Keeping a Level Head

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America, Defend the modern world, Europe, guardia civil, laura ingraham, news, tucker carlson

The current pandemic has been greatly disruptive to every person, country, culture and relationship on Earth. It has also been transformative, in that governmental responses to it have brought out secret orientations and sympathies that would otherwise have remained hidden, even to those now possessed by them. Libertarianism, for example, has seen its stock rise dramatically, while whatever appetite there was for authoritarianism and law-worship has declined, or developed anew in others places and forms, with different affiliations.

I have seen friends of many years collapse into wacky thinking and conspiracy, panicked out of their once sturdy minds. Just the other day my mother regretfully informed me that one of her work colleagues has come to believe in the psychotic explanations of David Icke; that 5G produced the virus, directly and by design, as part of a grand plan to enslave and microchip the world. Here in Spain, I have witnessed several people – typically older women – argue with police officers when asked to wear a mask, or to pull them up to cover their noses. Elsewhere, I know people who overestimate the virus as being worse than the 1918 Spanish flu, with one friend, admittedly drunk, going so far as to suggest it will cull half the planet. I know still others who suspect that China let slip, accidentally or otherwise, the creation of a military research laboratory in Wuhan. And so on.

My own experiences have been trying. The first few weeks of the lockdown here were disturbingly un-European. I can easily recall members of the Policia Nacional, with their black guns and batons, shouting at people on the street without a reason to get back to their apartments – “Venga! Vamos!” On one occasion I was myself interrogated for being outside. My explanation – that I was unaware the supermarket had changed its hours that day – was treated with authoritarian contempt. “Es cerrado! Vamos! Vamos!”

Having lost my father at Christmas, the virus erupted before I could catch my breath and added to a sense of personal apocalypse. I couldn’t help but feel anxiety, as well as anger and indignation. And I wasn’t alone.

“We are becoming Chinese!” my girlfriend complained of the drastic security measures. “China is going to win. This is not Europe.”

Days into the lockdown the supermarkets were stripped bare. People jostled for bags of muesli and boxes of milk; phenomena very new to me, and which seemed unreal, movie-like, strangely exhilarating. I rather enjoyed the ‘prepping’ aspect of it all; the feeling that I had secured everything I needed was a rush, no doubt the legacy of an earlier and more eventful evolutionary stage; but this too would give way when the same frustration returned.

I felt then and continue to believe now that the lockdown was an overreach of governmental power. During those long, boring months I was immensely grateful for the telejournalism of Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, who were among very few mainstream figures willing to question the wisdom and desirability of the policy outright. Both of them endorsed things that were silly and untrue, of course, most notably several fringe studies overstating the potential of hydroxychloroquine, which went on to cause great public confusion; but their willingness to question the heel-clicking technocracy of other media was refreshing and allowed for some to retain their sanity.

It seemed commonsensical to me that lockdowns were best targeted at vulnerable populations, not at every man and his dog. Those most at risk should have been encouraged to stay at home, along with anyone who could not live independently of them. Others should have been given the compromise our governments now offer us – namely, that we can go about our business if we wear masks and wash our hands.

I am pleased to see most Spanish people going along with the new rules (the exceptions tend to be non-native). The virus is very real, after all, and despite frequent claims to the contrary, far deadlier than the seasonal flu.

Keeping a level head as the world melts down is a royal art; far more difficult than one would think in advance of the fact. The number of educated people I have seen lose their wits as a result of this pandemic is depressingly high. But our governments and media have also faltered, and let them not insist otherwise. Contradictory information has become so commonplace as to seem unremarkable (the advice regarding masks, etc). So we have all failed in our own ways.

When the vaccine arrives, it will meet with substantial protest and dissent, overlapping streams from wildly different Facebook subcultures, naturopathy through to QAnon.  But I believe a return to something like normality is nonetheless possible. It isn’t only health that matters here. Governments must be pushed back behind their proper limits. Ultimately, that may prove as difficult as extinguishing the virus itself.

