The Meaning in the Chaos

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2020 election, BBC, biden trump, chris wallace, debate 2020, Fox, Hunter Biden, politics, presidential debate

I watched the presidential debate last night without popcorn or alcohol, perhaps putting myself in a European minority. A large number of us have grown accustomed to viewing the politics of that unwieldy superpower as entertainment, a fact so conspicuous and banal that even the BBC has taken note of it.

In the early hours of the morning, as the livestreams began to air a dark stage being prepared, and live chats in sidebars, already in angry chaos, became too fast to read, I tried to will my perspective away from that temptation. I was only partly successful. Since everything predicted fireworks, I couldn’t help but want to see a flash or two.

In the event, the explosions were too bright and too numerous. The ‘debate’, which seemed to go on forever, was shambolic. Biden was doddery, badly-prepared, unable to utter a single unbroken, un-revised sentence. Trump, even more pumped up than usual, was far too keen to take advantage of his opponent’s inarticulacy, blustering and gurning and disagreeing with everything he heard.

In the first few minutes, it appeared as if the incumbent was going to walk it. Mr Biden, looking deathly grey, in some ways almost corpse-like, seemed greatly diminished, his fluttering eyes narrowed enough for afternoon sleep; but then the president lost control of his bloodlust, creating a loop of grandstanding and exasperation that would last until the moderator put us out of our misery.

My conservative American friends are reacting as one might expect. Trump destroyed the Democrat, ‘tore him a new one’. My liberal friends are claiming to be appalled – in an almost Victorian way – at the ‘indecency’ of the president, his ‘vulgarity’ and ‘bullying’ – as if their champion, lionised as a sunglasses-wearing badass just minutes before the debate, should now be considered with the softness owed to a limping deer caught on the wrong side of a dark forest.

The best that can be said for the event has already been said by everyone; it was “gloves off”, infinitely more ideological than previous debates (recall for comparison the comedy that was the entire Obama-Romney contest – an argument over nothing between people of the same sponsored worldview). The combatants this time believed in each other’s faults. There was red hatred in the air. And that is no bad thing. Politicians should have faith in their ideas enough to take the battle to those who oppose their realisation.

But that is the only positive; or at least the only obvious one.

As for the arguments, or those I could make out, Trump’s strongest were his answers on race, and particularly ‘critical race’ theory, a mumbo-jumbo slave-morality designed to incriminate white people for the offence of not being something else. Trump calmly and articulately denounced this vile corruption of young minds, and with a statesmanlike posture he should have been trained to exhibit throughout the evening. To this, Biden had no answer, only some lukewarm sentimentality about ‘unity’ and doing things ‘together’. Trump knew, as we know, that his opponent cannot move in the pocket of these sinister academics.

Woke capitalism, which is what Biden offers a return to, must be completely destroyed. Big Tech monopolies, together with the economic giants who depend on their favour for advertising, are intent on creating a dystopian society of inverted rank – one in which people are graded according to the victimhood of their ancestors, or (as in the case of women) according to an imagined victimhood in the present, rather than on their quality, which is surely the only thing a person ought to be rewarded for.

The stream I watched last night was provided by MSNBC, the worst of the country’s liberal platforms. In the commercial break immediately following the debate there was an internal advert that Trump himself might have been willing to pay for. It was for a show presented by an African-American lady named Joy Reid. Over gentle music, Ms Reid announced her thrill at being able to give “the perspective of a black woman, raised by a single mother…”

I have never watched the show she was hawking, only the odd clip here and there, but there is no doubt in my mind that it does not – and never will – depend entirely on popularity or quality for its continuation. The presenter has enough disadvantage points to secure her a job for life. We are supposed to ‘shut up and listen’, to revere and adore her once ‘negative’ qualities (were they ever so harshly regarded in her lifetime?) as divine qualifications.

But I refuse to do that. I refuse. And only one of the men on stage last night would support me in my dissent.

To close, there is something important and worrying about the fact the strongest arguments for Trump rarely come from Trump himself, but derive from the absurdity of the status quo he challenges. This feeds into a sense that America can do better.

Can the reader imagine the president’s very legitimate arguments coming from a sharper, more gentlemanly – yet equally forceful – figure? I can. And when that kind of man rises, the liars will have nothing to hide behind.

David

The Dark Enlightenment

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• First published on this blog in November, 2015

If you’re one of those people not yet not au fait with the internet phenomenon/subculture referred to as the ‘Dark Enlightenment’, perhaps the best way to describe it is with reference to its adherents favourite movie scene. This is the moment in The Matrix, when Neo is offered two pills – one blue, one red. The man offering the medicaments, Morpheus, informs Neo that the pills have different metaphysical powers. One of them, the blue one, will send him back to the artificial world of the Matrix (a computer simulation) that he is already familiar with, completely ignorant of the existence of the alternate (real) world. The other pill, the red one, will make it impossible for him to go back to the sleep of unreality. Upon taking it, he will tumble down the rabbit-hole of the truth, however ugly or traumatic he may find that truth to be. As you’re probably aware, Neo boldly chooses the red pill, and so begins the main action of the film. Well, Dark Enlightenment adherents view themselves as embarking upon a comparably journey to Neo’s, and will often refer to themselves as being ‘red-pilled’. But what truths exactly are they discovering? What reality have they entered that is hidden from the majority? The answer is complicated.

It is certainly accurate to say that the Dark Enlightenment is on the political right. Its followers have little sympathy for feminism or political correctness, and on matters of race and racial difference, their views tend to align with those advanced by the likes of Madison Grant and T.H Huxley. Furthermore, one of the labels embraced by the movement since their beginnings is ‘Neo-reactionary’; a pretty baggy definition, but one that clearly denotes a rightward bent.

