Flicking through a bookshelf recently I happened upon Melanie Phillips's Londonistan, bought and read when it came out in 2006 and, as it is evident that militant Islam is gaining ever increasing power in Britain and the West generally, I thought I’d remind myself of what she said.
Londonistancaused a mixture of alarm and outrage when it came out – you know who was outraged – by Phillip’s reference to the contemptuous soubriquet used by foreign intelligence agencies to describe our capital city and her claim that as many as 16,000 British Muslims were 'actively engaged in or support terrorist activity'. An estimated 3,000 she said, visited al-Qa'eda training facilities under the guise of attending family weddings while others downloaded the knowledge needed to commit carnage from the internet.
How has did this nightmare, located somewhere between terrorism and warfare, come about she asked, why us in particular?
Her answer was that Arab, Afghani and North African radicals were allowed to settle here and, provided they left Britain alone, they could plot subversion against such allies of the UK as Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and last but not least, the United States of America unhindered.
Personally, I’m still not sure if they was any such agreement by the UK authorities and that it was much more likely that it was a mix of complacency, multicultural madness and fear of being labelled as racist that allowed this situation to arise, but whatever it was, it inevitably went wrong and fanatical Islamists like Abu Hamza, Abu Qatada and Sheik Omar Bakhri Mohammed turned their attentions on the millions of Muslim migrants in Britain and began to radicalise them – wonderfully assisted by the woke British establishment who educated them to believe that they were second class citizens in a racist Britain that despised them, thus massively alienating them from British society, even when they had done rather well out of it, relative to life in, say, a Pakistani village – while, as Philipps shows, encouraging ever more such immigrants while doling out welfare to them - people who routinely describe our society as a 'sewer'.
This Establishment-driven, and highly lucrative, human rights racket has resulted in the obscene spectacle of a failed suicide bomber announcing 'I know my rights' when he was captured, aided and abetted judges who have systematically frustrated the extradition of men bent on murder.
This has been made much worse by the Establishment pushing the police into adopting the mindset of a university sociology department and allowing prisons to become a major incubator of Muslim fanaticism.
As Phillips says, the constant anti-racism and multiculturalism propagated by the BBC, Channel 4, the churches, local government, schools and universities downgraded the majority culture and rubbished Britain's traditions in favour of the 'black armband' view of history. Each perceived historic slight trumps every other value.
Biased coverage of various foreign conflicts, notably that in the Middle East, encouraged a sense of global Muslim victimhood, rather than a critical appreciation of the shortcomings of many Muslim societies. Instead of being encouraged to count their blessings, the MSM is constantly filled with indignation about Israel and 'Islamophobia'.
All this Phillips described with a passionate rage in a book that could not have been timelier, but which was sadly ignored and often vilified. Just look at what she wrote – 16,000 supporters of terrorism. It is far more than that now.
Unsurprisingly, from her Substack and interviews she has given, Phillips has an even bleaker view of our future now, saying: 'Britain is currently locked into such a spiral of decadence, self-loathing and sentimentality that is incapable of seeing that it is setting itself up for cultural immolation' and offers the usual, obvious strategies to avoid that outcome, such as repealing human rights legislation that patently favours those who wish our society ill and resisting every attempt to slip in parallel banking and legal systems based on sharia law, a notion utterly alien to the common law of this country.
We should, she says, crack down on the wider ambience that sustains terrorism, be it Islamist bookshops, 'charities', newspapers or television, while expelling, or refusing entry visas to, extremist imams. Beyond this, Phillips argues that Britain should institute tough immigration controls, and introduce measures to assimilate existing migrants, and abolish the pernicious doctrine of multiculturalism in favour of a reassertion of British values.
Of course, none of that will happen until we rid ourselves of the woke, globalist establishment or while institutions like the BBC and universities maintain their policy of 'no conservatives need apply' whenever they pretend to other varieties of diversity in their recruitment adverts.
However as the self-appointed ‘elites’ who determine our destiny are, at best, like rabbits blinded in headlights, caught between fear of being 'racist' while dimly conscious that a populist backlash may be just over the horizon, none of Melanie Phillips's sensible suggestions will be adopted, and the lessons of her deeply shocking book will be consigned to the 'I told you so' category.
Melanie Phillips has described herself as being one of the UK's earliest and most famous "disillusioned" figures: from being a senior left-wing journalist and a "Jew by accident," to becoming a fighter for neo-conservative values in the West and an outspoken pro-Israel voice.
