How to oppose fascist violence

Imagine if, following the barbarous shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego this week, the press started prattling on about the sins of the Iranian regime. Imagine if people who fancy themselves as ‘progressive’ said the killings were sad, sure, but what do you expect when an Islamist nation overseas is committing violent acts? Imagine if woke talking heads breezily declared that this slaughter of innocents was ‘complex’ because it happened against a ‘backdrop of the horrors of the Islamic Republic’.

We would be horrified, right? I would be. To me it would smack of the most spineless equivocation. Worse, it would reek of a craven effort to rationalise the killings, to depict them less as the bloody handiwork of bigoted minds than as a response, albeit a regrettable one, to the wickedness of Iran’s mullahs. It would represent the sinister suggestion of collective guilt against all Muslims, as if each and every one bears the moral stain of Tehran’s crimes.

Yet that is exactly what happens when Jews are targeted. Every time. From the mountainous digital dungheap of Israelophobia right up to the establishment media, the cry goes out: ‘Israel is to blame for this.’ If the Jewish State were not so demonic, maybe Jews over here could avoid being stabbed, shot, beaten and insulted. Perhaps now, after the slayings in San Diego, people will realise just how repulsive it is to engage in such lowlife sophistry in the wake of fascist atrocities. I won’t hold my breath, though.

The events at the Islamic Center were horrific. And they would have been worse had it not been for the bravery of the security guard, Amin Abdullah. Two armed teenagers tried to storm the mosque. Abdullah shot at them and then initiated lockdown procedures, potentially saving scores from death. The teens killed Abdullah. In the car park, they found two other worshippers and shot them dead. They then killed themselves. Three Muslims slain at their place of worship: an unconscionable crime.

It was an act of brutish nihilism, infused with the infantile Nazism that stinks up the underbelly of the internet. A document allegedly written by the teenagers is full of anti-Muslim hatred, as well as homophobic and anti-Semitic invective. They reportedly blamed ‘the Jewish community’ for ‘the problems of the modern world’. It is an incalculable tragedy that three lives were lost to the racist brainrot of such digital conspiracism.

Now imagine how this tragedy would be compounded if the smart set were to respond to it by shrugging their shoulders or offering up such jaded moral evasions as: ‘Well, it’s complex, because of Iran.’ To be clear, I am not comparing Israel to Iran. In my view, the Jewish State is a democracy that has every right to defend itself against the armies of anti-Semites that wish to destroy it, while the Islamic Republic is a barbarous tyranny that crushes its own people when it isn’t busy funding those very armies of anti-Semites.

But that’s the thing: Jews and Muslims in the West should pay the price for none of it, whether for the bullshit ‘genocide’ that’s been pinned on the Jewish State or for the very real savagery in the name of Islam carried out by the Iranian regime. It’s amazing this needs to be said. But it does.

Some hard-right degenerates have tried to rationalise the atrocity in San Diego. ‘Just remember the people who attend this mosque want us all to be killed’, said MAGA influencer Laura Loomer. This has stoked outrage from the left, which takes hypocrisy to dizzying new heights: these are the same people who turned a blind eye when Loomer-style freaks in their own camp said there were Zionists at that Chanukah celebration on Bondi Beach and in those firebombed synagogues in London, so… what do you expect? Loomer’s moral obscenities have already been committed by the left, many, many times over.

The San Diego atrocity has exposed polite society’s double standards on anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish violence. British leftists who said fuck all when Jews were shot in Washington, DC and set on fire in Colorado have fallen over themselves to condemn the violence in San Diego. Even the Metropolitan Police issued a statement about it. Why is London’s police force commenting on a violent act 5,500 miles away? Why did they not likewise comment on the burning to death of a Jew in Colorado last year by a man barking ‘Free Palestine’? Sadiq Khan issued a statement, too. Okay, but has he ever issued a statement on Islamo-fascist atrocities against Christians in cities in Africa and Asia? Why not?

It seems some people, especially on the left, need a refresher course on how to oppose fascist violence. You do it like this: firmly and consistently. You do not clear your throat first, you do not reach for rationalisations, you do not stare at your shoes like a snivelling coward. Whether it’s Charlie Kirk being murdered for his beliefs, or a healthcare CEO being fatally punished for the ‘sins’ of capitalism, or TERFs being threatened with rape for saying men aren’t women, or Muslims being slain in their holy place, or Jews being targeted almost everywhere right now – all of it violently grates against the core virtues of our civilisation; all of it should be condemned.

It has been reported that the imam of the Islamic Center sang the praises of the 7 October pogrom. He called it ‘resistance’. And he lamented the brainwashing of Americans by the ‘Zionist propaganda machine’. This is bigoted drivel, but let us be clear: it provides not so much as a sliver of justification for the Nazi-inspired atrocity visited on the centre. As Rob Eshman wrote this week, too many people fail to understand that ‘justifying acts of violence against those who disagree with you gives them ample reason to do the same to you’.

Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His latest book – After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy.