Why liberal support for immigration is self-defeating, and hence unsustainable

Although the following article relates to American Jewry, its thesis, which is broadly correct, is equally applicable to British Jewry. The reader should be aware that there are an estimated twelve million ILLEGAL immigrants living in the United States, and an estimated (by Steve Moxon, the former Home Office whistle-blower) three million ILLEGAL immigrants in Britain.


Why Jews Welcome Muslims

By: Lawrence Auster

FrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, June 22, 2004



Mass Moslem immigration into America combined with world-wide Moslem Jew-hatred poses an unprecedented threat to American Jews—a "perfect storm" that is forcing at least some Jews into an agonizing re-appraisal of their traditional support for open immigration. So says Stephen Steinlight in his hard-hitting essay, "High Noon to Midnight: Why Current Immigration Policy Dooms American Jewry," published by the Center for Immigration Studies. A former director of national affairs at the American Jewish Committee and now an outspoken advocate of immigration reform, Steinlight tells his fellow Jews that they, along with the rest of America, face a momentous choice. If they turn away from their extreme immigration liberalism and help move America toward sensible immigration restrictions, the growth of the Moslem community in this country can be slowed substantially and even stopped, and a decent existence for the Jews themselves can be preserved. But if Jews and others continue in their embrace of open borders, in thirty years time the Jews will find themselves a besieged and powerless minority in an Islamic-dominated, anti-Semitic America.

That's what Steinlight is telling them. But will they listen? As he explains it, immigration to the U.S. in the early 20th century was literally a life or death matter for Jews—life for the immigrants, and death for those who stayed behind in Europe or who were closed out of America by the restrictive immigration policies of the 1920s and 1930s. For Jews, he says:

"(T)he immigration debate pits the heart against the head. In their gut, many feel that substantially reducing immigration betrays the legacy of their parents and grandparents. But a growing number believes that maintaining this policy betrays their children and grandchildren. The danger arises because mass immigration means importing mass anti-Semitism.... "



Yet, despite the dangers Moslem immigration poses to their security and their whole way of life, Jews have for the most part maintained their support for open immigration, and Steinlight by the end of his article does not seem very hopeful that they will change their minds—or at least that they will do so before it's too late to avoid disaster.



Loyalty to their ancestors' immigration "legacy" hardly seems a sufficient explanation for Jews' adherence to a policy that, as Steinlight puts it, spells the ultimate eclipse and ruin of Jewish life in this country, not to mention the ruin of America itself. After all, Jews in many cases betray without hesitation their grandparents' orthodox religious beliefs, and in other cases their grandparents' socialism, so why should their grandparents' immigrant history be so sacred to them? If we are to have any chance of converting the Jews from their open borders ideology, we must understand their own reasons for believing in it. From the following discussion, two basic perspectives on this problem will emerge, one pessimistic, the other optimistic.


The real object of Jewish fears

First of all, as crazy as it may sound, there is something that many American Jews fear in their heart of hearts even more than they fear Moslem anti-Semitism, and that is white Christian anti-Semitism. Steinlight himself pointed to this phenomenon at a recent panel discussion hosted by the Center for Immigration Studies:



"Every high profile Jewish institution, whether it's a national organization or a major synagogue, is surrounded by concrete barriers to prevent car bombs exploding too close to the buildings. If you go through the lobbies into those buildings you have to pass metal detectors and double-doors of bulletproof glass. You are then frisked by security guards, mostly retired New York City police or Israeli agents, and then are scanned again with metal detectors.



"What is truly comic about this—were it not an instance in the theatre of the absurd, and were it not so appalling an indication of the kind of mass denial that is still governing major American Jewish organizations, including the one I used to work for that's currently meeting across the street—is that the staffs of these organizations pass the car bomb barriers, go through the double bulletproof glass lobbies, get frisked, then go upstairs into their offices and spend their days talking about the threats posed by evangelical Christians...."



Jews' risible obsession with non-existent evangelical Protestant anti-Semites, combined with their obliviousness to actual mass murdering Islamist anti-Semites (whom, moreover, the Jews' favored immigration policies have allowed into this country) is an amazing phenomenon that we should not dismiss as simply a bizarre ethnic idiosyncrasy. It expresses, rather, a central preoccupation of a significant number of Jews, namely their corrosive apprehension of what they think the goyim might one day do to them—a fear they entertain despite the fact that, apart from some social exclusions and other ethnic prejudices that existed up to the end of World War II, Jews have never faced serious anti-Semitism from the white Christian majority in this country.



Just the other week I was telling a secular, leftist Jew of my acquaintance, a man in his late sixties, about my idea (which I've proposed at FrontPage Magazine) that the only way to make ourselves safe from the specter of domestic Moslem terrorism is to deport all jihad-supporting Moslems from this country. He replied with emotion that if America deported Moslem fundamentalists, it would immediately start doing the same thing to Jews as well. "It's frightening, it's scary," he said heatedly, as if the Jews were already on the verge of being rounded up. In the eyes of this normally phlegmatic and easy-going man, America is just a shout away from the mass persecution, detention, and even physical expulsion of Jews. Given the wildly overwrought suspicions that some Jews harbor about the American Christian majority who are in fact the Jews' best friends in the world, it is not surprising that these Jews look at mass Third-World and Moslem immigration, not as a danger to themselves, but as the ultimate guarantor of their own safety, hoping that in a racially diversified, de-Christianized America, the waning majority culture will lack the power, even if it still has the desire, to persecute Jews.



The self-protective instinct to divide and weaken a potentially oppressive majority population may have served Jews well at certain times and places in the past when they truly were threatened. Under current circumstances—in America, the most philo-Semitic nation in the history of the world—it both morally wrong and suicidal. Not only are the open-borders Jews urging policies harmful to America's majority population, but, by doing so, they are surely triggering previously non-existent anti-Jewish feelings among them. The tragedy is that once a collective thought pattern gets deeply ingrained, as is the Jews' historically understandable fear of gentiles, it takes on a life of its own and becomes immune to evidence and reason.



This element of the Jewish psyche is further illumined by Norman Podhoretz in his memoir, My Love Affair with America:



"[M]y own view is that what had befallen the Jews of Europe inculcated a subliminal lesson. . . . The lesson was that anti-Semitism, even the relatively harmless genteel variety that enforced quotas against Jewish students or kept their parents from joining fashionable clubs or getting jobs in prestigious Wall Street law firms, could end in mass murder." [Emphasis added.]



