Diary of Defeat, November 2025

LANGUAGE CHANGES IN SUBTLE WAYS.  The prospective mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, avers his Muslim identity by declaring “No longer will I live in the shadows,” describing anti-Muslim bias as “the one form of bigotry that remains largely accepted.”  At that point I realised that ‘bigotry’ had changed its definition.  20^th century dictionaries described ‘bigot’ and ‘bigotry’ as “obstinately and unreasonably wedded to a creed, opinion, or ritual; blind attachment.  Blind or excessive zeal, especially in religious matters.”  The subject (that is, acting with agency) of the word is the individual and strength of his or her belief, the object being internal, their own belief system.  The 21^st century definition now appears that bigotry is an individual’s agency acting on an external object, in the form of prejudice, and this is to which Wikipedia directs ‘bigotry’ without further defining it. 

This shift serves a useful purpose.  What could be more bigoted than a Muslim intent on bringing about Islam’s telos, that of global conquest?  Is there a greater example of bigotry than Muslims following Islam’s Five Pillars and defining infidels in terms of annihilation?  Or of Shia Muslims engaging in bloody self-flagellation during Ashura?  Or of the jihadists’ cry of Allahu akbar, ‘our God is greater’ after every act of violent supremacy?  Yet now we see critics of Islam’s mandates described as bigots in a reversal of subject.  This is how conquest works, by manipulating discourse to create a false consciousness, of who is victim and who is the oppressor.  The West will find out the true nature of its situation in time and to its cost.