Douglas Murray on the media’s reluctant coverage of the New Year’s Eve mass rapes in Europe, and the state of discussion of such things:

This is a shame, because some free thought and discussion about what is going on could have been useful at an earlier stage. Last year, when Angela Merkel flung open Germany’s borders anyone who said, ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’ was shouted down with cries of ‘racist’. Then, after about a million more people had come into the country even Chancellor Merkel started to wonder who they all were and whether they had all the right Germanic ideas. One minister finally said that they weren’t keen on letting many more anti-Semites into Germany. And now in the wake of the New Year’s Eve attack some politicians are saying they don’t really want people who aren’t even up to speed with even last millennia’s views on women. Perhaps it is too late and German women will indeed have to follow the advice of the Mayor of Cologne and take more care when out on the streets (‘No skirts. No trousers. Have you considered this lovely burka madam?’) Or perhaps an intensive period of workshops with new arrivals will settle it all amicably and swiftly. I suppose we will just have to hope so. In the meantime it turns out that the German police have been caught mis-representing the facts about who was doing the New Year’s Eve raping., and so we are now in the far more dangerous place where lies become the preserve not only of the fourth estate, but of the state itself.

Also discussed: the cops being MIA during the attacks but very quick to come down on anyone opposing them, be it firing water cannons at protestors outraged by the rapes or the continued persecution of people like Tommy Robinson (ex-EDL, now Pegida UK):

I mention that case because it is a reminder that instinctive reaction to the Cologne case is symptomatic of a much wider problem. With Pegida protests in German today being fired on by police with water-cannons that problem of attacking the reaction rather than the problem (where were the water cannons on New Year’s Eve?) has rarely seemed starker.

More at the Spectator.