Philosopher C.S. Lewis once noted that it’s what slips from our mouths when we’re not thinking that reveals our hearts. This could come to mind with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s claim that those demanding an inquiry into child-abusing rape gangs are jumping “on a bandwagon of the far Right.”
Delivered at a Monday press conference, Starmer’s comments were in response to a firestorm of criticism ignited by entrepreneur Elon Musk. Musk had resurrected the rape-gang story via his X social-media platform mere days ago, as I reported this weekend.
The prime minister’s efforts at flipping the script appear to have backfired, however. That is, many critics say that implicit in his remarks is that child sex abuse is just a right-wing concern. History may inform that he’s not all wrong about that, either (more on this later). Also notable here is that this controversy is shaping up to be a classic Establishment/anti-Establishment conflict.
Battle Lines Are Drawn
For brief background, note the issue here: Muslim “rape gangs” had (have?) abused many thousands of British girls for decades. Just as damnably, British authorities have often covered this up in deference to political correctness. In fact, they sometimes put the onus on the white victims rather than blaming the (generally) Pakistani-descent perpetrators. (The New American reported on this a decade ago already, such as here and here.)
And now, with this story finally getting the attention it deserves, the Establishment empire strikes back. (Starmer’s comments are below.)
But the prime minister may wish he could go back in time and have a redo. After all, he has only dug his hole deeper, with many prominent figures lining up alongside Musk. Just consider comments made (below) by Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage.
British journalist and ex-politician Martin Daubney also weighed in (below), asking if this was Starmer’s “biggest mistake yet.”
Then there’s Conservative Party (Tory) leader Kemi Badenoch. She vowed Monday (below) that her party would propose an amendment requiring a national inquiry into the rape-gangs scandal.
Apropos to the latter, Starmer is correct on one matter. The Tories, one of Britain’s two Establishment parties, wielded power for 14 years. Yet they also did little about the rape scandal, he pointed out. In fact, this is why Musk recently urged Brits to vote Reform. “It’s the only hope,” he said. (This isn’t to say Badenoch isn’t sincere; she may be a new breed.)
Ironically, this anti-Establishment scandal is intensifying at a symbolically significant time. That is, Starmer’s stumble came on the day, January 6, when the world standard bearer for anti-Establishment resistance, Donald Trump, had his election certified by Congress and insufferable Establishment court jester Justin Trudeau resigned the prime ministership of Canada.
Children Are Just Adults of a Smaller Growth, After All, Right?
Whatever Starmer meant, however, by calling the rape-gang-inquiry call a right-wing “bandwagon,” it wouldn’t be surprising if his moral compass were a tad askew. For this characterizes the Left and the Establishment generally.
Consider: Leftists are known to push policies with the appeal “Do it for the children.” But what do they actually do for them? They kill them in the womb, or at least advocate it. Why, they fund abortion and sometimes even support it up to birth (and beyond).
Leftists also vehemently defend having drag queens, symbolic of sexual devolutionary perversion, read stories to first-graders. Their agenda has even given us homosexual bars where drag queens perform before young children — who slip them dollar bills.
But then there’s this blast from the past. Question: Is the following a good summation of the argument used, starting many decades ago, to normalize homosexuality?
“Many researchers [are] taking a different view of homosexuality,” a newspaper wrote late last century. “Homosexuality once was thought to stem from psychological influences early in life. Now, many experts view it as a deep-rooted predisposition that does not change.” These “experts view it as a sexual orientation as immutable as heterosexuality…,” the periodical later added.
You may recognize this as the foundation of the “born that way” argument, with such claims regularly used to promote the idea that if something is innate, questioning it smacks of bigotry. But I have a confession to make: I told a little fib (for effect). The above quotation is not from decades ago but from the Los Angeles Times in 2013 — and the subject wasn’t “homosexuality.” I’d inserted that term in place of another: pedophilia.
The Shocking Truth
Here’s what the passage originally read:
“Many researchers [are] taking a different view of pedophilia. Pedophilia once was thought to stem from psychological influences early in life. Now, many experts view it as a deep-rooted predisposition that does not change.” These “experts view it as a sexual orientation as immutable as heterosexuality or homosexuality.”
The point? The Times is a mainstream, very liberal paper. And it was advancing the argument that so spectacularly helped normalize homosexuality — except, in service of normalizing pedophilia.
Outlier, you say? Perhaps not. As illustrated in my 2013 essay “The Slippery Slope to Pedophilia,” leftists have long exhibited indifference to the crime. That is, when they’re not registering what actually appears affection for it.
In fact, even when leftists inveigh against pedophilia there may be ulterior motives. Just consider their relentless attacks on the Catholic Church over its well-publicized (and exaggerated) sex-abuse scandal. While launching this assault, left-wing media simultaneously ignored the government-school child-sex-abuse scandal. This is despite a U.S. government-funded study finding that the school problems are 100 times the magnitude of the Church’s.
And how bad is the bias? That study, conducted by Hofstra University in 2004, evaluated topic-specific coverage by California’s 61 largest newspapers during 2002’s first half. The results? The outlets ran 2,000 Church scandal stories, mostly involving past allegations.
And how many were published during that period about the much larger, and still ongoing, government-school scandal?
Four.
Why, a cynic could conclude that the left-wing media didn’t really care about child sex abuse. It was just a cudgel for bludgeoning one of its favorite targets, the Catholic Church.
But is this surprising? The Left also lionized “sex researcher” Alfred Kinsey, who used pedophiles to collect “data” on young children. So welcome to the Left’s Brave New World: pedophilia as lifestyle choice.
