This is an edited version of an essay published on Matt Goodwin’s Substack on 27th July.
If you want to see one of the major contradictions on the liberal left today, then just look at what happened in Europe last weekend. On Saturday night in Berlin, as thousands of people attended a Pride festival to celebrate gay rights, the liberal left was confronted with an entirely different worldview.
A Muslim man, later identified by police as “Abdul B” and a known member of Berlin’s “Islamist scene”, ploughed a van into the crowd before going on a stabbing spree. He killed one person and injured many more before being shot by police.
One politician after another lined up to give the usual platitudes. Love will beat hate. Diversity is our strength. Or, in the words of Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission: “Hate and violence have no place in our societies. We stand united at the side of the LGBTQI+ community.”
There’s no doubt the attack is utterly horrific and everybody’s thoughts will be with those affected. But the events in Berlin also throw light on a contradiction that people on the liberal left have spent years trying to ignore - or pretending not to see.
The same liberal progressive politicians who are lining up to offer their condolences have been championing two causes simultaneously that are clearly incompatible.
On the one hand, they call for ever-more tolerance of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people and increasingly radical ideas about gender, sexuality, and what we teach children about these issues.
But at the same time, progressives have become increasingly strident in their support for mass immigration, porous borders, expanding asylum routes, and multiculturalism - which is importing millions of people into Europe who hold radically different, if not openly hostile, attitudes towards rights for gay people, women, individual choice, and individual freedom.
And now increasingly, as we see in Berlin and beyond, these two irreconcilable projects are colliding - sometimes with devastating consequences. While few people on the liberal left are willing to talk about it, the evidence for the contradiction is now becoming overwhelming.
At the extreme end, we see it in a growing list of examples of migrant violence against sexual minorities in Europe. The 21-year-old Syrian who murdered a gay couple in Dresden. The Iranian Islamist who committed a mass shooting at a Pride event in Oslo, Norway. The gang of Moroccans who beat a gay couple holding hands in the Netherlands. The gay refugees who had to be separated from their straight Muslim counterparts in shelters. And now the terror attack in Berlin, among many more cases.
We also see the contradiction reflected in the wider attitudes of people who liberal progressives have been importing into Europe. They are simply much more likely than everybody else to be hostile towards rights for gay people.
Take, for example, the findings of a new survey of more than 1,200 Muslims in Britain that was just released by research group Yonder, on behalf of the UK Extremism and Democratic Resilience Centre. It paints a deeply troubling picture about the kinds of views and attitudes the liberal progressive establishment has been importing into Western nations.
When asked whether they are in favour of equality for homosexuals, just 26% of Muslims said they were. Just one in four. In contrast, nearly six in 10 said they were not in favour of treating gay people as equal members of society.
The same survey, furthermore, found that nearly one in three Muslims would like girls and boys to be taught separately in schools. Nearly one in three. These are findings you will simply never hear about on BBC Verify.
And nor are they the only ones. Other major surveys and polls have consistently found that Muslims are far more likely than everybody else to oppose rights for sexual minorities, and also women.
Such as the ICM poll that found more than half of all Muslims disagreed that homosexuality should be legal, and nearly half disagreed that a homosexual should be allowed to teach in schools. Or the poll by JL Partners that found one in three Muslims wanted men and women to be kept separate in public places.
Clearly, not all Muslims think this way, and many Muslims will be utterly appalled by the way in which Islamists are targeting sexual minorities and Pride events.
But what is also true is there does exist a fundamental contradiction at the heart of Europe’s liberal establishment that the countless advocates for mass immigration ignore.
Liberal progressives cannot simultaneously demand ever more progressive attitudes towards sexuality and gender while imposing increasingly extreme immigration policies that are importing the opposite attitudes and values into Western nations and then, on top of that, denounce anybody who happens to point out the inconsistency.
You can have respect and rights for LGBT communities, for women, for individual choice, and for individual freedom. Or you can import millions of migrants from outside Europe who cling to radically different attitudes and cultural norms. But you cannot have both.
And you cannot try and shut down the few people who do have the courage to talk or write about this blatant contradiction within the Western establishment.
In the aftermath of attacks like the one in Berlin, liberal progressives immediately deflect, appearing more comfortable attacking right-wing politicians and media than addressing the actual issue and the major contradiction within their worldview.
It is suicidal empathy in action: importing millions of people into Western nations in the name of showing empathy and tolerance to outsiders while simultaneously eroding the safety and security of people who actually come from those nations.
If we were living in a serious nation with serious leaders, attacks like those in Berlin and the evidence I’ve discussed would force this conversation out into the open. We would be talking about how to limit immigration and demographic flows so as to protect our own people and preserve our own cultural values and civilisation.
But in the increasingly warped world of suicidal empathy, this debate will simply never be tolerated. Instead, we will get all the usual platitudes about “Islamophobia”, of “love beating hate”, of “diversity making us stronger”. All the usual attacks on right-wing politicians, columnists, television channels, and Substackers.
Once again, we will have to watch the liberal progressive establishment do anything and everything except address the glaring contradiction that sits at the heart of its own project. No matter the devastating consequences for everybody else.
