On Thursday, a car accelerated into pedestrians at a busy intersection in the heart of Melbourne, Victoria, at peak hour (5 pm) injuring nineteen, four critically. After the usual delay, the perp, initially described as a “man” and an “Australian citizen”, was publicly identified as Saeed Noori, a 32-year-old “Afghan of Muslim descent”. [ Flinders St: Saeed Noori charged with 18 counts of attempted murder over Melbourne car attack, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, December 22, 2017]

So, the brutal assault, despite being carried out by an offspring of immigrant Muslim stock, and despite employing the currently fashionable modus operandi of Islamic terrorists (deliberately driving into defenseless pedestrians), and despite being timed just three days out from Christmas and likely targeting “infidels” returning from Christmas shopping or office Christmas parties, and despite the immigrant-stock Muslim perp citing the “the treatment of Muslims“ in the West as a motive ), it was officially decreed, with Pavlovian predictability, by police and political authorities that the car-attack had nothing to do with Islam, terrorism or, perish the thought, immigration.

Apparently, "mental health issues" and a history of drug use made the Afghan Muslim do it, he was not a card-carrying member of any Jihadist franchise, whilst immigration, of course, was irrelevant (it always is). This should be a great comfort to those victims who, if they survive, will spend their Christmas in hospital or otherwise nursing injuries. So, nothing to discuss, then, about Australia’s immigration policy or the compatibility of Islam and the West.

Fortunately, however, the admirably heretical Australian population, of whom, according to recent survey [PDF] 54% want a reduction in immigration (compared to just 17% who want more of it), and of whom 48% support a partial ban on Muslim immigration in particular (compared to just 25% who oppose a ban), the non-PC-cowed people would beg to differ—just don’t expect to hear their dissident voices in the elite Australian media.

Phil Shannon, from Adelaide, South Australia, is a veteran socialist and atheist —and a Vdare sympathizer of more recent vintage. He lives the more heretical part of his political double life at AltLeftForum.