It is certainly as important.

David

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Kamala Harris: Kiss Up, Kick Down

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America, Civilisation, Defend the modern world, joe biden, kamala harris, MLK, trump, us election 2020

Kamala Harris is the downside of America. In her, the strengths of the national ethos are exposed as potential weaknesses; its hymned greatness is shown as entirely dependent on the character of the people within it; this because Harris has used everything America celebrates itself for – equal opportunity, racelessness, individuality, ambition, audacity in the pursuit of power and money, etc, – and demonstrated how such values are essentially harmful without virtue and a strong national identity to limit their abuse.

It is quite possible that I am talking here of the future vice president. Indeed, considering the un-vitality of her running mate, it is possible I am talking of the future president. Can either scenario be imagined without a shudder?

Harris has lived half a life on the principle of kiss up, kick down. She has been inflexibly conservative and generously liberal, switching hats based largely on career interest – a strategy that has left many blown-apart lives scattered in her wake.

She has cynically taken on the character of an African-American despite being Indo-Caribbean (and, not that she can help it, the descendant of slave-holders). She even announced her presidential candidacy on a day set aside to commemorate the noted ‘pussy-eater’ Martin Luther King, thereby making clear her identification with the more politically lucrative side of her ancestry, as well as her intention to squeeze it for all it’s worth.

Since then, she has been love-bombed by every liberal interest group in Washington and stands drenched in the encouragement of billionaire dollars. Her platform tends to align almost perfectly with those who have invested in her. (Harris’s own convictions are missing, presumed mythical.)

A model of woke dishonesty, the senator is a timely reminder that demographic change will not wash out the charismatic sleaziness of American politics; only alter the appearance of the actors.

Excited liberals may find out too late that womanhood and melanin are not virtues, and that when they are presented as such, it often means all else is rotten.

David

Some Thoughts on Donald Trump

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America, Ann Coulter, Defend the modern world, Donald Trump, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Twitter, United States, us election

Donald Trump lies. A lot. Media commentators complain about this, not because they’re corrupt, though they are that, but because he lies. A lot. I didn’t think hard enough about this when I wrote in support of his candidacy in 2016, or at least not hard enough about how much it might annoy me.

Truth is the most important concept in human thought, in life itself. Without it fixed securely in view, we are ever heading in the wrong direction. I hate dishonesty more than any political figure or doctrine; and so to advise the reader to vote for Trump again would need to be justified differently.

Most of Trump’s lies are entirely unnecessary. He has a fanatically devoted base, as well as a functioning cult of personality. He has no need to lie. He knows what his base want, and he wants it too. The feelings of the opposition should be of secondary importance.

But that isn’t the way Trump works. Those who warned previously of his narcissism and insecurity were not exaggerating. He wants praise from everyone. He would like as much to be regarded as a great feminist as a great conservative. The ‘great’ part is all that matters. As the exasperated Trump advocate Ann Coulter pointed out recently, “It’s all about him.”

Lying as a public figure makes it difficult for friend and foe alike. To speak in defence of a Trump pronouncement too often proves a wasted effort. As soon as you have finished agreeing with him, he retracts the point, or even denies saying it at all. There is comedy in this. And it’s not always funny.

Trump ultra-loyalists, who find nothing degrading in tidying up his babble into coherence it doesn’t merit, embarrass themselves rather too much. When there is no Trump regime to speak of, or to defend, their reputations will be in tatters – and quite rightly.

So what to do with the ‘mad king’ who nonetheless faces the right way on most of the vital issues facing a great country? I am not American, so this is not my responsibility, but I feel compelled to say what I think I would do.

A few points:

I do not believe any resident of Honduras has a God-given right to American hospitality. Immigration law should be enforced. A wall would help, but doesn’t seem likely to come.

America has too many problems within its borders to go on military adventures without good reason.