Subscribe to Matt Goodwin’s Substack here.
If you want to see one of the major contradictions on the liberal left today, then just look at what happened in Europe last weekend. On Saturday night in Berlin, as thousands of people attended a Pride festival to celebrate gay rights, the liberal left was confronted with an entirely different worldview.
A Muslim man, later identified by police as “Abdul B” and a known member of Berlin’s “Islamist scene”, ploughed a van into the crowd before going on a stabbing spree. He killed one person and injured many more before being shot by police.
One politician after another lined up to give the usual platitudes. Love will beat hate. Diversity is our strength. Or, in the words of Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission: “Hate and violence have no place in our societies. We stand united at the side of the LGBTQI+ community.”
There’s no doubt the attack is utterly horrific and everybody’s thoughts will be with those affected. But the events in Berlin also throw light on a contradiction that people on the liberal left have spent years trying to ignore - or pretending not to see.
The same liberal progressive politicians who are lining up to offer their condolences have been championing two causes simultaneously that are clearly incompatible.
On the one hand, they call for ever-more tolerance of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people and increasingly radical ideas about gender, sexuality, and what we teach children about these issues.
But at the same time, progressives have become increasingly strident in their support for mass immigration, porous borders, expanding asylum routes, and multiculturalism - which is importing millions of people into Europe who hold radically different, if not openly hostile, attitudes towards rights for gay people, women, individual choice, and individual freedom.
And now increasingly, as we see in Berlin and beyond, these two irreconcilable projects are colliding - sometimes with devastating consequences. While few people on the liberal left are willing to talk about it, the evidence for the contradiction is now becoming overwhelming.
At the extreme end, we see it in a growing list of examples of migrant violence against sexual minorities in Europe. The 21-year-old Syrian who murdered a gay couple in Dresden. The Iranian Islamist who committed a mass shooting at a Pride event in Oslo, Norway. The gang of Moroccans who beat a gay couple holding hands in the Netherlands. The gay refugees who had to be separated from their straight Muslim counterparts in shelters. And now the terror attack in Berlin, among many more cases.
We also see the contradiction reflected in the wider attitudes of people who liberal progressives have been importing into Europe. They are simply much more likely than everybody else to be hostile towards rights for gay people.
Take, for example, the findings of a new survey of more than 1,200 Muslims in Britain that was just released by research group Yonder, on behalf of the UK Extremism and Democratic Resilience Centre. It paints a deeply troubling picture about the kinds of views and attitudes the liberal progressive establishment has been importing into Western nations.
When asked whether they are in favour of equality for homosexuals, just 26% of Muslims said they were. Just one in four. In contrast, nearly six in 10 said they were not in favour of treating gay people as equal members of society.
The same survey, furthermore, found that nearly one in three Muslims would like girls and boys to be taught separately in schools. Nearly one in three. These are findings you will simply never hear about on BBC Verify.
And nor are they the only ones. Other major surveys and polls have consistently found that Muslims are far more likely than everybody else to oppose rights for sexual minorities, and also women.
Such as the ICM poll that found more than half of all Muslims disagreed that homosexuality should be legal, and nearly half disagreed that a homosexual should be allowed to teach in schools. Or the poll by JL Partners that found one in three Muslims wanted men and women to be kept separate in public places.
Clearly, not all Muslims think this way, and many Muslims will be utterly appalled by the way in which Islamists are targeting sexual minorities and Pride events.
But what is also true is there does exist a fundamental contradiction at the heart of Europe’s liberal establishment that the countless advocates for mass immigration ignore.
Liberal progressives cannot simultaneously demand ever more progressive attitudes towards sexuality and gender while imposing increasingly extreme immigration policies that are importing the opposite attitudes and values into Western nations and then, on top of that, denounce anybody who happens to point out the inconsistency.
You can have respect and rights for LGBT communities, for women, for individual choice, and for individual freedom. Or you can import millions of migrants from outside Europe who cling to radically different attitudes and cultural norms. But you cannot have both.
And you cannot try and shut down the few people who do have the courage to talk or write about this blatant contradiction within the Western establishment.
In the aftermath of attacks like the one in Berlin, liberal progressives immediately deflect, appearing more comfortable attacking right-wing politicians and media than addressing the actual issue and the major contradiction within their worldview.
It is suicidal empathy in action: importing millions of people into Western nations in the name of showing empathy and tolerance to outsiders while simultaneously eroding the safety and security of people who actually come from those nations.
If we were living in a serious nation with serious leaders, attacks like those in Berlin and the evidence I’ve discussed would force this conversation out into the open. We would be talking about how to limit immigration and demographic flows so as to protect our own people and preserve our own cultural values and civilisation.
But in the increasingly warped world of suicidal empathy, this debate will simply never be tolerated. Instead, we will get all the usual platitudes about “Islamophobia”, of “love beating hate”, of “diversity making us stronger”. All the usual attacks on right-wing politicians, columnists, television channels, and Substackers.
Once again, we will have to watch the liberal progressive establishment do anything and everything except address the glaring contradiction that sits at the heart of its own project. No matter the devastating consequences for everybody else.
Subscribe to Matt Goodwin’s Substack here.
