Milo Yiannopoulos: The Good and the Bad

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America, American Liberty, analysis, BBC, breitbart, catholic, Christianity and Islam, Civilisation, Coffee, Conservatism, Conservative, Defend the modern world, DTMW, EU, Facebook, gay, greek, homosexuality, Immigration, Internet, Iran, Iraq, ISIS, Islam, Islamism, Jewish, migration, milo, milo yiannopoulos, milo yiannopoulos orlando, Multiculturalism, neil degrasse tyson stupid, orlando, politics, politics politics, right-wing left-wing, trump, trump support, tyson, United States, War, writing

Few stars are rising faster at the moment than that of conservative writer/broadcaster Milo Yiannopoulos. Virtually unknown just three years ago, the Greco-British journalist, 32, is now fast approaching the kind of iconoclastic status attained by such writers as Gore Vidal and HL Mencken (both of whom expended considerably more time and effort to achieve it).

What can explain this success?

Well – for one thing, Yiannopoulos is a quite formidable debater, and it is for this talent that he is primarily known. Type in ‘Milo Yiannopolous’ into YouTube and many of the videos returned to you will have titles containing words like ‘destroys’, ‘eviscerates’, ‘owns’ and so on… These are not exaggerations. Yiannopoulos has a unique way of making the people he engages seem naive, foolish and weak-minded. He is even – I have found – able to achieve this effect when the other person is in the right; and there is surely no greater testament to a debater’s skill than that.

Yiannopoulos is not merely good with words, he is good with emotions, presenting his side of any argument in a relaxed, self-assured and matter-of-fact style that naturally makes the arguments of the other side seem less certain, more bizarre and fundamentally weaker. In this sense he reminds me in speech of Mark Steyn in print. Both put to use the same rhetorical trick – the insinuation – quite deliberate – that they know they are right. Both treat contrary points of view as amusing, forgivable, even charming eccentricities. Yiannopoulos and Steyn are not trying to make the other side look stupid, so they have us believe, they are trying are help them understand reality – and by arguing this way, they do make them look stupid. There is surely no better way of wounding an intellectual’s reputation than to sympathise with his failures and politely excuse his errors.

Yiannopoulos’s writing, though less spectacular than his debating, still passes with ease any quality test for the journalistic mainstream. Here is a representative excerpt from an article taking down the goodwill-bloated ‘astrophysicist’ Neil Degrasse Tyson:

“Neil deGrasse Tyson is a philistine with no love of learning except for popularisations and oversimplifications that serve his political purposes… (He) constantly situates himself in the big brain league, but he has done nothing in his life to demonstrate that he belongs there — and a lot to suggest he doesn’t…. (He) claims to have been “mentored” by Carl Sagan, for instance. Yet it appears this “mentorship” boils down to little more than a couple of traded letters. If Tyson thinks that qualifies as mentorship, I wonder what he’d call my nocturnal liaisons with other men who share his skin colour. Adoption?… As dumb as Tyson is, his fans are even more preposterously thick, which is probably to be expected given that they’re all liberals. But the extent to which they hoover up and retweet his contradictory and brainless provocations is matched only by the hilarity of the occasional social justice car crash, in which the politics of grievance that Tyson likes to encourage comes back to bite him.”

But neither Yiannopoulos’s skill in writing or debating can fully explain his meteoric ascent. Beyond the mechanics of his profession, Yiannopoulos is himself remarkable. For one thing, he is gay. Indeed, if homosexuality can be graded, he is very gay; audaciously, flamboyantly so. He is also Greek, Jewish and Catholic. This exotic quality, brim-full of apparent contradiction (Gay, Jewish, Catholic, Conservative – are not words used to being in each other’s company), has combined with Yiannopoulos’s oratorical (and occasionally bitchy) style to produce a ready-made object of media fascination. Yiannopoulos gets ratings up in a way no other public commentator has since the death of Christopher Hitchens, a person with whom the journalist bears many important similarities.

Like Hitchens, Yiannopoulos expresses with intelligence arguments traditionally expressed with stupidity. Though I do sympathise with many right-wing concepts, it is nevertheless a fact of politics that the conservative side of the political spectrum attracts more dullards than the liberal side. Many – perhaps the majority – of those inclined to oppose Islam, for example, do so in a crude, yobbish style that puts off the discerning classes and fails to excite anyone else.

