Khan’s London: Murder Rate Reaches Decade High as Knife Killings Surge
Jack Taylor/Getty
2:41
The number of people murdered in London has reached its highest level in a decade under the leadership of Mayor Sadiq Khan, with 149 people losing their lives in 2019.
The homicide rate in London last year was the highest since 2008 when 154 people were killed in the capital and ten per cent higher than in 2018 when 135 people were murdered. The majority of victims were stabbed to death, with 90 people being killed by knives, up from 55 in 2014.
Gang-related murders have risen sharply during the mayoralty of Sadiq Khan, with 42 people dying in gang-related crimes, more than double that of 2014 when 17 people died in gang crimes,
reports The Guardian .
In 2018, Mayor Sadiq Khan
launched a £500,000 “violent crime unit” in response to the knife crime epidemic sweeping over the city. The founder of Anti-Knife UK, Danny O’Brien,
said that the mayor’s response was inadequate to deal with the problem.
“He’s said that he’s going to try and save the problem but in reality, he hasn’t got a clue what to do. He starts something, throws money at the problem but doesn’t know what the problem is,” O’Brien said.
“Politicians as a whole just simply aren’t doing enough,” he added.
A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Service said in response to the surge in knife crime that “tackling violence that involves knife crime is the number one priority” for the police.
“Stop and search and the use of Section 60 remains an important power in tackling knife crime and protecting the public. This means that following a stabbing, further retaliatory incidents are prevented saving further violence,” the spokesman
told The Sun .
“In 2018, it resulted in more than 4,200 arrests for weapon possession alone. Every one of those weapons seized potentially means one less violent incident, injury or death,” the spokesman added.
The surge in knife crime and murders will be a top issue in the upcoming London mayoral election, in which Sadiq Khan will be seeking to win a second term.
Shaun Bailey, a Conservative Party candidate,
blamed Sadiq Khan for the violent crime wave in the city.
“An extremely violent end to the year in London. Sadly, 2019 will be remembered as a year of crime and fear for Londoners. In the mayoral campaign my focus will be on making London a safer place, things can’t carry on as they are. We need a change in City Hall,” wrote Bailey.
ONLY ABOUT ONE IN EIGHT BORDER JUMPERS ARE ACTUALLY CAUGHT.
THE REST GO ON TO LOOT JOB, WELFARE, SOCIAL SERVICES AND THEN VOTE DEMOCRAT FOR
MORE
4.3M
Migrants Caught at SW Border in Decade — More Than Los Angeles Population
Moises Castillo/AP
Photo, File
30 Dec 2019588
5:00
Border Patrol agents apprehended
more than four million migrants who illegally crossed the southwest border with
Mexico during the past 10 fiscal years. If these migrants were placed into a
single city, it would be larger than Los Angeles by population.
During the past 10 fiscal years,
October 1, 2009, through September 30, 2019, U.S. Border Patrol agents assigned
to the nine sectors that make up the United States’ southwest border with
Mexico apprehended 4,318,200 migrants. The highest year during that decade for
apprehensions occurred during Fiscal Year 2019 when agents apprehended 851,553
— including 76,020 Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) and 473,682 Family Unit
Aliens (FMUA), according to reports obtained from U.S. Customs and Border
Protection.
Apprehensions by Fiscal Year:
FY2019 — 851,553 FY2018 — 396,579 FY2017 — 303,916 FY2016 — 408,870 FY2015 — 331,333 FY2014 — 479,371 FY2013 — 414,397 FY2012 — 356,873 FY2011 — 327,577 FY2010 — 447,731
During the past decade, Rio Grande
Valley (RGV) Sector Border Patrol agents apprehended the largest numbers of
migrants. Between fiscal years 2010 and 2019, RGV Sector agents apprehended
1,600,663 migrants who illegally crossed the border into South Texas, the
reports state.
Agents assigned to the Tucson Sector
had the second-highest number of total apprehensions — 946,948. The Big Bend
Sector in West Texas had the lowest number of total apprehensions — 56,149.
The report shows a shifting in
migration traffic during the past decade. In FY2010, the Tucson Sector reported
the highest number of apprehensions — 212,202. This changed in FY2013 when the
largest apprehension numbers shifted to the RGV Sector.
In Fiscal Year 2019, RGV agents
apprehended 339,135 migrants including 34,523 UACs and 211,631 FMUAs.