Some press commentators have even suggested a fascist sentiment motivates the Dark Enlightenment subculture. Jamie Bartlett (writing for the Daily Telegraph), for example, describes the bloggers associated with the movement as ‘sophisticated neo-fascists’.

“Since 2012” he writes “…a sophisticated but bizarre online neo-fascist movement has been growing fast. It’s called “The Dark Enlightenment”… Supporters are dotted all over the world, connected via a handful of blogs and chat rooms. Its adherents are clever, angry white men patiently awaiting the collapse of civilisation, and a return to some kind of futuristic, ethno-centric feudalism… The philosophy, difficult to pin down exactly, is a loose collection of neo-reactionary ideas, meaning a rejection of most modern thinking: democracy, liberty, and equality… The neo-fascist bit lies in the view that races aren’t equal (they obsess over IQ testing and pseudoscience that they claim proves racial differences, like the Ku Klux Klan) and that women are primarily suited for domestic servitude. They call this “Human biodiversity” – a neat little euphemism. This links directly to their desire to be rid of democracy: because if people aren’t equal, why live in a society in which everyone is treated equally? Some races are naturally better to rule than others, hence their support for various forms of aristocracy and monarchy (and not in the symbolic sense but the very real divine-right-of-kings-sense).”

Is this a fair evaluation? I don’t think that matters. What does matter is why men (and presumably some women) find it necessary to hive off into subcultures in the first place. The Dark Enlightenment is clearly a reaction to the culture of extreme (and unnecessary) self-censorship by the academic and intellectual mainstream. We simply don’t talk about the important facts of the world for fear of alienating a single part of it. No, the races are not equal in average intelligence. Nor are the sexes equal. The first-born child is generally more intelligent than his/her younger siblings. The tall are more successful than the short. Women are physically weaker than men. Egalitarianism is a lie. And yes, even Democracy is a stupid idea when reduced to its fundamentals. For if the majority are wrong about something, then society is every bit as doomed with democracy as it would be with a wrong-headed dictator. Etc… Etc…

But creating subcultures around forbidden truths is a dangerous game. Whenever hives of thought arise, the trust generated by basic truth-telling grants the hive-leader authority over his/her followers. Having earned their trust with real (but publically denied) facts, he/she can then sprinkle any kind of abject stupidity on top. And if any mainstream condemnation of this stupidity comes about, it can be ascribed to ‘Leftism’ or the ‘blue pill’. “They told you the races were equal, so why listen to them when they say authoritarian monarchy is bad?”… “They told you affirmative action made sense, so why believe them when they say Jews aren’t in control of the government” Etc…

Denying self-evident truths risks handing intellectual authority to some very shady people indeed. The Dark Enlightenment must be replaced with a straightforward enlightenment. No ‘darkness’ is necessary.

D, LDN

Against Malala Yousafzai

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• First published on this blog in October, 2013

On today’s BBC News ‘magazine’ webpage, there’s a lengthy tribute to the heroism of Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai. Under the title ‘Malala: The girl who was shot for going to school’, the piece goes on to say things like the following:

“She is the teenager who marked her 16th birthday with a live address from UN headquarters, is known around the world by her first name alone, and has been lauded by a former British prime minister as ‘an icon of courage and hope’…She is an extraordinary young woman, wise beyond her years, sensible, sensitive and focused….The voice of the girl whom the Taliban tried to silence a year ago has been amplified beyond what anyone could have thought possible.”

Great tributes indeed, not wholly unlike those paid to Indian spiritual gurus and Western cult leaders. More generally, the piece (by Mishal Hussein) is watery-eyed drivel, and its subject remains a truly unremarkable, very wealthy sockpuppet.

Malala Yousafzai’s only qualification for the praises demanded from us lies in her being shot by the Taliban. Their reasoning for doing this – I concede – was certainly vile. She was one of numerous young girls in the Swat Valley to defend their right to attend school. To this (naturally), the Taliban are resolutely opposed and so – in a manner befitting their cowardice – they chose to silence Ms Yousafzai by bullet, shooting her on a crowded bus.

The Hussein piece ruminates that the Taliban ‘must regret doing this now’. To be honest, they can’t regret it more than me.

I am frankly sick of seeing her pinched little face grinning inside every newspaper I open. Her vacuous and unhelpful words (her latest suggestion is for us to negotiate with the Taliban) are also something we could do without. And why on earth is she living in Birmingham?

The guru known simply as ‘Malala’ is supposed to be a fearless warrior for Pakistani women’s liberties. I can understand that she left Pakistan initially to receive surgery, but despite many local troubles, the women of the English West Midlands are still allowed to go to school. Is her work really required there.

There are literally millions of brave women across the Islamic world who face down similar odds to Her Excellency, but who do not – like her – end-up in five-star New York hotel rooms. Some of them are even hunted in the West for becoming apostates from Islam. One thinks of the names’ Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Wafa Sultan.

But we won’t have either of these speaking at the UN. There’s a reason for that.

Ms Yousafzai has another value, alongside her chocolate-box ‘heroism’ story, for our political elites. She is the ‘Moderate Muslim’ par excellence. A visionary reformer of a culture unable to be reformed. She will doubtlessly also be held up as a ‘unifying’ figure, around which we can gather to bang tambourines and forget our differences, despite those ‘differences’ being the reason Yousefzai’s family scurried on a plane to Britain in the first place (there are many other hospitals she could have attended).

According to the Guardian, Malala has recently sold the rights to her life story for 2 million pounds. This heart-warming entrepreneurialism will provide great comfort to those women the newly minted hero has left behind in Pakistan.

Yousafzai is only 16. The BBC piece wonders excitedly where she can go from here. My suggestion and my hope is Heathrow Airport.

D, LDN.

