101 - WHY THE PARIS MASSACRE WILL HAVE LIMITED IMPACT
Autor: Cássio Marcelo de Melo Tunes | Publicado: 2015-11-16T09:40:00-08:00


WHY THE PARIS MASSACRE WILL HAVE LIMITED IMPACT

by Daniel Pipes


NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE
November 14, 2015



The murder of some 127 innocents in Paris by a jihadi gang on Friday has
again shocked the French and led to another round of solidarity, soul
searching, and anger. In the end, however, Islamist violence against Westerners
boils down to two questions: How much will this latest atrocity turn public
opinion? And how much will it further spur the Establishment to deny reality?

As these questions suggest, the people and the professionals are moving
in opposite directions, the former to the right, the latter to the left. In the
end, this clash much reduces the impact of such events on policy.

Public opinion moves against Islamists specifically and Islam more
generally when the number of deaths is large enough. America's three thousand
dead on 9/11 stands out as by far the largest mortality but many other
countries have had their equivalent – the Bali bombings for Australia, the
railroad bombing for Spain, the Beslan school massacre for Russia, the
transportation bombings for Britain.

Sheer numbers are not the only consideration. Other factors can multiply
the impact of an assault, making it almost the political equivalent of mass
carnage: (1) The renown of those attacked, such as Theo van Gogh in the
Netherlands and the&nbsp;Charlie Hebdo&nbsp;office in France. (2) The
professional status of the victim, such as soldiers or police. (3) High-profile
circumstances, such as the Boston Marathon bombing.

In addition to the over 27,000 attacks globally connected to Islam since
9/11, or more than 5 per day (as counted by TheReligionOfPeace.com), a huge
increase in illegal immigration from the Middle East recently exacerbated
feelings of vulnerability and fear. It's a one-way street, with not a single
soul ever heard to announce, "I used to worry about Islamism but I don't
any more."

These cases make more Westerners worried about Islam and related topics
from the building of minarets to female infibulation. Overall, a relentless
march rightwards is underway.&nbsp;Surveys of European attitudes&nbsp;show
60 to 70 percent of voters expressing these concerns. Populist individuals like&nbsp;Geert Wilders&nbsp;of the Netherlands
and parties like the&nbsp;Sweden Democrats&nbsp;are surging in the
polls.

But when it comes to the Establishment – politicians, the police, the
press, and the professors – the unrelenting violence has a contrary effect.
Those charged with interpreting the attacks live in a bubble of public denial
(what they say privately is another matter) in which they feel compelled to
pretend that Islam has no role in the violence, out of concern that to
recognize it would&nbsp;cause even more problems.

These 4-P professionals bald-facedly feign belief in a mysterious
"violent extremist" virus that seems to afflict only Muslims,
prompting them to engage in random acts of barbaric violence. Of the many&nbsp;preposterous statements by politicians, my
all-time favorite is what&nbsp;Howard Dean, the former governor of
Vermont, said about the&nbsp;Charlie Hebdo&nbsp;jihadis: "They're
about as Muslim as I am."

This defiance of common sense has survived each atrocity and I predict
that it will also outlast the Paris massacre. Only a truly massive loss of
life, perhaps in the hundreds of thousands, will force the professionals to
back off their deeply ingrained pattern of denying an Islamic component in the
spate of attacks.

That pattern has the very consequential effect of shutting out the fears
of ordinary voters, whose views thereby have negligible impact on policy.
Worries about&nbsp;Shari'a,&nbsp;rape gangs,&nbsp;exotic diseases, and bloodbaths are
dismissed with charges of "racism" and "Islamophobia," as
though name-calling addresses these real issues.

More surprising yet, the professionals respond to the public's move to
the right by themselves moving to the left, encouraging more immigration from
the Middle East, instituting more "hate speech" codes to suppress
criticism of Islam, and providing more patronage to Islamists. This pattern
affects not just Establishment figures of the Left but more strikingly also of
the Right (such as Angela Merkel of Germany); only Eastern European leaders
such as Hungary's Viktor Orbán permit themselves to speak honestly about the
real problems.


Eventually, to be sure, voters' views will make themselves heard, but decades
later and more weakly than democratically should have been the case.

Placing the murderous rampage in Paris into this context: it will likely
move public sentiments substantially in one direction and Establishment
policies in quite the opposite way, therefore ultimately having only a limited
impact.


Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org,&nbsp;@DanielPipes) is
president of the Middle East Forum.&nbsp;© 2015 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.