• About (new)

Defend the Modern World

~ From Communists and Nihilists.

Defend the Modern World

Tag Archives: Demographics of Europe

Against Malala Yousafzai

05 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by Defend the Modern World in Moderate Muslims, Multiculturalism, Muslims, Politics, Uncategorized

≈ 19 Comments

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

Malala Yousafzai

  • 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.

Advertisement

Does It Have to Get Worse to Get Better?

05 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by Defend the Modern World in Anti-Modernism, Conservatism, Culture, Decline of the West, Defence, Economics, Eurabia, Islamisation of the West, Multiculturalism, Muslims, Terrorism

≈ 27 Comments

Tags

America, America 911, BBC, Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, Counterjihad, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, EDL, English Defence League, Eurabia, Europe, France beheading, ISIS, ISIS Beheading, Islamic State BBC, Islamic State Wikipedia, Islamification of Britain, Islamophobia, Kuwait Mosque, Muslim, No to Turkey in the EU, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Tunisia attacks

150626122640-09-attack-in-tunisia-0626-restricted-super-169

  • 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

28 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by Defend the Modern World in Africa, Asia, Conservatism, Crime and Punishment, Culture, Europe, European Union, Muslims, Politics, Sexual Violence, Terrorism, Uncategorized, Violence

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

BBC, Britain First, Christianity and Islam, Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, Defend the modern world, defend the modern world blog, Demographics of Europe, DTMW, dtmw dtmw, EU, Eurabia, Facebook, facebook facebook, ISIS, Islam, Islam and the West, Islamic psychology, migrant crisis crisis, migrant crisis news, mind trap Islam, Multiculturalism, Muslims, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, refugee crisis, refugee migrant crisis

shout

  • 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.

pakistan_indian_flag_burning_IPE_20070115

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.

2440914_orig

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.

Doorways to heaven or hell

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.

AMISOM's humanitarian mission in Somalia.

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

Thank You & Goodbye

21 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by Defend the Modern World in Conservatism, Culture, Europe, European Union, Multiculturalism, Politics, Uncategorized

≈ 28 Comments

Tags

3 years, 500, BBC, Blog, blog blog, blogger, blogging, Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, David, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, DTMW, dtmw dtmw, England, Facebook, hotmail, Internet, internet blog, Islam, london, mail, million, Multiculturalism, net, Notice, notice dtmw, notice of, published, publishing, stuff, Thank you, Twitter, UK, web, wordpress, words, writing

london-skyline-wall-art-canvas-picture-large-_57

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)

Qur’an-Denial: The Foundational Error of the Appeasers

21 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by Defend the Modern World in America, Conservatism, Crime and Punishment, Defence, Europe, European Union, ISIS, Islam, Muslims, Politics, Terrorism, Violence

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

belgium flag facebook, belgium terror attack, brussels, Christianity and Islam, Civilisation, clas, clash, clash of civilisations, Coffee, Counter-Jihad, Culture, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, DTMW, dtmw dtmw, Facebook, Islam, Islamic, Islamism, lockdown, Multiculturalism, muslim in europe, muslims in europe and the west, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, security, Terrorism, Twitter, Violence, War

ap_140595164326

*Originally published on this blog in May, 2016

The terror attacks in Brussels, Ivory Coast and Nigeria this past week were (if you’ll tolerate a well-worn paradox) notable for being completely unremarkable. The murders were generic, run-of-the-mill, classical and exactly in step with the history and character of the Islamic religion. As I have said previously, such violence is best understood simply as the Qur’an in action, or Applied Islam, if you prefer. This is what all those elegant Arabic characters materialize into. This is their effect.

There is no ingenious metaphor behind Quranic verses imploring Muslims to kill “unbelievers.” and “strike of their heads”. It isn’t an allegorical way of saying “Try your best in life and be proud of your heritage”. It means exactly what you think it means. Mutilate and murder people if they derive from a different religious tradition.

The Qur’an murdered those people in Belgium, Nigeria and Ivory Coast. Without it’s message, they would still be alive.

But despite that terrible reality, this notorious book of death will remain readily available at your local Waterstones or Walmart for the foreseeable future. Your children, if you have any, will be able to purchase it, read it, learn from it, perhaps even act on it. This is because, for all the chaos and bloodshed at the hands of Muslims the world over, our cultural elite still refuse to recognise that it is the text itself which inspires the carnage. Rejecting this idea as essentially ‘racist’, they offer instead tortuous sociological, economic, psychological explanations more palatable to the liberal mindset and harmonious with liberal, multi-cultural doctrine. The Muslims are killing people because they are ‘disenfranchised’, ‘outcast from the cultural mainstream’, ‘oppressed’, ‘economically deprived’ and so on. They will stick stubbornly to these explanations right up to the point a Salafist knife rests upon their throats.

Prime Minister Cameron has repeatedly claimed that Islam is peaceful

Prime Minister Cameron has repeatedly claimed that Islam is peaceful

Through this prism of misinterpretation, individual terror attacks are not understood as a call to banish Islam forever from the shores of the free world, but as an opportunity to understand better the mistakes WE have made in our diplomacy with the Muslim world. Simon Jenkins, the eccentric libertarian sore thumb over at the Guardian, argued just a few days ago that the reaction of the West (to Brussels and other comparable acts of terrorism) should be to “alleviate” the “rage that gives rise to acts of terror…”, including by instigating a “wiser foreign policy than most western nations have shown towards the Muslim world over the past decade.”

