In Defence of… Christian Movies

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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

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What Would Bismarck Do?

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A few years ago, I was enjoying a lazy evening in my university library when I noticed that an essay was due for the following day. I had been completely unaware of it until then (having been absent on the day it was set). To my further anxiety, I noted that I was also unaware of its subject, the Father of Germany – Otto Von Bismarck.

I can be excused for the latter offence, I think. In British schools, we are taught an extremely limited curriculum (usually covering only the Holocaust, Henry VIII and Slavery in any detail). Bismarck was a familiar name to me, as it is to most people, but I had never been given a reason to make him any more vivid or lifelike in my imagination.

Needless to say, I got no sleep that night, spending the whole period in the library, pumped full of machine coffee and knee deep in a pile of thick, dusty books. But despite the anxious mood in which I was prompted to discover it, the story of Bismarck has proven enduringly fascinating to me. More than anyone in European history, Bismarck seemed to have been a living embodiment of the romantic ideal – Nietzsche’s ‘Ubermensch’, Carlyle’s ‘Great Man’, Machiavelli’s ‘Prince’ – a superman of reality, gifted far beyond the ordinary and with a drive to succeed that dramatically alters world history. There wouldn’t even be a ‘Germany’ without Bismarck, without his deviousness, intellect and personal strength. He is the author of Germany. Germany is his magnum opus. What other major country can call itself the product of one man’s cunning?

I believe the elephantine heroism exhibited by Bismarck goes some way to explain the quintessentially Germanic reverence for strong leaders (a reverence which, of course, went terribly astray in the 20th century). Bismarck was the proof of the German type. He demonstrated what a German could achieve. In this regard, he can be compared to Abu Bakr, the Muslim leader who conquered most of what is now defamed as the ‘Muslim World’. Bakr, like Bismarck, demonstrated an ideal – an ideal which Muslims try (in vain) to emulate right up to the present day (see, Bin Laden, Baghdadi, Zarqawi etc…). They are unwilling to accept that Bakr was a one-off giant, unrepresentative of the human average. Hitler and the Jihadists are thus products of the same delusion.

Still, unlike Bakr (a talented barbarian), Bismarck still has lessons to teach the leaders of the civilised world. For example, what would a man like Bismarck do in the context of the Euro-Islamic war? Let’s speculate now with the aid of three famous Bismarck quotes.

“A conquering army on the border will not be stopped by eloquence.”

This saying could hardly be more timely. As in Bismarck’s tinderbox era, Europe today finds itself under a long and potentially devastating siege. This time, the conquering army is not composed of other Europeans, but represents a detachment of our most ancient geo-cultural rival. Bismarck is surely correct to say that eloquence, reason and speech-making are bladeless weapons, useless in times of war and crisis. What we need is a physical, material blockade, strong enough to keep the hordes from advancing on our cities. In the case of the ‘refugee’ invasion, we should be deploying a massive, pan-European military force to Southern and South-Eastern coastlines. Anybody who shows up and is unable to prove they are Christian or of another non-Muslim minority faith must be turned away. If they try to rush the borders after being warned, they should be shot. That’s what war is like.

“With a gentleman I am always a gentleman and a half, and when I have to do with a pirate, I try to be a pirate and a half.”

Bismarck here uses ‘pirate’ to mean barbarian. He is correct to say that one should adjust one’s manner and values depending upon the force one is faced with. Since with Islam we are faced with a force of barbarism, we need not be overly civilised in defending ourselves.

“The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia.”

As regards European politics, this is a timeless truth. No attempt to secure Europe is feasible if it does not factor in the influence of Russia. To have thought otherwise is the foundational error of NATO. If Islam is to be kept at bay, Russia must be incorporated into our security structure and provided with a role reflecting her size and innate capabilities.

Though the age of Great Europeans has passed, their words and wisdom remain as relevant and necessary as in their own time.

D, LDN

Latent Vs Active: A Replacement Typology of Muslims.

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I’ve mentioned elsewhere that the often proposed division of Muslims into ‘Fundamentalists’ and ‘Moderates’ is unconvincing to me. The distinction is obviously political in origin and obscures more than it enlightens.

I would like therefore to propose a replacement theory, or rather definition, to explain the real difference between the believers who merely pray, and the believers who hijack airliners.

There are, I propose, two distinct types of Muslim in the world; Those who are Latent, and those who are Active. (*There will always be a minority who elude definition).

The Latent Muslim is in the clear majority, accounting perhaps for three quarters of the World Muslim population.

This kind of believer is typically serene and apolitical. He is opiated by his beliefs, rather than stimulated by them. Devout though they may be (and unlike Christians) they often have little curiosity for the battle of ideas.

The Active Muslim – by contrast – is someone whose experience has engaged the less sedating aspects of his faith. He is inclined towards the excitement of violence, death, punishment, procreation and conquest.

These Muslims will fight you until you believe exactly as they do, and possibly even afterward.

