What YOU can do about terrorism

The notion that we should blame Western foreign policy for terrorism (and I can't believe I am having to write this) is the worst of lazy, westerncentric narcissism - assuming that absolutely everything in the world revolves around us and what we do - irrespective of international and regional interventions by other political powers. Russia, Pakistan, China, India, Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh etc.

Yes, you can very easily argue that we have exacerbated the problems by creating spaces for it to flourish and gather resources and influence but at the same time there are always consequences for inaction. Syria shows us that you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. And while you can say that we have intervened and other actions have precipitated what is now happening, all of these tinpot regimes have been on a countdown to extinction for a very long time and will necessarily need a protracted reckoning in order to move on.

What we've done is park our forces in the middle of a wider inter-Islamic conflict. Islamists then leverage western action as propaganda - which means it is a pretext and a fig leaf for their murderous agenda. You can change your foreign policy accordingly but the propagandist will always find an excuse or be able to manufacture some other pretext. Prior to 9/11 the excuse was western support for Israel.

Unless you tackle the ideology at source you don't get anywhere close to solving that - and in that respect we can no longer afford for British Muslims/leftists to make excuses for Islamists by wagging the finger in our direction. There is no negotiated peace with Islamists. There is nothing they want that we can give them.

It is a suicidal mistake to believe that if only we'd left our tanks at home we would be safe. We are not dealing with a rational enemy. There are no territorial concessions we could make. All they want is our subservience or our deaths. The only real answer to this is to seek it out wherever it hides and destroy it. All I would add is that our efforts to fight it must be intelligent, measured and reserved otherwise we risk destroying ourselves in the process.

In this, a lot of us are sat here wondering what we can do about terrorism. In most instances we feel that it's something we have no control over and must leave to government. Most of us have no real contact with the "muslim community" (whatever that means) and so it becomes someone else's job. Except that there is one thing you can do.

Theresa May speaks of a "safe space" online where extremism can thrive. She may have some wrong-headed ideas on how to tackle that but there's one aspect we can all go after. Like I say, propagandists will invent just about any narrative to justify or excuse terrorism. The place they very often get it is from the lazy western self-hating post-patriotic left who continually promote the idea that everything the West does is evil and that somehow we are deserving of whatever fate awaits us.

One facet of this is the leftist feminist idea that somehow the Arab value system is more empowering for women. You can find such drivel on the pages of the Guardian every now and then. And then there's the classic foreign policy trope. These are all narratives that have taken hold because we are too cowardly to confront them. It's socially convenient not to have an argument and nobody wants to fall out with their friends over politics. This has since become dinner party liberalism where one is obliged to spout meaningless liberal dogma so as not to cause offence.

Well, now is the time to start falling out with friends and offending them. Now is the time to start calling out crap when you see it. Now is the time to stop letting lazy and intellectually warped ideas stand. Everything depends on this because the left have set about a system of manufacturing fig-leaves for the Jihadists who parrot our own leftist dogma back to us. Not for nothing do some of Osama Bin Laden's sermons sound much like a Guardian op-ed. They are aimed at weakening our resolve and questioning our own right to continue existing.

Tune into Channel 4 news after any terrorist attack and you'll find them interviewing British muslims in the street, some of whom will let slip one of this tiresome tropes about Western intervention. Where do you think they get it from? Not from a Jihadi John Youtube channel. They're getting it from our media, they're getting it from Facebook and they're getting it from celebrities. And why do celebs spout this crap? Well, because it's socially convenient and if you hold even moderately conservative views then your career is over.

Ultimately the left have the same goals as Islamsists. To destroy the west and install their own authoritarian regime we must all submit to. It's why you can always find the far left in bed with UK Islamists.

For too long now the left have held undue influence over public discourse and political correctness was always one of their favoured weapons. In doing so they have created the safe space for extremism to thrive and they have given terrorists all the excuses they need.

Over the years a few people who are very dear to me have broken off relationships with me because of the things I say. That is ultimately a consequence of saying what I think and it is that which has ultimately defined who I am. It limits my social options because I can't sit quietly and let people talk crap. It's not a nice place to be. But this has to be done. Every single one of us must play a part in defeating the corrosive ideas that make us vulnerable. That means destroying the modern left and making sure they are viewed not just with distaste, but disgust.

Our enemies have no demands we can acquiesce to. No amount of introspection can change the nature of our enemy. We are up against a murderous ideology. Though various voices have said that we need to tackle the ideology at source, going after various mosques and making demands of Saudi Arabia, leftist dogma is the WD40 that greases the wheels of Jihad. It's time to speak out against it - and that responsibility is yours and mine alone.