The cretinous Socialist Worker newspaper struck a similar tone: “Wars launched by the leaders of the US, Britain and France” read this week’s opinion column “have created huge resentment and created the space in which groups such as Isis can grow. These same leaders back the brutal governments that have turned back the tide of the Arab Spring—which offered hope…There is nothing remotely anti-imperialist about the bombings. But the reality is that more repression will mean more attacks.”

This bewildering ignorance is the natural result of Quran-Denial. Without reference to the text demanding violence, Islamic violence inevitably seems free-floating, reactive and mysterious. It is only with reference to the text itself that such violence becomes understandable. Denial of the link between violence and the Qur’an is thus the foundational error of the Western appeasers of Islam.

It is worth noting that we rarely fail to trace the origins of other religious practices. One of the key pillars of Christian practice, for example, is the injunction to loves one’s neighbour, the poor and even one’s enemies. Christian charities are acting upon this sentiment when they do charitable work, launch missions in the third world, or stage interfaith dialogues. Only a very eccentric man indeed would try to claim that such people were not directly motivated by the text of their Holy Book. It stands to reason that they are.

Christians are directly inspired by the New Testament

Christians are directly inspired by the New Testament

When critics of Christianity and Judaism, such as Bill Maher, reference the textual origins of what they perceive as Abrahamic ‘homophobia’, Christians and Jews are never allowed to claim the verses in question are metaphors or that they discriminate only against ancient homosexuals.

Only Islam is allowed to stand apart from its own Holy Book. And yet Islam is also the faith most fanatical about the literal inerrancy of its Holy Book.

Let’s look at some of the passages which may have influenced the murders this past week. A Hat-tip is due here to the staff at the invaluable websites ‘Gates of Vienna’ and ‘Religion of Peace’ which compiled some of the following excerpts (as well as many others):

Quran (5:33) “The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement”

Quran (8:59-60) “And let not those who disbelieve suppose that they can outstrip (Allah’s Purpose). Lo! they cannot escape. Make ready for them all thou canst of (armed) force and of horses tethered, that thereby ye may dismay the enemy of Allah and your enemy.”

Qur'an

Qur’an

Quran (9:5) “So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captive and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them.”

Quran (9:14) “Fight against them so that Allah will punish them by your hands and disgrace them and give you victory over them and heal the breasts of a believing people.”

That should be enough to prove my point. We need only use Occam’s Razor (AKA Ockham’s Razor: the formula that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one) to discover the root cause of the carnage afflicting the civilised and developing world. Muslims are killing because their Holy Text implores them to kill. No further discussion is needed.

ockhams-razor

Dear political elite – Islam is violent because the Qur’an is violent. The Qur’an itself is Europe’s mortal enemy. Drop the mystification and start working on a fightback.

What else is there to say about the Brussels attack? Well, for one thing, it happened in a very beautiful city. I went on holiday to Brussels as a teenager with my family and remember enjoying every minute of the two weeks I spent there. If you haven’t been yourself, please consider it (especially now). The famous cobbled streets, superior booze, laid back mood and architectural grandeur repay the price of travel with generous interest.

Watching the news come in after the explosions this week, I recognised with real sadness parts of the city I had strolled through during that halcyon fortnight. One of the massed news correspondents even stood in front of a complex of buildings I once happily photographed, her sad, elongated face starkly out of sync with the pleasant memories I will try – in spite of everything – to nurture and keep pure and intact.

Brussels

Brussels

Of course, as well as being a charming city in itself, Brussels is also – for now – the Capital of the European Union. Sadly, even if also inevitably, this fact has discoloured some reactions to the bombings. One couldn’t help but detect a mood of political schadenfreude on the part of the British right-wing press last Tuesday evening. From a propaganda point of view, it must have seemed too good to be true. The EU capital, machine-heart of a despised and oppressive bureaucracy, shattered by the fruit of its own myopic agenda. The heat of the explosions had yet to fade from the air when EU-haters excitedly set about refitting the tragedy to add weight to their case for Brexit. This tasteless enthusiasm, understandable but deeply regrettable, says a lot about how badly the European experiment has poisoned continental relations.

Let’s be clear: Those unlucky souls vanquished in Brussels a few days ago did not die entirely in vain. They are (and should always be remembered as) martyrs in a just war of good vs. evil, modernity vs. darkness. My heart goes out to them, their families and their friends. In their memory, I will conclude by restating my motive in writing this blog: I detest Islam. I detest it with all my soul.

D, LDN

Why are We Letting Anyone In?

