After the Paris attacks Francois Hollande proposed removing French citizenship from those of dual nationality convicted of terrorists acts, but his own Socialist Party supporters soon reversed themselves and opposed this change. Why?

Behind the high-minded arguments of the opponents of the law one espies rather narrower and more genuine electoral considerations. The opponents of the law are not philosophers, they are politicians, and the fact is that 80 percent of Muslims in France vote for the president’s Socialist Party. The opponents no doubt fear that if they support the law they in turn will lose the support of a significant number of voters, possibly a decisive number. Those voters will either abstain or find another political formation more sympathetic to their views.

This, I surmise, is how the parliamentary opponents of the proposed law think. But if I am right, it shows that they are the true Islamophobes, to turn on them their own term of abuse of opponents: For why should Muslims in France object to the law unless they were sympathetic to the terrorists who risked having their nationality withdrawn?

An absurd reaction to a political cartoon prompts Dalrymple to examine the power of false accusations of racism:

Outrage supposedly felt on behalf of others is extremely gratifying for more than one reason. It has the appearance of selflessness, and everyone likes to feel that he is selfless. It confers moral respectability on the desire to hate or despise something or somebody, a desire never far from the human heart. It provides him who feels it the possibility of transcendent purpose, if he decides to work toward the elimination of the supposed cause of his outrage. And it may even give him a reasonably lucrative career, if he becomes a professional campaigner or politician: For there is nothing like stirring up resentment for the creation of a political clientele.

Antiracism is a perfect cause for those with free-floating outrage because it puts them automatically on the side of the angels without any need personally to sacrifice anything. You have only to accuse others of it to feel virtuous yourself. There is no defense against the accusation: The very attempt at a defense demonstrates the truth of it. As a consequence of this, it is a rhetorical weapon of enormous power that can be wielded against anybody who opposes your views. It reduces them to silence.

Dalrymple decides that Max Frisch’s novel The Fire Raisers provides an analogy for the willful blindness of so many to the meaning of the Paris attacks, such as a Le Monde reporter who described chants of “Allahu akbar” during a moment of silence for the attack’s victims, at a Turkish soccer match, as a statement in favor of….Turkish nationalism:

But it is perfectly obvious that the attacks in Paris had nothing whatever to do with Turkish nationalism …The chant of ‘Allahu akbar’ during the minute’s silence before the soccer match expressed a religious, not a nationalistic, sentiment. This is so perfectly obvious that one wonders why the author of the article assiduously avoided saying it.

…We should not allow such evasion—a mere 13 days after the bombings!—to go unremarked.

Dalrymple is appalled to read an English university professor’s 5 top tips for study, and offers his own in the Salisbury Review:

1. When thinking ahead, think ahead.
2. When concentrating, don’t get distracted.
3. Agree with everything any superior says.
4. Keep a supply of sick notes in case of exam anxiety.
5. Always write sentences whose negation conveys no different meaning.

The Guardian asks rhetorically whether Molenbeek is “Europe’s Jihadi Central”. You probably won’t be surprised to hear their conclusion, to which Dalrymple replies: “Thought is perhaps not the author’s strong point.”

A bit of moral exhibitionism causes Dalrymple to conclude, on the Salisbury Review blog, that “The covers of the Lancet are like a hybrid of Pravda and Elmer Gantry.”

Thankfully, even the most morbid aspects of human behavior (like abuse of the elderly) are studied by specialists intently, so that you and I don’t have to:

A recent review article in the New England Journal of Medicine draws the attention of doctors to the phenomenon that they would probably rather not have to think about. Surveys suggest that about 10 per cent of the elderly (rather alarmingly, from my current personal perspective, defined as those over 60 years of age) are abused…