This is a compelling read. Remember how a couple of weeks ago at the Lindt Cafe siege inquiry, the commander on the night said that as well as the hostages he also had to consider the human rights of Man Haron Monis? That’s just the start. This disease of political correctness, harmony, tolerance and multiculti sensitivities has permeated the entire police force from top to bottom even in life and death situations.
How did this happen?
Lindt siege inquest: Scipione, Burns preoccupied with PC ideas
“….We now know political correctness doesn’t just place worrying limits on how freely we discuss Islamist extremist terrorism — it also dangerously inhibits our ability to fight it.
The inquest into the Martin Place siege this week revealed with horrifying clarity just how muddle-headed this nation’s response to the terror threat has become. When most Australians would have thought the only priority of police at the time would have been to save the lives of the hostages, we learn they were concerning themselves also with “community harmony” and “tolerance”.
Here, in stark and deadly terms, we can see where all the jihad denialism, victim inversion and virtue signalling can lead us. Not only can it fuel the Muslim victimhood propaganda that Islamist extremists crave but, in the Lindt cafe in December 2014, it even distracted police from their primary responsibility.
When the NSW police should have been totally preoccupied with freeing hostages from an armed, known extremist claiming jihadist intent, senior police were fussing over issues of social engineering. From the evidence of Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione and his deputy, Catherine Burn, we learned they “placed huge weight on community stability” during the siege, as The Australian’s Ean Higgins summarised it.
In her prepared statement, Burn accentuated this point as she described her media performances. “I needed to emphasise community harmony while urging people to provide any information that could help,” she said. “It was paramount that my messaging conveyed tolerance so as not to fuel anger which might have led to bias-motivated crime.”
Explaining why he suggested officers remove a YouTube message featuring a hostage inside the siege — an act that might have angered the terrorist further — Scipione cited concerns the video could trigger “retaliation and reprisals”.
So here at the fulcrum of the crisis, at the very top of the chain of command and in real time, police were distracted by the “I’ll ride with you” mentality.
If ever we wondered whether debates about political correctness and freedom of speech can have any tangible worth, here is the evidence. Politicised thoughts can shape or constrain practical action.
This might be one of the most disturbing manifestations of political correctness we have seen — instead of worrying only about direct victims whose lives were in danger, police were trying to be mindful of some imagined sociological impact. If it weren’t so tragic it would be the stuff of satire — it is like handing over your counter-terrorism operations to a Q&A panel.
It wasn’t the police’s job at that time to wonder whether an act of Islamist terrorism would spark a backlash, much less allow such considerations to influence their decisions. Any backlash, anyway, was going to relate to the terrorism, not the police response.
Most of us would contend that the police role was to eliminate the threat and free the hostages. We have police to defeat terrorism, not to fret about its impact on our social dynamics. We pay police to uphold the law and keep us safe, not to salve our social conscience, educate us about society or patronise us on multiculturalism.
It is true that having been one of the last people to walk out of that cafe before Man Haron Monis pulled his gun, the Martin Place siege will always weigh heavily on me. But it is also true that for years before that close shave my commentary had warned about complacency and delusion over the jihadist threat.
And the worry is we are not improving. Almost a year after the Lindt attack a teenager dressed in black yelled “Allahu Akbar” after he shot dead a stranger, police worker Curtis Cheng, in Parramatta. Yet in a press conference five hours later, Scipione said there was “nothing to link this event to any terrorist related activity”. Politicians skirted the Islamist extremism issue.
The public needs to know its law enforcement and political leaders are being frank and fearless….”
FULL COLUMN BELOW
“…We know political correctness doesn’t just place worrying limits on how freely we discuss Islamist extremist terrorism — it also dangerously inhibits our ability to fight it.
The inquest into the Martin Place siege this week revealed with horrifying clarity just how muddle-headed this nation’s response to the terror threat has become. When most Australians would have thought the only priority of police at the time would have been to save the lives of the hostages, we learn they were concerning themselves also with “community harmony” and “tolerance”.
Here, in stark and deadly terms, we can see where all the jihad denialism, victim inversion and virtue signalling can lead us. Not only can it fuel the Muslim victimhood propaganda that Islamist extremists crave but, in the Lindt cafe in December 2014, it even distracted police from their primary responsibility.
When the NSW police should have been totally preoccupied with freeing hostages from an armed, known extremist claiming jihadist intent, senior police were fussing over issues of social engineering. From the evidence of Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione and his deputy, Catherine Burn, we learned they “placed huge weight on community stability” during the siege, as The Australian’s Ean Higgins summarised it.
In her prepared statement, Burn accentuated this point as she described her media performances. “I needed to emphasise community harmony while urging people to provide any information that could help,” she said. “It was paramount that my messaging conveyed tolerance so as not to fuel anger which might have led to bias-motivated crime.”
Explaining why he suggested officers remove a YouTube message featuring a hostage inside the siege — an act that might have angered the terrorist further — Scipione cited concerns the video could trigger “retaliation and reprisals”.
So here at the fulcrum of the crisis, at the very top of the chain of command and in real time, police were distracted by the “I’ll ride with you” mentality.
You will remember the hashtag #Illridewithyou sprang up on social media during the siege. It was based on an invented episode of personal abuse on public transport and exhorted the public to ride with Muslims to protect them from a non-existent anti-Muslim backlash.
While real, innocent people were held at gunpoint in a deadly serious act of Islamist extremism, many fellow citizens and media poseurs were boasting publicly about their disdain for an imagined ugly social response. This was distasteful sanctimony — as I wrote at the time — and became even more sickening when two innocents lost their lives.
But such distaste should turn to consternation now we realise the police hierarchy — whose only concern that day should have been the hostages — were also troubling themselves about perceived societal responses to this act of terror.
If ever we wondered whether debates about political correctness and freedom of speech can have any tangible worth, here is the evidence. Politicised thoughts can shape or constrain practical action.
This might be one of the most disturbing manifestations of political correctness we have seen — instead of worrying only about direct victims whose lives were in danger, police were trying to be mindful of some imagined sociological impact. If it weren’t so tragic it would be the stuff of satire — it is like handing over your counter-terrorism operations to a Q&A panel.
It wasn’t the police’s job at that time to wonder whether an act of Islamist terrorism would spark a backlash, much less allow such considerations to influence their decisions. Any backlash, anyway, was going to relate to the terrorism, not the police response.
Most of us would contend that the police role was to eliminate the threat and free the hostages. We have police to defeat terrorism, not to fret about its impact on our social dynamics. We pay police to uphold the law and keep us safe, not to salve our social conscience, educate us about society or patronise us on multiculturalism.
Sure, police will have intelligence and experience when it comes to the possibility of retaliatory attacks. But such strife has been rare in this county and, even if feared, such considerations should not compromise an anti-terror operation. When real lives are in the balance we don’t need to conjure up imaginary victims.
Acting Deputy Commissioner Jeff Loy even detailed how police launched Operation Hammerhead to boost patrols and guard against anti-Muslim violence.
Scipione, we learn, considered his contact with officers commanding the siege operation as “welfare calls” rather than efforts to ensure the operation was being directed to the right outcome. Again, here is the sharp end of law enforcement focused on the warm art of social work.
Some might find it heartening to think the police leadership was concerned about the Muslim community and the mental welfare of police officers. But surely it needed to be — as Scipione stressed to the inquiry — the welfare of the hostages that was paramount.
As soon as the gunman invoked Islamist extremism as his motive — especially given his extremist background — police should have known they needed to incapacitate him before he took other lives on his way to martyrdom. The hostages had every right to think they would be freed before anyone worried about an anti-Muslim backlash.
Media at the time were being encouraged not to mention the Islamist links to this attack. Some journalists, typically, were in jihad denial.
Leading ABC opinionista Jonathan Green tweeted how the “connection” to Islamic State was “made up”. The chairman of the Australian Press Council, Julian Disney, admonished the media over its coverage of what he preferred to call Sydney’s “hostage incident”.
Here we had feelings triumphing over facts. The terrorist in this case had long defined himself through Islamism — he was a self-styled Shia cleric who opposed the fight against the Taliban and had been prosecuted for sending sickening letters to the families of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan. He was facing sex assault charges as well as charges over his ex-wife’s murder.
He had recently declared himself a Sunni, loyal to Islamic State. When he took 17 hostages at gunpoint and claimed to have a bomb, he unfurled an Islamic banner, demanded a proper Islamic State flag and declared he was conducting an Islamic State act against Australia. Yet the ABC published an online profile that did not mention the words Muslim, Islam or Islamic State and denied any links to terrorism.
Instead of dealing with the reality, too many were wishing he was just another nutter.
It is true that having been one of the last people to walk out of that cafe before Man Haron Monis pulled his gun, the Martin Place siege will always weigh heavily on me. But it is also true that for years before that close shave my commentary had warned about complacency and delusion over the jihadist threat.
And the worry is we are not improving. Almost a year after the Lindt attack a teenager dressed in black yelled “Allahu Akbar” after he shot dead a stranger, police worker Curtis Cheng, in Parramatta. Yet in a press conference five hours later, Scipione said there was “nothing to link this event to any terrorist related activity”. Politicians skirted the Islamist extremism issue.
The public needs to know its law enforcement and political leaders are being frank and fearless…”