Does It Have to Get Worse to Get Better?

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• First published on this blog in June, 2015

An argument beloved by the extremes of the right-left spectrum proposes that the short-term success of the opposing side is ultimately good for their own; in other words, that the dystopia they intend (ultimately) to make impossible has first to occur before it can be permanently forbidden.

In our case, this would be to say that the Islamisation of Europe has to quicken, the terror attacks multiply and the general abuse of our population intensify if we are to prevent a future in which such events cannot be opposed at all.

I suppose as arguments go, this one has a whispering, seductive quality to it. To a youthful and excitable temperament especially, easily thrilled by the idea of civil unrest and bad news, it will seem an obviously fine idea, since it guarantees (in fact requires) action and blood, broken glass and the rumble of boots.

But does it really hold water?

Well, today, following a Ramadan sermon by the shaggy beatnik “Caliph” Al-Baghdadi, terrorists have attacked civilians in three different countries. In Tunisia, Gunmen massacred at least 37 tourists relaxing at a beach resort. In France, some poor soul has been murdered, his head left – covered in Arabic script – on a spike. And in Kuwait, the perennially despised Shia have been blown up while praying in a Mosque.

All of the attacks are thought to be the actions of the Islamic State.

This triptych of evil certainly says something about the expansion of IS’s reach. And I think we can all agree that it qualifies as things ‘getting worse’. But have we been empowered by this day of carnage? Are we in a stronger position now than yesterday? I’m not so sure.

Most of the people intelligent enough to understand the reality of Islam already understand it. Faced with the daily progress of Jihad, you would have to be blind, deaf, mute and stupid to resist the conclusion that Islam is violent. And once that main point is understood, further outrages become progressively less shocking.

For this reason I doubt today’s events will have changed anybody’s mind. At least in the West…

In the nation of Tunisia, I think some progress will be made in the coming weeks. Although the point is often exaggerated by eager multi-culturalists, the Tunisians really are a more liberal, relaxed, ‘European’ people than their neighbours. Images of the city afflicted by today’s massacre (Sousse) remind me of destinations in Sicily and Greece. Only the captions below reveal their African location.

As one would expect, this reputation is jealously guarded by Tunisian liberals for whom an event like today’s must be infuriating. While they are in this mood, and should they stumble across this site, I would like say the following – The elimination of Islam from your country is the only failsafe cure for the misery that oppresses you. You have a beautiful Mediterranean homeland, one that many Westerners could be made jealous of. Be bold and change your allegiance while you still have a culture worthy of the name.

As for us in the West, the ‘things have to get worse before they get better’ argument is contradicted (repeatedly) by reality. Van Gogh’s stabbing didn’t bring us any closer to a solution. Lee Rigby didn’t. Rotherham didn’t. Charlie Hebdo didn’t. Today’s events won’t either. The attention span of the average Westerner is diminishing with every fresh atrocity, just as one would logically expect it to.

To rouse people into direct and decisive action will take initiative. It is no use waiting around for things to reach rock-bottom, and then like a phoenix, bounce back to a previous vitality. That is simply not realistic.

If you have the gift of organisation, organise a protest. If you have the gift of eloquence, write letters, start a blog or compose a petition. And when it is asked of you to state your grievance and preferred solution, be open and unafraid about it. Tell them you wish to preserve the Britain of comedy, poetry and freedom, and resist a Britain of Salat, Sawm and Jihad.

Keep the faith in victory too. When the future exerts its terrible pressures, our house shall stand. Theirs shall fall.  

D, LDN.

Challenging the Islamic Mind-Trap

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• First published on this blog in February 2016 

In terms of its reputation among non-believers, the past 15 years must rank as some of Islam’s worst. Every since the planes of 9/11 carved into New York glass, the international media has barely missed a beat in making known the faults of Islamic theology, tradition and social policy. The UK Daily Mail, once the grumpy advocate of small government and Victorian morals, is now better defined as The Daily Islamophobe. The Telegraph, Sun, WSJ, NYT and Star have likewise reshuffled their priorities to place a greater and more critical eye on the Islamic World. The result of this is that every Muslim wrong-doing the world over is reported as international news. Every honour killing, beheading, murder-by-explosion, corrective rape or stoning (though all common enough before 9/11) is now given headline treatment. One can only wonder what this has done to the average Muslim mindset.

It is fair to say that most Muslims sincerely believe Islam is the best religion for mankind to universally adopt; that Islam is a better recipe for peace, progress and happiness than its rivals. Indeed, one cannot be an authentic believer unless one believes this. And yet nobody paying any attention to the contemporary situation can possibly come to this conclusion – or indeed sustain this conclusion – without unimaginable contortions of logic and tricks of the mind. The most visible of these tricks has been to blame the ills of Islam on other forces, whether economic, racial or political. ‘True, Saudi Arabia is a barbaric, undeveloped desert, but it would have been very different were it not for the Zionists’. ‘True, illiteracy and incest are Pakistani specialities, but this would not be the case were it not for the wicked Indians’. And so on.

This self-deception, though ludicrously fake, has held out remarkably well. Apostasy rates from Islam are no higher than in the 1990s. Minority faiths (LDS, Scientology etc…) excepted, Islam remains the fastest growing religion in the world. The impression given is that Islam is the perfectly designed mind-trap; that it has inbuilt defences against criticism and failure that cannot be overcome by reason or reality. But this is unduly pessimistic, I believe. Though strong on the outside, Islamic psychology is substantially weaker in its design that its current reputation might suggest. Inflexibility is being mistaken for strength, disorder for complexity.