While the idea Podhoretz expresses here is certainly familiar, it is familiar more as a parody of Jewish fears than as something Jews themselves have openly stated. For years, it's been a running joke among traditionalist conservatives, including those of Jewish background such as myself (and there are more right-wing Jews than people realize) that "any criticism of Jews is equated with Auschwitz." The complaint, I confess, had always seemed a just a tad hyperbolic. But if Podhoretz's portrayal of Jews' beliefs is correct, then the old parody, "Any criticism of Jews is a potential Auschwitz," turns out to be what the Jewish community has believed all along. What this means is that in the minds of Jews, any desire on the part of gentiles to maintain an all-gentile country club, or any statement by a Christian, no matter how mild and civilized, that shows any concern about any aspects of the cultural and political influence of secular Jews in American life, is an expression of anti-Jewish bigotry that could easily lead to mass extermination, and therefore it must be ruthlessly suppressed.



Please do not misunderstand me. I am not saying, as today's anti-Semites are constantly saying, that concerns about anti-Semitism are nothing but political correctness. Though it is still largely a fringe phenomenon, anti-Semitism and Israel-hatred in today's America are terribly real, having grown by leaps and bounds in some parts of the political spectrum since 9/11, as I have discussed at length at FrontPage Magazine (see here and here) and at my website, View from the Right (see here and here). Yet we must also note a tendency on the part of more than a few Jews to decry as anti-Semitic virtually any rational criticism of Jews, or any normal manifestations of gentile ethnocentrism, or even any strong expression of Christian religious belief. Think of the wild charges that were leveled against Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" by such prominent Jewish commentators as Charles Krauthammer, who characterized the movie as "a singular act of interreligious aggression ... spectacularly vicious ... the pre-Vatican II story of the villainous Jews," and William Safire, who said that audiences would leave the theater with no other thought than to look for Jews to punish for the death of Jesus. There was also the disturbing fact that Commentary, which in the past had always defended Christians and Christianity from false charges of anti-Semitism, approvingly reviewed James Carroll's virulently anti-Christian book, Constantine's Sword, which argues that the Christian religion is inherently anti-Semitic and the ultimate cause of the Nazi Holocaust.



The significance of the Jewish belief in a lurking anti-Semitism among white Christians is made clearer by another passage in My Love Affair With America:



"Acting on the principle that 'all bigotry is indivisible,' Jewish organizations such as the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League, whose purpose was to defend Jews against discrimination and defamation, joined enthusiastically in the civil-rights movement, of which individual Jews were for a long time leaders and funders."



The principle that all bigotry is indivisible implies that all manifestations of ingroup/outgroup feeling (if we're speaking about the feelings of a gentile majority ingroup, that is) are essentially the same—and equally wrong. It says that if you're against one outgroup, you're against all outgroups. This denies the important truth that some outgroups (e.g., Mideastern Moslem fundamentalists) are much more different from the ingroup (e.g. America's Anglo-Protestant majority culture), and hence much less assimilable, and hence more legitimately excluded, than other outgroups (e.g., Italian Catholics or Ashkenazi Jews). The belief in the indivisibility of all bigotry makes it impossible to distinguish between degrees of bigotry or ethnocentrism. It makes it impossible to distinguish between immoral bigotry, meaning the desire to hurt some other group, and the legitimate defense of one's own people, their identity, and their interests. To erase such distinctions is the essence of political correctness, the reduction of all moral questions to a choice between "inclusion" and "hate."



Now, when Jews put together the idea that "all bigotry is indivisible," with the idea that "any social prejudice or exclusion directed against Jews leads potentially to Auschwitz," they must reach the conclusion that any exclusion of any minority group, no matter how alien it may be to the host society, is a potential Auschwitz.



So there it is. We have identified the core assumption that makes many liberal and neoconservative Jews keep pushing relentlessly for mass immigration, even the mass immigration of their mortal enemies. As these Jews see it, any immigration restrictions against Moslems would release a latent ethnocentrism in the white American majority that would then turn instantly against the Jews. To state this thought process in the baldest terms, these Jews believe that if philo-Semitic white gentiles exclude Jew-hating Moslems from America, it would lead those same gentiles to commit another Jewish Holocaust.



Even if they don't take it to the absurd point of envisioning a Jewish Holocaust or some other anti-Jewish persecution in this country, various Jewish writers and spokesmen have continued to express a deeply suspicious attitude towards white Christian America. In the cover article of the November 1999 issue of Commentary, entitled "California and the End of White America," Ron Unz predicted that if the current non-European immigrants fail to assimilate, the danger will not be an uprising of unassimilated immigrant cultures, but an eruption of white nationalism. "[W]e face the very real threat of future movements along the lines of Proposition 187, each worse than the last, and on a national scale," Unz wrote. "There are few forces that could so easily break America as the coming of white nationalism." [Emphasis added.] Amazing. Multiculturalism and minority group-rights movements are tearing apart America's once unitary, individual-rights-based polity, as Commentary itself has been lamenting for years, while America's declining white majority has been reacting with what can only be called pusillanimous passivity in the face of this systematic attack on their country.



But now it turns out that what Commentary most fears is not the minority group-rights movement, but any possible resistance by white Americans to it, a resistance Commentary demonizes as "white nationalism." In other words, open-borders Jews fear a totally non-existent white defense of America more than they fear the actual realities of mass legal and illegal immigration, multiculturalism, Mexican irredentism, Moslem jihadism, and all the rest of the forces that are threatening our country. For anyone who shares this view, it follows that the quicker America's white majority is reduced to a minority by continued mass immigration, and the quicker America's majority culture is pushed aside by immigrant cultures, the better off America will be.



A more hopeful view

While the disturbing attitudes I have been describing constitute a definite strand in the American Jewish sensibility, as well in the sensibility of liberals generally, I find it hard to believe that most Jews or even most politically active Jews are so paranoid about white gentiles' potential for committing anti-Jewish oppression that they are driven to the insane expedient of supporting mass Moslem immigration in order to forestall that oppression. There is a more moderate—and more hopeful—way of explaining the Jews' attachment to Third-World immigration.



The Jewish experience in the modern world could be understood as a series of attempts by Jews to free themselves from the historic burden of Jewishness, the fierce social disabilities that had been imposed on them for centuries. As Paul Johnson writes in his History of the Jews, the Jewish Communists of the 19th century ("non-Jewish Jews," as he calls them) saw in Communism the end of national and ethnic identities for all mankind, and thus the end of the Jewish ethnic identity, and thus the liberation of the Jews from the age-old curse of anti-Jewish prejudice. To seek to overturn entire societies in order to get rid of one's own ethnic identity may seem a rather drastic approach to solving the Jewish problem, yet it reflects, in a uniquely exacerbated and destructive form, Jews' recurrent pattern of forming some global ideology for reasons relating to their particular situation as Jews. (Let us note that this tendency, while it can take negative forms as in the current example, is natural for a people whose tribal history and beliefs became the basis for all of Western civilization.)



In America, Jews discovered a more reasonable approach to the Jewish problem: liberal individualism. Under liberal individualism, only the individual and his rights matter and each person's ethnicity is irrelevant, or, in any case, as irrelevant as he wants it to be. As Milton Gordon wrote in his important 1964 book Assimilation in American Life, mid-twentieth century American society combined cultural assimilation, in which people of all backgrounds participate as individuals in a common public culture (the workplace, the schools, political life and so on), with structural pluralism, in which people tend to organize their residential patterns and social and religious lives along ethnic lines. This unique American arrangement allowed Jews a measure of social belonging, economic and professional success, and "at-home-ness" that they had not experienced since the destruction of the Second Temple, or perhaps ever in their history.



But starting in the 1960s, Jews, and liberals generally, took the good idea of liberal individualism too far. The very idea of a common culture, which they had previously seen as the pathway to success and belonging in America, started to seem discriminatory to them, since it implied that some peoples and cultures could fit into the common culture while others couldn't. A common culture also implied the existence of common standards of behavior, derived from America's declining WASP majority, to which people were expected to conform; and Jews in particular, after having eagerly adopted those standards in previous generations, began, in the liberatory afflatus of the Sixties, to find them stifling. Jews and other liberals thus turned from the moderate tolerance of mid-twentieth century America to what might be called tolerance absolutism, an attitude that delegitimized any notion of a common American culture or moral tradition (other than the tradition of liberalism itself), because shared cultural allegiances and moral norms would place limits on the individual self or the ethnic group.



This radicalized liberalism made Jews feel even safer—and freer to express themselves as Jews—than before. Having realized the model of "pure-non-discrimination-and-individual-rights-without-a-majority-culture" as the very basis of their unprecedented success, freedom, and happiness in America, Jews saw that model as not only advantageous to themselves personally, but as advantageous to everyone—indeed, as the highest political truth. It didn't occur to them that the radical individualist model worked so well for them because they are a uniquely high-achieving people operating in a still intact Western society. It didn't occur to them that the model might not work so well for less capable or less assimilable people in a society without a cohesive common culture, such as America was now becoming due to the tolerance absolutism that was supported by the Jews themselves. It didn't occur to them that both the intactness and the liberalism of the society would be threatened if the liberalism were taken too far.



Their belief that radical individualism is true for all mankind is thus for liberal secular Jews a crux of faith, an emotional prop to make sense of the world, and a key component of their identity as a people. More than any pragmatic calculus, it is the reason they bitterly resent any criticism of the liberal ideology and voraciously crave attempts to vindicate it, whether by assimilating Third-World immigrants, democratizing Moslem countries, or liquidating traditional values founded upon the restraint of individual desire. (Consider, for example, the Jewish community's extraordinary degree of support for homosexual marriage, far more extensive than that of any other ethnic or religious group—a uniquely ironic outcome for the first major people in history who saw homosexuality as an abomination to God.)



What the Jews need to see—what they can't help but see under the encroaching reality of jihad in America—is that, like any good idea, the good idea of non-discrimination can be carried too far. The moderate non-discrimination that allowed Jews to thrive in America did not have to be taken to the point of absolute non-discrimination, which required us to open our borders and our culture to unassimilable and hostile aliens, which in turn must result in the disarming and destruction of the society itself.



Notwithstanding the horrific problems created by the open-immigration ideology, I call this the optimistic view of Jewish support for open immigration because it assumes, not an endemic Jewish oppositionalism to America's majority culture, but a correctable misperception stemming from Jews' unique history. Having experienced the liberal paradigm of individual rights and non-discrimination as the recipe for their own earthly salvation after centuries of misery and persecution, Jews have, understandably though mistakenly, carried that ideology to an extreme where it threatens the very country that provided the Jews those protections and benefits in the first place. This is so patently irrational from the point of view of the Jews' own self-interest that they cannot help but eventually see it, if it is clearly and firmly pointed out to them.



No permanent victory

So, while Stephen Steinlight is to be applauded for his efforts to convert his fellow Jews to a sane immigration policy, he needs to recognize that they are bound to their belief in open borders by a larger set of emotional and political attachments than a reluctance to "betray their grandparents." He also needs to recognize that even if, under the pressure of immediate fears of Islamism in America, Jews back off from their open borders ideology, their conversion is unlikely to be very deep. A full and principled abandonment of modern liberalism by liberals and especially by Jews is not to be expected. Just as the Israelis will fight remorselessly against the Arabs when absolutely necessary, and then, as soon as the fighting briefly subsides, instantly turn back once again to the utopian hopes of the "peace-process," American Jews in the face of an imminent Islamist threat may support some kind of tightening of immigration laws, only to revert to their accustomed liberalism the moment that the immediate sense of intolerable danger is past. It is unrealistic to expect any final victory in this area. Liberalism is the organizing ideology of modern society, but for secular Jews (and the great majority of American Jews are essentially secular), it is a sacred trust toward which they feel the same zealous devotion that their religious brethren feel toward their covenant with God.



Lawrence Auster is the author of Erasing America: The Politics of the Borderless Nation and runs the weblog View from the Right.


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Lancaster Unity turns "Holocaust-revisionist"?

The article below, based on a report by AFP, was published in the Australian, on 27 November, 2010, and then cut and pasted onto the Lancaster Unity "anti-fascist" blog, without any critical editorial comment from them.

