In the following piece, adapted from the London Telegraph, London Mayor Boris Johnson compares the crowd-mentality syndrome that has enabled the terrorist group Boko Haram to grow with the political correctness that just led to the firing of a radio DJ in Britain.
It is hard to think of any group of human beings more obviously loathsome than those who go by the general nom de guerre of “Boko Haram.” I yearn for them all to be rounded up by helicopter gunship, and brought to justice.
We find such behavior mind-boggling, don’t we: to shoot, maim or kidnap young people — and all for what? It is there in their deliciously moronic name.
“Boko” appears — on at least one interpretation — to be a kind of pidgin word for the English “book.” “Haram” means forbidden, religiously prohibited, verboten, nefastus. The gist of their manifesto is that Western education — reading a boko — is haram. Boko Haram! Boko Haram!
Young people in northern Nigeria have been brainwashed into becoming part of the evil panga-wielding mob.
It appears to be a form of collective insanity. It is the crowd that gives the feeling its compulsive and hypnotic effect — and when a crowd has decided that something is haram, who dares stand in the way?
Good people in that part of Nigeria live in terror of these lunatics, and the sheer force with which they express their views. The Nigerian government seems unable to fight back. That is the power of haram.
Can you think of any other society where people can suddenly decide that something is haram — and where everyone becomes terrified of the displeasure of the mob? Can you think of a country where there is a phenomenon of people being whipped up into an orchestrated frenzy — and where a funk-ridden officialdom refuses to take them on?
It seems that over the weekend, the BBC forced a well-regarded 67-year-old DJ on Radio Devon to resign because he had been so careless as to play a 1932 recording of “The Sun Has Got His Hat On.”
This contained a word that is now unmentionable. It is rude, offensive, and I would never use it; but this word has become so intensely haram that a miasma attaches to anyone using it, even inadvertently; and the prohibition is now enforced with a semi-religious fervor.
Their treatment of this man is utterly disgraceful. There is a film that has been broadcast several times on the BBC, by the name of Pulp Fiction, directed by Quentin Tarantino.
Toward the end, John Travolta accidentally shoots another character in the back of a car, so causing a mess. Travolta and his accomplice, played by Samuel L. Jackson, take refuge at the house of a distant associate, played by Tarantino himself. They arrive at breakfast time, and try to persuade Tarantino to help them dispose of the corpse.
Tarantino takes violent exception to this, and in the course of the conversation he refers to the corpse several times by using the aforementioned unmentionable word. “Did you notice a sign in front of my house that says dead [unmentionable word] storage? Did you?” he asks Travolta and Jackson.
Now can someone tell me, in the name of all that is holy, why David Lowe of Radio Devon was made to resign for mistakenly playing an old recording — and yet the BBC schedulers see nothing wrong with broadcasting Pulp Fiction?
If there were any logic or consistency in the world, the entire cadre of BBC schedulers would be asked to commit harakiri. They should all be sacked, from Tony Hall downward.
Will they go? I doubt it. Will they all be sacked? Not a chance. Will they be forced to apologize for repeatedly scheduling Pulp Fiction? Of course not. So where is the consistency, the fairness? Where does sanity lie?
The answer is that there is no answer. In our own modest way, we live in a Boko Haram world, where it all depends on the swirling rage of the Internet mob, and where terrified bureaucrats and politicians are borne along on a torrent of confected outrage.
There is no consistency in the outlook of the Nigerian maniacs: They use weapons produced by the very capitalist system they claim to deplore, for instance.
There is certainly no logic at the BBC. They should restore [the DJ] to his job — if he will take it — and the entire BBC board should go down to Devon to apologize in person, and at their own expense.