Denial of Islamic terrorism is a fine weapon in the face of hard truths, writes Tim Blair

NO-ONE can match the level of denial repeatedly achieved by the wilfully stupid yay-for-diversity crowd. Show them a blatant act of Islamic terrorism and they will claim it to be anything but.

STAFF DINKUS: Staff dinkus. Tim Blair.

COMPLETE denial of obvious facts can be a remarkably effective tactic. Properly delivered, a blunt denial in the face of clear truths will utterly confound an opponent.

As a short-term strategy, nothing beats it. I witnessed a fine example of the denial gambit years ago at a Collingwood match at the MCG, which had just banned smoking. Cigarette enthusiasts had to trudge outside. Considering that the number of Collingwood supporters who smoke is nearly matched by the number missing more than one tooth — I’m in both camps — this involved considerable human traffic.

During one journey, still several floors from freedom, a young man called the crowd to a halt. “To hell with this,” he announced. “We’re smoking here.” Perhaps it was his youthful defiance, perhaps his natural authority, perhaps even his prison neck tattoos, but we all immediately lit up right there in the stairwell.

A security guard arrived. “You,” he told our leader. “No smoking inside.” The youngster dragged slowly on his Winfield Blue and calmly answered: “I’m not smoking.” The guard was flummoxed. “Put that out,” he said. “Put what out?” came the reply. This exchange continued for several minutes, giving the rest of us time to discuss the match, compare the qualities of our various Legal Aid representatives and finish our own cigarettes.

But as impressive as that demonstration was, my Collingwood colleague cannot match the spectacular level of denial repeatedly achieved by so many in the wilfully stupid yay-for-diversity crowd. Show them a blatant act of Islamic terrorism and they will claim it is anything but.

This 2003 picture provided by the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences shows Nidal Malik Hasan in his graduation photo after he completed his M.D. degree.

In 2009, for example, Islamic extremist Nidal Malik Hasan screamed “Allahu Akbar” before killing 13 people at the Fort Hood army base in Texas. An obvious case of Islamic terrorism, then? The Guardian’s Michael Tomasky wasn’t convinced: “The fact that Hassan reportedly shouted the above is meant, I suppose, to imply that he was an extremist fanatic. I’m not sure that it does. My understanding is that it’s something Arab people often shout before doing something or other.”

Like shooting people. The ABC’s Lisa Millar presented an eight-minute news piece on the shootings without ever mentioning Hassan’s faith, but she did find time to tell viewers he’d “attracted a lot of harassment because of his last name”.

In April 2013, as police hunted for the terrorists behind the deadly Boston Marathon bombings, Fairfax’s Waleed Aly claimed there was “a very real suspicion that the perpetrators here are self-styled American patriots”. Police subsequently shot dead Tamerlan Tsarnaev and arrested his brother Dzhokhar, whose terror motivation was explained to the New York Times by a family member: “He was angry that the world pictures Islam as a violent religion.”

There’s nothing like two bombs in a crowded street to clear up misunderstandings about Islamic violence. Dole-bludging Muslim refugee Dzhokhar — remind you of anyone? — last week appeared in a Boston court where fans gathered to cheer him on.

One month after the Boston attack, British soldier Lee Rigby was run down by a car and then all but decapitated by two knife-wielding Muslims. One of them, Michael Adebolajo, declared: “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you. You people will never be safe. There are many, many ayah throughout the Koran that we must fight them as they fight us, an eye for an eye, a tooth for tooth.”

Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale after the grisly murder of British soldier Lee Rigby in London in the name of ‘almighty Allah’.

Lee Rigby was attacked and killed by two men in the Woolwich area of London on May 23, 2013.

Several hours later, the ABC’s man in London offered this view: “What happened was clear. The motivation, less so.” Then there was this back-and-forth between SBS host Hannah Sinclair and London-based Australian journalist Adam McIlrick.

Sinclair: “Is there any indication of the background of the suspects ­involved?’

McIlrick: “No indication as yet, Hannah.”

You know, apart from all the stuff about Allah and Islam. Which brings us to Man Monis, who praised IS online, demanded an IS flag at the scene of last week’s siege and ordered hostages to tell the media he was running an IS operation. One or two clues there, you’d think, about his beliefs, if they weren’t already clear from his years of wild extremism. Here’s Overland editor Jeff Sparrow’s considered response: “It seems increasingly unlikely that the hostage taker had any relationship to ISIS whatsoever.”

So how does Sparrow, a frequent ABC contributor, explain all of Monis’s IS ranting? “It’s not exactly rare for a delusional man with a history of violence against women to act out murderous fantasies based on whatever material comes to hand.”

It’s just bad luck, I suppose, that Monis was influenced by an Islamic death cult rather than, say, Enid Blyton. It’s just whatever material comes to hand, man. Fairfax’s John Birmingham insisted that Monis wasn’t a “trained jihadi”, but instead “just a murderous arse clown with mental health issues and a gun.” And, coincidentally, an ideology shared by violent Islamists the world over.

In the short term, denial can work. In the long term, however, people will think you might be some kind of idiot. Moreover, it doesn’t deliver lasting results. Later during that Collingwood game I saw our formerly defiant smoker friend outside with the rest of us. His denial strategy lasted exactly as long as one cigarette.

The Christmas pain of plastic reindeer and secret santa

Office colleague Chris once showed me an article about gaudily painted BMWs. One example upset him. “This is revolting,” he fumed. “Who on earth would do that?”

“I think you’ll find it was coons,” I said. Or at least that’s what he heard me say. Chris was appalled. Then I pointed to the caption: “Automotive artwork by Jeff Koons.”

That misunderstanding was quickly sorted, but other cases linger. Fairfax columnist Clementine Ford recently wrote about a traumatic experience on a country train. “I saw a large group of obnoxiously boisterous blokes. One of them held his hand out as I walked past, as if for me to shake it,” she reported.

Besides that friendly gesture, nothing else happened. Yet Ford went into meltdown. “From the moment I spied them to the point of walking past and then for a few minutes in my seat, I was shaking,” she wrote.

Oh, grow up. In the US, First Lady Michelle Obama recently described a “racist experience” at a Target store. “The only person who came up to me in the store was a woman who asked me to help her take something off a shelf,” she said. “Those kinds of things happen in life. So it isn’t anything new.” It also isn’t anything racist.

The current champion of hypersensitivity might be Canberra’s Ngoc Luan Ho Trieu. The Canberra Times reports that Trieu, formerly an economic modeller with the Finance Department, was given a plastic reindeer in 2012 as a Secret Santa gift. “When you press its tail it gives you a chocolate dropping, and a play dough with handwritten words ‘Luan’s modelling kit’,” Trieu said. “I had many sleepless nights after that.”

He’s since taken redundancy, but the pain remains. “Now, 2014 Christmas is coming and I still cannot escape from the sad feelings that Secret Santa forced on me two years ago.” Please think of Trieu on December 25. For some, Christmas is a very difficult time.