John Derbyshire: Paul Weston’s Liberty GB And The Threat Of Islamization
![westongphx1[1]](https://www.vdare.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/westongphx11.png)
The word “racist” is now thrown around with such blithe abandon, I have sometimes fantasized about us on the Dissident Right justowning the insult.
After all, a Whig was originally a horse rustler in the English-Scottish borders; a Tory was a fugitive Catholic in the bogs of Ireland. Homosexuals now have well-funded departments of Queer Studies at respectable universities, while black people cheerfully address each other as “my nigga.” Linguists refer to this owning-the-insult process as “reappropriation.”
Of course, it would be quite a trick to reappropriate “racist.” One person who has taken a shot at it is British dissident Paul Weston. His 7½-minute video “My name is Paul Weston and I am a racist,” first put on YouTube in June 2013, has been viewed over 1.4 million times in various versions, the one with French subtitles leading the pack at 1,064,088 when I looked just now.
Says Weston:
“If I want to defend what I grew up in, what I was born into—my country, my British culture, my heritage and my history—I am apparently, according to absolutely everybody today, a racist.”
If you didn’t catch Weston’s reappropriation effort, you may have heard of his April 2014 arrest for reading passages critical of Islam from Winston Churchill’s book The River War to a small crowd in Winchester. Weston spoke from the steps of the city hall. You can see him doing the deed here. He quoted:
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith.” [River War, 1st Edition, Vol II, P. 249]
For this, Weston was actually arrested by four policemen and taken off in a paddy wagon ...
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