Shahid Bolsen on the New Orleans Attack

Well when you ask me about the attack in the US over the holidays, you are going to have to be more specific. Are you talking about the attack a couple days before Christmas, when a woman was set on fire on the New York Subway? Or are you talking about the guy who got pushed in front of the train on New Year’s Eve day? Or are you talking about the mass shooting on New Year’s eve in Illinois? Or the shooting in Mississppi? Or the one in Ohio? Or the one in Chicago? Or the mass shooting in New York on New Year’s Eve? Or is it the guy who drove his car into a crowd in New Orleans? Or is it the Tesla truck that blew up in Las Vegas? I am going to need to know which one of these acts of wanton violence is the one that interests you. Which one of these bothers you?

I mean, I can guess. But for anyone who genuinely condemns and detests indiscriminate violence against innocent people, you are going to have to explain the selectivity of your horror. Because you don’t look like a people who are horrified by violence, frankly. I mean, that woman who was set on fire on the subway, you were just filming it. The man who set her on fire was just sitting on a bench watching her burn to death. People just walking past, security people walking past. The same nonchalance with which you have shrugged off the tens of thousands of innocent children, women, and men murdered on an industrial scale in Gaza.

So, yes, it is a bit confusing, how exactly you choose which acts of depraved violence you decide are bad and alarming.

Of course, we all know that you have said that the man who rammed his car into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, had pledged allegiance to ISIS. We haven’t seen any evidence of that at all, except an ISIS flag that was mounted upside-down, and can be seen in some pictures of his truck and not others. You said that there are videos of him on social media talking about joining ISIS, but no one has seen those. What we know is that he was born and bred in America, just like almost everyone else who commits violent crimes in your country; just like the gunmen in the 500 of mass shootings in America last year, the 40 school shootings.

He was a veteran of your military. You trained him, you created him; your society indoctrinated him, and then your military. It turns out, it’s the same with the Tesla bomber. That was also your guy, another American soldier. An active duty green beret, no less.

I saw some US senator tweeting about how something must be done about violent Muslims, and how Islam is this fundamentally broken and dangerous culture! That senator is from Florida, ok, you had nearly 1,200 murders in Florida in 2024. That’s over 7 per 100,000 people. Let’s compare that to a somewhat comparable Muslim country, say Tunisia. Well, the homicide rate in Tunisia is 2 per 100,000. Florida is nearly 4 times more violent. OK, Tunisia has a smaller population, so, what about Turkey? Turkey has a much larger population than Florida, is easily as, if not more developed, bigger cities, etc. So, what about Turkey? That’s 3 per 100,000. So, Senator Fine’s state is more than twice as violent as Turkey, which is about 4 times larger than Florida in terms of population. Or, let’s say Malaysia. Florida is about 23 million people, Malaysia is about 34 million. Similar climate, similar level of development. OK, again, Florida has a homicide rate of 7.4 per 100,000. Malaysia has a homicide rate of 0.7 per 100,000. Senator Fine’s state is over 7 times more violent than Malaysia. Homicide rates in the UAE and Saudi Arabia are similar. Florida even has a higher homicide rate than Afghanistan and Syria. Imagine! You are safer in Syria than in Florida. In fact, the only Muslim countries that have higher murder rates than Florida, are countries where Muslims are being killed by Americans and their proxies.

And yes, their proxies include groups like ISIS. So, when you say that your American veteran joined ISIS, well, we in the Muslim world just regard that as being the same as when a veteran leaves the army and joins a private military contractor. ISIS is America’s Wagner. That’s why you sent your Ukrainians to work with them in the Sahel. That’s why they are guarding Syria’s oil facilities for you.

I mean, I’m sorry, but after the last 24 years, we have all reached the point of regarding the official, at-face-value explanation for terrorist attacks as simply being a possible, if usually implausible, version of what happened. So, “A US Army veteran somehow became radicalized and was inspired by ISIS to drive his truck into a crowd of people on Bourbon Street on New Year’s Eve, and then open fire on police” OK, maybe. Maybe it happened like that. But, You all created this skepticism in us by the non-stop lying and manipulation, and by never, ever actually demonstrating that you are above sacrificing your own citizens for political and economic agendas. And, because, as I have just been talking about; you have never, ever demonstrated that you care even slightly about the lives and safety of your own citizens. Your cities are more deadly than war zones in the rest of the world; and that’s a fact. It’s abnormal. It’s unnatural. The extent of the psychopathy of your government, your authorities, and your whole society.

And you know, I am not saying that the New Orleans attacker might not have been radicalized, might not have genuinely pledged allegiance to ISIS; that’s not unbelievable. But, I mean, what radicalized the rest of you?

