Earlier today we
learned about homophobic Harvard professor Niall Ferguson's blistering attack on John Maynard Keynes. Keynes was wrong, according to Professor Ferguson, because he was gay and talked about faggy things like poetry with his ballerina wife. Homosexual economists, according to Oxford-educated Ferguson, are naturally inclined to advise loading up on debt because they are, by definition, childless.
Several years ago Ferguson left his wife of 20 years and mother of his three children to marry the darling of the neoconservative right Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Ferguson and the serial liar Hirsi Ali are a perfect match, since both have made brilliant careers pandering to right-wing think tanks (Hirsi Ali is a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute). Now the "politically incorrect" historian Ferguson and the glamorous "Islam Expert" Hirsi Ali are a much sought-after power couple in the Washington dinner party circuit.
Ferguson's remarks on Keynes were ugly, but he was outdone by his wife last year when she accepted the Axel Springer Honorary Prize in Berlin.
In her acceptance speech, which was delivered in English, Hirsi Ali attacked the "advocates of silence" who censor the truth about Islam and the Muslim extremists who are destroying Europe:
The advocates of silence warn us that publishing these facts or debating them in the media and in parliament will transform the existing resentment towards Muslims into violent behavior. Censorship and silence, we are told, are the best preventive remedies against hatred and violence.
I believe that the advocates of silence are wrong, profoundly and dangerously wrong.
Just who these "advocates of silence" are Ayaan Hirsi Ali never says, but presumably they are anyone who rejects hate speech against Muslims or anyone who proposes peaceful dialogue and reconciliation among different faiths.
But Ayaan Hirsi Ali has a great deal of understanding for mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who was forced to kill 77 mostly young people because of the treachery of the "advocates of silence":
Fourthly and finally, that one man who killed 77 people in Norway, because he fears that Europe will be overrun by Islam, may have cited the work of those who speak and write against political Islam in Europe and America – myself among them – but he does not say in his 1500 page manifesto that it was these people who inspired him to kill. He says very clearly that it was the advocates of silence. Because all outlets to express his views were censored, he says, he had no other choice but to use violence.
Yes, the "advocates of silence" left Breivik with no other choice than to hunt down teenagers systematically. Who wouldn't be driven to desperate acts by this terrible "leftist" conspiracy?
Maybe because Ayaan Hirsi Ali was speaking English her words didn't provoke outrage among the German listeners. On the contrary, her speech was met with a prolonged standing ovation. The first to leap to his feet and clap was the writer Henryk Broder - cited by Anders Behring Breivik numerous times in his manifesto as an inspiration.
Fortunately for us, however, a voice of reason was in the audience, and his reaction was reported in the German magazine Cicero :
Am I dreaming, or did this really just happen?" asked an astonished Daniel Gerlach, editor-in-chief for the magazine Zenith, who was sitting in the audience."This is how right-wing conspiracy theory believers talk. This really takes the cake, explaining Breivik's murderous rampage as the result of mysterious dark powers keeping quiet about the dangers of Islam in Europe." Gerlach seems to be one of the few listeners in the packed hall who is shocked by the speech.
In his 1500-page manifesto, Breivik expresses his deep admiration for Ayaan Hirsi Ali, writing that she deserves the Nobel Prize. For the time being, she will have to make do with the Axel Springer Bild-Zeitung Prize and being the wife of an odious fraud.