Yiannopoulos is successful precisely because he refines gut-sentiments into intelligent arguments. People watch Yiannopoulos debate Islam on television and scream ‘That’s what I think!” or “That’s what I’ve always said!”. He articulates feelings many desperately want to – but cannot – put into words.

So, that’s the good. Now for the bad.

Despite the considerable talents I have described, Yiannopoulos is not without his faults. He has, for one thing, consistently demonstrated a worrying lack of intellectual discipline; a tendency to seek controversy (for its own sake) over positive political impact. On twitter the writer has repeatedly engaged in pointless arguments with entirely apolitical pop-cultural figures, most recently Leslie Jones, the simple-minded comedienne and star of the much-maligned 2016 Ghostbusters remake. After a brief back and forth over various trifles, Milo made a joke implying that Jones (who is admittedly unfeminine looking) is actually a man. This comment then led to Yiannopoulos’s twitter account being deleted by the administrators of the site – (he is still banned).

Was this necessary? Did it serve a purpose? I don’t think so.

Like this author, Yiannopoulos is an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump’s 2016 bid for the US Presidency and has written countless articles explaining this support, most of which have been reasoned and compelling. But on this matter, too, he has a tendency to drift into inexplicable weirdness. Yiannopoulos often refers to Mr Trump in a sexualised voice as ‘Daddy’ and once stated that the “trashier” the Republican nominee becomes the more he loves him.

Now, I have no moral objection to any of this, but surely such unseriousness runs the risk of undoing the good work the journalist has done elsewhere. Once again I ask, is it necessary? Does it serve a purpose? Does Milo wish to be a neo-Orwellian truth-teller or a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother? Christopher Hitchens or Pete Burns? One cannot combine the two aspirations indefinitely.

The atheist Voltaire once remarked that the only prayer he had ever offered was ‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous’. I can well imagine Islamists and Leftists offering this same plea to the Almighty in view of current political circumstances. On the issue of Islam – as on many others – we are so far in the right that a misstep on our part is probably the best the opposition can hope for. Milo and others would do well to bear this in mind.

On balance, I am of the opinion that Milo Yiannopoulos can be a very effective soldier for the anti-Islamist cause. His oratorical skill, humour and minority-status make him a very difficult target for the Left to hit with their favoured weaponry. They cannot possibly call Milo, a gay man of partially Jewish descent, irrational or paranoid for worrying about the advance of ISIS. They cannot possibly accuse him of being a Nazi, a White nationalist, or a possessor of ‘privilege’ (the Left’s favourite buzzword of the moment). Milo’s exotic qualities form a wall of confusion around his arguments, giving them a better chance of being considered for what they mean rather than as an extension of who formed them.

And while there are those who will object outright to the inclusion of an actively gay man in the conservative movement, one must strive to remember that the threat of Islam is so broad that it will necessarily require an equally broad coalition to prevent its success.

If you find the right’s embrace of Yiannopoulos strange, you’ll be even more surprised by what the future holds.

D, LDN.

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In Defence of… Christian Movies

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America, America 911, American Liberty, BBC, Christian, Christian art, Christian movies, Christian people, Christianity, Christianity and Islam, Christianity movies, Christians, Civilisation, Culture, culture bbc, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, Facebook, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Religious movies, United States

When I feel low, I often cheer myself up by watching US-made Christian movies. I’m not proud of this. Very few are well made or intellectually complex. I’m drawn to them for other, perhaps less respectable reasons, some of which I will share here today.

First, you should understand that the Christian movie industry is a very much booming trade. After the injection of pace with Mel Gibson’s (slightly dodgy) ‘Passion of the Christ’, even the most atheistic Hollywood producer has come to recognise the massive profit-potential in religious film-making. Most ordinary Americans are devoutly attached to their faith, and of these a great number feel alienated by the over-worldly content churned out by conventional L.A productions. It seems only logical then that faith-based productions enter the void left over.

And they have done. They really have. Christian films now reliably bring in millions of dollars, usually despite a paltry budget and so creating a gaping profit margin for the makers.

What are they like? As I perceive the matter, Christian films are usually small variations on the following plot structure: Good Christian girl/boy living a wholesome American life – falls into temptation (drugs, fame, sex, wealth etc…) – gets burnt by the sin they fall into – are saved by their old friends or family from their former wholesome life.