No, it is left to a member of the despised and vilified British National Party to point out that at the end of this article its author grossly understates the death toll at the Auschwitz extermination camp. One million is far too low an estimate of the number of Jews who died at Auschwitz, museum plaque notwithstanding. The eminent historian Lord Russell of Liverpool states, in respect of Auschwitz, "Before the end of the war not less than three million men, women and children had met their death there by gassing and other means". By far the bulk of these victims were Jews. Consequently, at least two, and possibly nearer three, million Jews perished at Auschwitz, rather than the one million stated in the article published in the Australian, and re-published on the Lancaster Unity blog.

Perhaps this minimization of the death toll of Jews at Auschwitz is part of an attempt to curry favour with the Muslim community at the expense of the Jewish community.

Certainly, Unite Against Fascism (UAF) provides a salutary spectacle of "dhimmitude" through their sycophantic pandering to the most vocal and extreme elements (such as the Muslims Against Crusades' group, and its outrageous desecration of the Armistice Day ceremony at the Cenotaph) of Islam.

The article now follows.

November 30, 2010

Neo-Nazi Anders Hoegstroem jailed for Auschwitz theft

Posted by Antifascist 0 Comment (s)

A Swedish neo-Nazi leader accused of ordering the theft of the Auschwitz death camp entrance sign will serve 32 months behind bars.

Anders Hoegstroem, who had risked up to 10 years' jail if convicted in Poland, admitted his role before the case reached court, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office in Krakow said yesterday.

Hoegstroem was arrested in Sweden on a Polish warrant in February on suspicion of ordering the theft of the infamous Arbeit macht frei - Work will set you free - sign from the site of the World War II Nazi camp in the southern Polish city of Oswiecim.

Polish police recovered the 5m metal sign two days after it went missing late last year. It had been chopped into three pieces. Of the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust, a million were murdered at Auschwitz.

[ENDS]

BNP still under investigation by Electoral Commission over its accounts

Press Statement by Electoral Commission

BNP Statement of Accounts

14 Apr 2010

In January 2010 the Electoral Commission, the independent party finance watchdog, began a case review following concerns raised in the independent auditor’s opinion about the adequacy of the 2008 statement of accounts of the British National Party.

The case has now become an investigation. However, it is important to note - particularly during an election period - that no conclusion has been reached and therefore no assumption should be made as to whether a breach of the rules has occurred.

Ends/

For further information please contact
Electoral Commission press office on 020 7271 0704
Out of office hours on 07789 920414
Email: press@electoralcommission.org.uk

Notes to editors

1.The Electoral Commission is an independent body established by the Political Parties Elections and Referendums (PPERA) Act 2000.

2.Section 41 of PPERA requires that “the treasurer of a registered party must ensure that accounting records are kept with respect to the party which are sufficient to show and explain the party’s transactions.”

3.The BNP statement of accounts for the central party and for the party’s accounting unit for 2008 are available on the Commission website: http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/party-finance/database-of-registers/statements-of-account

4.Concerns were raised by the independent auditor in relation to the 2008 statement of accounts of the BNP. In January we wrote to the BNP requesting further information and began a case review. That case review has now become an investigation.

5.It is our usual policy to issue a press release at this point. A full copy of our policy on handling allegations and disclosing information relating to them can be found on the Commission website: http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/party-finance/enforcement/making-allegations

[ENDS]

The Electoral Commission states on its web site, www.electoralcommission.org.uk, that it aims to conclude ninety per cent of its investigations within a six month period. Since its investigation, (as distinct from its "case review"), of the British National Party, began on 14 April 2010, this means that its investigation of the BNP has already been so protracted that it has missed the Commission's six month target.

On 1 December, next week, the 'beefed-up' enforcement powers granted to the Electoral Commission under the Political Parties and Elections Act, 2009, come into effect. These will empower the Commission to compel individuals to provide material evidence, to attend interviews, and to answer questions, and are similar to the powers enjoyed by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration ("the Ombudsman"), for example.

Certainly, Messrs Griffin, Dowson, Hannam, and Jefferson, have questions to answer.

BNP at the crossroads

Below is a letter from Peter Strudwick, BNP Reform's legal officer, to Mr Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party, which was sent to him by post, care of the party's Welshpool PO Box, on 29 October 2010.

In his letter Peter reviews the events of the last fifteen months which have led him to the conclusion that Mr Griffin should relinquish the position of national chairman and party leader. At the same time Peter acknowledges the "...major contribution to British Nationalism..." made by Mr Griffin and implies that if he were to stand down now, rather than be forced out later, his "...reputation can remain substantially intact".

To date, Peter has received no reply to his letter from Mr Griffin.

The letter now follows.


Dear Nick

I write about the prevailing sad condition of the BNP, with its huge debts, loss of political momentum, arbitrary expulsions and suspensions and widespread discontent manifest amongst a fair proportion of the membership.

This depressing and fast-deteriorating situation is in marked contrast to the elation which greeted yours and Andrew Brons's election as MEPs - magnificent and thoroughly well-deserved victories which seemed to mark a point of transition in the party's fortunes and move us one step nearer our cherished ambition of contesting for political power.

As I see it, you deserve a great deal of credit for what you have done in the eleven years of your leadership; but there has been a rather rapid turnabout in our fortunes in the past 15 months or so. Four issues seem to stand out:

Your appearance on Question Time;

The revelations concerning the huge indebtedness, which has not been helped by the totally inexplicable failure of the party to produce accounts which satisfy the Electoral Commission;

The perception, albeit not wholly justified, of poor local and national election results, inducing much pessimism;

The (in my opinion) unwise intervention on your part over the Queen's Garden Party invitation.

All these things, coupled with a catalogue of heavy-handed suspensions and expulsions (many of which breach the basic rules of natural justice insofar as they give no reasons for the action taken) have brought about disappointment and, more than that, disillusionment.

I will dwell a bit on these matters.

Certainly you were treated unfairly at Question Time by Dimbleby and the participants but I felt you didn't sufficiently defend the party's programme. Your reasons for having changed your mind about the systematic murder of Jews came over as laboured. This clearly alienated many potential supporters.

As regards the party's debts, there is little to say other than the patently obvious: namely that there has been very poor management of the BNP's finances, despite the availability in the party of a number of accountants whose expertise you have been unwilling to utilize for some reason. The consequences being £580,000 of indebtedness and yet again a failure to produce accounts to the satisfaction of the Electoral Commission, making the BNP unique in this regard [not quite unique: Sinn Fein and the Christian Party also failed to submit their accounts on time, AE] - hardly something to be proud of.