Europe, which is my responsibility, can ultimately benefit from Trump’s isolationism. It is high time European powers set about building a military force capable of defending our beautiful continent. We cannot rely – and should never have relied – on American military charity. While we should be as friendly as possible with our natural ally, we must be our own guarantor.

Kamala Harris, who is obviously more dynamic than her senior running mate, is the personification of money politics. She offers a return to a corrupt norm, never desirable in the first place.

Finally, though Trump’s lies are infuriating and demonstrate a real lack of respect for his supporters, old media forces are ultimately more damaging to truth than he is.

Only Trump’s most intoxicated supporters believe he tells the truth all the time. But the slippery and clever deceptions of the mainstream press are held as credible by the majority of educated people. They do not lie outright, as Trump does, but they do evade certain topics, keep attention off uncomfortable but important realities, de-platform dissident men, and drive at untruth, even if not all the way.

In conclusion, Trump may well be the best option on the ballot this time around, but that should depress, not enliven. I look forward to a time when someone more professional and straightforward promises the same renewal.

David

America’s Black Neurosis (part one)

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America, Black people, Defend the modern world, mutt's law, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, racism, slavery

The presence of sub-Saharan Africans in the United States has never not been a subject of controversy, and will likely never cease to be one. No-one is indifferent to them, or of the kind of calm opinion about them as about any other group. The left cannot help seeing them not as ordinary citizens, but as a cause to be fought for, or as children to be adopted, guided or used.  The right cannot fully relax while they are granted the privileges of equality, allowed the freedom to wander delinquently into their suburban dreams. The very far-right appear sadistically happy about racial inequality. They wish to see black people on the other side of a wall from themselves, and doubtless to be able to see over that wall, to watch with a grin as the formerly uppity savages attempt to reconstruct what they once took for granted. Even the centrists, for all their professed stillness of mind, enjoy the racial controversy in other ways.

Indeed, the very humanity of black Africans is up for private dispute, even around the loveliest dinner tables. The ‘racism of low expectations’ prevails almost everywhere (if you doubt this, ask your most educated liberal friends for their opinion on the excremental poetry of Maya Angelou, say, or on the violence in Chicago. Anything short of disdain for the first and horrified condemnation of the second can be taken as evidence of a lower standard.)

Despite centuries of discord and moral debate, European-Americans have still to find a way of dealing with the presence of Africans within their society. And so much greater is the severity of this issue in the US that it seems to stem from nationally peculiar causes. Though problems exist everywhere with race and difference, there is simply no comparison between the anti-black racism of Europeans and that of non-black Americans. Something there has become unique.

Go even to 4chan, a bubbling pot of crude tribalism, and you will find Europeans tiring of the anti-black emphasis of those with American flags atop their posts. Reference is made on the Politically Incorrect forum to ‘Mutt’s Law’, a satirical principle holding that the longer a thread, on any topic, grows, the likelier it becomes that a Mutt (American) will refer to black men or interracial sex.

Almost everything that arouses intense dispute in American politics can be sourced back to the presence and status of black people. Universal healthcare, for example, might be accepted as commonsensical by white Americans were the racial profile of their country like that of Iceland. Put another way, if a white American conservative moved to Iceland permanently, it is unlikely they would end up criticising the island’s health system as ‘communism’ and seek to tear it down in the name of ‘liberty’. They would probably prefer it, regarding it simply as kindred people taking care of each other. But America is not Iceland; its taxpayers are far from equal, and so universal healthcare is conceived of as a massive transfer of wealth from whites to non-whites, in particular (and particularly offensively) from whites to blacks.

The gun debate in America, likewise, has a rather obvious racial undertone. Who can really call it a coincidence that gun sales shot up after the election of the first black president in 2008, or that such sales respond more dramatically to BLM protests than to real world overreaches of government authority? Obama was not a radical president. Nothing so interesting. But he wasn’t white. He enjoyed the support of a large non-white coalition. And thus the response.

