Happy Easter Monday to our readers, listeners and viewers across the Commonwealth and Europe. On the other hand, if you're in the United States, presumably it's a big Happy Post-Transition Monday, yesterday having been officially proclaimed by the purported Leader of the Free World as Happy Transgender Day of Visibility:
NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 31, 2024, as Transgender Day of Visibility. I call upon all Americans to join us in lifting up the lives and voices of transgender people throughout our Nation and to work toward eliminating violence and discrimination based on gender identity.
If you're thinking, "Hang on, wasn't there some other big event on Sunday?", hey, relax: We're only a year or three away from the Archbishop of Canterbury - or maybe even His Holiness the Pope - proclaiming Christ as the ultimate transitioner. While we wait on that, attendees at today's annual White House Easter Egg Roll have been cautioned that no "religious symbols" or "themes" will be permitted on their eggs. On the other hand, if your Easter bunny wants to use the ladies' bathroom, no problem.
In Washington, one assumes the insult was deliberate. In London, it was more a sin of omission: At the headquarters of Westminster City Council, they went to a lot of trouble for their big Ramadan display window. On Maundy Thursday, someone asked the council why there was no Easter display. There was a bit of a scramble, and then a minion was dispatched and returned with a couple of cut-out rabbits and some chocolate eggs.
The LGBTQWERTY crowd should enjoy their "Day of Visibility" while they can. "Diversity" and "multiculturalism" are the interim phase, before something colder and harder, unicultural and homogeneous, asserts itself. Almost two decades ago, I wrote an international bestseller about demography, which, aside from being rather difficult to do (go on, try it), was dismissed as "alarmist" by The Economist and the like. Over Easter, a Brazilian correspondent wrote to say that Paulo Guinote took it more seriously:
O livro de Mark Steyn (2006) é uma das bases para o que a actual direita radical tem espalhado pelos dois lados do Atlântico e Europa Central, só que escrito com humor...
What's that? You don't speak Portuguese? Oh, okay, let's do it in English:
Mark Steyn's book (2006) is one of the foundations for what today's radical right has spread on both sides of the Atlantic and Central Europe, but written with humor. Reading it, one realizes that it was there that was born the origin of Trumpism and its derivatives... Steyn, in all his Islamophobia, criticism of Science and the Cultural Left, especially on issues of gender identity, has the advantage of not being a Flat Earther, like other gurus of our 'New Right' with pretensions of culture war.
Well, that's awfully generous, I'm sure. Way back when, a lot of folk on the other side appreciated my book. You'll notice that the first approving quotation over at the Steyn Store is from the late Democrat vice-presidential candidate Joe Lieberman: "The thing I quote most from it is the power of demographics," he told The New Yorker. Can't see Kamala doing that any time soon. Demography isn't difficult: If the data show that Muslims have overtaken Catholics in your schoolrooms, don't be surprised if in twenty years you're a semi-Islamic society and it's too late to change the trajectory.
That's the great tragedy of America Alone: In 2006, as Douglas Murray responded to me during a panel in New York back then, there was still time to reverse course. So princes, presidents, prime ministers and a brace of kings and queens apiece called me in to discuss the thesis of my bestseller - and then they did nothing.
Two decades on, and their successors in the chancelleries of power are a little beyond mere inactivity. One of the "lagging indicators" in society is the popular assumption that somehow, whatever changes are happening on the ground, "the authorities" are still full of solid old-school types who may be slow to rouse but will eventually do the right thing. I gave up on that after meeting Sammy Woodhouse and her friends in Rotherham almost a decade ago - because it was clear at some point that every institution that mattered, and that could have prevented the mass gang-rape of young girls up and down the towns of England, had gone over to the other side.