24 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by Defend the Modern World in Conservatism, Crime and Punishment, Europe, European Union, Islam, Multiculturalism, Muslims, Politics, Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

adults, adults posing as children refugees, asylum seekers, BBC, calais, Christianity and Islam, Civilisation, Coffee, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, dover, DTMW, EU, Europe, Facebook, Guardian, Islam, Islam and the West, Islamophobia, jungle calais, kids, london, Multiculturalism, Muslims, No to Turkey in the EU, photo, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Telegraph, Terrorism, Twitter

nintchdbpict000276143862

Many in the UK have been outraged (and often simultaneously amused) this past week by the arrival on our shores of a batch of Calais asylum seekers billed as unaccompanied ‘children’, yet who are in appearance seemingly well over the age of 20. As bizarre and brazen (and obvious) as the fraud appears to be, I think this outrage somehow misses the point. The bigger scandal – and the one worth focussing one’s anger on – is that asylum seekers are being allowed into Britain at all.

What obligation does Britain have – legally or morally – to those refugees (if they are indeed refugees) stationed in the safe, democratic nation of France? None is the answer, and no-one can (or has even attempted to) reasonably argue otherwise.

As opponents of asylum fraud are right to consistently point out, a central principle (even if not a law) holds that refugees should settle in the first available safe haven they come across that is willing and able to accommodate them. To illustrate this idea with reference to Syria, a refugee from ISIS-controlled territory who has been accepted into Turkey has no right to demand entry into Greece. A refugee from ISIS-controlled territory who has been accepted into Lebanon has no right to demand entry into Cyprus, and so on. If the purpose of emigration is, as stated, to avoid violence, war or persecution, then only in the first accommodating nation can asylum be rightfully claimed. Should the refugee flee from one safe haven to another, that is called migration and no country is duty bound to facilitate it.

This isn’t a very difficult principle to understand – and, to be sure, most ordinary folk do understand it, which is partly why the Calais Jungle infants have been so poorly and unsympathetically received.

Now, I am an Islamophobe – no doubt about that. I despise the Islamic religion with a white-hot passion. I’m also not over-keen on the adherents of the Islamic religion. Nevertheless, I am, like the reader will be, a moral person, or at the very least someone with a moral sense. We do have an obligation as human beings to ensure that the innocent do not suffer any preventable evil. 

To help the Syrian people, Donald Trump has endorsed a workable and perfectly logical initiative. Allied forces, he says, should carve out a safe-zone in Syria into which the innocent can flee while the conflict burns itself out. This would not be difficult to achieve. Though Assad and ISIS would inevitably object to the idea, both forces have been so degraded that neither is capable of mounting an effective resistance.

Turkey, rich in manpower and arms, must be told to do the work on the ground or face expulsion from NATO. The Gulf States, especially Saudi Arabia, must be made to cough up the money to support the campaign or face a year-long suspension of Western arms sales. This is the solution. Let’s pursue it.

As for the Calais ‘children’, Britain and the West are under no rightful obligation to take in anyone. No asylum seeker, not one, whether from Eritrea, Syria, Afghanistan or the Congo, should be allowed to settle here. And we have every right to expect our government to prevent them from doing so.

D, LDN

Lily Allen’s Shocking Naivety

17 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by Defend the Modern World in Conservatism, Culture, Europe, European Union, Feminism, Islam, Muslims, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Sexual Violence, Uncategorized

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

afghan man, afghans, BBC, bbc bbc, boats calais asylum seekers, Christianity and Islam, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, DTMW, Feminism, Islam, Islam and women's rights, islam women, Islamism, jungle, jungle calais, jungle france, Lily Allen, lily allen calais, lily allen pop, Multiculturalism, Muslim misogyny, Muslims, pop star facebook, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, refugees or migrants, sexual, Twitter, violent, Women

Lily Allen

I quite like the pop singer Lily Allen. Not her music, you understand, just her. She is roughly the same age as me and I have always found her pleasantly, if also unconventionally, attractive.

Now, with such irrelevant information out of the way, I must say I was stunned, though not surprised, by the news that Allen had been reduced to apologising for her country during a visit to the notorious Calais ‘Jungle’ migrant camp last week.

In case you’ve yet to hear of this incident, Allen, faced with a war-weary Afghan teenager, declared that she was ashamed of Britain for not letting in the teeming hordes currently massed (illegally) on France’s Northern coast, making these remarks through a veil of tears and tear-dampened blonde hair. Later, in conversation with the British press, Allen remarked (presumably seriously) that she would even be prepared to have a refugee stay with her at her personal residence in England.

The UK backlash against Allen’s remarks has been predictably harsh. In the right-leaning papers, critics have lined up to pour cold water on Allen’s dippy sentiments, as well as to explain that the singer knows little to nothing about the realities of the Calais crisis and its multiple backgrounds.

“(Allen) was merely repeating the canards of her arty liberal chums” Zoe Strimpel wrote in the Telegraph “who – despite never venturing outside their own intellectual and social cosmos – are sure that everyone who doesn’t see the world as they do, and especially anyone who voted for Brexit, is a bigoted fool. To reduce the web of direness behind the ongoing migration surge to a simple matter of Western culpability is plainly idiotic. It shows painfully limited understanding of the catalogue of political and human horrors that predated, and indeed motivated, Western intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq…And to weepily lay the situation in Calais purely at Britain’s door was a severe misfiring of sentimentality. Crying in the face of human suffering is one thing. But crying on national TV while telling the audience that their country – merely by trying to control its borders – is cruelly causing the misery of innocents is quite another.”