But why is there such an intense obsession with black people in the US to begin with? Racism is diverse. The US hosts every type imaginable. So why are black Africans still the priority of its unique racial complex?

Part of the explanation derives, as might be anticipated, from the institution of slavery.

When thought about lucidly, there is something odd about loathing a people you have victimised. If a person considers slavery, with its flagellation and branding and rape and coerced reproduction, a natural sympathy should arise for the victim, and nothing but sympathy. Black people were treated horribly by many slave-owners (though by no means all), and the institution is loudly condemned in light of modern ethical standards.

But though there is sympathy for the victims of slavery, a great many Americans, including some of the most sympathetic, nonetheless hold black people in contempt for having submitted to it.

Slavery in the United States shouldn’t have worked. Its unwieldy scale, primitive means of enforcement, extremely lax security and obvious violation of declared national values, should have led swiftly to glorious insurrection. But that didn’t happen. It worked. For four hundred years.

This produced an instinctive disgust for black weakness. The obedience and fearful submission of slaves created a confused hatred of whatever in their nature allowed for such degradation. What is it about them, wondered many, that makes them so submissive? Why aren’t they fighting back?

It is possible to trace from this sentiment much of the later paranoia over blood purity. Who knew just how much of the dreaded blood was required to be remove a man’s will to resist, to nullify his self-respect. One could not be too cautious.

This contempt has survived into the present day. I have seen innumerable online comments angrily chastising modern day black people for their ancestors’ obsequiousness. This would explain a little of why anti-black racism is so different to anti-Asian or anti-Arab or anti-native racism. Unlike in those cases, there is a perverse kind of remorse in the hatred of black people in America.

(to be continued)

David

Is a ‘Red-Pilled’ Liberalism Possible?

Tags

Conservative, Defend the modern world, Internet, Liberal, millennials, PewDiePie, politics, zoomers

Western societies have been more divided than they are at present – but only rarely. With the presidency of Donald Trump, the process of Brexit, and what has become a destructive response to police brutality in the United States, England and elsewhere, Western political cultures are speciating beyond the possibility of debate or synthesis – a tragic and alarming turn, since such possibilities make up the essence of politics; and only when differing sides remain open to them can a democracy be reasonably judged as healthy.

The internet is largely responsible for this mayhem. A long, delayed response to the uncensorable exchange of information is becoming manifest; a generation of men, so prepared, have reached the age of political activity.

The internet’s main political effect has been to cut through indoctrination, removing the print and visual media’s long-held monopoly on information and interpretation. Formerly, political minds were created first by education and then by journalism. Only a narrow variety of data and interpretation was permitted in either. What was forbidden to the teacher was no less forbidden to the journalist. Thoughts and facts disgraced by the actions of historical figures were – quite reasonably – considered far too dangerous to be passed along to new generations, who in maturity might use them to like effect against groups once despised or disdained but now celebrated and protected.

But though times and attitudes change, truths remain the same, and so the prohibition had a time limit set into it from the beginning. Whenever a different mood or situation came to prevail, curiosity or interest would lead people to peek behind the thin curtain at what they were supposed to ignore. Since the turn of the millennium, in the obscuring shadow afforded by the internet, I suggest that every person of my generation has peeked behind this curtain; political or apolitical, liberal or conservative; and the results are now dividing the Occidental world.

What do we do with what we know? No question hangs heavier over us than this. No issue more divides mind from mind, heart from heart, mind from heart.

The red pill faction of my generation (and, to a limited extent, the one before it) know little more than the blue pill faction. It is only in response that they differ. Blue Pillers are depressed by or disinterested in things Red Pillers find urgent and exhilarating; what acts as a depressant to one functions as a stimulant to the other. The factors behind this divergence are emotional and situational. Some people are too good-natured to be exhilarated by dark things, others too attractive to care about them. Some people have a lot to lose with political engagement, others little or nothing. But they do know the same things. And that is crucial to appreciate.