The psychology of Islamic belief is best understood as a simple loop of deterrence, aversion and reward. When someone criticises Islam (its truth value, historicity or moral nature), a functioning Muslim will at first rationally process and understand the criticism, perhaps even to the point of agreeing with it. After this, in a state of profound unease, the Muslim will think of the Qur’anic verses drummed into his consciousness since infancy. He will think especially of those passages admonishing the ‘unbelievers’ – those who are bound for hellfire and who stray habitually from the ‘right path’. This then creates a feeling of terror and a desperation to obey Allah (who can perceive thoughts, reasoning, and even inclinations). To get rid of this discomfort, the believer admonishes the critic with harsh and even violent words. How dare he question the perfection of the Qur’an! He must have no soul! The aggression towards the critic is for the eyes of Allah and not the critic himself. The greater the aggression, the more relief will be felt by the believer. He is angry at you because you derailed his circular thoughts. You convinced him of something forbidden, something he tries with every fibre of his being not to think about. The force of aggression you unleash in him is proportionate to how convincing he (almost) found your argument; to how close you pushed him to the edge of reason.

Circular thinking is central to Islamic belief

This process also governs how Muslims integrate (or fail to integrate) the contemporary realities of the world. When viewing the chaos of Quranic rule in Syria, the loop described above prevents the processing of the stimuli into moral judgement and understanding. The believer is not ignorant. He knows everything we know. He just has a disorder of thought which allows him to dispose of un-Islamic stimuli as fast as he imbibes it.

How could one disrupt the loop? This is question best answered by those who have been raised in Islam only to discard it at a later stage. Since I am not from a Muslim background, I will have to go from the accounts of others.

As you’ll be aware, testimonies by ex-Muslims are notable among apostatatic statements by their emphasis on the aspect of ‘fear’; fear of Allah, of hellfire, of divine retribution awaiting them should they fail to live a morally perfect life. To understand why this is so characteristic of Islam, one must first appreciate the system by which human beings are said to be judged in Islamic theology.

According to Islamic tradition, a Muslim has two angels beside him at all times – one to the left, another to the right. One of these keeps a record of the good deeds and thoughts the believer performs and has during his earthly tenure, and the other keeps record of the bad. At the day of judgement, the two records are ‘weighed’ to see which is more reflective of the human in question, greatly influencing (but not deciding) whether he is to go to hell or paradise.

In a comparative sense, this is one of the more endearing and just-seeming of Islamic concepts. But a side effect of it is that the believer becomes subject to the divine equivalent of thought policing. As I say, the Kiraman Katibin do not only record your deeds, but your inner reflections. They make note of your intentions, temptations, lusts and transgressions, preserving all of them down to the finest detail. A bad deed is never forgotten or forgiven. There is no equivalent of Catholic confession in which one may wipe the slate clean. You sin and you are stained. Black marks last forever.

Try to imagine the effect this concept would have on your psychology were you to believe in it. You would be unable to enjoy a single private emotion without the fear of upsetting an omniscient authority. And since even temptations are recorded, you would be compelled to avoid any environment or stimuli which might lead you astray. This explains why Muslims are so seemingly afraid of female flesh. A girl in a mini-skirt prompts ‘impure’ thoughts in the believer, which in turn upsets Allah. The recorded acts of aggression against such women (Cologne, Rotherham etc…) are attempts to impress Allah, to make up with him for brief deficiencies of thought control. The believer might have been weak-minded for a moment, but he can still be a soldier of Islam by punishing the kafir in question.

You would also avoid un-Islamic knowledge as a matter of course. This explains why Muslims read little other than Islamic texts, and why they remain ignorant of scientific concepts like evolution and cosmology. The Muslims themselves might be intelligent and academically gifted, but their fear of wrong-thinking deters them from building on these gifts. One might posit this anxiety as the reason for the un-development of the Muslim world as a whole.

Islam, as a mindset, is a permanent state of anxiety, never-ending panic attack, perpetual psychosis. This must be understood by anyone who wishes to break through Islamic psychology to where the captive human is being held. One must treat a Muslim in the same way one would treat a victim of OCD or any comparable neurotic illness. Muslim fanaticism is based in fear. Muslim confidence is fake. Muslims do not like their God. They are afraid of him.

Convincing (or trying to convince) a Muslim that their religion is axiomatically false must necessarily be a perilous operation. If you do not succeed, he will kill you for trying. But it is not impossible. The best approach is not to impose conclusions on the believer, but rather to ask questions. The most developed, rich and powerful parts of the world are those in which Muslim believers are few. Are these enemies of God blessed by something else? Why are so many Muslims killed by other believers? Why are non-Muslim women happier and more secure from domestic violence and rape than Muslim women? Why are so many claims in the Quran provably false? Why do Muslims seem naturally drawn to non-Muslim societies over Muslim ones? Why do Muslim countries fail at science and technological development? Why are non-Muslims so petrified of Muslims in particular (and not, say, Hindus and Sikhs)? Why do Muslim armies fail to win battles against non-Islamic armies? Why are non-Muslims more plentiful than Muslims? And so on.

The more questions one leaves with a Muslim, the more effort he will have to put into diverting them from his rational mind. True, some believers are superhumanly stubborn, but these are far from typical. Many have never been presented with un-Islamic arguments before. A missile shower of reasonable doubts can severely degrade the conviction of a semi-committed believer.

While Islamic psychology cannot be broken in a society which prohibits un-Islamic concepts from being entertained, it can at least be attempted in the Western world, where no form of speech is (officially at least) off-limits. Muslims shouldn’t be written off as hopeless. It costs nothing to try and liberate their minds. You may be surprised by your success.

D, LDN

Normalising Muslim Britain

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• First published on this blog in January, 2016

The presence of Islam in 21st century Britain is no more natural or inevitable than the presence of Sikhism in Chile. It’s worth repeating this fact whenever possible or appropriate. This is because many fake liberals continue to push the argument that Islamophobes such as you or I are somehow unworldly, retrograde, or unrealistic for opposing Muslim settlement in the contemporary West.