As a result of the failure to pay the party's creditors, IDENTITY can't be published. I spoke with John Bean the other day. This was to be his last issue as editor. Am I one of the few people who have thanked him for his outstanding efforts? Moreover, members can feel aggrieved because their membership subscriptions are supposed to guarantee receipt of IDENTITY.

I am not in a position to know precisely what is the true cause of the party's financial crisis. I make just two observations. I have never personally believed allegations of improper financial dealings on your part but at the same time you cannot escape responsibility for the self-evident mismanagement of the party's money on a huge scale as Party Chairman, whatever claims you may make that it has been Dowson's fault.

Until quite recently I have never read the 12th constitution. I have now done so. It is, as I told you at the Dagenham meeting, an abomination of a document which I understand cost the party a substantial amount of money - £25,000? What a huge waste of money. It is 92 pages of very complicated, poorly written material, full of typographical errors and poor proof reading. I cannot believe you can have sanctioned such a monstrosity.

What the party needs is a concise, accurate, well-written document of, I suggest, 12-15 pages - no more, which everyone can understand, not the current incomprehensible apology for a constitution.

I have offered myself to produce such a suitable document which I believe would meet the party's requirements.

As regards the local and national election results, my own view is that the parliamentary results were reasonably good and something to build upon. Certainly the local results were disappointing but you are quite right in your assessment that it is easier to win seats than it is to hold them. And certainly local election fortune is always cyclical. There is no reason why we cannot win back our lost seats.

On the issue of the Queen's Garden Party, here I have to express total amazement. Andrew Brons and his daughter were photographed smiling in their finery and created a very favourable impression. Here, likewise was an opportunity for you. You, Jackie and your children would have come over very well. The uncommitted would have had to reflect on the normality of it all. Yet that became impossible because for some inexplicable reason you chose to go public and invited the membership to communicate with you so that you could tell the Queen of their concerns! Why should she want a private occasion to become a political forum? The Palace cannot be blamed for the action it took. I suggest that this is a very widely-held view within the party. I think this episode is a terrible misjudgement on your part which has given us harmful publicity and made us appear ridiculous.

The BNP is at the crossroads. It can go forward if it can surmount its current crises but, respectfully, I do not believe that can happen under your continued leadership. Most party leaders have a finite period of effectiveness. For Thatcher it was eleven years, for Blair nine years; for yourself, as events have turned out, it has also been eleven years.

You have lost your edge. You have made a major contribution to British Nationalism which only a charlatan would gainsay. You still retain your well-earned position as an MEP and you still have your individual contribution to make as a party member, particularly in your writing and speaking skills. Your reputation can remain substantially intact.

There is an overwhelming need for change. The party needs peaceful develpment, internal harmony, a new constitution and a realization that we cannot move to the next stage of our development unless we enter into a period of consolidation.

In conclusion, it goes without saying I wish you well at the court hearing on 8 November where, again, I feel the party should never have been involved, simply on the grounds of crippling costs.

Best wishes

Yours sincerely



PETER STRUDWICK


[ENDS]



Peter Strudwick is a retired solicitor and university law lecturer.

The discreet charm of Nick Griffin

The statement below is, according to Eddy Butler, who, let us remember, is in a position to know whereof he writes, a press statement which was drafted by Mr Griffin last year, and, though never released, was used to exert influence on Richard Barnbrook to acquiesce in Mr Griffin's poaching of the Barking parliamentary constituency for himself, as the seat in the country most likely to elect a British National Party MP.

The statement pulls no punches about Richard's perceived shortcomings as an elected representative, and politician. One has to ask the question, though: exactly when did Mr Griffin first become aware of this litany of failings in his once blue-eyed boy, Mr Richard Barnbrook? It seems to have been around the time that Mr Griffin decided that the electorate of Barking were likely to return a BNP MP to parliament. A prize like that was just too good to go to anyone but the party leader, Mr Griffin no doubt reasoned.

Once that idea had become fixed in Mr Griffin's mind, no doubt all of Richard's many alleged failings began to be borne in on him, and to assume a progressively increasing salience in proportion to the strength of Richard's natural reluctance to be squeezed out of what he, understandably, regarded as the natural reward of his labours in Barking and Dagenham, as the public face of the BNP in the borough.

This unsavoury self-seeking on the part of Mr Griffin raises several questions. Firstly, if Richard Barnbrook were such a "basket case" as Mr Griffin's draft press statement alleges, why was he chosen as the BNP's candidate for Mayor of London, and as number one on the party list for the London Assembly election in 2008? After all, by then he had already served for two years as leader of the BNP group on the Barking and Dagenham borough council, which one would have thought would have been ample time in which to evaluate both the strengths and weaknesses of his performance of his public duties.

No, it was only when Richard appeared to be getting between Mr Griffin and something he wanted for himself, namely the glory and prestige, not to mention the second salary, associated with becoming the BNP's first MP, that Mr Griffin turned against him. Up to that point Mr Griffin could not have cared less that the people of Barking and Dagenham, and of Greater London, were being represented by a man who was not up to the job, if indeed that was the case.

Indeed, the 'settlement' which was reached between Mr Griffin and Mr Barnbrook, shortly before the BNP's annual conference, in November 2009, entailed that whereas Mr Barnbrook agreed to allow Mr Griffin a clear run as the BNP's candidate in Barking at the general election, Mr Griffin, in a cynical quid pro quo, agreed that Mr Barnbrook should be the leader of the Barking and Dagenham council, in the event of the party winning control of it in the London borough council elections of 2010. If Mr Barnbrook were unsuitable to represent the BNP as a member of the London Assembly, as a Barking and Dagenham councillor, or as an MP, as Mr Griffin's draft press statement claims, then how could he be fit to serve as the leader of a London Borough council?

Doesn't this amply confirm, as if any further confirmation were needed, that Mr Griffin always puts his own personal interests first, before those of the party, not to mention the public?

Having observed both Mr Griffin, and Mr Barnbrook, deliver speeches, and engage in debate, I judge that Mr Griffin is somewhat the more accomplished performer. However, Mr Griffin's slight superiority is heavily outweighed by his holocaust-denying baggage, with which Richard is not encumbered. Richard was also well known, and well liked by many of the electors of Barking. Moreover, unlike Mr Griffin, who dwelt hundreds of miles away in North Wales, Richard lived in the constituency of Barking. I am not alone in believing that he would have stood a better chance of being elected than Mr Griffin, and would, almost certainly, have polled an appreciably higher share of the vote at the general election.

