After I spoke last Thursday in the beautiful nation of Iceland, a Leftist in Reykjavik poisoned me.

Perhaps I should have seen it coming. The international Left has rejected free speech, and has embraced violence as a suitable response to speech contradicting its narrative.

My visit triggered a firestorm of abuse in the Icelandic press, all of which was based on American Leftist talking points. Every story about my visit used the same elements. For example, that the Southern Poverty Law Center claims I purvey “hate speech,” which is a subjective judgment used to shut down dissent from the establishment line. Or the fact that I am banned from Britain, with no mention of the key detail: I was banned for saying that Islam has doctrines of violence. (Ironically, Britain has no problem allowing foreign Muslim dignitaries who happen to agree with me to enter.)

Of course, local media also pilloried me for the “crime” of supporting Israel.

Perhaps most absurd of all, Icelandic media published the false claim that I incited the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik to kill. (Sigh. In a world of logical thinking, I’m as responsible for Breivik as the Beatles are for Charles Manson.) After the event, one article even featured a large photo of Breivik, yet it quoted nary a thing I said that evening.

Not one Icelandic media outlet contacted me for comment, much less for rebuttal to the charges they made against me.

These stories were clearly intended to shame people into avoiding my lecture, and the tactic worked on Iceland’s politicians — none attended. However, 500 brave Icelanders did come to Reykjavik’s Grand Hotel to hear me and my Jihad Watch colleague Christine Williams, a staggeringly large number in a country of 300,000 people.

Of course, the Icelandic media gave the 50 protesters outside far more extensive and respectful coverage than was given to anything that happened inside. One station aired an interview with me in which the interviewer refused to believe that I did not feel responsible for the Breivik murders, asking me about them again and again. Articles after the event included quotes from the protesters, but none included even a single quotation or description of anything we had actually said.

Clearly, jihad is a subject that Icelandic politicians and opinion-makers do not want Icelanders to discuss.

And that’s all the more reason why it must be discussed.

After the event, my security chief, the organizers of the event, Ms. Williams, and I went to a local restaurant to celebrate its success. But I was quickly recognized: a young Icelander called me by name, shook my hand, and said he was a big fan. Shortly after that, another citizen of that famously courteous land likewise called me by my name, shook my hand, and said “f*** you.”

We left.

Back in my hotel room, I began to feel numbness in my face, hands, and feet. I began trembling and vomiting. My heart was racing dangerously. I spent the night in a Reykjavik hospital.

A hospital test confirmed that I had been poisoned — Ritalin mixed with MDMA (Ecstasy). One of the local Icelanders who had approached me (likely the one who said he was a big fan, as he came much closer to me than the “f*** you” guy) had dropped drugs into my drink. I was ill for several days afterward.

I did manage to get to Reykjavik’s police station. The police report, which is in Icelandic, specifies the offense as giving someone an intoxicating substance against his will, which carries a four-year prison sentence.

The police official with whom I spoke took immediate steps to identify and locate the principal suspects and to obtain the restaurant’s surveillance video. Through a series of fortuitous incidents, I was quickly able to discover the identity, phone number, and Facebook page of the primary suspect, the young man who claimed he was a “big fan.” Icelandic police now have his information. Predictably, his Facebook page contained nothing indicating that he might be a “big fan” of my work, or that he held any views out of the mainstream, which is — courtesy of Iceland’s political and media elites — dominated entirely by the Left.

What likely happened is that this young man, or whoever drugged me, heard that a notorious “racist” was coming to Reykjavik, happened to see me in the bar, and decided to teach me a lesson with some of the drugs that are as plentiful in Reykjavik as they are anywhere else.

I learned my lesson. And the lesson I learned was that media demonization of those who dissent from the Leftist line is direct incitement to violence. By portraying me and others who raise legitimate questions about jihad terror and Sharia oppression as racist, bigoted “Islamophobes” without allowing us a fair hearing, they paint a huge target on the backs of those who dare to dissent.

Those who paint the targets, and those who shoot at them, think they’re doing something great. Not only does the Left fill those whom it brainwashes with hate, but it does so while portraying its enemies as the hatemongers, such that violent Leftists such as the young man who drugged me feel righteous as they victimize and brutalize for the crime of disagreement.

I have no doubt whatsoever that whoever poisoned me in Iceland went away feeling happy over what he had done. If he told anyone what he did, I’m sure he was hailed as a hero. I’m also aware that many who read this will crow and exult in knowing that someone who hates my opposition to jihad terror and Sharia oppression made me seriously ill. This is how degenerate and evil the Left has become.

Meanwhile, in Iceland and all over the West, Leftist students riot and physically menace conservative speakers. Leftist spokesmen frequently indulge in the most hysterical rhetoric to defame their foes. Politicians cower in fear and decline to discuss these issues, only ensuring that the problems I identified when I spoke in Reykjavik will continue to grow in Iceland and elsewhere.

Back in the 1920s and 1930s, as they were rising to power in Germany, the Nazis indoctrinated their young followers with the same message: those who oppose us are evil. Those who brutalize them are doing a great thing.

We all saw where that led. As I lay in my hospital bed in Reykjavik last week, I thought about those days, and about how the Left’s demonization of its opponents today will lead to exactly the same thing. I experienced it myself, in my unhappy visit to that happy land.