The failure of Cologne
On the one- year anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo slaughter — 12 people killed in all — carried out by two Muslim brothers shouting “We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad,” there was what appears to have been an attempt at a “commemorative” attack. A man identified as Sallah Ali approached a police station with a meat cleaver and a reportedly fake suicide vest, and was shot dead before he could exercise his grisly memorial intentions.
Could be, I suppose, the late Mr. Ali just wanted to remind the world how perturbing cartoons are. Yet, even after his fortunately aborted reminder, and after the far more brutal executions of the original attack, there are still some who mewl that while “everyone agrees that executing 12 people was not really right … still, those cartoons were tasteless, juvenile, blather,” and the rest.
The emasculating logic of political correctness always seeks a path to throw dirt on the victims, while offering something of a clearance sale on the responsibility of the murderers. As it is the essence of political correctness that the tolerant society — the open, multicultural, diverse society — is always both catalyst and agent for the horrific deeds of those from intolerant societies.
In case the Charlie Hebdo horror doesn’t fully illustrate that thesis, take the fresh-from-the- headlines story of the mass sexual assaults in Cologne just days ago. It is a story that should crease the brows of the most fervid apologists of our brave new diverse world. There’s more than a chance you’ve missed it, since the German newspapers and their police originally tried to throw a blanket over the story, to deny its scale and causes. The coverup could not hold.
There was “a riot-like series of sexual assaults and robberies carried out on New Year’s Eve in the centre of Cologne,” reads one report. As many as a thousand men, including some suspects the local police have identified as refugees or immigrants, went on a wild spree. Young girls and women were mass assaulted, surrounded by gangs, fondled, at least two claim they were raped. “They made a kind of wall around us … They shouted, groped us, reached under our clothes and undid their pants. It was disgusting and humiliating,” one girl told the media.
Another description is equally distressing: “We walked through the group of men, there was a tunnel through them, we walked through … I was groped everywhere … It was a nightmare. Although we shouted and hit them, the men didn’t stop. I was horrified and I think I was touched around 100 t i mes over t he 200 metres.”
As Robyn Urback in Friday’s Post cogently asserted, if you’re looking for an illustration of what real “rape culture” looks like, then Cologne on New Year’s Eve will stand as the abiding example.
What was the initial response of the police and authorities to the outrage? To cover it up. To deny the identity of the malefactors. But the number of women attacked was too large, and the story too horrific, to bury. And so now the police, the guardians of the peoples’ safety, are being “accused of trying to hide the fact asylum seekers were involved for fear of political sensitivities,” according to Britain’s Daily Telegraph. That they “concealed the origin of the suspects” and that a later incident report “report proves i dentity of suspects was hushed up.” The chief of police suddenly “resigned” on Friday.
The climax of this insanity has to be the words of the very Mayor of Cologne. “We have heard by now that ( attacks) have occurred in other cities. This of course is not comforting to us.” She next offered suggestions for avoiding future incidents. More police? Stronger screening of refugees? Of course not. Her recommendations were all directed to the “girls and young women” of the city she presides over, to wit: “maintaining an arm’s length distance from strangers, to stick within your own group, to ask bystanders for help or to intervene as a witness, or to inform the police if you are the victim of such an assault.”
This is “Blame the Victim(s)” on steroids.
Cologne represents the inversion of normal values. Seek everywhere reasons or excuses for intolerable behaviour, except at its source. As with the seeming apologists f or Charlie Hebdo, look past the horrific deed itself to how “we” may have contributed to their “anger.” Denigrate the host culture and glide over the offending one. Repress facts and cloud reality in favour of some vague idealism.
Also, with deep and even dangerous irony, political correctness works against i tself. The urge to spare outrage against perpetrators multiplies the outrage when the facts — as they always will — emerge. In Cologne every major authority — police, officialdom, press — failed. They essentially lied, by omission or choice, to their citizens. Which will have consequences for all concerned, and not least for those from foreign lands, genuine refugees of good character, who were not involved in the night’s horrors nor ever would be.
THE WORDS OF THE MAYOR — STAY IN GROUPS, AVOID MEN — AMOUNT TO ‘BLAME THE VICTIM’ ON STEROIDS.