Because look, before Christmas, you had a similar attack in Germany, right? You all thought it was a Muslim, but turns out it was just one of those crazed ex-Muslims, an apostate Atheist, who was a full-on believer in your so-called Western values, your Enlightenment, your secularism, and whatnot — that’s why you gave him asylum, because he was on your side, and he was subscribed to all your outlandish, dishonest propaganda about Islam, and he hated Muslims. OK, well, ex-Muslims and extremist Muslims have a lot in common. Both of them are Westernized. Both of them are ignorant about Islam, both of them reject genuine Islamic teachings; both of them are basically miseducated about Islam by you. They both believe what you tell them about Islam; which makes them more or less products of Western society. The ex-Muslims believe Islam is savage and violent, because you told them it is; and so they hate Islam savagely and violently, just like you. The extremists also believe Islam is savage and violent, because you told them it is, and so they act savagely and violently according to your teachings, and more often than not, they act savagely and violently against other Muslims — just like you.

Everybody in the world knows who the problem is, everyone knows who is the most violent society, the most violent culture, the most vicious terrorists on earth. And it most certainly is not the 2 billion Muslims of the world, who collectively have the lowest rate of violent crime, and who are collectively the most victimized by Western violence; and an American driving a car into a crowd of Americans in America, doesn’t change that reality.

So, you want us to condemn it, of course we condemn it, we condemn all of your violence; whether you call it terrorism or crime; whether you act alarmed about it or whether you treat it as mundane. We find all of it horrific and repugnant. It is all alarming to us, it is alarming to any civilized person, who comes from civilized societies that don’t act like that. And like I said, no one outside of your society, outside of your strange culture, no one understands how or why you apply different definitions and characterizations to your acts of brutality.

Like, remember the guy who blew up his van in Nashville in 2020? Somehow you just swept that under the rug. You said that was not terrorism. He blew up his van outside the AT&T building, shut down the internet, and you said he chose his time and place for maximum impact — but you said it was just a suicide, and not terrorism. OK, why? After that woman was burned to death on the New York Subway, they caught guys trying to get on the train with lit Molotov cocktails…also not terrorism. An elite, highly trained American soldier blew up his truck in Las Vegas in front of a hotel owned by the incoming president…not terrorism. A mob of people with clear political demands set fire to a police station in Portland, Oregon…not terrorism. But you bomb hospitals, schools, ambulances, and even United Nations staff, and not only is that NOT terrorism, but in fact, the victims you bomb are terrorists.

See? This kind of nonsensical, cynical approach to violence is absolutely sadistic to the cognition of your own people. To people outside your society, it is just a blatant lack of seriousness about violence — in other words, to everyone outside the West, we all understand that you never mean it, you never mean it at all, when you pretend to be horrified or outraged by violence, no matter who commits it. I don’t think you cared about any victim of violence in 2024 except for the United Healthcare CEO. You don’t care about the victims in New Orleans, just like you don’t care about the victims in Chicago, New York, Ohio, Mississippi, or Gaza.

Your music is violent, your movies are violent, your tv shows are violent, your games are violent, your children’s stories are violent, your policies are violent and your society is violent. And you don’t take any of that seriously. That means you live in a society, live in a culture that does not value life, that doesn’t value your life; and you have authorities and officials, leaders and politicians, you have a government that does not care about you at all. They don’t care about you any more than they care about people overseas who they bomb and kill every day. Your life is only valuable, I mean, your death is only valuable to them as a vehicle for justifying repression and on the pretext of security or some other political agenda. So, for instance, 500 mass shootings, rampant violent crime, people being burned alive on the subway — none of that, according to your government, constitutes a threat to your safety. None of that extreme violence is alarming, none of it needs any sort of response; but the attack in New Orleans — because allegedly there was an ISIS flag connected to it — THAT is somehow incredibly dangerous.

I mean, aren’t you tired of living in a society that holds you in such contempt? They don’t just insult your intelligence, they literally don’t value your lives; your government, your elites, have turned your society into a death cult, and they are cannibalizing you; even your children aren’t safe. There is no one more dangerous than these people, no one poses a greater threat to you and everyone else. Meanwhile they tell you that Muslims are the danger; Muslims who have a fraction of your society’s level of violence in our societies. Why it looks like what they really think is dangerous is peace itself, it looks like the thing they fear the most is real security, real stability, harmony and safety. The kind of security and stability and harmony and safety that we have in the Muslim world, or anyway, what we have in the Muslim world until you invade and attack and occupy our countries. Maybe that’s what you mean by spreading your values, spreading your way of life; you mean turn our countries into dystopian war zones like your society; and maybe that’s what you mean by Muslim immigration endangering your culture and way of life, because it might actually civilize your society at some point, maybe you’re afraid that if you get enough Muslims in your country, your homicide rate might drop to a fraction of what it is now. And who knows, if people in America, in the West, were actually secure in their lives, and didn’t have to worry about being shot or set on fire every time they walk outside or send their kids to school; maybe they would be able to concentrate on educating themselves about the world and about policy, and on holding their politicians and oligarchs accountable, and actually build a society on justice and economic fairness. Come to think of it, I guess I can see why Islam and Muslims are so scary for your power structure.

You had 200 murders outside your office in the capitol building in Washington DC in 2024. That’s 200 murders in a 70 square mile radius.