Sounds stupid? I suppose it is. But then there is something weirdly magnetic and comforting in the uncomplicated innocence these films advertise. If the idea of the movies is to tempt you into a different, more wholesome way of life, they are successful to the extent that they make that way of life seem joyful and safe. You come away from one of these films with a desire to avoid falling into life-traps, perhaps even to get out of life-traps you are already in. The feeling doesn’t last long enough for you to do anything about it, of course, but it certainly stays in your mind longer than the messages of Taken 3 or the latest sci-fi abomination.

Christian movies are also appealing to me because of their all-American feel. The characters at the beginning of each film (before the temptations and fall from grace) are living the American dream; a suburban house, a nice car, and a tight family with one beautiful cheer-leading daughter and one athletic and good-mannered son. I’ve always been drawn to idyllic caricatures like that. It matters nothing that this isn’t the reality for 90% of real American families. As shtick goes, it works for me – like a social watercolour painting.

A list of Christian cinema’s flaws would be as long as the list of its virtues. Christian movies are often anti-Semitic (the temptation villain trope character in a film usually looks Jewish). They are homophobic as a matter of course. And though the lead character in each production is usually female, she is also passive, secondary and naïve. These films are anything but politically correct, and this explains sufficiently why they will never break through into the mainstream.

By any religion’s standards I’m a sinner. I like anything that brings me pleasure and have indulged more than I should in uncountable vices. Perhaps it is for that reason that the morals of Christian cinema strike me as exotic and fascinating. They are foreign, but in a way I can’t easily belittle or reject.

D, LDN

Merry Christmas

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Christianity, Christmas, Defend the modern world, Festive, festive season, fireplace, Happy, Happy Christmas, snow, snowman, snowmen, various Christmas related things

I’d like to wish all who frequent this blog a truly wonderful and pleasure-filled Christmas season.

As ever, I am deeply grateful for your support and attention.

Posting shall resume soon after the holiday. In the meantime, any comments will be answered as normal, and feel free to email me if you wish.

Merry Christmas

David.

On the Shooting at Planned Parenthood

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America, America 911, American Liberty, BBC, Britain First, Christian extremism, Christianity, Christianity and Islam, Christopher Caldwell, Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, Counterjihad, Defend the modern world, Memes, Multiculturalism, parenthood, planned parenthood, pp, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, unsatisfactory

It didn’t take long for the shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado, Oklahoma on Friday to be exploited for cynical political ends. After three bodies were carted away to the morgue Colorado Springs, memes began to spring up everywhere (on facebook, twitter, reddit and other places) comparing the shooting to Islamic terrorism, and in doing so downplaying the suffering of its victims. A truly shocking exercise in cold, emotionless manipulation if ever there was one.

The memes, though multitudinous, differed from each other only very slightly. The most popular ‘Willy Wonka’ variant was typical: against the backdrop of a smiling Gene Wilder (taken from my favourite childhood movie), the text read as follows: “Christian extremist kills 3 people at an abortion clinic…Tell me again how Syrian refugees are a threat.”

You don’t need more than a few operational brain cells to perceive the startling un-worldliness of this sentiment. Indeed, many people on social networks have recoiled from the image in revulsion or responded to it with loud mockery. How on earth can one tragic, stupid action – the first of its kind in years – measure up to the daily bloodbath of Political Islam? How can one action – brutal, awful and yet discriminating – be placed in the same ethical category as the bombing of market-places, funeral parades, Parisian restaurants and concert venues?

Since the outrage in Colorado was committed, Christians across America have disowned the force behind it, branding him ‘psychopathic’, ‘crazed’, ‘lunatic’ and (most crucially) ‘un-Christian’. Compare that to the icy silence and tacit approval of Muslims communities after outrages in the West.

Let’s be clear – there has been no major Christian terror attack (that is, a terror attack committed explicitly for Christian theological motivations) in Europe or America for the last 100 years. There have been murders, random and cruel all, but nothing of the same malevolent grade as Islam manages to inspire on a daily basis.

The attacks in Norway in 2011 were not Christian. I don’t believe Anders Behring Breivik had a Christian bone in his body. The troubles of Northern Ireland don’t count either (despite the enthusiasm with which Islamic apologists bring them up). The Catholics of Ulster do not hate the Protestants of Ulster for religious reasons, but for ethnic and national reasons. Ulster Protestants are descendants of British colonisers and remain loyal to their imperial sponsors. The Catholics are native Irish who wish to have the northern corner of their island back under Irish control. Whichever way you lean on this, you can surely agree that religion plays no part (apart from the total coincidence of the religious divide between Scots-Irish and Irish which serves as an excuse).