The users of 4chan do not possess some secret, explosive information, in need of only wide enough dissemination to burn down society and the state. The way we treat information is more complicated and strategic and hypocritical than that. People downvote things they agree with readily enough, upvote things they disagree with just as readily. What matters is attitude and preference, nature and feeling. Simple ignorance, though at fault in almost all other matters, is not nearly as important in this one as those denizens suppose.

The red-pilling of the Millennials occurred long ago; a rapid process. finding no shortage of minds eager to be corrupted. I can just about recall the time before Google censored search suggestions so as not to offend anyone. Even typing in the word ‘are’ brought up a question about black people so offensive that no-one outside of the skinhead right would feel comfortable asking it in public. This question was suggested because it had already been asked a considerable number of times, almost certainly by liberals as well as conservatives. Under this new cover of anonymity, people of all kinds felt compelled to seek an answer. And they likely received the same answer, but adapted to the information in different ways.

***

Two issues, far above all others, separate the sides into which occidental humanity has divided – gender and race; separate subjects, but so fundamental that they inevitably bleed into one another. On these matters, according to the most believable data available online, the right appears much more realistic than the left. Consequently the solutions offered by the Western Right are more workable and immediately practical, even if not as pleasant. The left, meanwhile, offers uplifting and well-packaged distractions from unpleasant realities, or else workarounds which improve other areas of life, while postponing darker reckonings. These different approaches appeal to different kinds of people, exploiting different moral priorities and life-strategies. They do not, or only very rarely, cater to different levels of awareness. 

For the past three decades, the left’s approach has done more than hold its own in the battle of approaches; it has made considerable gains, especially with younger generations, who have a tendency to opt for anything despised by the old. The newer the concept, the better to counter-signal the past and generationally self-define with. The left, in this sense, is always new. The right is axiomatically old.

Millennials, whatever we did yesterday, are due to interrupt this trend. No generation has splintered so quickly and so violently as we have. Never have there been so many young people offering hands of solidarity to the most extreme advocates of the past. As I write, Julius Evola is on every bored drifter’s bedside table, perhaps alongside volumes by Guénon, Mishima and a dozen other glamorously radical retrograde thinkers. There are political subreddits devoted to what amounts to little more than intellectual cosplay. Medieval fetishism and paganism grow steadily in popularity. And so on. We are not so much a lost generation as a divided one; even as individuals we are divided, each of us straddling the pre-internet innocence of our childhood and the red pill shocks of our adolescence.

A good case to consider in this light is the Swedish YouTuber Felix Kjellberg (PewDiePie). For several years now, Kjellberg has been dogged by accusations of racism and misogyny (dissent on race and gender) in the progressive media. His general crime is hard to pinpoint, but going only by the offences cited by the press it seems that he is suspected of being in league with people who believe uncomfortable things. (A left-wing YouTuber describes a ‘PewDie-Pipeline’ via which innocent youths are exposed to red-pilled communities through his association with them.) Kjellberg nods occasionally to 4chan tropes and uses its more popular memes (he recently called the Coronavirus ‘Corona-chan’, for example), and this, if nothing else, demonstrates a familiarity with the forum’s style of humour. Orthodox journalists appear to believe that to know of 4chan is to know of other things; that one need only be familiar with such material to have been corrupted by it. And they are essentially right, even if only by accident. PewDiePie isn’t a ‘racist’, at least in any clear, active sense, and the accusation is only really taken seriously by older, pre-internet generations. As it appears to me, Kjellberg is simply the Millennial archetype, representative of our flaws and divisions, our struggle to deal humorously and harmlessly with certain knowledge of the world.

