You had to know it was only a matter of time until the left patiently explained to us that the Muslim rape mobs in Cologne were really the "oppressed" and the women they assaulted need to admit their privilege. That's the theme of this little essay in The Guardian by Gaby Hinsliff, a feminist and the daughter of an actor.
"The New Year’s Eve attacks are shocking at least partly because they’re confusing. If they were primarily sexually motivated, done for kicks or fuelled by assumptions about western women’s sexual availability, then surely there would be no reason to steal the victims’ valuables. Rapists seek power, not money."
Except when you know, they do both. The Muslim rape mobs had not been informed ahead of time that they needed to make their crimes less confusing by confining them to simple categories that fit the preconceived notions of Western leftists who have decided that if a sexual offender robs someone, it really isn't rape.
But Gaby is working herself up to her thesis of explaining the "confusing" attacks in traditional class warfare terms.
Liberals shouldn’t be afraid to ask hard questions. Young German women thankfully enjoy historically unprecedented economic and sexual freedom, with their expensive smartphones and their right to celebrate New Year’s Eve however they want. The same isn’t always true of young male migrants exchanging life under repressive regimes, where they may at least have enjoyed superiority over women, for scraping by at the bottom of Europe’s social and economic food chain.
It is not madness to ask if this has anything to do with attacks that render confident, seemingly lucky young women humiliated and powerless.
In the real world, the poor oppressed migrants "scraping by" have their own "expensive smartphones". They even routinely stage protests in Italy because they're not getting free WiFi.
But let's unpack the basic idea here. The "young German women" have a good deal of privilege and smartphones. The poor oppressed Muslim gropers have lost their natural right to superiority over women. And so they reassert that superiority against those "lucky young women" and their "expensive smartphones".
Substitute "miniskirt" for "expensive smartphone" and the Guardian would be running furious essays about rape culture. But the left has a long history of justifying all sorts of crimes, including rape, in class warfare terms.
Liberals shouldn't ask any hard questions about Islam. But they should ask hard questions about why those "lucky young women" had it coming from the poor, oppressed migrants.