Personally, I was less struck by Ms Allen’s weak grasp of the political-economic background of the migrant crisis than with her shocking naivety in relation to the religion of Islam and the nature of those currently attempting to force their way into the British Isles. For a young, beautiful Englishwoman such as Allen to offer to take in young (almost always male) Muslim refugees displays a terrifying disregard for her own safety. Can you imagine (do you even need to imagine) what would happen if Allen allowed a 16-20 year old Afghan male to move into her personal residence? True, we cannot say for sure, but I don’t believe it is bigoted of me to speculate that sexual advances would almost be made by the new arrival – and that, should they be rebuffed, sexual violence might well follow.

What will it take for our best and brightest to understand that they are being conned by the lowest elements in the human species? What will it take for Western women to understand that the weeping masses huddled in tents along the French coast are not like the Jews who fled Nazi Germany; that they are rather wolves imitating sheep; devils imitating angels? What will it take?

Several commenters under the articles reporting Allen’s comments in Calais have delighted in speculating the fate that would await her should she follow through on her deranged offer of sanctuary. I don’t believe we should be so cold-hearted. Allen is a good person. She has simply fallen victim to a dangerous lie peddled by a negligent, dishonest media. The blame, should Allen’s words inspire some young girl to expose herself to danger, lies ultimately with them.

D, LDN

Why the Alt-Right is Too Alt for Me

12 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by Defend the Modern World in Anti-Feminism, Anti-Modernism, Antisemitism, Conservatism, Culture, Donald Trump, Europe, European Union, Islam, Japan, Multiculturalism, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Race and Intelligence

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

2016, 4chan, alt-right, America, American Liberty, anime, anti-Semitism, BBC, Blog, blog blog blog, Christopher Caldwell, Civilisation, Coffee, dark enlightenment, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, DTMW, dtmw dtmw, Facebook, frog, Internet, internet internet, Japan, milo, modern world, Multiculturalism, Music, Muslim, Muslims, No to Turkey in the EU, pepe, pepe the frog, political, politics, race, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, subcultures, Twitter

325072

Internet subcultures are so often exaggerated in scale and importance by the mainstream – offline – media that most reasonable folk tend instinctively to dismiss reports of their influence as hyperbole. Such was the case when Hillary Clinton devoted almost an entire speech to warning America of the insidious agenda of the ‘alt-right’, an internet coalition of racists, misogynists and Islamophobes allegedly in cahoots with the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump.

Strangely, and unlike so many cyber phenomena reported in the media, the tribe to which Ms Clinton referred is notable for being very real, or at least very widespread. Though there is no single agenda or set of principles agreed upon by the alt-right, there is certainly a general Weltanschauung strong and clear enough to gravitate like-minded people towards it. This worldview is well-described in the following YouTube comment taken from under a video of the Clinton speech: “We (the alt-right) are anti neo-libs. That is the only reason we are alternative. Neo-libs/cons have been the conservative mainstream since 9/11. We are a backlash against that. Neo-cons are not real right.”

By ‘neo-libs’ and ‘neo-cons’ (Neoliberals and Neoconservatives) the commenter is likely referring to a consensus known elsewhere as the ‘New World Order’, the 1%, or (vaguely) as ‘Zionism’.

Rumours of a 'New World Order' have gained currency on the right-wing fringe in recent years

Rumours of a ‘New World Order’ have gained currency on the right-wing fringe in recent years

These labels, although having little to do with each other in fact, are used as synonyms for the force that is actively shrinking the world into a liberal, multi-racial, multi-cultural free-trade zone, in yet another word – the force and ideology of globalisation.

The idea that conservatives should be pro-globalisation is actually a very recent one. Traditionally, as the alt-right notes, right-wing political thinkers have been strongly nativist and culturally protectionist. The shift in conservative thought, beginning during the Reagan-Thatcher era, to laissez faire globalism is attributed retrospectively to the influence of non-native forces, often (predictably) to that of the Jews (sometimes referred to in euphemism as ‘capitalists’/’big business’/’bankers’/’the banks’).

The alt-right wishes to return the conservative movement to where it was before that transition; before economics became more important as a right-wing principle than blood, soil and culture; that is, before paleo became neo.

The alt-right has no single birthplace, but there are nevertheless a few websites and forums indelibly associated with it. Prime among these sites is the Japanese-cultural forum 4chan and in particular the /pol/ (politically incorrect) messageboard. Here, a right-wing political consensus has become entrenched, often (but not always) expressed with dark humour, that has subsequently bled out into the wider internet universe, evidenced by the broad use of memes like Pepe the Frog as well as words and phrases like ‘degenerate’ and ‘dindu-nuffin’ (the latter invention being used to refer sarcastically to African-American criminality).

The English-language messageboard 4chan is commonly associated with the alt-right

The English-language messageboard 4chan is commonly associated with the alt-right

The alt-right is connected to, but distinct from, the ‘Dark Enlightenment’ phenomenon I have written about previously. Unlike the latter, the alt-right is more realistic and less philosophical. While the Dark Enlightenment recommends absurd initiatives like the abolition of democracy and the return of divinely-appointed’ Kings, the alt-right prefers to concern itself with more achievable and substantial ideas, such as the abolition of third-world (non-white) immigration, building an opposition to political Islam and degrading the influence of certain varieties of feminism. This down-to-earth-ness is a large part of the reason the alt-right, unlike the Dark Enlightenment, has become a force to be reckoned with.

