We’re getting a real-time lesson in how to spin a wingnut conspiracy tale out of literally nothing. It all started in the aftermath of last week’s Paris terrorist attacks, when dangerously unhinged weekend Fox News host Jeanine Pirro welcomed terrorism analyst Steven Emerson on her Sunday program to talk about The Brown Menace in Europe. Now, Steven Emerson is a “terrorism analyst” in the sense that I’m a “billionaire playboy” — I’ve said I am, so it must be true. Anyway, Emerson had some alarming news to share:
On Sunday, Emerson appeared on Fox News with host Jeanine Pirro and discussed parts of Europe that Pirro referred to as “no-go zones,” areas that are supposedly off-limits to non-Muslim people. Emerson said: “So you basically have zones where Shariah courts were set up, where Muslim density is very intense, where the police don’t go in, and where it’s basically a separate country almost, a country within a country.”
He then got specific: “And in Britain, it’s not just no-go zones, there are actual cities like Birmingham that are totally Muslim where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in. And parts of London, there are actually Muslim religious police that actually beat and actually wound seriously anyone who doesn’t dress according to Muslim, religious Muslim attire.”
Emerson’s “no-go zone” scoop was a huge shock, especially to the 80% of Birmingham residents who aren’t Muslim. Emerson abjectly apologized for his bullshit not long after the show aired, just before the Prime Minister of Britain took time out of his day to call Emerson “clearly a complete idiot.” It was so outrageous even by Fox standards that Pirro is planning on issuing a correction on tonight’s show. Sure, it will probably be one of those “this is actually central to my point” corrections, but it’s a big deal for Fox, which would have to start a third channel if it bothered to correct all the inaccurate garbage that gets transmitted over its airwaves on a daily basis.
Of course, not everybody can aspire to Fox News’s high standards for accuracy. Take Bobby Jindal, who somehow managed to get elected governor of a state despite his tenuous at best grip on reality. Jindal, who hopes to be Peter Principled all the way to the Oval Office, plans on giving a Major Address on Monday:
“In the West, non-assimilationist Muslims establish enclaves and carry out as much of Sharia law as they can without regard for the laws of the democratic countries which provided them a new home,” Jindal’s text reads. “It is startling to think that any country would allow, even unofficially, for a so called ‘no-go zone.’ The idea that a free country would allow for specific areas of its country to operate in an autonomous way that is not free and is in direct opposition to its laws is hard to fathom.”
It is hard to fathom. So hard to fathom, in fact, that Jindal apparently can’t actually identify a specific case in point. But he’s not just making it up. Apparently, he heard about these no-go zones from a reputable source: the Gatestone Institute. And who runs the Gatestone Institute? Why, it’s John Bolton, and we all know that he’s a reasonable guy on this stuff!
Emerson, bless his heart, has gotten back on the horse following his Birmingham depantsing, telling USA Today that he was right in principle, just wrong on the specifics:
“I stand on what I said,” Emerson told USA TODAY Thursday. “I should have pointed out at the outset that no-go zones are not static. But yes, there are areas in other parts of Europe — ‘amorphous’ as I specifically pointed — such as in France, Sweden, and Germany in which there are no-go zones where governments do not exercise sovereignty. Officially, national governments do not acknowledge the formal existence of such no-go zones. But they definitely exist, as attested to by statements of and first hand observations and experiences of local government officials — from mayors to police chiefs and rulings of local courts.”
Ah, yes, they definitely exist, but they’re “amorphous,” which is totally the reason why Emerson can’t point to a specific example. It’s not because he’s making the whole thing up, no sir, it’s that these no-go zones are specifically and totally coincidentally designed so as to make it impossible to pin one down, ever, so stop asking him about it.
“No-go zones” aren’t a new thing in fringe right-wing circles (every one in a while we hear that Dearborn, Michigan, has become an Islamic emirate or some such nonsense), but the Paris attacks have given them new life. Daniel Pipes, who put the “Daniel Pipes” in “Daniel Pipes is a bigoted hack and a pathological liar,” pushed this nonsense in 2006, writing about a French concept called Zones Urbaines Sensibles (“sensitive urban zones,” or in other words, neighborhoods that require extra resources or monitoring — the kind of place that only exists in every major city in the world) as though they were little Salafi islands floating in the middle of every French city. He referred to these places as “no-go zones,” and then in 2013 he actually tried visiting one. You won’t believe what happened next:
Likewise, Middle Eastern writer Daniel Pipes originally blogged about Zones Urbaines Sensibles back in 2006 and then revised his viewpoint after seeing some of them first-hand in 2013:
I had an opportunity today to travel at length to several banlieues (suburbs) around Paris, including Sarcelles, Val d’Oise, and Seine Saint Denis. This comes on the heels of having visited over the years the predominantly immigrant (and Muslim) areas of Brussels, Copenhagen, Malmö, Berlin, and Athens.
A couple of observations:
For a visiting American, these areas are very mild, even dull. We who know the Bronx and Detroit expect urban hell in Europe too, but there things look fine. The immigrant areas are hardly beautiful, but buildings are intact, greenery abounds, and order prevails.
These are not full-fledged no-go zones but, as the French nomenclature accurately indicates, “sensitive urban zones.” In normal times, they are unthreatening, routine places. But they do unpredictably erupt, with car burnings, attacks on representatives of the state (including police), and riots.
Having this first-hand experience, I regret having called these areas no-go zones.
Seriously, if your Islamophobic conspiracy theory is too off the deep end for Daniel Pipes, you’ve really gone around the bend.
The Foreign Exchanges Companion 
Daniel Pipes! I knew his father at Harvard, a smart guy but also a total f*cking dick who I wouldn’t trust alone with my daughter. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree on that one, let me tell you.
Kind of like Horowitz, who isn’t stupid neither. I get… annoyed… at my friends on the left who spend (what I consider to be) too much of their time mocking their enemies for alleged stupidity when we need to be devising and implementing effective strategies to block them while promoting our interests and the common good. It seems obvious to me that we are the ones who have not been doing a very good job in that department, distracted as we are by yucking it up at the foibles of the Other.
No, Pipes is a very smart guy. It’s the people who pay attention to him who are idiots.