Some commentators go even further, saying that far from being a new and foreign element in our society, Islam is a traditional part of Europe, citing irrelevant factors like the antique conurbations of Muslim Sicily, Malta or Andalucía. Islamic influence, they claim, can be found in Europe’s system of law, code of social ethics, philosophy, medicine, architecture and geography. Given that this is so, why shouldn’t Muslim Pakistanis, Turks or Arabs live in present-day Leeds or Stockholm? They are as responsible for the greatness of these places as the natives…right?

No. Not right at all. It is certainly true that Islam’s Andalusian Golden age imparted a great number of ideas to European elites, many of which are now claimed as entirely and originally European. However, such contributions were mostly limited to disciplines of what we would now call ‘academia’ and in-any-case are dwarfed many times over by the influence of European ideas on Muslim civilisation. Do Europeans have the moral right to settle in Muslim countries on that basis? No, of course they don’t. And vice versa.

Leftists like to push the myth of European-Islamic co-development for one reason above all; they think it will normalise the presence of Islam in Europe and erase the memory of a Europe without Islam. For if the Muslim presence in Europe can be made to seem normal, traditional or ancient, objections to it will naturally seem irrational, unreasonable and unrealistic.

Another way the same effect can be achieved is via the media, and especially the screen media. Over Christmas, like most Britons, I found myself slouched in front of the television for extended periods of time. During that time I witnessed an astonishing barrage of British Islamic subject matter. There was the Citizen Khan Christmas special on BBC One (Note: CK is a woefully unfunny Muslim sitcom). There were the quiz shows with a disproportionate number of Muslim contestants, many of whom wore Hijabs or prayer caps. There was Eastenders – perhaps the most popular show in Britain today – with gripping plotlines involving characters called Shabnam, Kush, Tamwar, Masood, Fatima, Kamil and Ali. National (and even more so) local newsreaders and weathermen/girls were disproportionately Muslim. And so on. Over time, this normalises something abnormal; the slow bleed of east into west; the merging of two contraries into a single untenable consensus.

This is new. This is unnatural. And this is not something we should be tolerating.

D, LDN

Thank You & Goodbye

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I began this blog in January, 2013, largely on a whim. I can still remember coming up with the idea as I waited in the rain for a bus in Wimbledon, London (the bus, as is London tradition, was absurdly late.). Since then, ‘Defend the Modern World’ has been visited over half a million times, chiefly by Brits and Americans, but also by thousands of Australians, Africans, Asians and Middle Easterners, too. I am immensely proud of the work that I have done. I hope that it has done some good.

Last week, I received an offer of a teaching position in Europe. When I taught English in northern Spain last year, mainly to small groups of infants, I managed to carry on the blog simultaneously. However, I have come to the conclusion that it will be difficult for me to do the same this time around.

In light of this, and with regret, I am suspending DTMW from this week forward.

The blog will remain online – I have no intentions of deleting it – and I have scheduled a selection of the old posts I am most proud of to be published over the next few Mondays.

To those who have been loyal readers of this blog, I want to say a heartfelt and sincere thank you. Though the quality of my writing has been greatly uneven, you have always been too kind to point out my failings. I do appreciate that.

It is possible I may pick up the blog again sometime in the future, but this is uncertain. I will try to post on occasion – when the news compels me to say something; say, after a terror attack in the UK or US – but the weekly format is just not something I can keep up.

It would, of course, be impossible to adequately sum up the work of three years in a few paragraphs, so I’ll just say this; my sole motivation in writing DTMW has been an uncomplicated loyalty to Western civilisation. It is, to me, the only culture on Earth worth a penny. Nothing else has inspired me. I have not hated anything. I have sought to help protect something I love.

The contest with Islam is not going away any time soon. I do, however, have faith that we will triumph in the end. Even the most fanatical Muslim knows in his heart that the modern world is superior to the mud-huts and mutilations of the Dar-al-Salaam. We need only be loud and proud about this and eventually even the most stubborn will come around.

I wish you all the greatest possible happiness. Thank you once again for your generosity and encouragement.

David (Defend the Modern World)

Letter to the Muslims of Europe

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*Originally published on this blog in July, 2015

If you (reader) are one of the twenty million devout Muslims currently resident in Europe, I’d like to try explain to you why I believe your beliefs are incompatible with the culture of your adopted home. But more than this, I hope also to persuade you that this view (shared by a growing majority of Europeans) does not emanate from ignorance or racism, and why it may not be a defeat or a humiliation for you to agree with it.

You or your parents probably came to Europe initially for economic reasons, seeking a better life and a more secure future. There is nothing dishonourable or unusual about that. Most non-Muslim migrants make the journey with the same ambitions. The West is very wealthy and safe relative to the rest of the world and so it is only rational to want to join it.

Once here, you or your parents probably planned to exist in a peaceful but separate state to the majority, maintaining your beliefs and traditions quietly in the same way that Orthodox Jews and Eastern Orthodox migrants have done in the past. Increasingly, this doesn’t seem to be possible, if it ever was. And in my view, the reasons for that directly relate to the nature of Islamic belief and the sense of mission that is so inseparable from it.

