Mark Steyn favors us in the 7/25 Australian with an extreme example of the so-called Stockholm Syndrome, a term denoting captives who become sympathetic to their captors; the phenomenon was first named after a 1973 hostage situation in Stockholm that ended with the captives pleading on behalf of their attackers. The FBI estimates that 8 percent of captives fall prey.
Steyn tells the incredible tale of one Johnelle Bryant, a US Department of Agriculture official in Florida, who in 2001 found herself confronted by Muhammad Atta asking USDA to put up $650,000 so he could convert a plane into a crop-duster. Let Steyn take up the tale:
"The meeting got off to a rocky start when
Atta refused to deal with Bryant because she was but a woman. But,
after this unpleasantness had been smoothed out, things went
swimmingly. When it was explained to him that, alas, he wouldn't get
the 650 grand in cash that day, Atta threatened to cut Bryant's throat.
He then pointed to a picture behind her desk showing an aerial view of
downtown Washington - the White House, the Pentagon et al - and asked: 'How would America like it if another country destroyed that city and
some of the monuments in it?'"
Fortunately, Bryant's been on the training course and knows an
opportunity for multicultural outreach when she sees one. 'I felt that
he was trying to make the cultural leap from the country that he came
from,' she recalled. 'I was attempting, in every manner I could, to
help him make his relocation into our country as easy for him as I
could.'
"So a few weeks later, when fellow 9/11 terrorist Marwan
al-Shehhi arrived to request another half-million dollar farm subsidy
and Atta showed up cunningly disguised with a pair of glasses and
claiming to be another person entirely - to whit, al-Shehhi's
accountant - Bryant sportingly pretended not to recognise him and went
along with the wheeze. The fake specs, like the threat to slit her
throat and blow up the Pentagon, were just another example of the
multicultural diversity that so enriches our society." Steyn believes that the multicultural crowd has been shaken by the London bombings, having in the past glossed over such cultural phenomena as German honor killings and Sydney gang rapes. but will it last? 9/11 shook the Left in America, but now they are in full cry against 43. As early as the 2002 campaign season the Left was pushing for unionized Homeland security workers. By 2003 they were in hysterics over Iraq. not even the moving spectacle of Afghan and Iraqi voters courageously going to the polls make more than a temporary dent in their animus.
When after 7/7 NYPD chief Ray Kelly announced stepped-up subway surveillance he hastened to add, lest anyone worry, that their would be "no racial profiling." Australian grandmas, beware. It seems, alas, that something far worse than 9/11's horror show will be needed to liberate the West's intellectual classes from their multicultural fixation.
Steyn: Stockholm Syndrome Tops Reality
Wikepedia: The Stockholm Syndrome
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