Revising history to make today’s unpleasant reality palatable. My latest in PJ Media:

The UK’s Express reports: “Winston Churchill was fascinated by the Islamic faith and some of his family believed he might have even converted to the religion after his time in India with the British Army, an uncovered letter reveals.”

This is yet another manifestation of the seemingly endless capacity of Western political and media elites for self-flagellation and self-hatred. This Islamization of Churchill is also another example of what we can call the “Jefferson’s Qur’an Tactic”: To promote Islam, claim that public figures who had any interest in Islam for any reason — even if they publicly expressed negative views of the religion — were actually enthralled by Islam, and may even have been secret converts.

The evidence for Churchill’s “fascination” and possible conversion comes from an August 1907 letter to Churchill from his future sister-in-law, Lady Gwendoline Bertie. She exhorted him: “Please don’t become converted to Islam. I have noticed in your disposition a tendency to orientalise Pasha-like tendencies, I really have. If you come into contact with Islam your conversion might be effected with greater ease than you might have supposed, call of the blood, don’t you know what I mean, do fight against it.”

Also, as the Express tells us, Churchill “took to dressing in Arabic clothing while with friends.”

Well, here is the reality of what Churchill stated about Islam, whatever “fascination” he may have had, or how often he wore Arabic clothing:

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property — either as a child, a wife, or a concubine — must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

This powerful statement would get Churchill torrents of abuse from the British political and media establishment today. The Express and other British papers would excoriate Churchill as an “Islamophobe,” a bigot, a nativist, a racist, and worse.

And that’s not all: Several years ago, British politician Paul Weston was actually arrested for reciting Winston’s above quote in public.

Churchill today would never get anywhere in British politics, or anywhere else in the West for that matter. But Winston Churchill is still undeniably a hero of British history, so a new Churchill has been invented to accommodate present-day realities.

Similarly, in the United States we have a new multicultural Thomas Jefferson, who apparently revered the Qur’an and hosted a Ramadan iftar dinner at the White House. Of course, Jefferson did not revere the Qur’an, and never hosted an iftar dinner. But the facts are seldom allowed to intrude on these fantasies.

Showing once again how craven and dishonest the establishment media is today, the Express finally gets around to informing us — in its tenth paragraph — that “Churchill never seriously considered converting.”

In other words, it had no story at all but published one anyway. That’s modern journalism at its apex….