Adherents of Christianity have certainly been violent at various points in history, but the period since they behaved in a way comparable to the adherents of Islam is measured in centuries. Let no one deny reality, or history, or seek to deform them into a reality or history synchronisable with their bigotries.

Islamic violence has no equivalent in other faiths.

D, LDN

Help Religious Minorities: Petitions and Links

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America, American Liberty, BBC, Britain First, Christian Arabs, Christianity, Christianity and Islam, Christians, Christians in Middle East, Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, Counterjihad, Defend the modern world, east, Facebook, middle, Middle East, Multiculturalism, politics, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, reddit, religious minorities middle east, social media, Twitter

Further to last week’s article about the appalling predicament of Bibi Asia – the Christian Pakistani women currently on trial for blaspheming the Prophet Muhammad – I have collected some links to charities and information pages relating to issues of this kind below.

http://rescuechristians.org/

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/?gclid=COHj29mf48cCFQQUwwodyq0KLA

http://www.christianaid.org.uk/whatwedo/middle-east/

http://www.acnuk.org/the-middle-east

http://csi-usa.org/

http://www.embraceme.org/

http://www.persecutionblog.com/asia-bibi/

http://www.christianstogether.net/Articles/289124/Christians_Together_in/Christian_Life/Current_News/An_interview_with.aspx

http://www.prisonersofconscience.org/support-poc/latestappeal/

http://www.iranhrdc.org/english/publications/reports/3149-a-faith-denied-the-persecution-of-the-baha-is-of-iran.html

D, LDN.

Counter-Jihad is Not a Crusade.

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America, America 911, America vs Islam, American Liberty, Barack Obama, BBC, Britain First, Christianity and Islam, Counter-Jihad, Counterjihad, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, Miley, Multiculturalism, Muslims, No to Turkey in the EU, Obama, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, US, War with Islam, War with Muslims

I was walking through an underpass the other day when I noticed some bright yellow graffiti on the sloping wall above me. It was an unidentifiable but medieval-looking shield, above which the ferocious statement (in English) ‘Death to Islam!’ was scrawled in capital letters.

Walking on, I wondered whether the shield was some sort of Crusader symbol, or perhaps a coat of arms connected to the Reconquista (I am still in Spain). The former is not unusual in counter-jihad society, where veneration of the Knights Templar and Teutonic Order has long been popular.

I don’t personally venerate the Crusaders. They were brutal anti-Semites and religious fanatics. They killed without mercy or planning, and the mission with which they charged themselves was little different to the Jihadism of today.

And the crusader worship so prevalent in Counter-Jihad circles seems to me generally wide of the mark. I don’t want a war with Islam. I want Islam out of the West and a segregation of cultures enforced by a large, well-organised transnational military. I don’t much care if Indonesians or Sudanese people want to practise their faith. I don’t think that’s part of the West’s concern.

Whilst an entity like ISIS, which has declared war on the civilised world, must be vanquished from the air as soon as possible, the existence of the Islamic religion itself is not something we can do much about. ‘Death to Islam’ consequently has no meaning for me, unless it is followed with the limiting clause “…in the West.”

One of the greatest myths in modern political discourse holds that Islam (and Muslims) are ‘weak’. Designed to manipulate opinion, the idea is typically advanced alongside the observation that the West is strong, thus making for an asymmetry of power conducive to a view of Muslims as the ‘underdog’.

We don’t have to place much stress on the imagination to bunk that concept. Simply think of the political, economic and military capabilities of 1.6 Billion people acting for a common goal. Think of a civilisation which together controls 70% of the world’s oil supply. Think of the combined might of the Turkish, Egyptian, Iranian, Algerian, Moroccan, Saudi, Pakistani and Indonesian militaries. Think of the disruption that would be caused if the Muslims of Europe and India violently turned on their host societies.

No, Muslims are not weak, and nor is the Muslim world. It is formidably powerful and a condition of total war between Islam and the West would plunge both coalitions into bloody oblivion.

This is why, in reversing the Islamic conquest of Europe, we have to be careful not to redevelop a crusader mind-set. We would be fools to try to defeat the Muslim world entirely. Even if it were possible, we’d gain little from doing so.

Let us stress instead the benefits of a peaceful separation of Islam and the West. A peace that would allow for both cultures to develop as they wish.

D, LDN.

The New Atheism: A Clarification.

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American Liberty, BBC, Christianity, Christianity and Islam, Christianity vs Islam, Christopher Hitchens, Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, Daniel Dennett, Defend the modern world, Muslims, politics, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Religion, richard dawkins, Sam Harris

I wrote a post last week that seemed (and was) hostile to the school of thought labelled as ‘New Atheist’ – more explicitly, the works of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens.

Specifically, I criticised these personalities for repeatedly lying about Hitler’s religious convictions – for claiming, as they do, that the Fuhrer was a believing Catholic, when his real views were closer to rational unbelief.

I don’t want to write the same article twice, so if you’re interested in my argument, please scroll down to ‘Hitler Was an Atheist’ in last week’s bunch. On this occasion, I’d like to clear up my position in regard to the ‘New Atheism; and atheism in general, lest my previous words have failed to communicate my true opinion.

I’ll start by restating that I am the son of a Church of England minister, and (as it goes for most vicar’s sons) the experience has often led me to an extreme and reactive rationalism, inspired by (among other figures) Nietzsche and Sartre, the traditional heroes of the thinking Western adolescent.

At the time of my enrolling in University, I was so convinced by atheism that I rarely thought about it. As far as I was concerned, the debate was dead, and all that remained to do was for the rising generation to destroy any legacy of Christian thought; to liberate the West from its dusty idols, arbitrary loyalties and primitive moral worldview.

Since then, I’ve not gone back on my view of the cosmos, the historicity of religious texts, or the facticity of evolution. But what I have done is read more about the human animal and the role that religion plays in sustaining him, in reminding him of things he might otherwise forget.

I remember at college coming up with what I considered to be a bold new scientific theory: the idea that there is an ‘optimal IQ range’, below which the human behaves in a destructive or abusive fashion to others, and above which the human being malfunctions, seeks to destroy himself or otherwise rebels against natural law. The ‘theory’ (if it can be so dignified) was drawn from the observation that high-IQ people tend to neglect the fundamental practices of nature, most notably the need to reproduce, to avoid suicidal thinking, and to maintain connections with the rhythms of their fellow man.

In retrospect this seems slightly daffy. There are clearly benefits to high intelligence and not just for the individual possessed by it. But that said, I still believe there is something vital in the wisdom of the less able, in their commitment to the essentials of life.

This very week it was reported that by 2070, the number of Muslims will overtake the number of Christians to make Islam the largest religion on Earth. This has to do with three synergetic factors. First, Muslims still believe in reproduction. Secondly, Europeans and Latin Americans no longer reproduce at the required pace and quantity. And thirdly, Europeans are becoming more disjointed and secularised, leading to a collapse of the only cultural coalition large enough to compete with the spread of Islam.

This has less to do with theology than with natural priorities. Religion, though it may on occasion go against science and progress, nevertheless tethers the human mind to very important primal truths. To sever the European from his traditions is to sever him from the destiny those traditions were laying out for him.

According to Richard Lynn, Japan is the most intelligent country on Earth, yet it is turning into a high-tech nursing home. Sweden is similarly dying. Norway is dying. Germany is dying. Italy is dying. Even China is dying.

And that last example is an especially illustrative one. China has been forcedly atheist for over fifty years. In that period of skyscraper building, the birth rate has steadily but surely declined. This has been helped by – but cannot be wholly explained by – the ‘one-child policy’ that (in any case) accompanies the confident atheism of Communism.

Outside of reproductive issues, the abandonment of Christianity by Europeans has another global effect. The more impressionable and cultureless races, most notably the booming population of Africa may be increasingly drawn to confident religions like Islam and turn away from the tired out, apologetic religion of their former colonial masters. The wonderful civilising effect of European Christianity may vanish and plunge great swathes of the world into barbaric darkness.

To repeat my general position – none of these concerns imply religion is true or science false. All I recommend is to consider the void that comes after religion and weigh its benefits against those of history.

D, LDN.

Why America Thrives and Europe Dies.

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Christianity and Islam, Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, Counterjihad, David P Goldman, Demographics of Europe, Eurabia, Europe, Islam and the West, Islamisation of London, Multiculturalism, No to Turkey in the EU, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census

In Britain and Europe, it is customary for Liberals (and anyone under 40) to laugh at and belittle the religious*.

(*When I say the ‘religious’, I’m of course excluding Islam, which remains insulated behind a wall of ‘political correctness’.)