Unlike Christianity or Judaism, yours is a conquering faith, not a persuading one. Relatively little importance is given to peaceful proselytization in Islam. While there are occasionally stalls set out in front of tube stations or elsewhere in city centres to preach Islamic doctrine, this is an imitation of Christian practice and not something organically ‘Muslim’. Rather, Muslims have historically sought to attain dominion over society by violence, sometimes later permitting religious diversity within that society, but never allowing any symbol to enjoy precedence over the crescent. Their hope, indeed their announced intention, has always been to exalt Islam to a position of cultural dominance and authority. While Christians and Jews have peacefully resided as minorities in many different parts of the world, Muslims have always struggled with the very concept of minority life. Since Allah is supposed to be the only authority to which submission is made, it is seen by most Muslims (and perhaps by you specifically) to be incongruous that a divine authority is subordinate to any non-Islamic regime, whether secular or religious. Minarets are built to tower above all other buildings for grander reasons than amplification. They proclaim symbolically the primacy and authority of Islam over the territory Muslims inhabit. It will simply not do that cathedrals or government buildings are larger or invested with more power and importance. Indeed, it is blasphemous and idolatrous. As Islamists never forget to proclaim before they demolish some priceless artefact – “Nothing and no-one is worthy of veneration except Allah”.

This sense of mission, inherent within Islamic theory, has radically altered human history. The nations of Lebanon, Libya and Syria were once Christian. The territory of what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan was once Buddhist. Persia was once Zoroastrian. That these places are now Muslim is testament to Islam’s conquering urge and military spirit. Islam seeks not only to convert, but to dominate and subdue. It is expansionist by its very nature. It was not designed to be one faith out of many, but to be the one and only faith of all humankind. The Quran itself is not shy of stating this. I would quote the passages urging the subjugation of unbelievers here but this would be so long as to be disruptive to my argument.

Your faith is antagonistic to everything but itself. And since you began settling in Europe back in the 1960s, members of your community have behaved in a way harmonious with that analysis. Just recently in Britain, there has been a wave of serious sexual assault committed by Muslims against exclusively non-Muslim children. Some estimates put the number of girls assaulted by British Pakistanis as high as 200,000. In the town of Rotherham alone, at least 1400 girls are known to have been forced into sexual slavery by Muslim gangs.

And even when it doesn’t lead to assault, your behaviour around women (if you are a man) is infantile and tactless. It would appear customary that upon meeting a woman (Muslim or otherwise, online or in real life) your first words either involve sex or invite a personal relationship that can lead to sex. It might surprise you – it probably has surprised you – but non-Muslim women do not enjoy being asked for their phone number or address by a complete stranger without any preceding conversation. Your lack of charm – indeed, your failure to even understand the idea and purpose of charm – is absolute. To you, women are merely sexual animals, possessing no greater value or agency than cats and dogs. For this reason, perhaps more than any other, I find it difficult to breathe the same air as you.

Then there are the acts of extreme violence. Members of your community blew up the train network in Madrid, Spain and the subway in London, England. Members of your community massacred the staff of a cartoon tabloid in Paris. Members of your community have beheaded European citizens, the most recent case occurring only a month ago. You even hunt your own kind! Hundreds of Muslim women have now been killed in Europe in the name of ‘honour’ – and usually by members of their own family. Every year, thousands of Muslim girls are taken abroad to have their vagina mutilated by a shaving razor and then brought back to lead a miserable, painful existence with the perpetrators.

How could we possibly put up with this? What kind of people would we be if we did?

Face the facts, a growing proportion of the native population of Europe actively despises you, and does so without allowing any distinction for your race, Islamic school or individual contribution to European society. After decades of aggressive dysfunction and sickening crime, people simply hate you. They hate you and they fear you. And it is becoming difficult for even the most committed liberal to propose a reason why they shouldn’t.

There is an obvious – some would say cartoonish – contrast between the Islamic conception of society and the hopes and opinions of the Europeans. We value things you view as Satanic. You value things we regard as barbaric. You put faith before reason. We put reason before faith. You regard women as second-class human beings. We regard the sexes as equal. You view freedom of speech as being limited to secular matters. We believe it should permeate every corner of life and thought.

Even if this weren’t the case, your religious tradition is not the one that we are used to and which has inspired and characterised our manners and rituals over centuries. No European books are dedicated to your God. No statues of your Prophet (even if this were allowed) grace the Piazzas of our cities. Few if any Qur’anic phrases have entered our common parlance. We don’t celebrate your holy days, and have no regard for your heroes and saints.

You might reply that Hindu and Sikh mythologies do not inform our ways either, but then Hindus and Sikhs have proven themselves to be comfortable with that. I have never heard of an act of Hindu terrorism, nor any religiously-motivated outrage committed by a Sikh, Buddhist, Scientologist or Jain organisation. Islam has actively distinguished itself in violence, in readiness to fight and to make war where there is peace.

You are wrong if you take us for fools. We know well enough what the phrases Dar al-Harb and Dar al-Islam mean. We recognise the desire on your part to transfer us from one to the other and by what means. You must have known from the start that a project of this historical magnitude would be resisted with passion and fire. And, please believe me, that passion and fire is already generated in sufficient quantity should we ever be given the excuse to unleash it.

There are people on this (uniquely civilised) continent who would gladly slaughter you like dogs. It is not fantastical anymore to foresee a new Nazi movement emerging in Europe and going on to behave in a Hitlerian fashion. Nobody (save a few lunatics) wishes to go back there. Peace in Europe has been a blessing. Democracy is deserving of all the celebration dedicated to it. But your behaviour is testing the hold of democracy to its white-knuckled limits.

How then can we defuse this bomb? How might we organise a solution that forbids the need for mass violence and the self-destruction of democratic liberalism? This of course is the great question of my generation, and the most important task of the Western World, ahead of the environment, Russia, or any other exaggerated diversion.

That there is – or rather, that you are – an issue in need of resolution can no longer be sensibly denied. We are obliged by everything we hold dear to guarantee that the Islamisation of Europe ceases and that what progress it has already made is reversed. The Western way of life is not just ‘different’ to your own, but a million times superior. We are behaving very rationally by seeking to protect it.

