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Home Marx and Mohammed in Manchester

Marx and Mohammed in Manchester

There’s good news for Manchester.

The city with the highest death rate and some of the worst drug and alcohol problems in England is
getting a statue of Friedrich Engels.

A scowling bearded cement statue of Marx’s best friend will fix everything wrong with Manchester.

The statue comes to Manchester courtesy of Phil Collins. That’s not the singer who crooned, “You’ll Be In My Heart”, but the British artist who introduced East German instructors of Marxism-Leninism to Manchester with Marxism Today. Like the more famous Phil, he has his share of love songs, but it’s Marx and Engels, who are in his heart.

Manchester had no statues of Engels. Now thanks to Collins, it will.

Phil Collins lives in Berlin. The Engels statue comes from the Ukraine. And he would like to bring the unemployed instructors of Marxism-Leninism from East Germany to Manchester “to teach Marxism in schools there.” It failed in the Ukraine. It failed in East Germany. But it’s bound to work in Manchester.

The search for the statue started out in the Russian city of Engels: a post-industrial disaster area where unemployment is high and drug smuggling and human trafficking are major industries. The old Communist infrastructure is coming apart. And so on he went to Mala Pereshchepina in the Ukraine.

Mala Pereshchepina had previously been best known for the tomb of Kubrat, founder of Old Great Bulgaria, who had been laid to rest surrounded by golden vessels and jeweled rings. There Phil found a broken cement statue of an old monster and decided to haul the ugly old thing over to Manchester.

There’s always been a market for the art and tchotchkes of fallen totalitarian regimes. There’s a booming market in Nazi and Communist souvenirs. And Collins isn’t the first sympathizers to haul back one of the many Comrade Ozymandias statues that were tossed into the dirt when the Soviet Union fell.

There’s a Lenin statue in Fremont, Seattle. It was bought and shipped over by an English teacher who mortgaged his house to pay for the statue of a mass murderer. It’s been for sale for over twenty years. The current asking price is $250K. So far no capitalist has acquired Lenin as a lawn ornament.

The New York Lenin facing Wall Street hasn’t done any better. On Houston Street, the Red Square building houses a FedEx, a Dunkin’ Donuts, a Sleepy’s and an H&R Block. The building was built by a former NYU professor of “radical sociology”. Then it was bought for $100 million. The Red Square was renamed, Lenin came down and occupies a humbler perch on an eyesore of a tenement.

The icons of Communism don’t hold up well against the march of capitalism.

Being derivative, Phil Collins has to compensate by being twice as loud. The Engels statue will encourage Manchester’s working class to contemplate the “conditions of the working class” today. But Collins seems oddly uninterested in contemplating the condition of the working class in the former Communist countries he passed through while searching for the kitschy junk souvenirs of Marxist tyranny.

Indeed, the only people whose conditions he seemed interested in had been pushing Marxism-Leninism.

Phil Collins would not have done well under Communism. Just ask the Russian Futurists. What began with a boisterous call to throw the art and literature of the past overboard from the “steamship of modernity” ended with a muffled whimper as the Futurists were forced to adopt Socialist Realism. Collins’ statue is, among other things, a tribute to the Communist suppression of modern art.

The irony of modern art celebrating its own suppression is both heartbreaking and stupefying.

The Engels statue will sit in Tony Wilson Place. Mr. Manchester’s spot has a certain appropriateness and inappropriateness. Wilson was a Socialist who refused to pay for private health care, despite being fairly wealthy. Engels profited from the same misery that he graphically condemned. But none of it matters.

A mile away from Mr. Engels’ new digs is the Manchester Arena where Salman Ramadan Abedi, a second-generation Muslim refugee, murdered 22 concert goers and wounded hundreds more.

A specter had stalked the streets of Manchester. And it was no longer the specter of Communism. It was Salman howling, “There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is the messenger of Allah”. Forget Marx. In Manchester, it’s Mohammed time. And Islam does not allow any paintings, cartoons or statues of Mo.

Cops raided Abedi’s home in a part of South Manchester where sixteen other Jihadis had operated. Forget Engels, you can tour the home of Abu Qaqa al-Britani, the ISIS propaganda point man who did for the Islamic terror group what Engels had done for the popularization of his left-wing cause. If that doesn't float your boat, there are the Abdallah brothers, the Halane sisters and Jamal Al-Harith

Friedrich Engels had lived in Moss Side, Manchester. These days Moss Side is best known as a no-go zone in progress. The neighborhood swarms with Muslim migrants. It’s violent and broken. 36% of the population is Christian and 34% Muslim. 12% of the population comes from Somalia or Pakistan.