During the past 10 fiscal years,
Border Patrol agents apprehended a total of 433,216 unaccompanied minors.
Officials reported that more than half of those apprehensions, 235,050 took
place in the RGV Sector.
FMUA apprehension numbers for the
decade were not readily available. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials
provided statistics for Fiscal Years 2013 through 2019. During that period,
Border Patrol agents apprehended 857,328 family units. More than half of these,
463,811, occurred in the RGV Sector.
FMUA apprehensions represent the
largest increase in migrant demographics. The number of apprehensions jumped
from 14,855 in FY2013 to 473,682 in FY2019 — an increase of more than 3,000
percent. Again, more than half of the FMUA apprehensions occurred in the RGV
Sector — 463,811.
With three fiscal years missing from
the FMUA report, FMUA and UAC apprehensions account for 1.3 million of the
total 4.3 million apprehensions. These demographics also represent the highest
cost to U.S. taxpayers in terms of processing, transporting, feeding, and
providing healthcare, Border Patrol officials repeatedly state.
Migrants Flooded
the Border in 2019 — Census Bureau Claims the Inflow Dropped
Guillermo
Arias / AFP / Getty Images
31 Dec 2019196
8:53
The Census Bureau claims that
immigration dropped to just 595,000 people in the 12 months up to mid-2019, but
the estimate is built on conflicting data, said Steven Camarota, a statistician
at the Center for Immigration Studies.
“Net
immigration is a very hard thing to measure because there is so much sampling
variability” amid continued arrivals and departures, he said, adding that
President Donald Trump’s pro-American policies may be prompting illegal
migrants to evade surveys.
The
bureau’s conflicting migrant population estimates are hidden under t he bureau’s
claim that the nation’s population rose by just 0.5 percent from
July 2018 to July 2019, up to 328 million. The number is low partly
because the bureau says the resident population of legal and illegal migrants
rose by only 595,000 during the year up to July 2019.
But
the Department of Homeland Security reported that 700,000 migrants crossed the
southeastern border in the nine months before July 2019. The vast majority of
those Central American migrants were allowed to stay pending their eventual
asylum hearings.
Trump
sharply reduced the flow of border migrants in the second half of 2019 and may
have reduced the number of new overstays and new illegals. But Congress and
business have blocked his 2018 efforts to shrink legal immigration.
Business
groups and investors want
the federal government to stimulate their economic growth and stock values
by adding more
immigrant workers and more consumers . Faster
population growth means higher forecasts for economic consumption, sales,
housing prices, and profits, thus boosting the value of stock prices on Wall
Street.
So
business groups are touting the bureau’s new low-ball estimate to demand even
more migration. For example, the New
York Times portrayed the
bureau’s new claim of slow immigrant growth as bad for investors and the
economy:
William
H. Frey, a noted demographer and senior
fellow at the Brookings Institution , said in an interview Monday
that the percentage increase was the lowest in a century. The growth rate
during the most recent decade, about 6.7 percent, is expected to be the lowest
since the government started taking population counts around 1790, he said.
“This
is a huge downturn in the nation’s growth,” Mr. Frey said. “This is even lower
than the Great Depression.”
Census
watchers say that one of the biggest reasons for the stagnancy of the
population is the decrease in the number of new immigrants. a trend that has
continued through President Trump’s first three years in office.
…
“The
immigration is really the [economic] safety valve for us going forward,” Mr.
Frey said of population growth. “I think that immigration is an important part
of what we have to think about going forward.”
In
contrast, wage-earning Americans gain from a reduced migrant inflow. Any
declines in worker population pressure employers to compete for new employees
by offering higher wages and by training sidelined Americans. The slower
population growth also allows young Americans to migrate to good jobs in other
regions, and to buy homes in good locations at lower costs. Slower population
growth also forces employers to buy labor-saving machines to allow employees to
earn more by getting more work done each day.
Those
changes also mean that slower population growth — via lower births or reduced
immigration — also tends to transfer wealth from older investors back to young
wage-earners. “Throughout American history, even during the Great Depression,
business always says they don’t have enough workers,” said Camarota, adding:
That’s
true today as well – [because] they always want to keep wages down [and] they
have an [economic] interest in an ever-more densely populated America. Whether
that is in the interest of the American people already here that is a different
question.