In the UK especially, the devout are routinely depicted as soft in the head, gullible, blindly conservative and generally stupid.

There are many reasons for this attitude. Chief among them is anti-Americanism (Americans being associated with organized religion) and particularly the age-old canard that Americans are somehow less intelligent than their European cousins. This bigotry is common enough in London and almost uniform in Paris, where the French intellectual elite can trace a lineage of imagined superiority back – through Sartre and Camus – to Voltaire.

For a while, I held fast to it myself. Prior to University, the nature of American religiosity was defined for me not by my observing the culture itself, but through a borrowed lens of self-important satire.

After a year at University however, and having moved to a city in a rapid process of Islamisation, I began to appreciate the logic of cultural protectionism – that old system of emotion traditionally badmouthed as ‘Xenophobia’.

Those religious ‘rednecks’ I had been encouraged to laugh at had a point all along. If Islamisation was the alternative to a confident Judeo-Christian identity, can we really afford to reject it?

The classical European view – that there is a comfortable ‘third choice’ available between Islamisation and Judeo-Christianity – called variously “Secularism”, “Post-Modernism”, “Multiculturalism” etc… is (to put it impolitely) bunk.

Whatever your views on the origin of life and the universe, the abandoning of cultural identity has real-world consequences.

European commentators often wonder aloud why the Muslims of the US are better integrated than the Muslims of Europe. Though the question suggests profundity, the answer is actually pitifully obvious. The Muslims arriving in the EU are walking into a cultural void. They see nothing before them but a blank sheet of paper, and, given their innate certainty and proselytizing urge, behave quite naturally by attempting to fill it in.

When a European secularist complains therefore, about the Islamisation of his native continent, a Muslim would be fully justified to reply (as they often do reply) – “What have you got instead?”.

Indeed, what has Europe got?

What tangible attribute separates the olive-skinned masses of Tunisia from the olive-skinned masses of Spain and Greece? Terms like ‘West’ and ‘East’ avail us nothing here. Geographically they are useless in explaining the divide between Tunis and Turin. ‘North’ and ‘South’ don’t work as cultural terms either. ‘Europe’ meanwhile is merely a restating of the question.

“What has ‘Europe’ got?”

I can tell you clearly what America has. American culture is solidly built on a base of confident religious identity. This element of its character has played no small part in its success relative to Europe’s decline.

Indeed, take the word of the brilliant Jewish commentator David P. Goldman (who writes under the name ‘Spengler’):

“The United States is the last remaining Christian nation in the industrial world” he writes “…To speak of an “exceptional culture” would be a pleonasm; national cultures are unique by construction. Nonetheless some cultures may be radically exceptional. Unlike all the other nations of the world, America’s Exceptionalism rests on a political culture informed by the biblical idea of covenant – not on common language, race, borders, or history. That is why the US emerged as the survivor out of the 20th century while the ethnocentric cultures of Europe plunged into mutual destruction.”

Goldman prefixes the above observation by pointing out that “What has made the United States radically different from all other big industrial nations during the past generation is a fertility rate above replacement.” As he suggests, this is something directly attributable to American fidelity to the Judeo-Christian notion of family. I would also point to the taming effect religion has on the toxin of feminism.

Goldman elsewhere points out that, contrary to defeatist narratives arguing otherwise, the demographic prospects of the Jewish state are also bright,  a direct result of population growth among the religious population.

The only real alternative to Cultural Nationalism is Ethno-Nationalism, the transformation of a country of individuals into an ethnic farmyard.

Unfortunately – if predictably – the ghost of ethno-nationalism is rising once again in the economic ruins of Europe. The Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party is gaining influence in Greece, while Hungary is increasingly falling under the spell of the rabidly anti-Jewish ‘Jobbik’ organisation.

In the near future, Europe may become racially awake, but fall into an even deeper cultural sleep. Fascist parties may organize to expel the Islamising forces from their lands, but then recover only to find older hatreds burning across their own borders.

Indeed, the trouble with ethno-nationalism, as opposed to the cultural nationalism of the US, is that it supplies new threats even as it gets rid of old ones. This is especially true on a crowded, multinational continent like Europe.