I have no idea whether this site would or should be considered part of the alt-right blogosphere. I only know that it has never been so described – and certainly not by me. I am, in my estimation, far too moderate, too much of a bleeding heart, to integrate smoothly into that crowd.

Though I recognise that races exist, I have never been a racist or a racial nationalist. Though I accept that certain varieties of feminism have inflicted great damage upon Western civilisation, I am not opposed to the idea of sexual equality, nor dismissive of the disadvantages women still face around the world on account of their being female. Though I recognise that he has joined the right side of the Syrian civil war and made constructive and wise comments about the bombing of Libya, I do not support or make excuses for the authoritarian, anti-democratic administration of Vladimir Putin. And so on…  The alt-right is simply too alt for me.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is bellowed by many on the alt-right

Russian President Vladimir Putin is beloved by many on the alt-right

Is the movement as dangerous as Hillary Clinton is making out? The answer depends almost entirely on who is asking the question. If you’re a white, Christian, heterosexual male resident in the Western World, then the risk this movement presents to you is minimal. If, however, you are Jewish, homosexual, black, south Asian or atheist, I would be very cautious about taking the movement to heart.

There are decidedly ugly currents within the alt-right that are not adequately represented by its spokespeople. Milo Yiannopoulos, a Jewish-Greek homosexual, may well be regarded as the crown prince of the movement at present, but it does not follow that the general masses huddled under its banner agree with his lifestyle or look kindly upon his ethnicity. On the contrary, more often than not, the alt-right foot-soldier is loudly hostile to both Jews and homosexuality. If you require evidence of that, just spend an hour or two browsing the /pol/ board on 4chan yourself.

Anti-Semitism in particular runs through the alt-right like colours run through a stick of seaside rock. It is both below and behind it, providing a vital support to the worldview espoused by its adherents. The West is being taken over by foreign elements, they agree, because a hostile elite is conspiring against the natives. One need not refer to the hostile elite explicitly. Innuendo will do. Innuendo did the job in the thirties, too (sorry, Godwin).

A variant of the anti-Semitic 'happy merchant' meme

A variant of the anti-Semitic ‘happy merchant’ meme

I do admit that the alt-right is correct on some very important issues. On Islam, for example, the movement is reliably clear-headed and refreshingly consistent. On the virtues of a Trump administration, too, the movement is providing a much-needed counter-force to the almost universally anti-Trump mainstream media. The problem is the movement doesn’t seem to possess any kind of intellectual brake. It swerves habitually all over the place, sometimes finding itself on a main road and sometimes blindly ploughing through a field. This youthful unpredictability might make hopping on-board an attractive prospect for political thrill-seekers, but not for anyone else.

I suppose, if we must manufacture labels for ourselves, I am more of an alt-liberal than an alt-rightist. And I am not alone in that. There must be millions of people like me, scattered around the political spectrum, living unhappily in temporary ideological accommodation. It is high time we had a real home to go to.

D, LDN

Beck Vs. Trump – The Death of Abstract Patriotism

05 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by Defend the Modern World in America, Conservatism, Culture, Donald Trump, Europe, Islam, Multiculturalism, Politics, Psychology

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

4chan, alt-right, America, America as idea, America Cruz, anti-Semitism, BBC, Civilisation, clinton, clinton 2016, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, Donald Trump, Donald Trump 2016, DTMW, dtmw dtmw, Facebook, Glenn Beck, glenn beck hannity, Internet, Islam, Multiculturalism, paleo, Paleo conservative, politics, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, realism, sean hannity, trump, trump 2016, trump alt-right, United States

Coulter addresses the Conservative Political Action conference (CPAC) in Washington

As you may have heard, conservative commentators Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity aren’t getting along with each other at the moment. Over the past few days, the two men have used their respective soapboxes to trade well-mannered – but cutting – pot-shots, all the more surprising for the fact the two were once close personal and ideological friends.

At the root of this newfound animosity lies the 2016 election and specifically the nomination and candidacy of Donald J. Trump,

Hannity, an employee of the Fox News Network, has thrown his lot behind Donald Trump’s presidential bid with great enthusiasm, becoming over time the most reliably pro-Trump voice on the mainstream media.

Glenn Beck, a former employee of the Fox News Network, has, by stark contrast, reacted to Trump’s nomination with damp-eyed despair and tremulous unease. On his popular ‘Blaze’ media network, Beck has repeatedly refused to endorse the businessman (despite considerable pressure from his subscribers) and argued passionately and consistently that Trump represents a grave threat to American stability and democracy, perhaps even greater than that posed by Hillary Clinton herself.

Glenn Beck's Blaze network has been one of the few conservative broadcasters to oppose Trump following his nomination

Glenn Beck’s Blaze network has been one of the few conservative broadcasters to oppose Trump following his nomination

This disagreement between Beck and Hannity (and by extension between Beck and Trump) represents in microcosm a much larger philosophical cleavage in the American conservative movement.