Almost 50% of U.S. employees got higher wages in 2019, up
from almost 40% in 2018.
That's useful progress - but wage growth will likely rise
faster if Congress stopped inflating the labor supply for the benefit of
business. http:// bit.ly/2SyaLg7
However,
the Associated Press pushed the same pro-migration,
pro-growth theme. “Immigration is a wildcard in that
it is something we can do something about,” Frey said. “Immigrants tend to be
younger and have children, and they can make a population younger.”
“Immigration
is no fix for an aging society,” said Camarota. “The immigrants grow old,
and they don’t have that many children.” Currently, “everybody has
got low fertility … and the fertility of young immigrants has declined more
than the fertility of natives,” he said.
Some
of the population data is easy to count accurately. For example, government
agencies and hospitals reported just 3,791,712 births and 2,835,038 deaths
in 2019, so boosting the native-born population by only 956,674.
But
estimates for immigration are far more difficult, said Camarota.
For
example, the two Census Bureau population-tracking estimates lag far
behind the news.
In
November, the bureau released its 2018 American Community Survey that excluded
data from the second half of 2018 and all of 2019. So the 2018 report missed
the inflow of roughly 800,000 migrants across the border in 2019 as it reported
that 1.45 million new legal and illegal immigrants settled in the United
States during 2017.
The
estimated 1.45 million immigrant inflow in 2017 is down from 1.75 million
migrants in 2016 and the 1.62 million migrants in 2015, but it was
also more than any year between 2002 to 2013.
Alongside
the ACS, the bureau also releases the Current Population Survey (CPS). It
“showed a significantly larger total number of [legal and illegal] immigrants
in 2018 (45.8 million) vs. the total shown in the ACS (44.7 million),” said
a November
analysis by Camarota.
“A
recent news story in the New
York Times Slows to a
Trickle ,” said an October report by
CIS, which explained:
An
op-ed in the Times mistakenly
interpreting the earlier report as meaning that “immigration fell 70%”
in the last year. The writers interpret this as the result of President Trump’s
immigration policy changes.
But
it is not clear that any slowdown in immigration has actually taken place.
First,
growth in the immigrant population does not measure new arrivals; immigrants
come and go, so the net change in the total is not the same as the annual
number of new arrivals.
More
important, though, is that the two Census Bureau surveys that measure the
foreign-born have recently diverged in unexpected ways. The Times
These
annual differences produce larger differences over several years, said the CIS
report:
In
terms of growth, the ACS shows a 4.8 million increase from 2010 to 2018 in the
immigrant population, while the [2018] CPS shows a 6.9 million increase over
the same period. The just-released 2019 CPS shows an increase of 7.3 million
since 2010 …
From
2015 to 2019, growth in the immigrant population averaged one million in the
CPS, while in the ACS it averaged 600,000 from 2015 to 2018 (Figure 1 and Table
1).
NYT's Tom Edsall says Trump's immigration-reform voters
are 'snakes and vermin.'
Edsall usually tries to understand ordinary Americans'
concerns. But he & his elite peers live in a bubble & just don't see
immigration's huge economic damage to Americans. http:// bit.ly/2YQO7Aq
The
swearing-in of new citizens also lags,he Census Bureau reports. The
naturalization data show that a record number of immigrants became citizens —
and possible voters — in 2019:
CALIFORNIA: now a colony of Mexico
By Jessica Vaughan
Earlier this week ICE released its 2019 report on
enforcement activity. While overall removals increased due to a record number
of illegal arrivals at the southwest border, removals from the interior
declined by 10 percent. Meanwhile, ICE's caseload grew by 24 percent, with more
than 630,000 cases added to its docket, which has grown to a record high of
more than three million cases.
THOMAS
HOMAN, the former acting head of
"They
say they care about these people, they
care
about children dying and women being
raped...
they need to look in the mirror
because
if you keep offering enticements...
'sanctuary
cities'... free health care... in-state
tuition...
people are going to put themselves in
harm's
way to come to this country," Homan
Six-Time
Deported Illegal
GCSO
29 Dec 20192,239
1:57
A six-time deported
illegal alien has been arrested for allegedly killing a 51-year-old Colorado
grandmother after being released from local law enforcement custody.