Though at the moment there appears a balance between right and left among Millennials and Zoomers, perhaps even a slight majority to the left given the carnival of solidarity over the George Floyd killing, this is deceptive. Celebrities, journalists and late-night hosts have created an illusion of consensus, a bullying sentimental atmosphere in which people fear it is bad taste to dissent. The real balance of opinion is visible elsewhere. On the Guardian newspaper website, for example, the reader might visit almost any article on race or gender and note the stark contrast between the tone of the article and the comments below the line. Here, as in various other places, intelligent liberals appear exasperated, at their wit’s end, or else long past it. 

As we said before, a key component of the package offered by the left is a promise to defer reckonings with uncomfortable issues, to work around them and keep the emphasis on positive, unifying themes. But this is less effective as a selling point when the dark issues demand a reckoning now, when the world erupts in flames over such issues, and the left, having hoped in vain for a longer postponement, can offer only rigid moral orthodoxy and a red-faced alliance with snowballing radicalism increasingly out of its control.

Defections to the right are inevitable and now commonplace. People will go where the logic is, where the truth appears to be; crucially, they will go where the truth is allowed to be discussed without censorship. And such places are increasingly to be found on the right.

***

What is liberalism to do at this juncture? Faced with an unprecedented brain-drain, hopelessly out of touch with the real and the fundamental, hostage to an ever-worsening woke fanaticism… What now?

If such a movement is to survive at all, it will need to reassess its attitude to truth and how it affects politics. Only a liberalism willing to update itself can survive long enough to be of any use. The internet has changed everything. Red pills are already dissolved in the water-supply. As a direct consequence of this, certain claims will no longer be taken seriously. Traditional tactics of obfuscation will no longer work. Truth, or any rate what appears to be true, attracts the majority of people eventually. The left cannot rely on the natural hatred of the young for the old, or on the shiny novelty of the present, or on the combined efforts of paid-off celebrities and late-night propagandists. Trump’s election should have straightaway signalled the end of this strategy; a method that is horribly corrupt and manipulative, even when it does work.

Truth is not only more appealing to people, it is economical, advertising itself for free. Trump needn’t add much to the daily headlines, since they too often align with his message. The left, by contrast, is necessarily at war with the news, busily filtering, intellectualising and hashtagging events into something they are not. To be in accord with reality and logic costs less, requires less effort. Indeed, one can accurately measure how distant one’s message is from the truth by how little one needs to work to re-frame events as they happen. Simplicity of this kind isn’t a sign of stupidity, it is a virtue. 

(The esotericism of the modern left grows with its distance from truth. It may be the case one day that people are excluded from it by sheer inflexibility of imagination. Talk of the “criminalisation of vaginas” or of “black bodies” deters anyone without a certain taste for the poetic and the theoretical.)

If liberals wish to get back on the side of common sense, uncomfortable conversations must be started, feelings hurt, doctrinal minds and traditional ‘allies’ confused; unpleasant things, of course, but necessary if the future is not to be gifted wholesale to the extreme right.

In this author’s view, liberalism has never seemed more counter-intuitive. Though I hold myself to be a humanistic person, sensitive to the dangers and stupidities of pure reaction, I cannot align myself with the nonsense currently being espoused. Much of my generation is tired out by the media’s pointless denial of the obvious, especially with regard to race and the plight of men. These are issues that will have to be addressed honestly at some point. The longer the can is kicked down the road, the stronger and more organised the opposition will become. And should the worst people win by simple loyalty to truth, with whatever that entails, they will deserve their victory.

David

Reflections

Tags

Blog, Defend the modern world, Islamism, politics, race, writing

I spent a large part of the weekend revisiting this old project of mine, the first time I have logged in for several years, re-reading what I used to call – with some pretension – my ‘articles’; quickly written opinion pieces about civilisation, Islam, race, politics and the like. It has been a weird, moving experience, as it was always sure to be. I have cringed, smiled, recoiled, occasionally glowed with pride. 

Such is the effect of time, I disagree with a lot of what I wrote then. My priorities are different. Some bad things have become good to me, some good things have become bad; many issues, once critically important, now seem greatly diminished.

