from Luton,” he states.

​It is obvious that Green did little research for his article on Robinson. Indeed, he appears to be more interested in affecting a moral superiority to him than digging into his complicated history. Robinson, Green writes, has “false front teeth because his real ones got punched out, a conviction for drunkenly assaulting an off-duty policeman, and another conviction for mortgage fraud.” Seeing as Robinson may relocate to America, where he has the support of vulgar men like Steve Bannon, Green asks himself, “Should I apologise preemptively for Tommy Robinson?” Ah, good team members should expect nothing else, but alas for Green, the question finds him nostalgic for the old, better days:

​Green, one imagines, is very pleased with himself for writing that, and doubtless such work will keep him well liked among the faithful and invited to their cocktail parties. But Time is likely to render a very different judgment, for Green’s is nothing but genteel conservatism, an evasion of exacting thought: which is precisely why this sort of thing is ever in demand. After all, the big money and social distinction are not obtained by being intellectually rigorous and morally principled—quite the contrary. That is the way to end up persona non grata.

Green reduces complex cultural and political movements to sheer caricature. Like a millennial student in his cultural studies class, keen to impress big fancy wise professor—to say nothing of his monkey-like peers!—he signals his disapproval of “popular revulsion at Islamism” and “old fascists in anti-Islamist clothing.” He accepts the false distinction between Islam and so-called Islamism. And yet, as Ibn Warraq shows in The Islam in Islamic Terrorism: The Importance of Beliefs, Ideas, and Ideology (2017), what is called “radical Islam” derives from Islam itself. Hence Gad Saad, an admirably principled intellectual, and other serious scholars refuse to use that inaccurate phrase. It is possible, for God’s sake, to be truthful about Islam without thereby implying that all Muslims are bad. And the plain truth is that Islam as such is fundamentally incompatible with the modern world and with the liberal democratic West in particular. Europe, of course, is now learning that the hard way, having chosen, very like our own country in regard to the southern border, to act on blind pity and needless guilt where only sober, unflinching judgment regarding certain tragedy can do. This is, ultimately, the price the West is now paying for having become so rich, for enjoying so much material progress. For it is this that allows for the rule of the weak and unthinking. Stupid moralistic sentiments become dominant over severe, tragic decisions.

Men and women having turned their eyes away from the grim truth, their politics now take a darker turn. The populist and nationalist uprisings that we are witnessing throughout the United States and Europe teach life’s deepest, most enduring lesson: willful blindness, from which disaster may issue. Although he despised democracy, for Thomas Carlyle, the French Revolution, awful as it was, was only to be expected, the elite having exploited and betrayed the people, then as ever. So it is in our time. “The fruits of free trade policy during the last 25 years,” writes Pat Buchanan,

​Whatever form government takes, selfishness and intractable delusion in the face of overwhelming complexity and one’s own evils are permanent aspects of our condition. Nationalist economics, and turning immigrants away for the sake of the common good—which is necessarily limited—are readily passed over for the sake of easier and less controversial gains, destructive though they shall prove in the end. From this grave background there arise men like Tommy Robinson, as necessary as they are unpalatable. Says Emerson:

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In our time, ‘bruisers’ like Tommy Robinson find their antagonists in the politically correct, in effete types like Dominic Green who, in the rotting decadent post-Christian West, make an enemy of him who is a hero, though properly mixed to suit the tragic whole. Not to imply that Robinson and the people, in a moral sense, consist of such better stuff than the loathsome elite. For that, too, is a sentimental delusion. As I wrote in an essay earlier this year for The Imaginative Conservative,

​Like others, Dominic Green—who has no skin in this game—will go on moralizing on the cheap. Meanwhile, the irony is that it falls to the very people to whom he blithely condescends—Deplorables such as Tommy Robinson and Steve Bannon—to strive to preserve their countries from the disastrous effects of short-sighted elite rule. Smug, genteel chatterers like Dominic Green will not stick their necks out for anyone.

Note: This article was originally published in the Unz Review on August 20, 2018.

​Because it is averse to tradition per se and to any authority besides its own, the Left—no longer the party of working people—has become a kind of authoritarian sentimentalism. As such, it reveals the essential irony of American modernity: Our liberal state cannot simply decree that a certain way of life is good and expect us to live accordingly, but since human nature must have some sort of collective moral authority—which communities themselves lose over time—we have become players in a kind of Puritan theater; the nation acting on its Protestant heritage in a warped and decadent fashion. In order to maintain a sense of sin, in effect, Americans have devised all sorts of roundabout forms of social control. 
 
So, for example, a boy whose energetic endowment naturally renders him unruly some of the time is said to have some sort of disorder: attention deficit disorder, or oppositional defiant disorder, or God-knows-what. The culture being so enfeebled, virtually any plain speaking may be found to cause a “hostile work environment,” a comical notion that is not found in more vital peoples. Lack of affirmative consent, for a paranoid many, entails sexual assault by definition, just as the expression of romantic interest is indistinguishable from sexual harassment. Contra J.S. Mill and Immanuel Kant, neither consequence nor intent matters: post-hoc feeling (i.e., “offense”), though as various as people themselves, is the disciplinary criterion. Whose criterion? Why, a Leftist bureaucrat’s, of course.
 
As in wicked religion, the accusers tell us we are guilty of all manner of sins, and in so doing they distinguish themselves as innocent. Like Milton’s Satan, hubris bears no responsibility, being only a victim. There is a profound antipathy to experiencing any sort of conflict or even discomfort, and yet to experience such things is a form of power, so long as one may be considered a victim. Behind all the victimhood there is the vital thing: the will to inflict suffering on one’s “oppressor,” an activity by which people can vent discontentment that has nothing to do with the “oppressor” and the “suffering.” The unrelenting political correctness, our insidious new church, functions as a kind of pretend confession: we pay heed to it regularly, while in private we don’t live at all like that. Throughout the culture so-called experts, ignorant of their own ignorance, purport to guide the perplexed multitude. Well, why should they not? There is so much lucre in it.
 
In its blind hypocrisy—does any member of Antifa realize his own fascist character?—the Left is akin to the borderline personality, whose interests are right by definition, so that whatever is contrary to them is evil indeed. A representative example of this mad logic was furnished on August 19 of last year at a free speech rally in Boston, Massachusetts. Leftist activists turned out to protest what they took to be hate speech, unaware that their protest was itself an act of free speech. Such hypocrisy and lack of self-awareness now characterize the Left, which, since it loathes nothing so much as traditional values, elects to create all sorts of perverse idols to guide its confused path. Zealously demanding our submission, a power-grab they call freedom, Leftists display a curious puritanical sensibility which, like any hypocrite, they do not see. Hence the various acts in our Puritan theater: in addition to those already named, mandatory diversity training at corporations, bias response teams on college campuses, sensitivity readers at publishing houses, mere cultural influence understood as cultural appropriation, ever increasing gender pronouns which one is supposed to use, and on and on.
 
In an acute aphorism, Ludwig Wittgenstein says that: