Islam (radical or otherwise) is not the immediate problem. It is the secondary infection hitching a ride on the back of the real problem: Western complacency and silent acceptation of the anti-western propaganda from within. And islam is not the only such secondary cause. Cultural marxism gives precedence to whatever "oppressed" class is around to further its agenda. Islam in Europe fulfill this role admirably, but any other group will do just as well.[1]Westerners are complacent because they are infected with the memory of the recent dominant position of the West up through, say, the year 2000. Europeans assume that Uncle Sam is, as always, just a phone call away and ever willing to forgive those interminable insults. "Just kidding, guys. Could we borrow those infantry divisions again, please? Ever so ta."
For their part, Americans assume that the present is eternal and that the oceans are like these really awesome like moats. 9/11, which should have been like a giant reset button in the matter of national perceptions, just failed to work and the nation lapsed back into its endless fascination with athletic contests between escapees from illegal genetic experimental labs. "No need to get excited, dude."
The internal generation of anti-Western propaganda and cultural Marxism flow from the same spring: seething resentment at the failure of the capitalist economy to reward people who can parse a sentence, spell Renaissance, distinguish Ray Charles from Scarlatti, and have bumper stickers that read "We support the opera."
If your own homeland is a certified crime against All That Is Good and True and chooses not to be supervised by educated people like you, then why not lend your support to people who also hate your country? How discerning they are. How similar in their thinking.
And if reasonable efforts to right past wrongs are good, then even more efforts to do so must be even better. And if those are good, then, well, huge efforts to do so are the best. Send a fool to close a window and he'll close them all over town.
To which add Lawrence Auster's point[2] that since the Nazi Holocaust is the worst thing in all of human history and it resulted from discrimination against minorities, then discrimination against minorities is the one thing that can never, ever be permitted again.
And, finally, add in the ever diminishing intellectual coherence of leftism and the horrifying prospect of once-dominant leftist parties' losing all hope of national political power. Rather than suffer this low fate, the left indulges in the greasy, unseemly lurch to create electoral alliances with immigrants and domestic fruitcakes who inhabit the fever swamps of rejectionism and irrationality.[3]
With this short background in mind, it's easy to understand GalliaWatch's translation of a post about the dispossession of the French through the casual denigration of their national identity:
Today French identity is threatened fundamentally by two factors. The first is forgetting, or even refusing, the spiritual, cultural and human values by which our centuries-old people have lived. This is called decadence.Point # 1. What the French people have in France sucks. Point # 2. What a bunch of Goddamn foreigners want and help themselves to avec l'attitude extrême somehow matters.
The second is the massive implantation of another group that differs religiously, culturally, sociologically, with different points of reference, with a different memory from that of the French, and with a different founding capital from Jerusalem-Rome-Athens, namely Mecca. (...)[4]
Obvious fascism on our part. If you don't want European culture to disappear overnight anywhere in the world, you most certainly are one of those.
Definitely.
Yes, you are.
Notes
[1] "Fjordman file update." By Klein Verzet, 4/2/07 (emphasis added).
[2] "Liberalism chases its tail into oblivion." By Lawrence Auster, View from the Right, 4/3/07.
[3] We have discussed that here citing therein as further authority, um, ourselves.
[4] "Identité nationale: clarifions le débat!" By Bernard Antony, Le blog de Bernard Antony, 3/27/07 translated in "Defining French Identity" By GalliaWatch, 4/2/07.
2 comments:
@ col.b.bunny
I'm glad you found the translation of Bernard Antony's essay worthwhile and I thank you for the link.
I agree completely that the problem is really internal - without the rot and confusion and cowardice within, there would never have been a Muslim immigration into Europe or an open borders policy anywhere, including the USA. We would never have allowed it to happen and this is why it may be impossible to stem.
The combined forces of the media and the educational institutions could never have perpetrated their deeds if the populations had not already lost faith and interest in their own heritage.
For me the key date is 1968 - after that year nothing was the same. Western populations, at that point in time, underwent a mutation from a higher standard to a lower one. They have never stopped descending ever lower. What remains of the great cultures of the past are shreds, almost like relics of an ancient civilization. The politicians and justice systems could have prevented this, or at least attenuated its effects, and women have a large share of the responsibility in having abdicated their role as central moral and educational figure in the family.
I don't know if it can be reversed. Probably not. Maybe it can be slowed down - it would take enormous courage from heads of state.
I thought it was excellent and its my pleasure to call attention to such a fine blog as yours.
It is beyond difficult for me to understand how, on a national level, some people blythely accept that foreigners can enter the country at will without penalty or make outrageous demands after arriving. Yet, these same people would criticize an individual who left the door of his home open for any and all strangers to enter and use his home as their own. This behavior, they would consider neurotic. Yet, these people would take great offense to have their views on the national boundary characterized as neurotic. Which it is. There is something pathalogical about having no boundaries and being unable to make healthy distinctions betweem people.
I very much believe that the immediate future for me personal is to return to a study of first principles. I too am to blame for allowing myself to be distracted by shallow things. There is a very healthy river of creative and critical thinking that one can encounter in the blogosphere and this is a form of interaction that is unique in history outside of a university setting, if the university is not too far gone.
The last national election in the U.S. was inconclusive and ambiguous in my view. The present collection of possible candidates for the presidency is not impressive with the exception of Tancredo and, possibly, Thompson. 2008 looks to be another election of no particular consequence. The outcry against illegal immigration, muted though it is, still fails to penetrate the thinking of national leaders.
Jacques Barzun writes that the West is becoming decadent but this is a cycle that repeats itself in history and it may be there will be a revival of a substantial kind that casts off the spirit numbing fixation on (a) feminist stupidity, (b) "discrimination," (c) the danger of "offending" anyone, and (d) the illegitimacy of every Western culture as evidenced by all manner of minor transgressions.
What we may see -- after all the pundits and wise men have spoken their piece -- is a manifestation of the phenomenon well known to the ancient Chinese, viz., the present elite's loss of the Mandate of Heaven. By some magical process the masses of China, with no communication with each other, at some point simply ceased to perceive the emperor's rule as legitimate.
The strenuous efforts of legions of intelligent lovers of liberty failed to make decisive inroads into the sick intellectual enfatuation with socialism and totalitarianism that played such a prominent role in the past century. Perhaps a truly massive shift can come from an incohate process such as I describe. In fact, the U.S.S.R. pretty much collapsed like a Chinese dynasty like a paper house in a flood.
Unfortunately, the dangerous status quo in the West has a great deal of legitimacy that it still enjoys.
I think we all write on some aspect of this conundrum, how to avert cultural suicide. I look forward to reading a great deal more of your stuff.
I apologize for my original post which is not as clear as it seemed to me at the time of writing it. But it was sufficient to convey the important points.
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