A political party can only exist, let alone succeed, through the self-sacrifice and altruism of a large number of individuals coming together to work in a spirit of co-operation, towards goals which transcend the personal, and yet through the sacrifice of the purely personal, fulfil the person.

Mr Griffin appears to understand nothing of this. His naked pursuit of his own material gain, at the expense of both party and principle, has alienated most of the BNP's best activists and, crucially, has destroyed its morale. It is unlikely to appeal to the electorate - who are not fools.

The best, perhaps the only, way in which he can now redeem himself, in the eyes of both his contemporaries, and of history, is quietly to stand down as party leader. He has done the party some service, and we know it. Let him do perhaps the greatest service now, and stand down.

PRESS STATEMENT

Release Immediate

Withdrawal of BNP Whip From London Assembly Member Richard Barnbrook

It is with regret that the British National Party announces the withdrawal of the party whip from Richard Barnbrook, up until now a BNP councillor in Barking and the party's sole Member on the Greater London Assembly.

We are aware that sections of the media will use this as a stick to beat the BNP, and have worked hard to persuade Mr Barnbrook to make the changes to his lifestyle and attitudes which could have avoided this outcome. In the end, however, the party’s short term political convenience has to be put second behind the interests of our voters and the long term need to maintain our reputation for honesty and competence.

We are therefore unable any longer to allow our voters and our members to be abused and let down by a man who, after so much early promise, has let everyone down so badly.

In itself, Richard`s refusal to seek treatment for his alcohol dependency would be his personal problem and tragedy, but this illness is now having a catastrophic impact on Barnbrook the elected politician. The main, but not the only, problems that result are

* His increasingly erratic and poor attendance record at the GLA

* His repeated and personally disloyal attempts to bully and blame staff members and BNP colleagues for his own failings

* His failure to perform his constituency duties, cancelling meetings without warning or valid excuse. The final straw in this regard was his recent decision to go on an Internet blind date rather than take up a request to attend the funeral of a young victim of the London knife crime epidemic on which he was so active when first elected

* His attending meetings and disciplinary hearings, and giving interviews while drunk

* His ignoring repeated warnings and pleas from colleagues not to drink and drive. We make this a matter of public record here in the hope that the resulting possibility of greater police scrutiny will compel him to revert to travelling by public transport and thereby prevent a serious accident that is at present just a matter of time

* His breaking of his personal pledge to give 10 % of his gross salary to the party, giving instead irregular smaller amounts and repeatedly refusing to provide copies of his council pay slip so as to allow a proper assessment of the resulting shortfall

* His repeated approaches to BNP members with requests for donations and 'investments' into private business proposals and unauthorised personal political projects

* His repeated attempts to blackmail the party leadership by threatening to 'go Independent' in the GLA a move which he has actively discussed with senior officials at the GLA and to split the BNP vote in Barking by standing there in the General Election as an Independent under the slogan 'Barnbrook for Barking'

* His underhand efforts to secure BNP staff time and donors' money for his proposed Independent parliamentary campaign by claiming that this is authorised by the party leadership.

* His insistence on acting as an unofficial spokesperson on television and radio. His two most recent performances after his disciplinary hearing and also following Question Time in themselves make it clear that Richard, for all his qualities, would be wholly unsuitable to represent the Party in the highest level of government in Britain and the most demanding debating chamber in the world.

A number of meetings have been held between Mr Barnbrook and members of the BNP leadership in an effort to resolve these and other problems, but it has been impossible to reach a satisfactory outcome. As a result, Richard Barnbrook's status as a BNP councillor and London Assembly Member is revoked with immediate effect. This decision is reversible if he responds to this sacking by seeking and accepting professional help to deal with his alcohol problem, which is clearly the root of all the failings outlined. But failing that he will not be standing as a BNP candidate in any elections for the foreseeable future.

Our council group in Barking and Dagenham will be reduced by one, but will continue to be led by Cllr. Robert Bailey. The two BNP members who are at present working for Mr Barnbrook in the GLA have been informed that it is entirely their own decision as to whether to continue in post should he wish to retain them. As far as we are concerned it is now no different to any civil service job and we wish them well.

We will be announcing our prospective candidate for the Barking constituency following a selection procedure in which Mr Barnbrook will not be considered. We will be going all out to unseat Margaret Hodge and to replace her with a loyal, competent British National Party MP who will serve the electors of Barking with the dedication they deserve.

ENDS

The gathering storm

"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be even a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves."

Winston S Churchill

"Anti-racism" is the REAL racism

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/edwest/100064191/sorry-to-break-the-bad-news-but-anti-racism-is-actually-racist/


Yesterday, after I wrote that “the EU, multiculturalism, the Equalities Act, anti-racism, hate crimes, bastardised human rights, Marx, Marxist feminism, Marcuse and Gramsci” all belong in history’s dustbin, lots of people screamed: “If you’re anti-anti-racism that means you’re pro-racism!”

So I thought I’d help your deprogramming with a little explanation.

“Anti-racism” is not the same as being opposed to racism; rather it is the name sometimes given to a particular authoritarian view of what racism is, and how it can be combated.

The conventional definition of racism is the belief that “race” (however one defines that) is a primary or significant cause of differences between men; that some of these races are superior to others; and that it is acceptable to discriminate on grounds of race, or to behave unpleasantly to someone because of their race. The term dates to the 1930s, although “racialist” and “racialism” go back to the Edwardian period.

“Anti-racism” means something altogether different, and is best explained by the Civitas book Racist Murder and Pressure Group Politics, an account of the Salem-like events that gripped Britain in the 1990s. The authors cite the example of the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work (CCETSW), which in 1991 set out the implementation of its new Diploma in Social Work.

The first tenet was “the self-evident truth” that “racism is endemic in the values, attitudes and structures of British society”.

The training manual then stated “steps need to be taken to promote permeation of all aspects of the curriculum by an anti-racist analysis”. All “racist materials” had to be withdrawn from the syllabus and CCETSW would decide what was racist.