The Engels house was long since demolished. But Salman Abedi’s home is still standing in Moss Side.

There is a different breed of radicals in Manchester now. Forget the old folks flying the red flag. It’s the black and white flag of the Jihad that counts now. The new radicals of Manchester aren’t fighting for the dictatorship of the proletariat, but the tyranny of Sharia.

The new murderous utopian movement cares nothing for Das Kapital. Its guidebook is the Koran.

Dumping a statue of Engels salvaged from the wreck of Communism into a city on the verge of being wrecked by the left’s enthusiasm for migration is more of a morbid prank than anything else. The left’s nostalgia for its murderous past has blinded it to the reality of the murderous present and future.

Engels viewed the “Mohammedan revolution” as class warfare. The Manifesto of the Communist Party written by Marx and Engels sees their radical movement as the superior inheritors of Islamic fanaticism.

"Islam was unconquerable so long as it trusted in itself alone and saw an enemy in every non-Mohammedan," they write in its closing message. “From the moment when Islam entered upon the path of compromise and united with the non-Mohammedan, the so-called civilized powers, its conquering power was gone. With Islam it could not have been otherwise. It was not the true world redeeming faith.”

“Socialism, however, is this, and socialism cannot conquer nor redeem the world if it ceases to believe upon itself alone,” they conclude.

There are many Socialist militants in the UK, but they have made their compromise with Islam.

That’s why Jeremy Corbyn winks and nods at Hamas and Hezbollah. It’s why Phil Collins went to the West Bank. For his Ramallah production, he screened The Battle of Algiers which glamorized the FLN terrorists who desecrated the Great Synagogue in Algiers, planted an FLN flag and scrawled, “Death to the Jews”. The synagogue is now a mosque. Yesterday Algiers, tomorrow Manchester.

Labour meetings in Manchester have been known to be segregated by gender. The police spend more time hunting Islamophobes than fighting Islamic terror. The specter isn’t of Communism, but of Sharia.

Muslims in Manchester know what the true world redeeming faith is. And it wasn’t preached by Engels. It was the left, not Islam that failed. The left turned over its mission to Third World radicals who were more Islamic than Socialist, but who had the courage to bomb and kill that the European left no longer did. And then when the Socialism vanished and there was only Islam, the Socialists bowed their heads.

Forget Engels. Mohammed is in Manchester now.

Comments

  1. Infidel29/7/17

    I posted elsewhere thanking you for this superb article. One tangent that occurred to me, Europe is a good case study for the possible future clash of the left and radical Islam.

    In Latin America, it might be possible for the left to win, for example ruthless regimes like Cuba might be able to defeat Islam. Still, a horrifying prospect to contemplate.

    Islam is trying to make inroads into Venezuela, but they still seem to be too weak, demographically.

    In Western Europe, the left seems to be just surrendering without a fight.

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    1. Anonymous5/8/17

      As in the Islamic "revolution" of Iran in 1979, the commies and Islamic got together to bring down the government. The commies organised this revolution for their Islamic brothers. But the useful idiots of the left were cheated and they had to run, be killed or spend some time in Evin. The left will never learn

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  2. This is why I steadfastly refuse to acknowledge that leftists are "progressives," as they so much like to call themselves.

    People who worship an ideology that goes back to the 18th century, if not earlier, and has not changed an iota since then, cannot be called progressive. And don't bother to recite to me the "different kinds of socialism." They all boil down to government's tyrannical control over the life of citizens.

    Not only are leftists NOT progressive, they are NOT liberals, either. Not in the classical sense. Liberalism generally emphasizes liberty, individualism, and support for limited constitutional government. Please tell me what part of that is supported by today's self-described liberals. Certainly not individualism or support for a limited government. As for 'liberty,' leftists merely confuse that with self-indulgence. And if anyone tells me that modern liberals (leftists, by any other name) adhere to the famous, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," I will not hesitate to call him/her a shameless liar.

    So I am not surprised that this Phil Collins thinks he does such a service to Manchester by unloading a piece of junky Communism memorabilia on the city. Deep down inside, every lefty sighs nostalgically for Soviet-style communism. But no matter how often the left "reinvents" socialism to make it sound "progressive," the truth is that leftism is a decrepit, historically-proven failed ideology. A Tyranny that seeks total control by depriving citizens of even the most basic civil liberty, and by crushing dissent and destroying dissenters.

