H/T Larry Auster for further evidence of the putrefaction of National Review: NRO does not post readers’ comments politely criticizing Muslim immigration

On August 26, Clark Coleman forwarded to me this e-mail he had sent to National Review Online:

Subject: Online comment moderation at NRO
To: National Review Online editors
Dear Sirs:

I submitted a comment more than a week ago to a column by David Pryce-Jones.

My comment pointed out that the source of the conflict discussed in the column was the immigration of Muslims into Britain. No name-calling or rudeness; just a simple statement of the obvious. The comment never received approval from the moderator of online comments, apparently, as it has never appeared.

As I periodically check the comments, I find plenty of not too useful comments, including two anti-Christian comments by an online creature known as “Etch-a-Sketch Robmoney.”...

I would appreciate if an explanation could be provided by the “conservative” employee responsible for this moderation, or his superiors. Is there an editorial policy that permits name-calling, anti-Christian bigotry, and so on, but not criticism of immigration? Have moderators been instructed to impose such a policy?

Coleman’s latest email to Auster

Well, eight days and no reply so far.

Of course NRO itself has been really just been National Republiwhore for many years, much intensified by the eviction of John Derbyshire. Still, the comment threads did sometimes seem to serve a purpose, as I noted in An MLK Day Grovel From National Review.

But apparently the control culture is asserting itself. As Peter Brimelow noted in an earlier case of Derbyshire repression -

…it is worth considering why an article that might conceivably incline the founding people of this country to consider matters from the angle of their ethnic interest is forbidden at NR. After all, they are the indispensable core constituency underpinning the Republican regime so assiduously courted by the magazine. What is NR afraid of?

(Auster's correspondent was writing about imigration into the UK, of course, but for analytical purposes in this matter, the U.S. and U.K. are a political continuum – even if it is un-PC to say so.)

Conservatives and Patriots make a mistake in commenting at NRO. Debate there is a sham and participating just encourages them.