In the rules there would be no freedom of speech for opinions that can be constructed as “racist” or favourable to “racism”, and “anti-racist practice requires the adoption of explicit values”. The first value is that individual problems have roots in “political structures” and “not in individual or cultural pathology”. (In other words, if different groups have different outcomes in terms of education or crime levels, it is all the fault of British racism, not of individuals).

A second value is that racial oppression and discrimination are everywhere to be found in British society, even when invisible. In other words, impossible to disprove!

This is “anti-racism”, and it is heavily influenced by a Marxist interpretation of race. Oliver Cox’s 1948 work Class, Caste and Race presents the idea that race originates in “a practical exploitative relationship” used to justify the exploitation of one group by another as part of capitalism.

Racism is created to justify imperialism, exploitation, and scapegoating when things go wrong, and to divide the population to prevent class consciousness from forming.

Racism, therefore, is a product of western, European society, which is why those schooled in British academia are so bad at seeing racism when it is committed by non-whites, because only whites can really be racist.

This, itself, is a racist idea, because it views only whites as being fully sentient actors capable of committing right and wrong, when of course racism, like all human feelings and failings, is universal.

So if you consider yourself an “anti-racist”, you are, in fact, a racist.

Ed West

Conservative Home pandering to Islam

The article below, by 'Melanchthon', was recently published on Conservative Home, a probably quasi-autonomous web site which supports the Conservative Party.

The author, who oddly claims to be a Christian, argues, on the very flimsy grounds of having watched a television programme featuring the noted atheist Richard Dawkins, that "The majority religion in our society is, as it probably always has been, and probably has been in every significant human society, animism."

This is nonsense on stilts. Simply because most people are not regular attenders at church, it does not follow that they are not Christians. In fact, surveys consistently show that most people still regard themselves as Christians, despite only rarely attending church. That is because the institutions of our society have historically been shaped by Christianity even where they now appear to be secular. Society is still culturally Christian, and most non-churchgoers still feel Christian, and rightly regard themselves as such.

Melanchthon seems to believe, and to wish his readers to believe, without adducing any evidence in its support, the proposition that Sunni Islam is a benign, tolerant faith. Has he not heard of the massacre of Christians, only a few days ago in Iraq, of the threatened massacre of Christians in Sunni Muslim Egypt, and of the massacre of Christians by Muslims in Sunni Muslim Pakistan?

Has he not heard, or does he wish conveniently to forget, about the genocidal holocaust suffered by the Christian Armenian people at the hands of the Sunni Muslim Turks in 1894-96, and again in 1915-18?

Or does Melanchthon hope that his readers will be unaware of these facts? Does he hope we will be taken in by his proselytizing, by his advocacy of the creeping Shariatization of society and of "dhimmitude" ( ie, second class citizen status) for those whose self-respect, reason, and patriotism lead them rightly to despise and reject Islam as a culturally alien, repressive, and profoundly inhumane religion? Islam treats, as an immutable article of faith, women as inferior, before Allah and 'his' law, to men. It prescribes, again as an immutable article of faith, barbaric punishments for infractions of Sharia law, such as adultery, theft, homosexual acts, apostasy, and blasphemy.

Furthermore, a society cannot have a little bit of Islam, and leave it at that. The more Muslims in a society, the stronger becomes their religion, and the more strident, and aggressive, become the demands on its behalf. Melanchthon's article itself is an indication that Islam is flexing its muscles, and testing its strength. Combined with numbers (more than four million now and rising) and the confidence that a growing population vis-a-vis the shrinking population of the Christian majority confers, is the money power of the oil-rich Arab states, and the influence they acquire with it, in favour of their religion and its adherents, over our venal Establishment politicians. Regrettably, the latter are all too ready to retrace the shameful path of appeasement trodden by their party forebears in the 1930s.

Then, just as now, the few lone voices who sounded the alarm were derided, and insulted with unpleasant name-calling. Yet they and their warnings were ultimately fully vindicated, fortunately in time to save our people from subjugation to a foreign power and an alien creed. The danger now is more insidious and, for that very reason, far more deadly. I only pray to God, (not Allah,) that our people, the indigenous British, awake to their danger in time to save ourselves from it.

Odd, that Melanchthon refers to the self-hatred of the Establishment and yet offers no explanation for it. Perhaps since he is, so he claims, a Christian and yet argues (however fallaciously) for the establishment of the archetypal supremacist religion and historically the deadly foe of Christianity, as our new state religion, he is very familiar with that self-hatred and perhaps also with masochistic tendencies.

November 13, 2010

Islam should become our state religion, by 'Melanchthon'

The Guardian became outraged when Iain Duncan Smith suggested that it was a "sin" that society had negligently abandonned 4.5 million people to live permanently on out-of work benefits instead of find ways to get them re-integrated into working life. His "mask" was said to have slipped, though he had "almost succeeded" in pretending there was a proper basis for his policies, more acceptable to our "secular society".

The absurdity of suggesting that Iain Duncan Smith's Christian motivations were any kind of secret and of criticising the use of moral categories to justify his policy approaches - only lefties are allowed to have morals, after all; to be Right Wing is, by definition, to be evil, seeking to impose final solutions on the poor, force them to eat rotting horse-flesh, and cleansing them from beyond the sight of nice middle class folk; any right-winger employing a moral term such as "wrong" or "sin" must have some sinister ulterior motivation - has been covered already by the Editor and by Cranmer.

What I want to add, though, is a challenge to this idea, underlying the Guardian's criticisms, that our society is "secular", by which the Guardian clearly means some combination of atheist materialist and agnostic. The reality is that no free society has even been secular, though a number of state structures have been. Our Establishment cannot, any longer, find inspiration in Christianity, so it must look elsewhere. I shall argue that the best alternative is Islam.

The majority religion in our society is, as it probably always has been, and probably has been in every significant human society, animism. As explored in a recent television show by Richard Dawkins, most people believe in some hotchpotch combination of astrology, chakras, healing crystals, reincarnation (think of past lives hypnosis), faith healers, ghosts and spirits. And that's before we start re-interpreting beliefs in aliens or the Illuminati in religious categories. Animism is the religion of The Folk, not atheism.

