As the shadow of violence lengthens across Europe, every week seems to bring a new round of atrocities.
In recent days the catalogue of blood-soaked incidents has been savage.
It includes the Nice massacre by immigrant Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the axe assault on a train at Würzburg, Germany, by refugee Riaz Khan, and the stabbing of a mother and her three daughters at a French holiday camp by a Moroccan Muslim who took offence at their clothes.
Here in Britain there was an attempted kidnap of an RAF serviceman at a Norfolk airbase by two abductors of “Middle Eastern appearance”.
On Friday night the Bavarian city of Munich became the arena for another bloodbath as Ali Sonboly, son of Iranian immigrants, killed nine people before shooting himself.
Then last night a Syrian refugee with a machete murdered a woman near Stuttgart in Germany.
In many of these cases the perpetrator yelled “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is Great”).
The burgeoning list of outrages should have provoked a new spirit of determination from our leaders to protect our civilisation.
Instead, they have indulged in more appeasement, denial and cowardice.
Clinging with destructive obstinacy to their cherished policies of mass immigration and cultural diversity, they refuse to face up to the lethal Islamist threat in our midst.
A key aspect of this feebleness is their enthusiasm for empty rituals rather than tough action.
So they attend their vigils with solemn faces, light their candles, sign their books of condolences and fly their flags at half mast.
But it is all meaningless.
They talk of “solidarity” yet they are the ones who have wilfully torn apart the social fabric of Europe with their attachment to demographic revolution.
Just as grotesque is all the earnest talk about “praying for Munich” or Nice or wherever from politicians who have treated Europe’s Christian heritage with contempt.
Alongside these hollow gestures there is often a mood of self-abasement, particularly from Left-wing commentators who blame the West for Islamic violence.
According to this guilt-tripping narrative, the perpetrators are driven to violence by poverty or inadequate social housing or foreign policy or the legacy of Empire or Islamophobia.
But this is all just pathetic buck-passing.
Most western European countries have been remarkably generous in supporting vast numbers of migrants, but the response to this benevolence has been growing conflict.
The Würzburg axe attacker, for instance, was accepted into Germany as a teenage refugee, even though he appears to have lied about his age and background.
In addition, he was offered an apprenticeship at a bakery, given taxpayers’ money for his upkeep and taken in by Catholic foster parents.
Yet he reacted to this institutional and personal kindness with murderous rage fuelled by the vile separatist creed of militant Islam.
“Pray for me that I can take revenge on these infidels and go to paradise,” he wrote privately before his rampage.
Just as misguided is the fashionable rush to blame mental illness for this spate of attacks.
Both the Munich shooter and the Nice lorry killer are reported to have been suffering from “depression”, just as Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people at an Orlando gay nightclub in June is said to have been “bi-polar”.
The theory goes that these crimes are so sick that they must be a product of a sick mind.
But that is wrong on so many levels.
For a start, it is highly offensive to people with genuine mental health problems.
In an opportunistic attempt to explain away mass murder, this descent into phoney psychiatry could end up demonising real sufferers and undermining public support for improved mental healthcare.
Besides, the diagnosis seems profoundly mistaken.
People who are in the grip of severe psychosis or depression do not act like these killers whose crimes are characterised by cold-blooded ruthlessness, chilling efficiency and careful planning.
Ali Sonboly, terrorist or not, brought 300 rounds of ammunition for his killing spree in Munich, hardly the behaviour of a madman.
But above all, blather about mental illness lets fundamentalist Islam off the hook, which is precisely why so many appeasers resort to it.
But the creed is central to any understanding of the present carnage.
It is the ideology that provides the rationale for the actions of the terrorists, firing their hatred of western values and driving their violent separatist agenda.
That is why Islamic State has cheered the rising death toll.
In truth, the atrocities in the West are no different to the pattern of lethal mayhem that jihadism inflicts throughout the rest of the world.
The Orlando horror matched the murderous homophobia of the hardliners in Iraq and Syria who delight in throwing gay men to their deaths.
At the infamous Bataclan massacre in Paris last November several of the victims are reported by police witnesses to have been castrated, beheaded or had their eyes gouged out.
But that is no different to the abominations of IS.
Militant Islam is the problem, not housing or mental illness.
The reason we are seeing an upsurge in this kind of violence across western Europe is simple.
Our politicians decided to transform parts of our once peaceful societies into Islamified sections where instability and discord are endemic.
We are now paying a terrible price for this suicidal folly.
The #BBC wasn’t so restrained when it came to reporting claims that Thomas Mair had shouted ‘Britain first’ as he killed Jo Cox
That renowned BBC editorial integrity at play.
So, a pattern is emerging:
2. When it’s all over the media and blogosphere and impossible for even biased Beeb to ignore, bury it in some obscure section of the website, e.g Halifax sex gangs were not on Home page, not on Regions page, not on Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, but on Leeds page, in other words 4 or 5 clicks away from anyone actually seeing it.
3. If you must mention it on the news, prevaricate, obfuscate, misinform, disinform, quote selectively (‘a boy with a gun, that’s the problem’), throw in red herrings, hints at excuses (Machete attacker a FAILED asylum seeker – see? it’s the German authorities’ fault). Sow doubt and confusion.
4. Hope the next breaking news story will dislodge it from the top. Oops, it’s another Islamic/Migrant terror attack.
5. Back to 1.
