Douglas Murray is a prominent British neoconservative ideologue. He is currently the Associate Director of the Henry Jackson Society.
On extra-judicial assassinations Torture
Douglas Murray has defended the use of US drone attacks and shockingly, even torture in the form of water-boarding.
in the below video he suggests there are degrees of torture which may bye “legitimate”:
Human Rights and Rule of law
Douglas Murray does not believe universal human rights, should be equally applied. He thus violates the rule of law. He writes,
“Under Article 2 of the ridiculous and newly invented European Convention of Human Rights, European countries are “forbidden” from deporting or rendering culprits if their lives may be in danger… To win this war lives of terrorists and inciters to terrorism should be considered as pitilessly on our streets and within our society as they are on foreign battlefields… The rights of the West’s people override those of the Islamist’s in their midst. And extradition should also include sending suspects away from our shores.”
(Douglas Murray, Neoconservatism: Why We Need It, Encounter Books: New York, 2006, p.215)
He also opposes the Human Rights Act.
On Liberals and Equality
Douglas Murray endorses inequality:
“Welfarism was not, as it stood, the answer – it was a problem and it had become a problem because a piece of false or bad logic had been taken for granted… At the root of many of these assumptions, on race, welfare, employment and other issues, lay the most mistaken rallying cry of liberals: ‘equality’…”
He then positively cites the “godfather of neoconservatism”, Irving Kristol to elaborate this point,
“I know the question of equality is something that many religious people are quite obsessed with. Here, I will simply plead my Jewishness and say, equality has never been a Jewish thing. Rich men are fine, poor men are fine, so long as they are decent human beings. I do not like equality. I do not like it in sports, in the arts, or in economics. I just don’t like it in this world.”[1]
On Liberalism and Equality
Douglas Murray endorses inequality:
“Welfarism was not, as it stood, the answer – it was a problem and it had become a problem because a piece of false or bad logic had been taken for granted… At the root of many of these assumptions, on race, welfare, employment and other issues, lay the most mistaken rallying cry of liberals: ‘equality’…”
He then positively cites the “godfather of neoconservatism”, Irving Kristol to elaborate this point,
“I know the question of equality is something that many religious people are quite obsessed with. Here, I will simply plead my Jewishness and say, equality has never been a Jewish thing. Rich men are fine, poor men are fine, so long as they are decent human beings. I do not like equality. I do not like it in sports, in the arts, or in economics. I just don’t like it in this world.”
(Douglas Murray, Neoconservatism: Why We Need It, Encounter Books: New York, 2006, p.37)
Links to Far-right
In the end notes of the book, Murray references (on p. 239) a book by extremist, anti-Muslim Robert Spencer called Islam Unveiled. He has called him a “spectacular scholar”. Spencer’s book, which demonises Islam as a religion, is filled with fallacious half-truths and is celebrated by the right-wing Muslim haters. Despite this he has called him a “spectacular scholar” and has said that,
“In America I respect Robert Spencer, he is a brilliant scholar”
Spencer, an ordained Catholic deacon who is the main writer for the anti-Muslim Jihad Watch website, has been behind other websites named f***allah.com and f***islam.com. His incitement to hatred is such that even Theresa May the extremist banned him from entering the country.
Spencer’s writings have also inspired the anti-Muslim Christian terrorist Anders Breivik.
He also defended the EDL:
“If you were ever going to have a grassroots response from non-Muslims to Islamism that would be how you would want it, surely.”
And:
“They [the EDL] have tried to kick out BNP elements. Does that mean that they aren’t racists? I’m not making a definitive point.”
And:
“These things are extremely complex and we ought to be careful before dismissing whole swathes of people [i.e. EDL members].”
He admires and supports Nigel Farrage, sharing his concerns, stating,
“With millions of immigrants flooding into Europe and high-level terrorists given sanctuary, the elites have said there was nothing they could do and this was just something we must live with. The public have not accepted this.”
Funding from Bigoted Donors
According to the Guardian,
“Another donor is Nina Rosenwald, whose Abstraction Fund donated $10,000 to HJS via a US fundraising arm, the American Friends of the Henry Jackson Society. Rosenwald also finances the US-based rightwing Gatestone Institute which publishes Douglas Murray’s writing alongside Geert Wilders, the founder and leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom who has declared he “hates Islam”.”