Juan Sanchez, a Mexican
illegal alien who has already been deported from the United States six times
over the last decade, was arrested last week and charged with vehicular
homicide and fleeing the scene of an accident after he allegedly hit and killed
Annette Conquering Bear, a grandmother, while she was walking home from
Walgreens, 9 News reported .
Sanchez, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) officials revealed, was deported from the U.S. twice in 2002,
three times in 2008, and in 2012. Sometime after his last deportation, he
illegally re-entered the U.S. for the seventh time.
“Sanchez is an ICE enforcement priority,”
ICE officials said in a statement.
Four days before Conquering Bear’s killing,
Sanchez was in local law enforcement custody on suspicion of drunk driving but
was released after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials said
they did not have enough time in advance to lodge a detainer against him so he
could be turned over to their custody.
During that arrest, Sanchez was allegedly
driving drunk with a blood-alcohol level of 0.183, which is twice the legal
limit. Police said Sanchez admitted to having had “two beers” before getting in
his car and driving with an “international driver’s license.”
Sanchez was taken into custody at the time
and was then quickly released after he became uncooperative and allegedly
telling officers, “I’ll fight my way out of jail.”
The illegal alien is now being held on a $500,000
bond.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart
News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder .
Sanctuary City Released Human Rights Violator
And then NYC hit the snooze button on this wake-up call
In my last post , I discussed a Liberian
amnesty provision that was snuck into section 7611
of the National Defense Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2020 . I specifically
referenced the case of Liberian human rights violator Charles
Cooper , who
was removed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to Liberia in
June 2018. I left out the part about how the New York Police Department (NYPD)
failed to honor an ICE detainer for him, and released him without even
notifying the agency. The incident does not reflect well on those who set the
rules for New York's finest.
Cooper entered the United
States in January 2006 on a nonimmigrant visa, and remained beyond his
authorized return date. He was no ordinary visa overstay. According to ICE, Cooper
"served as a bodyguard to former Liberian President Charles Taylor and was
a member of a paramilitary police unit called the Secret Security Service
(SSS)."
ICE continued:
"Cooper, while a member of the SSS and the National Patriotic Front of
Liberia [NPLF], was directly involved in the persecution of civilians in
Liberia." In addition to identifying Cooper as "a human rights
violator," the agency asserted that he was "a member of an
organization known for setting fires to whole villages."
The aforementioned Charles Taylor is a special case.
He was a Liberian civil servant in the 1980s, and was accused of embezzlement.
He made his way to the United States, but escaped from prison in Massachusetts
where he was being held for extradition, and travelled back to West Africa. He
thereafter formed the NPFL, and in 1989 launched attacks against the Liberian
government from the Ivory Coast, igniting Liberia's first civil war.
Global
Security explains
that between December 1989 and the middle of 1993, the NPFL "is estimated
to have been responsible for thousands of deliberate killings of civilians. As
NPFL forces advanced towards Monrovia in 1990, they targeted people of the
Krahn and Mandingo ethnic groups, both of which the NPFL considered supporters
of [then-Liberian President Samuel] Doe's government."
Various factions became
involved in the conflict, including the NPFL; forces that were loyal to Doe;
the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and their Nigerian-led
peacekeeping force, ECOMOG; and the breakaway Independent National Patriotic
Front of Liberia (INPFL), which was led by Prince Johnson. INPFL captured, mutilated,
and killed Doe on September 10, 1990.
The first bloody civil war
ended with Taylor's election as president in 1997. According to Britannica , however:
As
president, Taylor restructured the army, filling it with members of his former
militia. Conflict ensued between Taylor and the opposition, and Monrovia became
the scene of widespread gun battles and looting. Governments around the world
accused Taylor of supporting rebels in Sierra Leone, and in 2000 the United
Nations Security Council imposed sanctions on Liberia. The country was
subsequently gripped again by civil war, and Taylor, accused of gross human
rights violations, was indicted by a UN-sponsored war-crimes tribunal (the
Special Court for Sierra Leone) in 2003.
Following
widespread international condemnation, Taylor agreed to go into exile in Nigeria.
In March 2006, however, the Liberian government requested Taylor's extradition,
and Nigeria announced that it would comply with the order. Taylor subsequently
attempted to flee Nigeria but was quickly captured. Charged with crimes against
humanity and war crimes committed during Sierra Leone's civil war, he was later
sent to The Hague, where he was to be tried before the Special Court for Sierra
Leone.
