The Moment Belfast Fought Back
“Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.”
—Blaise Pascal
On the streets of Belfast, an attempted beheading took place mere days ago. The attack was filmed by horrified and disarmed onlookers who seemed desperate to help but were unsure how to do so without being stabbed themselves. It is a video that is difficult to watch, and even more challenging to forget. Eventually, one brave Irishman took action, repeatedly hitting the Muslim aggressor with a hurley stick.
The symbolism of that action is unmistakable. But first, one must become familiar with the Irish pastime of Hurling. It is a sport that is believed to have a 2,000-year history, and is decidedly Irish. For a brief primer, consider watching this two-minute video:
Let us consider why this matters. I posit that just as the hurley stick is woven into Irish culture, so too is beheading woven into a different one. After all, beheading is mentioned in Islamic religious texts, both the Quran and Hadith, and can be seen without much interpretation:
“So when you meet those who disbelieve, strike [their] necks until, when you have inflicted slaughter upon them, then secure their bonds...” —Surah Muhammad 47:4
One of the attackers who beheaded British soldier Lee Rigby on the streets of London in 2013 quoted directly from Surah 9 (of the Quran) when engaging in his assault. Conquest and initiatory violence are not alien concepts to those who have embraced Islam and its subsequent cultures in the Middle East and much of Africa.
In the beheading video (not recommended) taken in Belfast, we see a revelatory series of events in rapid succession. Onlookers tire of waiting for the police to arrive, they intervene themselves, then you hear someone behind the camera yell, “There’s a cop. Back off, back off, back off.” In other words, even though they are actively preventing a literal beheading, they are afraid that the police might arrest them instead of the immigrant aggressor.
To act in the defense of oneself or one’s neighbors has been recast as criminal behavior in so much of the West. Eighteen-year-old Henry Nowak died while telling police that he had been stabbed and that he couldn’t breathe, while police forced his hands behind his back for his alleged racism. Events like that are not only horrifying and tragic for those who are forced to live through them, but they affect how the broader society relates to police and to government. It creates fear and antagonism rather than a healthy structure in which police are viewed as peacekeepers who are upholding justice and coming to the defense of the innocent.
In the aftermath of the Belfast attack, we can see the downplaying of the gravity of the violence. Mainstream news outlets have deferred to calling the Belfast assault a “knife attack” as if that label is akin to an attempted beheading with a box cutter (“Stanley knife”). But why? Might we suggest that if they used the word “beheading,” every reader would immediately know the motivation of the attacker? Beheadings are not part of the local culture in Belfast. They are a product of an imported and foreign culture.
When the aggressor was repeatedly hit in the head with a hurley stick, there was a brief moment in which people decided that their culture was better, and was worth defending. However momentarily, there was a determination of one man to use an instrument of authentically Irish culture against a man who was exhibiting his own.
Protests against mass immigration policies are now spreading throughout the British Isles, spurred on by frustration at the seemingly constant barrage of attacks by aggressive immigrants and a growing exasperation with police forces who cannot be relied on.
Ultimately, the nations of the West will have to decide what it is that is authentically Irish or English or German or French, etc., and whether that is worth defending. For decades, such nations have abdicated their own duties and downplayed their strengths in order to pretend that all cultures and faiths are morally equivalent. They are not. We must strive to reject inferior cultures that normalize barbarism, and in so doing, we laud the good and set standards of behavior.
Ultimately, it is a question of justice. It is just for societies to uphold order and defend the innocent. They should do so via law enforcement bodies that recognize such values. They must be encouraged by a media that cares more about truth than the promotion of mass immigration. As long as these foundations are crumbling, we will experience widespread disorder.
The West can’t defend what it refuses to define. Nations like Ireland, England, Germany, and France have spent decades avoiding any clear statement of what their civic identity, cultural norms, or social expectations actually are. Without that clarity, integration becomes incoherent, political consensus collapses, and economic behaviour drifts — migrants fill essential work while a growing share of locals detach from the labour market. The real issue isn’t nostalgia or nationalism; it’s that a society with no agreed sense of itself has nothing solid to protect. Until Western nations decide what is authentically theirs — culturally, civically, and economically — they can’t expect anyone else to uphold it. Also took a look at the NI Youth Employment and one see this pattern in process: "migrants fill essential work while a growing share of locals detach from the labour market."
Excellent article. Watching for several years from America and it sickens me.
What I can’t fathom is how the leaders of these European countries have continued to blindly encourage immigration from these 3rd world countries. And have they no foresight to see how this will negatively impact their countries in the future. What we have always recognized as the traditional unique characteristics of Ireland, England, France, Germany, etc will all be erased and a become distant memory.