Incidentally, you can deny this last fact as much as you want. It makes no difference to me. Deep down, beneath all the evasions and the layers of self-hypnosis, I’m sure you accept it as much as I do. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t still be here.

And that is the real, embarrassing truth, no? Whatever your friends have scrawled on placards in the past, you don’t ‘hate our way of life’ at all. You are simply jealous of it, and angry that your ancestral lands have failed – and are still failing – to develop in a like fashion.

For an effective and rapid solution to this problem, I propose the following measures – If you are brave, honest and intelligent enough to rid your mind of the numbing circularities of Islamic thinking, a space in the European future can and should be found for you. If not, and if you continue to display the toxic side effects of Islamic belief, then no more kid glove treatment should be forthcoming. If you espouse anti-Semitic, anti-Democratic and anti-Western ideas, you should be arrested and receive criminal records, with all the implications that has for finding employment, pursuing political office and securing tenancy and accommodation. The wearing of the Niqab must be outlawed and repeat offenders deported to a country where it is still the prevailing fashion. All Muslims involved in the mass-rape of British children must hang. Any Mosque preaching violence against Jews, Christians or Homosexuals must be shut down and demolished, and the same with colleges and Islamic faith schools. There must be an end to all immigration from Muslim countries, including from those cultures touted as exceptional (like Tunisia, Turkey or Iran). The culture of the West must be openly celebrated as the supreme culture of the world, and no ‘noble’ savagery must ever be taught as a desirable alternative to our children.

Our foreign policy must also be redesigned to reflect our desire to survive. Turkey should be expelled from NATO and replaced by Armenia. Any sanctions lifted from Iran must be reimposed. Investment in alternatives to Middle Eastern oil, including fracking (in lightly populated areas), fusion technology, nuclear and renewable energy must be radically increased. Western arms should only be exported to regimes which ruthlessly suppress Islamist activity (like Egypt and Jordan) and never to theocratic countries, whether ‘allies’ or not (Saudi, UAE, Kuwait etc…). Needless to say, our support for Israel must be great and unconditional.

In all these efforts, our motivating principle (and final goal) must be that Islam is forever segregated from the Western World.

Finally, reader, I promised at the beginning to tell you why it isn’t a humiliation for you to agree with my arguments… This is for the simple reason that you were a human being long before you were a Muslim, and this will always be the most salient fact about you. You are no more biologically predestined to ignorance and poverty than a Swede or a German. If you wish to become free, you can become free! And if you prefer slavery, well, then there is no defeat in relocating to pursue it, if that is your dream. There can no ‘shame’ in wanting to be where you belong. Nothing is more human.

Whichever condition you choose (and we will make you choose), understand that the West is the homeland of the free, the creative and the happy. A slave will always be foreign here.

D, LDN.

The Second American Revolution

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Well… there we are then. I’ve predicted the outcome of two major votes this year and been wrong about both of them. I’m not sure what to say. Perhaps there is nothing to say, other than to warn the reader never to take advice from me on lottery numbers or business investments.

America, as you’ll now be aware, has just elected Donald J Trump to the highest office in the land. And with the GOP also triumphant in both houses of Congress, for the next four years, the New York billionaire will have an almost unprecedented level of control over the mechanisms of Western government,

This is the beginning of what will inevitably be referred to by historians as the ‘Trump Era’ – a four-to-eight year period dominated by the decisions and personality of a single, remarkable man.

I am both pleased and nervous about the result. As someone who made the case for Trump (as best I could on a UK-based blog), my satisfaction with the unexpected success of the Republican is naturally tempered with unease and foreboding.

Trump is not a perfect man – far from it. Many of the criticisms made by his opponents over the past 12 months (or was it lifetimes) were perfectly valid and based in solid fact. He is often boorish, unpredictable, erratic and – in some key ways – he is inexperienced. No matter how passionate your support for his reign may be, you cannot sensibly deny that his election represents a gamble.

But it was a gamble the people of America were forced by circumstance to make. The elite, which includes the press, has lost all contact with, and respect for, the ordinary population of the United States. Unless a US citizen lives in New York or Los Angeles, he simply doesn’t matter to the decision-making class. His voice, projected at a polite volume, is muffled to a whisper by distance, farmland and poverty. On Nov. 8th, therefore, he was left with no choice but to shout, to shout so loud that windows were broken, and so they have been.

Hillary Clinton prepares to give her concession speech in New York

Those members of the global elite currently tearing their expensively shampooed hair out have no right to be surprised by what has happened. How could their disregard and arrogance have led to any other destination? Trump was and is a shock of history, but he was not an unforeseeable one.

Nevertheless, the shockwaves of the election result have been palpable. Jonathan Freedland, a normally level-headed liberal commentator, spoke for many in the London-New York-LA bubble when he wrote (in an article dramatically entitled ‘Will Donald Trump Destroy America?’) “What if (Trump) goes ahead and deports 11.3 million undocumented migrants? What if he really does ban all Muslims entering the country? What if he tries to use the powers of the state to go after media organisations that have criticised him – making life difficult for the businesses that own inquisitive newspapers such as the Washington Post, for example – as he has said he will? What if he overturns abortion rights, even imposing “some form of punishment” on a woman who terminates a pregnancy, as he once suggested? And what if he really does build that wall?… There are plenty who believe that if Trump went ahead and actually implemented his programme, he would create a different country: closed, xenophobic and at odds with some of the founding principles – religious equality or freedom of speech – that have defined the United States since its founding. The country would still exist – but it would no longer be America.”

Freedland’s words may be misguided, but his tone is surely appropriate. This really is a major turning point in American history – a second American revolution, if you will. By the time Trump has finished his work, however that goes, America will be a drastically changed place. There are so many differences between his approach and that of his predecessors that such an outcome is irresistible.