I suppose the greatest mea culpa to perform involves the central theme of this blog. I wrote for close to three years in a mood of hot panic over Islamism, believing it was playing a slow, clever game and would, if ignored for too long, eventually triumph over the sleeping cultures of Europe. I wrote in a negative style of negative things, ideas around which a whole blogging subculture had crystallised, such was the uniformity and agreement.

But Islamism, happily, will not conquer Europe, only cause horrible and unnecessary trouble for it. Just the other week, an Islamist nobody went on a stabbing spree in the commuter town of Reading, Berkshire; such is what they have been reduced to – amateurish, Victorian violence; local vandals, neighbourhood nuisances. 

Needless to say, I oppose anyway the subjugation of man, anything that diminishes him, puts shackles on his imagination, forces him to live in a way contrary to his nature. And the stupid and nasty project of Islamism does this professionally enough. But there were then – and surely are now – equally grand and urgent and depressing questions to consider. Isolating Islamism from other processes was a mistake. It would be out-of-date to continue to make it.

We are short-sighted if we pitch the crisis of our age, like the slippery polemicist Christopher Hitchens once did, as a neo-Enlightenment battle between theocracy and reason. Islamic immigration and violence represent only one part of a far bigger issue, rooted as much in the West as the East. Not seeing this clearly enough was my great failing, the parent of all the others.

The religion of peace is crowded out in my thoughts these days. Here in Spain, I have encountered only a few believers in several years. New immigrants from exotic shores are in no short supply; but they do not bring caliphates, just complications. They have night-black skin and wear tribal shawls from the pre-ideological serenity of Africa. There are also little crowds, slowly swelling, of Peruvians, Chinese, Koreans and Vietnamese.

The future of the West will be dominated by questions of race, gender, economy and generation. Islamism, though it will play a destructive role, will not be the predominant theme. This is the reality as I now see it.

The big things are happening outside of the 9/11 universe, the narrow, dimly-lit mind-space in which too many, for too long, were trapped and accordingly limited.

***

My dear father, who passed away at Christmas, was a gentle, conservative man; a rector for many decades in the Church of England. One of his living and dying wishes was for me to embrace the faith that guided him, and which provided him with such amazing courage during those final months of illness. Since then, over a mad period of global unrest,  I have been duly reflecting on what I actually believe in. Re-opening this project is part of that self-interrogation.

Looking back at my blogging here, I find not a slight aspect of performance. I wrote material I believed added to what I had already written, that built upon the same theme and promised to reconfirm the same ideas. I wrote to be consistent, in short, not to explore in earnest issues of real importance. 

Performance politics is the curse of our age; in England, America and doubtless elsewhere, people are arguing and marching and fighting for things they do not, in their heart of hearts, take to be true. I see this more on the left than on the right – which is natural enough – but there are performance artists across the spectrum, as harmful at one point of it as at any other.

On anonymous forums intelligent debate mixes freely with nonsense. Users embrace ludicrous fetishes and equally ludicrous figures to fill the office of interpretation left vacant by a dishonest and corrupted media.

What do people really believe? What would we say if we were forced to speak without thinking, free of care and cant, unconcerned with the pursuit of glamour or acceptance into some intellectual culture or another? The chances are we would not fall neatly into any group or hive but would outrage them all equally. There is great honour in that.

I am not so blindly arrogant to believe I have retained an audience after this much time. People move on, as they should. I am grateful to have had my work considered worthy or readable by anyone at all.

David

Against Malala Yousafzai

Tags

American Liberty, BBC, Christianity and Islam, Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, Counterjihad, criticism yousafzai, Cultural Marxism, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, Islamification of Britain, Islamisation of London, Islamophobia, Malala Yousefzai, Muslims, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Rihanna Muslim, Sockpuppet, yousafzai fraud

• 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

The Future and the Western World

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• First published on this blog in October, 2015

Whatever one’s political orientations are, and no matter what the individual context is, the sight of human suffering is always traumatic. As human beings, we are naturally upset when presented with photographs of starving African children, shrapnel-wounded Syrian schoolgirls, Burka’d Afghan women and brainwashed North Korean families. It is the way we were designed to be. Few things are more innate.