Taylor was found guilty in
April 2012 on 11 counts "of bearing responsibility for the war crimes and
crimes against humanity committed by rebel forces during Sierra Leone's civil
war", and subsequently sentenced to 50 years in prison.
Back to Cooper . As noted, he entered as
a nonimmigrant with permission to remain until August 2006. When he failed to
depart, he was placed into removal proceedings. He was ordered removed by an
immigration judge and appealed the decision, which was dismissed by the Board
of Immigration Appeals in February 2016.
According to ICE:
On
Aug. 11, 2017, Cooper was arrested by the New York Police Department, and
charged with DWI. On that same date, [ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations
(ERO)] deportation officers lodged an immigration detainer with the NYPD's
Richmond Central Booking. Cooper was released from NYPD custody, without the
detainer being honored and without notification to ICE.
Fortunately, in May 2018,
ICE deportation officers arrested Cooper in Staten Island, New York, leading to
his removal.
As my former
colleague Preston
Huennekens reported:
"In March 2013, New York City began ignoring [ICE] detainer notices."
According to ICE , the agency had "not
been notified about the release of aliens in custody at New York City
facilities since 2014, except for those that fall within the 170 crimes
considered egregious by the Mayor's Office." Apparently, human rights
violators do not make the cut.
Huennekens noted that in just
one three-month period (January to mid-April 2018), the NYPD and the New York
Department of Corrections together ignored 440 detainers; "40 of those
individuals released from custody subsequently committed more crimes and were
arrested again." About this, ICE stated: "In
just three months, more than three dozen criminal aliens were released from
local custody. Simply put, the politics and rhetoric in this city are putting
its own communities at an unnecessary risk."
To restate the obvious:
Sanctuary policies, including those that prevent ICE from finding out about the
release of dangerous aliens and that require police to ignore ICE detainers,
make no sense. They only serve as sanctuary for criminals, or in Cooper's case,
human rights violators.
Cooper should have served
as a wake-up call to those in power who, for purely political reasons, require
the NYPD to turn a blind eye to ICE's requests for help. But instead, as
Huennekens' reporting demonstrates, Gotham's officials simply hit the snooze
button.
No-Go Paris Suburbs Now Second-most Populated Department in Region
MARTIN BUREAU/AFP via Getty Images
2:45
According to newly released statistics, the multicultural no-go suburbs of Paris have become the second-most populous department in the capital region as of January 1st, 2020.
The Seine-Saint-Denis department, which consists of several suburbs to the north of Paris, is second only to the French capital in the Île-de-France region in terms of population, with the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) claiming there to be 1,630,133 inhabitants,
Le Parisien reports .
In the last five years, the population of the department has increased by over five per cent, higher than the average in the region with the city of Paris losing 2.4 per cent of its population during the same period.
The commune of Saint-Denis has the most residents at 111,948 in total, followed by Montreuil and Aubervilliers which grew by 11.41 per cent in the last five years.
“The population is growing twice as fast as the regional average, thanks to a young population, economic development, and major housing construction programmes,” the INSEE suggested.
Seine-Saint-Denis is also well-known for having a large population of illegal migrants, with a 2018 report indicating that as many as
400,000 residents of the department were illegals.
Jerome Fourquet, director of polling firm Ifop, commented on the trend
saying: “Over fifteen years, numbers of Jewish populations or families have collapsed in a series of municipalities from Seine-Saint-Denis.”
“In Aulnay-sous-Bois, the number of families of Jewish faith has thus decreased from 600 to 100, at Blanc-Mesnil from 300 to 100, in Clichy-sous-Bois from 400 to at 80 and at La Courneuve from 300 to 80,” he added.
The area is also known for its high levels of crime, and some have argued that the suburbs
pose a major threat to French security.
“If the suburbs give rise to further and even more violent uprisings, we will have no way to face them: we lack the means, we lack the men. This is the reality of the French political situation,” General Pierre de Villiers, the former Chief of the Defence Staff, is said to have told French President Emmanuel Macron.
Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ
Paris Police Shoot Knifeman Who Stabbed Three, Killed One
Marc Piasecki/Getty Images
2:04
A knifeman who injured two police officers and stabbed three members of the public, killing one in a Paris suburb was shot by French police Friday afternoon.