As must be clear to even the most casual political observer, Donald Trump is not a ‘conservative’ of the traditional American style – or at least not of the modern American style. True, he supports a strong military and emphasises patriotism and law and order, but he also opposes (or treats with suspicion) the growth of economic globalism and the concept and ideology of American foreign policy. True, he celebrates the record of past Republican greats like Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln, but he also trashes the record of recent Republican leaders like George W. Bush.

Trump is not a tribal Republican, or a tribal conservative. With his notion of ‘America First’, he is a self-conscious throwback to the old, pre-World War 2 American right-wing; the school of thought which argued that America is, for all its greatness, a country like any other country; that America is exceptional, but not so exceptional that it is duty-bound to make itself representative of the variety of the world.

Trump is also a much less religiously-minded candidate than recent conservative leaders. Though professedly a Christian, he does not make frequent references to his faith and nor does he frame his policies with religious language or support them with religious explanation.

Most importantly of all, Trump would appear to agree with the Old Right idea that America has an original and organic culture, distinct from and superior to those of other Western countries, which must be protected from the transformative effects of mass immigration.

Pro-Trump posters often feature Old-Right or 'nativist' language.

Pro-Trump posters often feature Old-Right or ‘nativist’ language.

Glenn Beck represents a very different breed of reactionary, as opposed to Trump’s way of thinking as can be imagined. A self-described constitutionalist and religious fundamentalist, Beck elevates only the most abstract and intangible aspects of America, prioritising concepts like faith, freedom and flag over real-world issues like demographics, economics and jobs. Beck adheres to and celebrates a philosophical-spiritual conception of America, while Trump bases his patriotism more-or-less in reality.

The United States has always been in some ways an experiment. Numerous eminent figures, from Thomas Paine and Ralph Waldo Emerson to Ronald Reagan and Christopher Hitchens, have discussed America as a concept and ideology as well as a flesh and blood nation. This is quite unique, globally considered. Nobody discusses (seriously at least) the idea of Austria, the concept of Algeria, or the meaning of Burkina Faso. America is different. It can be (and often is) thrown into the abstract.

America is ‘freedom’. America is an ‘experiment in self-government by the people’. America is the ‘material form of the constitution – and thus of the enlightenment which produced it’. And so on. These lofty philosophical conceptions of America have dominated its politics for centuries.

As an article on the right-wing website RedState put it: “The United States is a unique animal. Not only is it a country, but it’s also an idea. People around the world don’t just dream of coming to America, they dream of becoming Americans. Many have and continue to risk their lives to do so. It’s one thing to risk your life escaping the Soviet Union, Communist China or even Communist Cuba. Those people were or are running from something, trying to go anywhere else. It’s another thing altogether to risk one’s life to come to a place… And that place is more often than not, America…America is somewhat unique in the history of mankind – or at least in the last 2,000 years. People may dream of moving to Paris for the romance and the food, but they don’t dream of becoming a Frenchman… One almost has to go back to the Roman Empire to find something similar to the idea of America. There, outsiders not only dreamed of living in Rome, they also dreamed of becoming Roman… and could do so. The idea of becoming a Roman citizen actually meant something beyond just living in the Empire or being subject to its laws.”

The United States Constitution

The United States Constitution

Trump represents, perhaps more than anything else, a dramatic deviation from this way of thinking.

Trump sharpens America, with everything he says, into something tangible and worldly. He considers America with reference to how it has been and can be, as opposed to how it might be on some ethereal, philosophical plane of thought. He is a realist – and like all realists he is inevitably accused by his opponents of being ‘crude’ and ‘simplistic’. America, for Trump, is not an academic thesis. It is a community of living, breathing human beings. Those who (like this blogger) possess a degree in politics and economics dislike this idea precisely because it isn’t something you need a degree in politics and economics to understand.

As the reader will recall, during the primary contest for the Republican nomination, Trump’s only real rival was Texas Senator Ted Cruz, a man who had been, prior to Trump’s lightning ascendency, the favoured choice of the party’s grassroots. Cruz represents, even more than Beck, a patriot of America at its most intangible. His political rallies during the primary season were hardly political rallies at all. They were more like Baptist conventions or prayer meetings. Cruz talked about salvation and virtue more than he talked about tax and immigration. He referenced the aspirations of the constitution more than he referenced the aspirations of the voters themselves. He spoke almost exclusively about America as idea. And the voters were fine with that, but only until Trump offered something more down-to-earth.

Texas senator Ted Cruz speaking at a political rally

Texas senator Ted Cruz speaking at a political rally in 2015

The US constitution that Cruz and Beck so adore is a fine set of principles. Let there be no confusion about that. It is not, however, a piece of holy script which should, in every case, over-rule the lessons of empirical reality. It is also unhealthy (and rather sinister) to experience or suggest an emotional response to it. Glenn Beck has been known to cry when talking of the constitution. He has spoken favourably of writers like W. Cleo Skousen, a Mormon fundamentalist who implied in his bestselling work ‘The 5000 Year Leap’ that the constitution was a perfect, divinely authored document, almost as infallible as the Bible itself. This is fanatical thinking. It is madness. And it is no wonder in this sense that Beck backed Cruz, with all his lip-trembling devotion to America as sentiment, as philosophy, as spiritual idea.

Trump, like Samuel Huntingdon before him, understands that America is not an abstraction, unresponsive to changes in worldly reality, but a material something, as vulnerable to worldly forces as any other material something. Unlike the idea of America, the reality of America will not necessarily be the same thing if the people are replaced over time by mass immigration. As Herder proposed, a nation’s culture is the product of its people, not the other way around. The changing situation on the ground in America matters immensely as to what is to become of America.

Slowly but surely, and despite a long tradition of supposing otherwise, Americans are coming to regard their country as something real, substantial, mortal and delicate. Even if Trump goes on to lose in November, that genie will not easily be forced back into the bottle.

D, LDN.

Phoney War: Why a French Burkini Ban Would Be Meaningless

29 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by Defend the Modern World in Conservatism, Crime and Punishment, Culture, Europe, European Union, Feminism, Islam, Multiculturalism, Politics, Religion, Terrorism, Uncategorized

≈ 24 Comments

Tags

American Liberty, BBC, burkini, burkini ban france, burkini controversy, burkinis, Christianity, Christianity and Islam, Civilisation, conflict over women's rights, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, DTMW, Facebook, Feminism, ISIS, ISIS war in Syria, Islam, Islam and the West, Islam in Europe, meaningless, No to Turkey in the EU, phoney war, politics, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Rihanna Muslim, security

Burkini

In September, 1939, after the Nazis had triumphantly rolled their tank battalions over the corpse of the Polish defence forces, there began a period now referred to by historians as the ‘phoney war’.

This period – which lasted roughly eight months before terminating dramatically at the Battle of France in 1940 – saw little to no actual military activity in Europe, despite the war being officially underway and there being no diplomatic solution considered feasible by European leaders.

That is not to say that nothing happened. There were, of course, war-like gestures by both sides, such as the digging of trenches, the erection of barbed wire fences and other military deterrents etc… What was missing, what made the war phoney, was the absence of any pro-active initiatives, any real engagement of the enemy, either with policy or force of arms.

In regard to Europe’s confrontation with Islamism, we have been locked in a period of phoney war for over ten years now. In this period, no real battles have been fought, or at least none to any great consequence. Only war-like gestures have been made. Nothing big. Nothing loud. Nothing enough to scare the pigeons.

The burkini ban proposed by the French government last week is one such gesture. Though the ban (which has since been blocked in the French courts) was greeted initially by some in the cultural-defence community as bold and meaningful, I cannot for the life of me think why.

Woman wearing the 'Burkini' swimsuit in Nice, France

Woman wearing the ‘burkini’ swimsuit in Nice, France

The burkini ban was simply a token move by the French government designed to convince the smaller-skulled among the French public that it cares, that it is willing to do something about the threat of Islamisation.

By itself, the ban would have done nothing at all to improve security, guarantee the secular character of French society, or even liberate the women concerned from their religious obligations. Indeed, it may have even robbed them of liberty, since, given that Muslim women are governed ultimately by their husbands, such women would almost certainly have been ‘advised’ to avoid the beach rather than risk breaking Quranic law.

The ban would contribute nothing. It was nothing – nothing pretending to be something.

To avoid the charge of picking on the French here, it should be noted that many such token gestures have been enacted or proposed by the British and American governments also. I can still recall the fanfare and fake controversy when the Home Office announced that it would be no longer acceptable for Muslim women to wear the veil in their passport photos. Imagine that…

The Niqab - often referred to as the 'Burka'

The Niqab – often referred to as the ‘Burka’. No legal restrictions on Muslim dress have been successfully enforced in Western nations.

Whatever explanations they manufacture for their apathy, the truth is that the governments of the West are simply too scared to take any serious action to combat the Islamist threat. And, to be fair, it isn’t difficult to imagine why they would be.

If the reader is on Facebook – and has a representative selection of friends on this site – he/she will have observed with dismay the absurd intensity of the backlash against the burkini initiative these past few days.

Self-defined Liberals, both in France and outside of it, have branded the idea ‘fascist’, ‘totalitarian’, and (of course – drum roll please….) ‘RACIST”. The idea was even said by some to violate the rules of feminism and sexual equality – including, it should be noted, by Muslims themselves, who ordinarily have scant regard for the notion of female empowerment.

In the Independent newspaper columnist Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan went further than most by pressing the accusations of racism and feminist betrayal into one incoherent lump, arguing that French feminism is itself explicitly rooted in “colonialism and imperialism.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” she wrote, “but I thought this was a pretty black and white thing we feminists were agreed on. An article of faith if you will: Thou Shalt Leave Women To Do As They Will With Their Own Bodies. France, often posturing itself as the beacon of feminism because apparently feminism was born of the French Revolution… should surely know this article more than most. And yet, here it is – the French state itself – forcing women to wear or not wear certain clothes! Incredible!…Muslim women are posited always as victims of their dress who require liberation from the French authorities. And here’s the catch: this French desire to liberate Muslim women and the positing of Muslimness as ‘oppositional’ to Frenchness has a long and bloody history (in the colony of Algeria).”