Given this predisposition, the arguments of ‘humanitarianism’ will usually find a public audience, and typically (from there) a political majority. For example, the view that it isn’t ‘fair’ for Americans to have ipads and super-sized milkshakes, while Malians have only bottle tops and sewer puddles is not one most people would feel comfortable disputing. Who would ever wish to be regarded as an elitist or social Darwinist? No-one, I would venture.

However, in the interest of truth, we must consider that at some point the privileged will have to draw a line around their advantages and prevent their being usurped. For if they fail to do so, the advantages will be watered down, or stolen outright, to be shared among the swelling masses until all have as much as each other, and very little alike.

It is a good time to reflect on this difficult issue. For if we think that the West enjoys obscene advantages at the moment, the developments of the near future will leave us bewildered.

We are living on the brink of a scientific revolution unlike any in history. The confluence of emerging competences in AI, robotics, nanotechnology, life-extension and genetic manipulation will make the gap between America and Mali today seem insignificant. Part of the world is about to accelerate through time into a dazzling future, and all other parts will be left languishing in a primitive angry, resentful past.

Most ordinary folk have no idea of what is about to be unleashed on the Western market. Misinformed by experience, they naively presume that technology will progress at the same rate as it did in the past. They do not realise that with every advance, technological development is speeding up.

To a 20 year old in 1980, military drones were science-fiction, as were iPhones, ipads, anti-satellite weapons and hypersonic vehicles. And yet all are now with us. It takes a healthy and imaginative mind to realise how much has been achieved in such a short period of time, and to appreciate that this kind of 35 year leap will soon take 5 years, then 4, then 3…

We would be fools to believe this scientific revolution will not have geopolitical consequences as large as its spectacle.

Right now, you can buy a PlayStation in Karachi, and perhaps even in Mali. This won’t be the case with the operating systems of the future. New technologies will be so overwhelming and expensive (and dependent on other technologies and infrastructures) that first-world lifestyles will fall entirely into their orbit, adapted to fit and absorb their possibilities. The first-world will begin to speak a language that the rest of the world cannot relate to, using concepts, humour, references and symbolism only applicable to the age the West (and the West alone) has arrived at. In time, technology will create a new cultural divide far greater than any created by religion or politics.

And as that divide grows, the West will have to make a choice. Let the rest of the world in on the future, and risk having our hard-won wealth and military advantages destroyed or turned against us by destructive and primitive beliefs; or else simply declare ourselves the winners of human history; the winners of the global lottery, and be happy and secure in our good fortune, willing to defend it from our competitors. Triumphalism, that is, and not humanitarianism.

While this sounds morally outrageous, recall that many of us indulge in this attitude already, even if only semi-consciously. When you’re out using your laptop in Starbucks, for example, you are doing so fully in the knowledge that you are part of the exclusive 20% of the world population who can afford to live so extravagantly. Though we might feel privately guilty about this, none of us make any great effort to change it. If a popular figure (Russell Brand, perhaps) called upon us to donate 90% of our wages each month so that the third and second worlds can lead a Western standard of life, we would all refuse. In fact, we would likely be indignant about it. Our civilisation has figured out the best way to live, to produce and to thrive. Theirs has not done so. Sub-Saharan Africa is among the most fertile regions in the world. The Islamic world is flush with resources. The reason for our success is our creativity; the things we have done with our hands and minds. Therefore, only we have a right to the fruits of our achievements. Perhaps this is the correct attitude…

‘Humanitarianism’ and its much vaunted idea of ‘international development’ certainly has a future. But I don’t believe its arguments are as future-proof as some believe. I’m interested in your views.

D, LDN