https://www.thefp.com/p/the-uk-grooming-gangs-and-the-cowardice-05e
Bari Weiss moderates a discussion between Julie Bindel and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Bindel is a journalist and advocate that relates an account of the events that is largely in line with what I recall of the coverage at the time. Hirsi Ali is, as I understand, more broadly an anti-Islamicist and critic of immigration policies that she believes come at the expense of Western Enlightenment values. Hirsi Ali recently wrote a book that, in part, discussed the organized rape rings in Britain, but I don’t believe she was a contemporary voice in the matter in the same way that Bindel seems to be.
My problem is with Bari Weiss. Weiss somehow avoids using the word “woke” in this discussion, but it’s clear that she wants to frame the discussion in that term. That is, society at large was unwilling to recognize these horrible crimes out of fear that any one person who called them out would be labeled “racist.”
This all broke in the early 2000s, right? Islamic fundamentalists just committed the most horrifying terrorist attacks in history. American and British politicians both were speaking very carefully to avoid fueling anti-Muslim hate groups or inspiring jihadist actors. Hell, explicit anti-Islamicist statements were more likely to be scolded for putting troops at risk in Afghanistan and Iraq than they were to be rebuked for upsetting immigrant communities. Proto-woke at best… but I suppose I have no authority to define the scope of “wokeness.”
Still, I find it hard to believe that English police officers were willfully ignoring crimes because of George Floyd in Minneapolis ten years in the future. Weiss wants to view a decades-old scandal through 2020s red-pill-colored glasses. I feel like that’s journalistically egregious. It’s not just that this framing fails to describe the actual context of the events; it misassigns blame. Bindel, on the other hand, argues that the scandal is rooted in garden-variety misogyny that was (and is) endemic in English and every other culture. Fear of stoking Islamophobia or even sparking a race riot may have been a factor, but it’s far down the list below “cops treated young girls as self-deserving criminals rather than as victims.”
This is a topic of discussion this week because Elon Musk is calling attention to the crimes in an attempt to politically damage current Labour leadership in Britain. Quoting Hirsi Ali from the transcript on Spotify:
“No, I’m infitinitely grateful to Elon Musk … he’s using his superpowers to say I am going to give a voice to the voiceless.”
It’s just so on-brand for the Free Press to think that tweeting constitutes a “superpower.”
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