French nationalists, for example, still have a lingering hostility to Germans. Macedonians despise the Greeks, and vice versa. Belgium is divided into two simmering ethnic enclaves that could easily ignite into war. Italian nationalists often speak of creating a new nation (Padania) in Northern Italy based upon imagined descent from primeval Celtic tribes. Finland lies in an uneasy peace with Russia. Spanish nationalists routinely taunt Britain with threats against UK sovereignty in Gibraltar.

I won’t depress you by listing any further examples.

All that remains to say is that only a return to Judeo-Christian self-awareness can save Europe from the twin menaces of Islamisation and/or a fragmentory civil war from which it could never recover.

In the meantime, the prognosis of Europe gets grimmer by the day.

D, LDN.

Immunised by Experience: The Irony of East-European Fortune.

Tags

Belarus, Counter-Jihad, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, Eastern Europe, English Defence League, Eurabia, Multiculturalism, Muslims, Poland, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Russia, Slavic

Though still subject to debate, the landscape boundaries of ‘Europe’ have traditionally been drawn over the extremities of Russia in the East, and the coasts of Ireland and Portugal in the West. This mass is usually then cleaved into three (Western, Central and Eastern) cultural areas, each dominated by a regional giant – respectively, France, Germany, and Poland.

When we talk today of the ‘Islamisation of Europe’, we are normally talking exclusively about the Western and Central demarcations. The Eastern part of the continent remains, with a few isolated exceptions, relatively homogenous.

Poland, for an example, is currently over 90% Christian with a Muslim population below 1%. In Ukraine, the majority are either Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or irreligious, with Muslims barely a trace cultural element. Similar situations to these prevail in Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, Hungary and Latvia too.

The reason behind this advantageous trend surely counts as one of the grandest ironies in history.

As you know, between the close of World-War II and the fall of the Soviet Union, the nations of Eastern Europe were held in political bondage to Moscow. During this period, the regime which saw fit to rule them, Soviet Communism, reduced such countries to economic ruin, and created a repressive and politically inflexible atmosphere, based – above-all – upon fear.

Throughout the Eastern bloc, young people, upon graduating from their indoctrinated universities, were allowed few aspirations beyond that of joining the cruel Soviet infrastructure itself. Goods were hard to come by. Food-production was poorly managed. Freedom of speech and conduct were radically curtailed. Businesses were bullied by the state, or else sank of their own accord. Only jails and torture chambers conducted a roaring trade.

Into this unfortunate situation, very few non-European immigrants aspired to enter, preferring, quite logically, the wealth and freedom of Paris, Amsterdam and London, to the midnight interrogations and bread queues of Warsaw, Kiev and Minsk.

When the iron curtain finally fell then, and with the seeds of demographic destruction already having been planted to the West of Berlin, Eastern Europeans re-awoke to find their societies starved, disorientated and angry, but otherwise relatively unchanged.

Though in the coming years, Cultural Marxists attempted to launch third-world immigration drives in Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania, they were never successful. Eastern Europeans were immunized to their deceptions by direct, bitter experience. They knew very well all the lies and buzzwords of the Left, having spent years in societies hearing nothing else. They also knew, more importantly, where such lies can lead.

In Britain, there is a running commentary in the football press, regarding the alleged ‘racism’ of Polish and other East-European fans at Euro football matches.

When the Polish national team plays the Dutch squad for example, explicitly racist taunting (monkey impressions, the displaying of bananas and watermelons, use of racial language) is often heard solely from the Polish terraces.

This is – of course – thuggish and unacceptable behavior for any civilized people, but perhaps there is more to this conduct than meets the eye.

These taunts, I believe, are rooted in political memory, and have behind them expressions of relief as well as – perhaps – just a whiff of Schadenfreude….

The Poles see in the (usually all African) ‘Dutch’ football squad, the realization of an ideology they successfully threw off, and which the West, once so chauvinistic, is now itself perishing under.

D, LDN.

‘Islam Versus Europe’, Immigration and the Jews.

Tags

Christianity and Islam, Counter-Jihad, Counterjihad, Cultural Marxism, Defend the modern world, Holocaust, Jew, Karl Marx, Kevin Macdonald, Multiculturalism, Nationalism, Nazi, No to Turkey in the EU, Pamela Geller, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Tommy Robinson, United States, Zionism

A friend once asked me why Neo-Nazis hate ‘Zionism’ so much. ‘Surely…’ he said ‘…they don’t care about the Arabs.’.