Lebanon, now in the spotlight of both the conflict and media attention, played a crucial role in Phillips' process of leaving the British left. "The first time I was exposed to the hypocrisy towards Israel in the world press was in 1982, when the First Lebanon War began," she recalled. "I hadn't visited Israel before, had no such plans, and didn't know much about the Israeli-Arab conflict. To my shock, the coverage in the British press portrayed Israel as a Nazi state. I'll never forget how Ariel Sharon, then defence minister, was described as a Nazi general and mass murderer. Out of nowhere, and for the first time since the Holocaust, displays of antisemitism towards Jews in Britain began to emerge, claiming that we, British Jews, support a state that is committing 'genocide' against Palestinians in Lebanon.
"At that time, I was a senior writer at The Guardian. I asked my colleagues – educated and wonderful people on a personal level who advocate moral principles – how it was that a shocking tragedy in the Middle East, where the army of Syrian President Hafez al-Assad murdered between 25,000 and 40,000 people in the city of Hama in Syria, received a side headline in our newspaper, while Israeli attacks against Palestinians in Lebanon received front-page headlines and extensive coverage. 'We have a double standard towards Israel,' I told them."
The answer she heard changed her life: "Of course we have a double standard," her colleagues explained. "Israel is a Western country, so we judge you by our morals, while from the Arab world, which wasn't educated on human rights values, we don't have similar expectations. If we made such a comparison, it would be racism on our part." Phillips replied: "What are you talking about? If someone claims that Arabs can't be expected to be as moral as the West, in my eyes, that's racism."
This conversation was a turning point for her: "The left revealed itself as fundamentally racist. This realization stunned me. They weren't the moral knights I thought they were. Although it took me time to part ways with The Guardian and the left, in retrospect, this was the moment when my previous world began to crumble." Beyond the ideological debate, Phillips realized that in her colleagues' eyes, she was a Jew representing Israel, and accordingly, they addressed her with expressions like "you" and "you all."
The series of attacks on the London Underground on July 7, 2005, sent shockwaves through the UK. Four Al-Qaeda terrorists with British citizenship detonated bombs in three train stations, killing about 52 people and injuring about 700. This tragedy catalysed the publication of "Londonistan" Despite being published by a small, unknown publishing house, the book quickly became a bestseller in Britain and the US. "The major publishing houses in Britain boycotted me and refused to publish my books," Phillips explained. "'Londonistan' sparked a wide public debate on the integration of Muslim immigrants in Britain and the West's failure to address the internal Muslim threat, not only in terms of terrorism but also on the cultural front."
Eighteen years after the publication of "Londonistan," Phillips was asked how she viewed the attitude of the British elites towards Muslim immigration and answered as follows:
"The situation hasn't improved but worsened, in the sense that they're still in complete denial of the religious component of the attempts to Islamise the West, which is essentially jihad. On the other hand, in the general public, people understand that this is a terrible problem that only gets worse year by year. One can't ignore the fact that in France, there's a phenomenon of churches being deliberately and symbolically burned by Muslims, and that entire communities essentially function as enclaves operating under Sharia law."
When asked about her transition from left to right Phillips said, "I emphasise that I still hold the same values that have always guided me: giving voice to the weak against the centres of power, presenting the truth against lies, and going where the evidence leads me. I'm simply a Jew who believes in tikkun olam [a concept in Judaism about healing the world] and a journalist who believes in telling the truth. In many ways, I haven't changed; I just realised over time that the environment that surrounded me, those I thought were with me 'on the same front,' were never really there."
An example of Phillips' approach to the British media can be seen from her appearance in March on the BBC's long-running program, "Question Time." Phillips argued that Israel is not systematically starving Gaza residents as a means of warfare. The audience reacted with astonishment, some even with overt laughter. Panel members and the program's host also expressed opposition to her statements.
"When you see how a story like the Palestinian narrative, which is entirely based on lies, receives such support in the West, you understand the power of the intellectual and moral degeneration that has struck its elites, in Britain and in general. 'Palestinianism,' the Palestinian ideology aimed at fighting Israel, plays a much more central role today compared to other destructive ideologies: it's a moral cancer at the heart of Western civilization. It has distorted collective logic by paralyzing our ability to distinguish between truth and falsehood, and has emasculated the West from defending its way of life."
And Amen to that.