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| Steyn: All the news that's Fitna |
| 2008-03-29 |
| Geert Wilders' film is a hit - over 1.5 million views in English, over 2.5 million in Dutch last time I checked - but it's nevertheless been yanked by LiveLeak, with the following statement: Following threats to our staff of a very serious nature, and some ill informed reports from certain corners of the British media that could directly lead to the harm of some of our staff, Liveleak.com has been left with no other choice but to remove Fitna from our servers. This is a sad day for freedom of speech on the net but we have to place the safety and well being of our staff above all else. Indeed. The Internet will keep Fitna alive in odd corners hither and yon, but only to those who actively seek it out. In the wider world, it goes without saying that such a film is unacceptable, and that this time round the pre-emptive rage (as Diana West calls it) was so successful the next Fitna will have an even harder time: no movie theaters or broadcast networks or obscure cable channels would even consider showing it, and Google and YouTube and the other Internet biggies have grown increasingly comfortable with political speech-policing, and now one more small net operation has learned that, unless you want to be a 24/7 crusader on this issue, it's not a business worth being in. In effect, the Islamobullies have been rewarded yet again for threatening physical violence. The best way to end the debate is not to make the price of having one too high. To reprise Douglas Murray's point below, a film such as Fitna might not even be necessary were the western news organizations not so absurdly deferential toward Muslim sensibilities that they go out of their way to avoid showing us anything that might cause us to link violence with Islam. Even that footage of those depraved West Bankers jumping up and down in the street and passing out candy to celebrate 9/11 appears to have been walled up in the most impenetrable vault of the archives these last six years. Both CNN and the BBC could only bring themselves to show the Danish cartoons by pixelating Mohammed's face - the first time this technique has ever been applied to a drawing, as if the Prophet had entered the witness protection program. At one level, they make Wilders' point for him, but, at another, they make it less likely anyone else will step forward to try to make the point next time. In reality, it's the small band of people trying to resist the de facto universalization of Islamic prohibitions that have to enter the witness protection program. Wish Mr Wilders good luck. Neither his own government nor the feeble equivalence peddler who serves as US ambassador to the Organization of the Islamic Conference are much help to him. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #5 Muslims are still pouring into the UK in spite of their use of that country as a forward base. Check for media sources of the UK film, "Undercover Mosque." You see inter-faith meetings where dhimmi Western politicians praise the peaceful nature of Islam, while undercover infiltrators record open advocacy of the murder of Jews, Christians and Hindus, in those same mosques. |
| Posted by: McZoid 2008-03-29 22:06 |
| #4 I guess if you threaten the media with violence, you can put a stop to almost anything being aired. Maybe they wouldn't like it so much on the left if their message was getting blocked. That would be CENSORSHIP!! |
| Posted by: Shomotle Peacock2649 2008-03-29 19:21 |
| #3 There is soon going to be a cartoon out: http://www.nisnews.nl/public/280308_1.htm "While the cabinet is losing sleep over MP Geert Wilders' unpublished Koran film, a second film is due out on 20 April. Ehsan Jami plans to launch a cartoon film featuring the Prophet Mohammed as a paedophile." However, we can but hope that a bunch of nobodies out in Internet land make their own videos that are "as nasty as they wanna be". They won't get the huge popularity of Fitna, but they can get the message out there as well. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2008-03-29 16:59 |
| #2 This is a sad day for freedom of speech on the net but we have to place the safety and well being of our staff above all else. I wonder what it'll be the next time? |
| Posted by: tu3031 2008-03-29 09:24 |
| #1 I would not condemn LiveLeak or any of the other commercial entities for making decisions that are in their commercial interest. That's what they do. But the media supposedly searches for the truth. What Fitna will do from a media perspective is not to restrict the dissemination of information but to reduce the power of the large centrally controlled distribution monopoly of the MSM on what people can learn. The repression of Fitna will be beneficial if illicit viewing makes viewers consider how the MSM is complicit in Jihad and wonder what other information it is filtering from them. And politicians supposedly represent for principles, no matter how poorly they reflect them. Politicians are going to lose control of the debate if they allow it to become dominated by furtive communications in a samizdata underground. Interesting times. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2008-03-29 09:20 |