    That is why I will always refuse to call these leftists "progressives" or "liberals." They are neither.

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  3. Just a common 'tater30/7/17

    Thank you for demonstrating once more that the leftists (so-called progressives and liberals) do indeed suffer from some kind of delusional disorder.

    The leftists and islamists currently seem to work together because both groups believe they are morally, mentally, physically, and culturally superior to everyone else. However, I suspect they both think the other is a useful idiot.

    The left no doubt thinks that when the smoke has cleared after tearing down western institutions, they will turn on and suppress the islamists. Check Iran out to see how well that worked. Russia and China have active Islamic insurgencies that they work overtime to keep a lid on.

    The UK and Western Europe may not be salvable. They need to act ASAP to save their heritage and culture. I think we still have a chance, but we need to stop the leftist nonsense and stop bending over to appease leftists and islamists here in the US.

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  4. Another seminal, unassailable thesis. Disseminate, disseminate! Manchester of course will not read, listen or care. Those whose heads are not up their own fundaments, have their heads up the combined scented jacksies of their current two Premier League football teams - and the attitudes of those opposing supporters personify the current zeitgeist of a City that was once a powerhouse of The Empire: arrogant, stupid and vociferous with it, despite the demographic demise of the real Manchester. Their teams, of course, reflective of the multi-culti melange.

    O England, my England; how suddenly thy glory faded. In the face of what? Ignorant savagery, within and without? Arrgghh.

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  5. Infidel30/7/17

    One other demographic advantage the Muslims have over the left is abortions. I just found out that Cuba has almost as many abortions as live births.

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  6. National Socialists also admired the fanatical spirit of Islam. Those who trace modern political radicalism only as far as the French Revolution need to go further back.

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  7. Sammish30/7/17

    Your mention of Algiers is befitting and a painful reminder of the destructive nature of islamofascism. It's personal experience for me. The FLN's official slogan was: "La valise ou le cerceuil" which means "The suitcase or the coffin". Go figure.
    By the way, I think that the great synagogue of Algiers (after it was burned, and desecrated with plundered without measure was turned into a post-office. One of the most impressive post-office building in North Africa. Go figure.

    I wish good luck to Manchester.

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  8. Anonymous1/8/17

    I have to imagine in Manchester's Islamified future, there will be no place for graven statues of atheists. After all, did not the Prophet himself (Fascism Be Unto Him) specifically forbid art that depicts living beings?
    I wonder if the atheist left really thinks Moslems will be their BFF's in their magical dystopia?
    Thanks for another well written literary broadside Mr. Greenfield.
    Here's an example of such a literary broadside in an earlier era of US history:
    “The Union Platform regards the Rebellion as flagrantly wrong-iniquitious, inexcusable, an justly exposing its contrivers to punishment. The Democratic, on the other hand, has no word of condemnation for the treason, nor of reproof for its authors.”
    Democratic, as in the Democratic party.

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  9. Y. Ben-David2/8/17

    It is interesting to see how Communism, which seemed dead and totally irrelevant 20 years ago is now making a big comeback. While it is true that the new Marxists are not as doctrinaire as the old Soviet-controlled COMINTERN was, we are seeing the same fanaticism and the tired claim that "this time we will get it right". From the rehabilitation of Stalin's reputation in Russia, where he is viewed by something like 50% in a poll as the greatest man in history and statues of him are being set up.
    Then there is Bernie Sanders in the US who is only getting more popular, once had a flag of the USSR on his Mayor's desk in Vermont. How about Justin Trudeau's tearful eulogy for Fidel Castro? Or one of Barak Obama's cabinet secretaries quoting approvingly from Mao Zedong? Jeremy Corbyn in the UK?
    It seems people in the democratic West are getting tired of their democracies and are looking for fanciful utopian ideals. Looks like Santayana's statement "those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it" is more relevant than ever.

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  10. That statue of Engels will fit right in with the blight of Manchester. What a joke.

    That gives me an idea. I think I have have a statue of Pee Wee Herman installed on my front patio.

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  11. Great post, I worked in Manchester for 18 years and had many run ins with the religion of peace. Like several other large English cities it is now a lost cause and a sad reminder of the follies of past socialist experiments at destroying British culture.

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