Crucially, (unlike with the false Fundamentalist/Moderate antonymy) the Latent Muslim can become an Active believer at any given time. The two conditions are not opposed, merely different, and the Active state is always quiescent in the Latent.

The signature fallacy of EU/US leaders has been to assume that extremism and moderation are real elements of Muslim self-identification; that they are innate, unchangeable and permanent. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

As Daniel Greenfield wrote:

“Politicians… wall off that vast majority of Muslims who did not actually come down to Woolwich and hack at a soldier with a machete and did not fly two planes into the World Trade Center from those who actually did. The hackers and pilots are extremists. The couch potatoes watching at home and cheering them on are moderates. That might be fine if we were discussing a gas station robbery in Cleveland. But to Muslims, Jihad isn’t an act of violence; it’s an act of faith.”

The Latent Muslim, as the name I have chosen implies, is not a moderate. He is unactivated. He lives quietly and habitually, enlivened only by foreign stimulus. It is this Foreign stimulus that tends to change the Latent into the Active. This explains for example, why those Muslims in 99% Muslim countries (Turkey, Saudi Arabia etc..) are largely Latent, whereas those in religiously divided lands (Lebanon, Egypt, Serbia/Kosovo, Britain, France) are more Active.

A more frivolous illustration would involve the mythology of Zombies.

Zombies (in some depictions) are unaggressive and docile among each other, but faced with a thinking human, become drones of monstrous conquest.

In the logic of Zombies, there is no ‘friend or foe’, but simply ‘fellow or food’. And as wrong-headed as we would be to negotiate with the undead, perhaps we’d do better to reconsider our approach with Muslims based on the criteria described.

D, LDN.

Somalis in Minnesota? Really?

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As I browsed YouTube the other morning, a video in the ‘news’ sidebar caught my attention and quickly triggered a fit of laughter. The video’s title was ‘Minnesota Somalis Protest against al-Shabab’.

I had a personal reason to laugh at this. A friend of mine lives in Minneapolis and the city’s lack of diversity is a running gag in our correspondence. (‘A black guy came in to the bar yesterday. It’s closed down now’….)

But even without my private rationale, the headline is pretty surreal. Somalis in Minnesota… How? Why? When?….

After regaining my composure, I began to research the census figures on American Muslims. I haven’t done this before as the ‘Islamisation of America’ scenario spoken of by Conservatives has never felt real to me. America – I’ve always thought – is much too proud, too nativist and too various for Muslims to pose an organized threat.

Perhaps I was too hasty.

While it’s certainly true that America will never become a Muslim majority country, it seems the seeds of euro-style Islamic ghettos are being planted at an alarming rate. This is from the NY Daily News:

“A new survey reveals the dramatically changing face of religion in America, with the number of Muslims in the U.S. soaring 67% in the decade since the 9/11  attacks….Data released Tuesday from the 2010 U.S. Religion Census shows Islam was the fastest growing religion in America in the last 10 years, with 2.6 million living in the U.S. today, up from 1 million in 2000…..In the Midwest and parts of the South there are now more Muslims than Jews for the first time. Immigration from parts of the Muslim world and a small rise in conversions are the driving force behind the growth, researchers said.”

For the Muslim population of the US to double in ten years is not unworthy of concern. It should also warrant special attention across the Atlantic. As we in Europe know so well, breakneck growth of this kind is heavy-laden with political and social consequences.

What kind of consequences? Well, leaving aside the ‘Little Mosque on the Prairie’ fantasy world of the Left, almost all of them negative.

Take for example, our Minnesotan Somali friends from earlier. It turns out their ‘protest’ was actually more of an apology. “Six years have passed” reports the Mail “since Somali-American fighters began leaving Minnesota to become part of al-Shabab. Now the Somali community is dismayed over reports that a few of its own might have been involved in the violence at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi.”

So, a terror attack by Somalis on Kenyans in Nairobi… and connections are apparent with Minnesota. This is what you get with a blind immigration policy.

Though complete Islamisation might be unthinkable for the United States, there is a halfway condition between that nightmare and what the country is used to. This is ‘Europeanisation’. To be ‘European’ in respect to Islam is be in a state of castration, political correctness and deliberately naivety. It requires a sizable Muslim minority with a political voice and a proven threat of violence (the Netherlands perhaps, is the model for this). You’ll know you’ve reached this condition when, after an Islamist attack or riot, your politicians address the community responsible in a pandering language more appropriate to admonishing children for overturning a houseplant. “Come on guys, this isn’t what we expect…”

If it wishes to catch up with European decline, America has a lot of running to do (or should that be running backwards), but it’s a shorter walk than many realize from the burned out houses of Detroit to the burning cars of Paris. Islamism thrives in extreme poverty and racial resentment. Neither is in short-supply in contemporary America.  

Things can snowball quickly in the modern age. Before you know it, Somalis will be in Minnesota.

D, LDN.