image credit: contrarypedant.blogspot.com
Mark Steyn’s column today reports on another grim milestone:
the death of Lars Vilks, one of the vocal few who made up the front line in the
“free speech wars”:
Here's the score card from that
2010 event [in the free-speech wars, gathered to mark the fifth anniversary of
the Danish Mohammed cartoons in Copenhagen in 2010]: Lars Hedegaard, of the
Danish Free Press Society, had invited five of us that day - a Dane, a Swede, a
Norwegian, a Dutchman and yours truly:
~The Norwegian comedienne Shabana
Rehman had already had her family's restaurant firebombed; she now lives under
24/7 police protection, which is not the easiest way to practice observational
standup;
~The Dutch cartoonist Nekschot was
obliged, for security reasons, to appear on stage with his face obscured and
unidentifiable. So he chose to wear a burqa. Funny, but not quite secure
enough. Nekschot had already been arrested for "hate speech" with the
authorities openly taunting him about the impending loss of his anonymity. He
now lives in hiding, and is no longer a cartoonist;
~Our host Lars Hedegaard was
subsequently shot at point-blank range, but fortunately by an incompetent, so
he survived. Mr Hedegaard also lives in hiding; the would-be assassin lives
free in Turkey, where Sultan Erdogan refuses to extradite;
~and now Lars Vilks is dead.
Yesterday, Sunday afternoon, he was
being driven in a bulletproof car by two of his protection officers when there
occurred what Swedish police regard as a freak collision with a truck. An
almighty fire ensued and neither Lars nor the policemen survived; the driver of
the other vehicle is seriously wounded and in hospital. This all happened near
Markaryd, about an hour north-east of Helsingborg, where Lars was born.
Helsingborg, like many Swedish cities, is utterly transformed, which is why
Lars Vilks ended his life in an unmarked car being driven home under police
protection from a guarded lunch with an old friend.
The BBC reported his demise thus:
Muhammad cartoonist killed in traffic collision
He was not, in fact, a cartoonist.
He was an artist, primarily a sculptor - of limited technical skills (as he
conceded) but of whimsical imagination. Yet, as the gates clank shut on free
speech across Europe, it's easier for lazy Beeb hacks to lump every dissenter
under the category of "Muhammad cartoonist".
. . .
It was an unusual traffic accident.
On a divided carriageway with a sturdily fenced median, the police vehicle
somehow managed to cross into the oncoming lane to find itself just in front of
a large truck. As Robert Spencer puts it:
The names of his police guards need to be released. As does the name of
the truck driver. Note that 'the rescue service and the police said it would
take a lot for a vehicle to be able to pass into the other lane, given that it
is separated by a wire fence.'
The Swedish police continue to
investigate. Whatever the circumstances of the fatal crash, Douglas Murray is
correct as to the
broader cause of death:
Lars Vilks was a man, and an artist, of enormous courage. He should
never have been in this situation, and if other artists and others across
Europe had not been such cowards then he never would have been.
I ponder the grim arithmetic of
that 2010 event. Six of us on stage that day: One firebombed, one forced into
hiding and out of his job, one shot, and now one dead. It's like Agatha
Christie for jihadists: And Then There Were None. Maybe someone would like
to produce a film or a play on the theme. Ah, but no: As Douglas says quite
correctly, Lars Vilks was only in that van because of the miserable cowardice
of our so-called artists, a "community" that spends the whole year
giving each other awards back and forth for their "courage" and
"heroism".
Mark’s full column is here.
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