The alleged killer was “neutralised” by firearm-carrying police officers in the southern Paris suburb of Villejuif around 1400 local time (0800 EST) Friday. Paris based newspaper
Le Parisien reports the assailant attacked several people in a local park in assaults that were described to have taken place at random. French media subsequently reported that the suspect had indeed died of gunshot wounds.
Three people were stabbed during the incident, one of whom is reported to have died of their injuries. Police pursued the suspect through the park and exchanged gunfire with him, the paper claims. The man was “neutralised” by police during the chase, and two police officers were injured.
While the motivation for the attack is not yet known,
Le Figaro reports a bomb disposal team has been deployed to the park, suggesting police may suspect the presence of explosives. RTL — formerly known as Radio Luxembourg —
reports the “European” suspect wore a traditional Arabic garment known as a djellaba, had a bearded face, and shouted “Allahu akbar”, while noting police had not yet confirmed these details from witnesses.
The attack, which French media described as “random”, follows another in the Villejuif neighborhood in May 2019 when a man who was reported to shout “Allahu Akbar” as he struck attacked passers-by with a knife and iron bar. A man was arrested and the injuries were not fatal,
FranceBleu reported at the time.
In 2017, police raided an apartment in Villejuif following a tip-off and uncovered a
terrorist plot to bomb French banks. Officers found 3.5 ounces of TATP in the flat, a common explosive used in Jihadist attacks because of its power and comparative ease of production.
The Belgian Court of Appeal has ruled to remove the passports of six Islamic extremists convicted of terror offences in absentia in 2015 after they left the country to fight for jihadist groups in the Middle East.
The six men, Ali and Said El Morabit, Ilyass Boughalab, Bilal Elhamdaoui, Azdine Tahiri, and Fouad Akrich, were all dual nationals with citizenship in both Morocco and Belgium, and were all activists with the group “Sharia4Belgium,” 7sur7
reports .
The whereabouts of the six men remain unknown, although several sources believe that some of the jihadists were killed while fighting for terrorist groups in Syria.
While the move to strip the six men of their Beglian citizenship had been made some time ago, the public was only informed of the move on Thursday and published in Flemish media. Given that none of the men holds addresses in Belgium, none of them were personally informed that their passports were revoked.
The six men were not the only ones in Sharia4Belgium convicted on terror charges in 2015. The group’s leader Fouad Belkacem was convicted of sending men to fight with terror groups in Syria and sentenced to
12 years in prison.
Belkacem, also a Moroccan national, was known in Belgium for conducting street sermons and was a major figure in the pro-sharia movement in the country. Sharia4Belgium was also
linked to the Paris Bataclan attackers, several of which were Belgian nationals.
Belgium’s move to strip the jihadist fighters of their passports comes as several other countries in western Europe have done the same. Denmark
announced plans to strip the citizenship of Islamic State fighters in October, for example.
“These are people who have turned their backs on Denmark and fought with violence against our democracy and freedom. They pose a threat to our security. They are unwanted in Denmark,” Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen said.
Norway has implemented similar measures,
revoking the residence permits of any individuals who left Norway to fight for the Islamic State terror group abroad.
Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ
The Mob and Social Justice
The British writer Douglas Murray is one of those rare public intellectuals who writes cogently, with wit and erudition, but also with a sharp dose of common sense and humanity. His latest book, The Madness of Crowds
Murray’s book is a follow-up to his international bestseller The Strange Death of Europe The Madness of Crowds might well have been titled “The Strange Death of Political Discourse,” as Murray illustrates how the weaponization of identity and victimhood has poisoned the political culture.
Murray argues that the decline of religion in the 19th century and the decline of secular ideologies in the last quarter of a century have led to a vacuum that was filled by postmodernism. That worldview, which began at the universities, functions as a religion-substitute. Its holy trinity is “social justice,” “identity group politics,” and “intersectionalism.”
Murray’s book is divided into four main chapters corresponding to the four main social justice identities: Gay, Women, Race, and Trans. Between each chapter he has brief interludes on the Marxist foundations of intersectional theory, the impact of technology and social media, and the important of forgiveness in the age of the internet.