It's not hard to grasp where the demographic and ideological energy is in society. The evil British constabulary certainly do. If you clicked on this in Laura's Links last week, you'll know the Toronto Police Service has also figured it out:
Gutless cowards turning off replies. That's OK, you'll get plenty of feedback from quote posts. https://t.co/lKfXPztSAi
— Laura Rosen Cohen 🪬 🪬 🪬 (@LauraRosenCohen) March 24, 2024
In the two decades since 9/11, the Greater Toronto Area has become ten percent Muslim. Whether or not that is a prudent response to the self-evident frictions between Islam and the infidel, it is a fact. Total number of Muslims in the Dominion of Canada, per the official census:
1971: 33,430;
1981: 98,150;
1991: 253,260;
2001: 579,645;
2011: 1,053,945;
2021: 1,775,715.
Pick a number: How Muslim would you like Canada to get?
Aw, forget it: whatever estimate you pick, you'll be low-balling it.
If tripling the Mohammedan population seems a somewhat counter-intuitive response to 9/11, well, both William of Ockham and the wilder conspiracy theorists lead us to the same place: It's because that's what our rulers wanted to happen.
Let's say you work in an office in those cities: One day they install a Muslim prayer room, and a few folks head off at the designated time, while the rest of you get on with what passes for work in the EU. A couple of years go by, and it's now a few more folks scooting off to the prayer room. Then it's a majority. And the ones who don't are beginning to feel a bit awkward about being left behind.
What do you do? The future showed up a lot sooner than you thought. If you were a fundamentalist Christian like those wackjob Yanks, signing on to Islam might (pace Mr Ferrigno) cause you some discomfort. But, if you're the average post-Christian Eurosecularist, what's the big deal? Who wants to be the last guy sitting in the office sharpening his pencil during morning prayers?
Funny how quickly it all happened. There was the woman on reception, but she retired. And the guy in personnel who used to say, sotto voce, that Geert Wilders had a point. But he emigrated the year after Wilders did.
Well, Wilders hasn't emigrated yet. In fact, he "won" last year's Dutch election - although, four months later, there's still no agreement on letting him into the cabinet and having any meaningful say in government.
But in the Toronto Police Service the future has shown up. Islam no longer needs to fly planes into buildings - because, increasingly, it controls those buildings, even the mega-butch ones. From The Washington Beacon:
US Intel Agency Wants To Ban Terms 'Radical Islamists' and 'Jihadist' Because They're Hurtful to Muslim Americans
The entire "war on terror" was a complete waste of time, unless you're an American defence contractor. Election Night in the Great Satan:
Ismail Mohamed won his race in Ohio's 3rd district last night, beating Abdirizak Diini.
He campaigned (almost) entirely in Somali instead of English. His campaign pitch? To represent the interests of Somalia.
This was the Ohio victory party last night: pic.twitter.com/TbASrCSinK
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 20, 2024
The very minimum that citizens of the west need to demand is an end to the sentimentalisation and indeed psychologically unhealthy fetishisation of "diversity". As you can already see at Westminster City Council, the future they're planning for you isn't going to be that diverse.
~Steyn's first and second Statements of Claim against the UK media censor Ofcom have been accepted for judicial review by the High Court of England. The King's Bench Division will hear the case in two months' time - June 11th. Many readers have inquired about how to support Mark's free-speech lawsuits on both sides of the Atlantic. Well, there are several ways to lend a hand, including:
a) signing up a friend for a Steyn Club Gift Membership;
b) buying a near-and-dear one a SteynOnline gift certificate; or
c) ordering a copy of his latest book, The Prisoner of Windsor (you won't regret it - ask Kathy Gyngell).
With the first two methods, one hundred per cent of the proceeds goes to a grand cause - and, with the last, a significant chunk thereof. And, in all cases, you or your loved one gets something, too.
~We had a very busy Easter weekend at SteynOnline, starting with Mark's thoughts on the fifth anniversary of the burning of a Paris landmark, and his audio adaptation of Victor Hugo and Notre-Dame de Paris. Rick McGinnis's Saturday picture date looked at The Naked City, and Steyn made it a movie double-bill with his thoughts on the twentieth birthday of The Passion of the Christ. Mark's Easter entry to his anthology of video poetry was T S Eliot and East Coker, and he rounded out the seasonal observances with the only Easter standard in the American songbook.
If you were too busy trying to decide what gender your Easter egg was assigned at birth, we hope you'll want to check out one or three of the foregoing as a new week begins.