Rosenwald is one of the key figures in the multi-million dollar, neoconservative/Zionist, Islamophobia-whipping industry who has been able to fuse two objectives through her funding, promoting Zionist interests and spreading fear and hatred of Islam and Muslims. A 2011 report by Center for American Progress,Fear Inc, places her family foundation in the “top seven funders of Islamophobia” (p.14). The Council on American-Islamic Relations published another report two years later titled, Legislating Fear, also listed it as one of the groups in the Islamophobia Network’s “outer core” (p.5). Her friends-list reads like a who’s who of extremist neocon, Islamophobia-peddlers with people like the racist Daniel Pipes (who funds seven anti-Muslim groups – Legislating Fear, p.7), “World War IV”advocating Norman Podhoretz and Henry Kissinger. On the connection with Podhoretz, Blumenthal writes,
“Rosenwald counts among her closest friends Norman Podhoretz, the octogenarian neoconservative activist and former Commentary magazine editor who argues that Jewish Democrats are heretics betraying their religious duty to support the Jewish state. Rosenwald, according to one friend, is also close to Podhoretz’s daughter, Ruthie Blum, a right-wing columnist who lives in the illegal West Bank settlement of Har Adar and writes a column forIsrael Hayom, a newspaper published by far-right billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a chief financial supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benajamin Netanyahu. Father and daughter echo the line of Likudnik Greater Israel ideology…”
Rosenwald’s Gatestone Institute was born when she split Hudson New York City from Hudson’s national branch. One of the “experts” found on the Hudson Institute is, Richard Perle, a key architect of the 2003 Iraq war.
The Clarion Project is an anti-Muslim organisation which has been publishing Nazi-esque propaganda and which has been identified as part of the multi-million dollar American Islamophobic Network. Perle has served as a representative for the Clarion Project and a contact point for interviews for various inflammatory, anti-Muslim videos produced by Clarion. The Clarion Project have also published articles supporting the idea of Islam being the “Trojan Horse” hell-bent on invasion:
“Islam is more than a religion… Since radical Muslims know they can never defeat our military on the battlefield, they devised the strategy of internal subversion… Like the ancient Trojan Horse welcomed within the city’s gates, Islam has entered America disguised as a religion… But its ultimate objective is political: Destroy America and establish an Islamic nation under Sharia Law.”
It has also promoted Quilliam Foundation’s Ghaffar Hussain and the Henry Jackson Society.
Perle penned the neoconservative roadmap, Clean Break: A new Strategy in Securing the Realm for Israeli Likud party prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This document, as well as influencing the removal of Saddam Hussein, outlined the way in which the areas of Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria could be “remade”.
Perle is listed on the HJS website as an international patron.
The HJS’s link with Netanyahu and his party does not end here. According to one source, British journalist and policy analyst Samer Libdeh, the HJS “acts in Britain on behalf of Israel’s right-wing Likud Party”. Of course, it could be the case that some of the donors which HJS do not want disclosed may be right-wing Zionists residing in the Occupied Territories.
On Muslims
Douglas Murray has particularly bigoted views reserved primarily for Islam and Muslims. Murray explicitly calls for exceptional discriminatory treatment of Muslims. He has gone on record to say the following regarding Muslims:
“It is late in the day, but Europe still has time to turn around the demographic time-bomb which will soon see a number of our largest cities fall to Muslim majorities. It has to. All immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop.”
He has also stated that,
“Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board.”
With regards to Muslim schools (and ignoring other faith schools), he has written,
“The attitude towards Muslim schools should be exceptional… if any Muslim academies are allowed to exist, they should be funded entirely privately, with no taxpayer assistance and should be subject to uniquely strict regulation and inspection. If such conditions are considered unbearable, then Muslims will have to try their luck in other countries…
“To defend our tolerance we must be intolerant to those who are opposed to us.”
(Douglas Murray, Neoconservatism: Why We Need It, 2005, p.177-8)
Murray insinuates executing “Islamists” as a final solution for ending the “cold war” with Islamism”:
“The fact is this at the end of the Second World War the Nazi leaders were tried and executed. At the end of the cold war it didn’t happen, one of the biggest problem we have is that it wasn’t resolved.”
With regards to the religion itself, he has stated
“Islam is not violent per se, though they’re quite good at it when they’re in charge.”
On Islam
He calls the Qur’an and the religion of Islam “bad”, and the Prophet of Islam “a very bad man”.
Standing Against Bigots 