Intersectionalism is the theory that race, “gender,” and sexuality overlap to create systemic oppression. The theory, Murray notes, “is an invitation to spend the rest of our lives attempting to work out each and every identity and vulnerability claim in ourselves and others and then organize along whatever system of justice emerges from the perpetually moving hierarchy which we uncover.”
The foundation of this demented theory is Marxist – except that now whites, males, and heterosexuals are at the top of hierarchy of oppression (in addition to that old standby, capitalism). Beneath the white patriarchy are all the minorities: non-whites, gays, women, and (most recently) the transgendered.
What unites these various disparate groups who have entirely different histories and interests is the perception of the white patriarchy as the common enemy. Indeed, if white heterosexual “cisgender” males didn’t exist, intersectional theoreticians would need to invent them in order to cement the alliance of oppressed victim groups who otherwise have little in common.
This has all led to a toxic culture, characterized by increasing conflict. “In public and private,” Murray writes, “both online and off, people are behaving in ways that are irrational, feverish, and herd-like, and simply unpleasant. The daily news cycle is filled with the consequences.”
We see this most prominently at universities, where free speech has been crushed beneath stultifying political correctness and where any point of view at odds with the prevailing PC narrative is dismissed as “racist”, “sexist”, “homophobic”, or similar epithets designed to end debate. But, as Murray details, this toxic culture has now spread from the university-educated elite out to government and corporations. The wrong word at the wrong time can end a career. Just ask James Damore, formerly of Google.
Identity politics has found a home in the modern Democratic Party where candidates feverishly compete for intersectional points. Elizabeth Warren, who has arguably benefitted the most from identity politics, recently made the startling announcement that, “Black trans and cis women, gender-nonconforming, and nonbinary people are the backbone of our democracy.”
Decades after the successful civil rights movement of the 60s, the relations between blacks and whites are deteriorating. Murray notes that “the number of Americans who view racism as a ‘big problem’ doubled between 2011 and 2017.” These dates almost perfectly bookend the presidency of Barack Obama.
In his discussion of women, Murray notes that there is “a presumption that almost all relationships in the workplace and elsewhere are centered around the exercise of power.” The relationship between men and women, crucial to a stable society, are thus viewed through a Marxist prism, as if we are discussing labor and capital. Science tells us that male and female natures are rooted in biology, but identity politics requires us to believe they are not. “We have begun trying to reorder our societies not in line with facts we know from science but based on political falsehoods pushed by activists in the social sciences,” Murray concludes.
Conversely, the moral case for gay rights rests on the notion that gay people are “born that way” -- that it is rooted in biology when in fact scientific findings are inconclusive. Nonetheless, Murray notes, “being gay has become one of the central building blocks of identity, politics, and ‘identity politics.’” Yet, as Murray points out, “LGBT” hardly exists as a cohesive community. “Gay men and gay women have almost nothing in common” and neither group thinks much of “bisexuals.”
In his chapter on transgenderism, Murray notes that no other issue has so swiftly moved to the fore. It took decades for homosexuality to be accepted. “By contrast,” he notes, “trans has become something close to a dogma in record time.” The demands go beyond requiring new pronouns and imposing gender-neutral bathrooms. “Far more serious,” Murray says, “is the demand that children be encouraged toward medical interventions over a matter that is so incredibly unclear,” referring to prescribing puberty blockers, sex hormones, and surgery to children as young as 12.
Murray’s prose is measured throughout and his book means to persuade, not to hector. He wants to lower the volume of the conversation. Unfortunately, his tone has not been reciprocated by the Progressive Left. The leftist Guardian , for instance, has dismissed The Madness of Crowds as a “rightwing diatribe.”
Murray calls for approaching the cultural issues in a spirit of love and forgiveness rather than “the endless register of resentment and greed.” One way to start, he suggests, is to ask more regularly “Compared to what?” when faced with charges that our society is racist, sexist, homophobic and the like.
“The aim of identity politics would appear to be to politicize absolutely everything,” Murray writes, something to which anyone who watches football or listens to late night TV can attest. “In an era without purpose, and in a universe without clear meaning, this call to politicize everything and then fight for it has an undoubted attraction. It fills life with meaning of a kind.”
But politics is a poor substitute for religion. “One of the ways to distance ourselves from the madness of our times is to retain an interest in politics but not to rely on it as a source of meaning,” he advises.
It’s a dose of sane advice in an insane age.
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