Leftist atheists (there are plenty of right-wing atheists, also, but they suffer from this particular error somewhat less) have a touching belief that because, as they see it, reason and evidence favour atheist materialism, society is destined eventually to become atheist materialist. Now obviously I dispute vigorously that reason or evidence favour atheist materialism - reason strongly favours philosophical monotheism and the belief in just desert for action (Islam is probably the religion most purely favoured by reason alone); whilst evidence runs contrary to reason in favouring Trinitarianism, and love and mercy as opposed to just desert (this clash between reason and evidence having been acknowledged and explored since the letters of St Paul). But that is not what I want to explore here. I want to challenge the notion that society could conceivably come to believe in atheist materialism even if it were recommended by reason and evidence. Recognising that that simply isn't an option has profound consequences for how a society's politics and constitution should be organised.

It requires a great deal of emotional and intellectual robustness to be a materialist atheist, because atheist materialism responds to the deepest questions of the human heart - "what's it all about?"; "what is truly meaningful and worthy?"; "there must be something more - what is it?"; "we cannot simply end, so what happens after we die?"; and others - it responds to these deep questions by the intellectual equivalent of sticking its fingers in its ears and crying "La, la, la, la! I'm not listening!", namely to intone "These are the wrong questions." Since that is so transparently unsatisfying a response, only very confident people can defy logic by proclaiming themselves satisfied by it. That is why the Dawkins, Atkins, and Hitchens of this world are so strident - they must yell loudly to drown out the discontented voices within.

Atheist materialism has no prospect of replacing orthodox religions (at least in anything remotely like its current forms). Its only contribution to the discussion can be that of the vandal - to destroy what it despises or does not understand leaving nothing of value in its place. The illusion of cleverness generated by atheist materialism has merely broken the confidence of the Establishment in its ability to sell orthodox religion to The Folk. Atheist materialism itself is obviously unsellable. So, without the credible and respectable critique of animism that orthodox religion provides, and only the fundamentally empty and implausible criticisms of animism that atheist materialism offers, The Folk feel no constraints upon the overt expression of what was always, in truth, their underlying superstition.

It is unclear how many in the Establishment were ever really convicted of the truths of orthodox religion, even in its pomp, but they certainly understood and respected its value as a guide and moral focus for policy-making, a discipline upon The Folk, and a key social binding force. The Somme and Passchendaele broke the British Establishment's confidence in itself and in its moral project, but Nihilism isn't any kind of long-term project. Self-pity, self-hatred and self-indulgence are understandable in the light of such terrible events, but at some point we must get over it.

I make no apologies about being a Christian, but I am pragmatic enough to recognise that the British Establishment finds it impossible, any longer, to accept any Christian inspiration for its projects. On the contrary, precisely because it retains certain of the forms of Christianity, the Establishment's self-hatred often takes the form of hating Christians. Individual Christians are oppressed, in our country, precisely because the Establishment still formally takes Christian inspiration but doesn't want it.

It's time to move on. We need to abandon the last vestiges of Christian role in our constitution, and regard Christians as the minority we are, entitled to proper protection in a liberal society of the sort we automatically extend to Muslims and Hindus. But we cannot hope to abandon religious inspiration in our constitution. All that does is create a disconnect between an irreligious polity and our ineliminably religious Folk, and will make our Establishment despised rather than perceived as the rulers and leaders it should be. So we must have something. As I have said above, Christians accept the dictats of evidence over intuitive reason, but Islam is the most straightforwardly intuitive religion of all. Its core doctrines make perfect sense: there is one God over all the earth; He is our creator; He commands obedience from us; He will judge us at the end of our lives sending the virtuous to paradise and the wicked to hell. How could it be any more obvious? Islam is also clearly tempting to our Establishment - they admire its disciplines, certainty, self-confidence and clear hierarchies of authority. If Muslim politicians express matters in moral categories or talk about their prayers, they are not condemned in the way that Christian politicians are. If our Establishment adopted Islam as its religion of inspiration, and we chose Islamic religious leaders to listen to as our society's moral guides, The Folk could be diverted from their superstitions and decadence into more morally purposeful and energetic projects. Our lethargic, morbid Establishment could be quickened into life by clear moral goals provided by those they could respect and listen to. Sunni Islam has also (and crucially), historically been the second most successful structure for promoting tolerant multi-cultural societies (behind Protestantism and ahead of Catholicism).

Our society is not the atheist materialist place that Guardian writers fondly imagine it, and it cannot and will not ever be so. Atheist materialism is simply not well-designed to provide a moral inspiration to societies, for the simple reason that it offers no answers to the big questions. Christianity cannot serve that role any longer in Britain, and the notion that it does has become a threat to individual devout Christians - the Establishment's self-hatred becomes manifest in oppression of Christians. The next best alternative is Islam. That would be the best way to go from here.

Those BFs!

Below is an extract from an article by Peter Mills, entitled "European Union - A Long Tradition Of Fiddling The Books", recently published on the web site of the British Freedom Party, or the BFs, as Martin Webster has wittily characterized them.

"Of course, there is another possible reason why this news has not gained much publicity in Britain; it is getting boringly repetitive. Believe it or not, the same thing happened last year. And the year before. And the year before that. In fact, the European Accounts have not received a cleared auditor’s certificate of authenticity for every one of the last 16 years! (3) (4) And, bearing in mind accounts are finalised at the end of a trading year, 16 years ago was November 1994, the end of the accounting year in which Great Britain signed the Lisbon Treaty (at the start of 1993)."

While few nationalists would demur at the article's thesis that the European Union is an irremediably corrupt and undemocratic body from which Britain should secede as soon as possible, the author makes a "howler" by confounding the Maastricht treaty (proper name: Treaty on European Union) which actually established, and gave its name to, the European Union, properly so called, and came into force in November 1993, with the very recent Lisbon treaty, which came into force in December 2009.

Mr Mills is either very uninformed about the European Union, or rather sloppy when it comes to proof-reading his own work.

Although the amusing sobriquet of "the BFs" was coined by Martin Webster in reference to the party's down-playing of the crucial issue of immigration, and their terror of being thought of as "racist", a few more howlers like this and it may begin to catch on for another reason.

Peter Mills seems to believe that if only the country were to be run like big business all would be well. Has he never heard of Enron, Lehman Brothers, Northern Rock, Equitable Life, etc?

It all sounds like the kind of saloon bar Tory 'nationalism' one sees in the Daily Mail, or hears on TalkSport. Or, as the oleaginous Michael Howard (real name: Hecht, meaning Pike) put it in 2005, "Are you thinking what we're thinking?" To which my response is: tell me what you're thinking, and I'll tell you!