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has spoken in support of the Burkini ban

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has spoken in support of the burkini ban

The comment section beneath this article contains numerous criticisms of Khan’s leaky reasoning, but just as many agreeing voices. Khan is, furthermore, in the solid majority within the closed world of the Western press and the activist mainstream it feeds.

In France, Britain and America, protests against the burkini ban have been staged outside French embassies and cultural centres. On the internet, petitions have been drawn up and generously endorsed with signatures from right-thinking undergraduates and bearded Guardianistas.

If this timid, pointless gesture cannot pass into law without triggering such hysteria, one can well understand why our governments are averse to doing anything more profound.

I will not here deal with the specific arguments for and against the burkini ban in France (or elsewhere), since the initiative is too meaningless and tokenistic to merit our consideration. Instead, let us consider (for contrast) a meaningful, serious policy; one with which the governments of the West could take the fight to the Islamist forces threatening our way of life and physical existence. To do this we must necessarily turn away from Europe and look to America.

The Donald Trump speech I referenced last week (which addressed the issue of US foreign policy) advertised many novel and impressive strategies for pushing back against the Islamist ranks. Of these, one stood out to me as particularly commonsensical: namely, the drawing up of an ideological test for prospective migrants to the United States prior to their admission. This brave idea is logical and reasonable not just for the US, but for the entire Western world.

Donald Trump addresses supporters in Ohio

Donald Trump addresses supporters in Ohio

As Trump explained, this would be no different in practice to the tests used (effectively) by many Western nations during the Cold War. As with Communism during the Soviet era, Islam (Trump still insists, for political reasons, on calling it ‘radical Islam’) represents a massive and feasible existential threat to the social and governmental norms of all Western countries. It is only natural, therefore, that the West should take the same precautions now as were put to use then.

What would such an ideological test look like? No-one knows for certain (Trump has the habit of being rather vague). I can only say at this juncture what I think it should look like.

Here are some suggested questions for Trump’s ideological test (and I write these fully in the knowledge that they are too extreme even for Donald Trump’s campaign):

Q1: Do you recognise, understand and accept a causal relationship between the strength of Islam in a country and the backwardness of that country?

Answer required for a pass: Yes.

Q2: Do you recognise, understand and accept that what attracts you to the Western world is the cultural superiority (freedoms, secularism and sophistication, etc.) of the Western world?

Answer required for a pass: Yes.

Q3: Do you recognise, understand and accept that those things you wish to escape by leaving the Muslim world are the natural and inevitable by-products of Islamic culture?

Answer required for a pass: Yes.

Q4: Do you believe women, homosexuals and followers of non-Islamic religions should have the same rights and freedoms as anyone else?

Answer required for a pass: Yes.

And finally: Q5: Do you swear on the Quran to put your commitment to the liberal, bohemian values of the West over and above any commitment you retain to the Muslim faith?

Answer required for a pass: Yes.

While imperfect and incomplete, I think this little questionnaire would go some way in filtering out the more honest Islamists from among the migrant hordes. Lying (a virtue in Islam) is obviously a possibility, but, even in that case, such an interrogation would nevertheless succeed in putting unwelcome thoughts in previously closed minds.

When the phoney war is finally over, and when the competing sides are clearly identified and ready for an honest confrontation, I believe Muslim immigration to Europe and America will be outlawed entirely. But we are not at that stage yet. The war of gesture vs. gesture still has a lot of life left in it – not to mention appeal.

All people, of all backgrounds, are naturally inclined to oppose confrontation and support the status quo. Even during WWII, the British, German and French populations were almost certainly relieved by the break in hostilities offered by the phoney war. They knew deep down that it couldn’t last. They knew deep down what the Nazis were really about. But they wanted space to breathe, to continue life as normal. It is no different now.

Ultimately, of course, the same thing will get us out of our comfortable trenches as got the French and British armies out of theirs in 1940. We will have no choice.

D, LDN

← Older posts

Categories

  • Abortion
  • Africa
  • America
  • Anti-Feminism
  • Anti-Modernism
  • Antisemitism
  • Asia
  • Atheism
  • Australia
  • Balance of Global Power
  • Barack Obama
  • Canada
  • China
  • Christianity
  • Class
  • Communism
  • Conservatism
  • Crime and Punishment
  • Culture
  • Decline of the West
  • Defence
  • Donald Trump
  • Dysgenics
  • Economics
  • EDL
  • End of American Power
  • Eurabia
  • Europe
  • European Union
  • Feminism
  • Germany
  • Heroism
  • History
  • Imperialism
  • India
  • ISIS
  • Islam
  • Islamisation of the West
  • Israel
  • Japan
  • Literature
  • Masculinty
  • Moderate Muslims
  • Multiculturalism
  • Muslim Rape
  • Muslims
  • Philosophy
  • Politics
  • Psychology
  • Race and Intelligence
  • Racism
  • Religion
  • Restoration of Europe
  • Russia
  • Saudi Arabia
  • Scandinavia
  • Scotland
  • Sexual Violence
  • Terrorism
  • UKIP
  • Uncategorized
  • Violence
  • White People
  • Zionism

Archives

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Defend the Modern World
    • Join 366 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Defend the Modern World
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...