Donald Trump, unlike Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and practically every president stretching back to the Eisenhower administration, is an Americanist. He believes that America, despite its size and power, is a real, flesh and blood country – with real, flesh and blood people living in it. America is not, to him, an idea, a hope, or a ‘dream’. It is a pulsating, living, breathing reality. If one thing divides him from the presidents of the recent past, it is that his focus is largely limited by loyalty and affection to and toward the United States (and those countries like it – *I was greatly encouraged to hear Mr Trump describe the UK as a special friend this week).

Donald Trump is not a neo-con, preoccupied with the security prospects of the Saudis, Turks and Qataris. He looks at the world with the purity of the patriot; an honest, crystalline simplicity. To him, something is either good for America, or not. That seems to be his only consideration.

I do understand and appreciate that many parts of the world (and parts of America) will be unnerved by Trump’s election. This is only inevitable. Change always brings anxiety. Nevertheless, such places and people must be calm and reasonable enough to give the president-elect a chance to show his governing style before jumping to rash conclusions.

In Israel, there is some stress over President Trump’s words regarding the conflict with the Palestinians. Back in the primary debates, Mr Trump shocked the gathered by stating that it wasn’t helpful to pick a side in foreign conflicts and that he would, as president, strive to be more fair-minded. Since then, Trump has reconfirmed his intention to make a ‘deal’ on the Israel-Palestine face-off. What does he mean by this? What kind of ‘deal’ does he have in mind? We have no way of knowing, so worrying about it is a waste of time.

As on Israel, so on many other issues. Trump is simply a mystery to us at this point. Will he tame his fiery populism upon entering the White House? Will he go back on his promises made at his roaring rallies? Will the wall be built? What will happen to the 11 million illegal migrants currently embedded in American society? We don’t know. We can’t know. Only time will tell us.

It is my belief that Donald Trump will either be the greatest president of the past 50 years, or he will be the worst. There is no in-between with him. His personality is too spectacular, his confidence too muscled. As things stand, the former seems more likely to me than the latter.

D, LDN

 

D-Day

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Nervous? I am. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure I’ve ever been so on edge before an election in my life. On Wednesday morning, barring some unforeseen chaos, America will have a new president elect. As to whether that president will wear a tie or a pantsuit is still anyone’s guess.

I have stopped paying attention to the polls. The last couple I saw, published only a few hours apart, predicted a Clinton victory and a Trump victory respectively. This tells us nothing except that the contest really is down to the wire.

The New York Times is, as far as I know, the only notable publication daring to predict a landslide for one particular candidate. In today’s online edition, the paper’s resident statisticians give Hillary Clinton an 84% chance of winning the election. For context, the paper notes that (according to this calculation) “Mrs. Clinton’s chance of losing is about the same as the probability that an NFL kicker misses a 38-yard field goal.”

I don’t need to tell you that such brazen overconfidence is terribly unwise at this point.

We have, whatever the media may fill time by saying, no real way of knowing what the final imbalance will be on Wednesday morning. We know only that two radically different Americas will have fought with purpled-faced passion for the right to determine the national (and, in some ways, global) future – their preferred visions as different from each other as can possibly be imagined. Perhaps not since the Civil War has there been such stark and violent disagreement between the peoples of the (ostensibly) United States.

There remains nothing more to say now other than to hazard a final prediction. Before I do, I must first make clear the difference between what I think will happen and what I am personally hoping for. These are, as I will explain, sadly out of sync.

I believe (perhaps I should say – I fear) that Hillary Clinton will edge the contest on Tuesday. My reasoning for this is based not on the polls, but on the strange logic (if it can even be called logic) of the US electoral college. As you’ll be aware, it ultimately doesn’t matter who leads the national polls. America’s presidents are elected by a much more convoluted mechanism. Based on unbiased (non-US) media analysis, the road to a Hillary victory appears at present much clearer than the road to a Trump triumph. In order to pull off an upset, Mr Trump must ‘flip’ numerous states in which the Republican support base is traditionally weaker than the Democrats’ – and do so in spite of a massive blitz of hostile propaganda in those states (Clinton’s attack ad spending in this election has resembled more the budget for a military invasion than for a political campaign).

True, a Trump victory is still possible, and we mustn’t lose hope. I was, you may remember, wrong about the outcome of the Brexit vote (along with pretty much everyone else in Britain). However, there is nothing to gain from wishful thinking, and I prefer to state my opinion truthfully.

Whoever wins on Tuesday, America has been undeniably altered by the long, gruelling contest up to this point. A forgotten and despised community – the White working class – has organised into a coherent and readily deployable political force. This force will outlive Trump’s candidacy and go on to influence many elections to come. This is bad news for both parties, but in particular for the Republican mainstream – a tired-out, uninspiring and treacherous collective more concerned with dollars and cents than with people and destiny. If Trump does indeed lose, therefore, there are still a lot of reasons to be thankful for his having stood at all.

The Democrats, even if they win, will be greatly wounded by Clinton’s effect. Almost singlehandedly, the nominee has peeled off a previously loyal base of youthful idealists, casting them adrift into the political wilderness in search of a third party able to satisfy their lust for European socialism and big government. It would be no surprise to me were these idealists to coalesce with the stray Republicans mentioned previously. Both groups do, after all, have the same complaint in kind. They both understand all too well that the elite no longer gives a damn about their welfare or identity. Never has a genuine third alternative looked more realistic than now.

I will post a celebration or condemnation of the result as soon as possible after it has been announced.

See you on the other side of this madness. Breathe slowly. It’s almost over!

D, LDN

PS: I am very interested to hear if the readers of this blog concur with my prediction. Perhaps I’m being unduly pessimistic?