I explained as best I could that ‘Zionism’ to a Nazi means something very different than it does to a Western Liberal. For the former, ‘Zionism’ is a shorthand for any organised Jewish Political force, real or imagined.  The kind of political force usually intended is a conspiracy to promote (or enforce) multi-racialism on the European world, with the ultimate goal of wiping out the White race via miscegenation (encouraged by a Jewish media and pornography industry).

It’s easy to dismiss such ideas as crackpot, if not borderline psychotic. They are not comfortably distinct from black helicopters behind the clouds, or brain-rotting chemicals in the water supply.

But it would be unfair to dismiss them so completely.

Back in July (hat-tip Enza Ferreri), the respected CounterJihad blogger IslamversusEurope  (‘Cheradenine’) published a lengthy post reviewing the book ‘Culture of Critique’ by Canadian author Kevin Macdonald. To my surprise, Cheradenine, a great foe of Islamisation and terrorism, said the following:  ‘

“Having now read MacDonald’s books A culture of critique and A people that shall dwell alone…. I have to say they have made an unexpectedly strong impression on me. I now understand antisemitism. I wouldn’t say I now share the feeling but I am at least much further along that spectrum of sentiment that I was before.”

He goes on to explain his reasoning:

“MacDonald documents, in excruciating detail, the overwhelmingly disproportionate Jewish involvement in intellectual movements that have worked to delegitimise and denigrate the traditional forms of cohesiveness characteristic of European societies, including patriotism, church and family structures…..Communism blighted eastern Europe; multiculturalism is destroying western Europe. Although Jews are clearly not solely responsible for either, it’s reasonable to ask whether either ideology would have achieved such “success” as it did achieve, establishing doctrinal dominance in the minds of policy-making elites, had Jews never immigrated to Europe. In my opinion, the answer is no. Without Jewish political and intellectual activism, without the Holocaust, without the Hitler stick ready to beat down any manifestation of European pride or patriotism, Europeans would not now be losing their countries to Islam.”

OK. Let’s address these points.

I do not personally find the idea that Jews instinctively promote societies which are not repressively homogenous unlikely, but nor do I find it disturbing. It is perfectly natural for Jews to desire a Nationalism they can be part of, and to combat a Nationalism which excludes or threatens them. The cultural totalitarianism of the Middle Ages offered no comfort for the Jews, despite their eschatological importance to the Christian faith itself, and post-enlightenment liberalisation was strongly desired by Christian minorities (Catholics in Protestant countries and vice versa) too. This was (at least initially) nothing like a conspiracy, but merely the fight for a better society.

The modern blight of Communism too is not something to lay solely at the door of the Jews. Communism precedes Karl Marx (who merely provided its most eloquent expression). Class interests and the desire to correct economic ‘injustices’ arose organically among the gentile working classes, and may never have required the assistance of Jews to enact a political effect.

Similarly, modern ‘Multiculturalism’ is as much a class movement as it is an ideology. Multiculturalism is favoured by the business elite and the liberals of the middle class, both of whom associate the objections of the working class with ignorance and inferiority. A desire to not be seen as ‘racist’ is not motivated by Holocaust guilt alone, but by an arrogant wish to prove oneself superior to the uneducated.

As for the author of ‘Culture of Critique’, one must be honest and call him at minimum a suspect character. Professor Macdonald is a sometime associate of David Irving, and a venerated hero of the Ethno-Nationalist fringe. His work typically attracts the dregs of sub-political society and is animated by a science (‘Evolutionary Psychology’) that is rarely accepted as mainstream. As John Derbyshire pointed out in his evaluation of Macdonald, the very idea of a ‘group evolutionary strategy’ (vital to Macdonald’s argument) is open to doubt:

‘The Jewish over-representation in important power centers of Gentile host societies became possible only after Jewish emancipation—which, like abolition of the slave trade, was an entirely white-Gentile project! Did the genes of 12th-century Jews “know” emancipation was going to happen 700 years on? How? If they did not, what was the point of their “evolutionary strategy”? There is a whiff of teleology about this whole business.’

I agree. Perhaps even more than a whiff.

In sum, Jews have long been at the forefront of the struggle against Islamism and I truly hope that Cheradenine’s unfortunate fascination for Mr Macdonald’s work doesn’t precede a split in the CounterJihad movement. I have always subscribed to the ‘Big Tent’ ideal when it comes to this issue. It will take Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, Ba’hai, Christians and nonbelievers working in agreement for any kind of successful resistance to be formed. A defensive phalanx; not a gabble of factions divided by race.

D, LDN