Challenging the Islamic Mind-Trap

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

• 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

Advertisement

Thank You & Goodbye

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

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

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

*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

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

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

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.

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

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

Trump and the Tape

Tags

America, America 911, American Liberty, BBC, Blog, Christianity and Islam, Civilisation, Coffee, Defend the modern world, Donald Trump, DTMW, dtmw dtmw, Facebook, Internet, Mike Pence, Multiculturalism, Muslim immigration, Muslim immigration ban, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, trump, trump ban on, trump breitbart, trump bush tape, trump grab by the, trump tape, trump trump, trump trust, Twitter, twitter facebook, United States, Vice president

As regular visitors to this blog will be aware, I have written in support of the candidacy of Donald J Trump ever since he announced his run back in 2015. In the intervening period, the myriad accusations and denigrations offered by the mainstream media have done little or nothing to diminish this support. I have found that the Republican has been treated grotesquely unfairly by the press and most – if not all – of the arguments against his election have been based in soft, muddy ground.

However, I am not a fanatic, nor a devotee. Trump is not my God and my enthusiasm is conditional. I have always been prepared to criticise him in the face of troubling evidence. And troubling new evidence – about his character and judgement – has now arrived.

To go over the basics, Trump’s campaign was dealt a terrible blow on Friday with the release by the (pro-Clinton) Washington Post of video/audio tape depicting the Republican nominee making crass and idiotic remarks about the fairer sex. Here is a transcript of the most controversial parts:

Trump: I moved on her, actually. You know, she was down on Palm Beach. I moved on her, and I failed. I’ll admit it.

Billy Bush: Whoa.

Bush: I did try and fuck her. She was married.

Bush: That’s huge news.

Trump: I moved on her very heavily. In fact, I took her out furniture shopping… She wanted to get some furniture. I said, “I’ll show you where they have some nice furniture.” I took her out furniture — I moved on her like a bitch. But I couldn’t get there. And she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look.

…Trump: I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.

Billy Bush: Whatever you want.

Trump: Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.

To be clear from the start, these comments shouldn’t mean anything politically. They were not made openly (that is, publically) and nor were they made by a man contemporaneously engaged in a political campaign (the comments are from 2005). However, there is no respect paid to ‘shoulds’ in politics and certainly not in this Alice-in-Wonderland election. The comments do matter, therefore, and will make a political impression. They are already being seen as a window into Trump’s character, into who he really is behind the spray-on tan and oratorical polish. It hasn’t been quite enough to say that Trump was joking, or that the comments merely represent the kind of ‘locker room talk’ all men engage in away from the earshot of women. Trump is not running to be the president of a student fraternity. He is running to be leader of the free world.

Still from the tape depicting Trump with TV personality Billy Bush in 2005

Trump’s remarks are also offensive to his own base in a way his previous remarks have not been. As Avik Roy put it in Forbes magazine – “Few Republican lawmakers have Muslim relatives. Few Republican lawmakers are of Mexican heritage. Few Republican lawmakers have faced discrimination based on the colour of their skin. But all of them have white female relatives. And therefore, when Trump talks about grabbing white women by the genitals, they can directly relate.”

But does the tape spell the end for Trump’s chances of election? That is the million dollar question being relentlessly repeated by every media outlet this (Sunday) afternoon. The answer surely depends on what happens tonight in St Louis, Missouri. How will Trump deal with the tape at the debate? Will he deal with it at all, or ignore it (and hope that his opponent ignores it, too)?

Personally, I think it is vital that he does deal with it – and quickly and decisively enough that the rest of the debate is left clear for a debate on policy. Whatever the first question put to Trump is, he should politely request an opportunity to first make a brief and heartfelt apology (in addition to the inadequate one already issued) to the nation and women in particular for his reported indiscretions.

He should most definitely not attempt to get even by going after Clinton’s past family issues, since this will only invite retaliation against his own rather dubious marital record. The priority must be to return the centre-point of gravity to policy and ideology.

America is still a majority-Christian country, one that emphasises the value and importance of forgiveness and being ‘born again’. If Trump is to get out of this quagmire alive, he will need to convince the believing section of society in particular that his sense of shame is real and sincere. This cannot be achieved with surface gestures, but only with spontaneous and heartfelt emotion. Put simply, Trump will need to apologise and mean it.

It’s not just you. I also sense a real injustice as to how all this is playing out. I still believe that Trump has been the victim of massively disproportionate media opprobrium this past nine months. He has invited much of this, but certainly not all of it. The shabbiness and murky dishonesty of Hillary Clinton has been hardly mentioned in any of the major newspapers or television networks (with the exception of Fox News), while even the tiniest of blemishes upon Trump’s record has been magnified to the highest possible definition. This simply isn’t fair. The odds are stacked in one corner’s favour.

It is worth reminding ourselves what exactly is at stake in this election, lest all this irrelevant nonsense lead us to forget it. We (the West) are a glittering civilisation at war with barbaric filth. We are being challenged violently by people who would force us to regress centuries in science, women’s rights and economic and philosophical clarity. Yes, Trump is goonish, unrefined and often stupid. But he is also strong, unrelenting and brave. Even if he is about to implode, we need not be ashamed at having put our faith in him.

D, LDN

Why the Alt-Right is Too Alt for Me

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

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

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 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 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

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

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

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

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.

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

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 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.

Is Trump Imploding – and What Would It Mean If He Is?

Tags

America, American Liberty, Barack Obama, BBC, Blog, Civilisation, Coffee, Defend the modern world, donald, Donald Trump, DTMW, dtmw dtmw, Facebook, Internet, make america great again, National Rifle Association, nra, nra nra, politics, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, radio, trump, trump 2016, trump clinton, trump news, trump nra, trump odds, trump rally, Trump rally latest, Trump rally schedule, trumpdonald, tv, Twitter, United States

According to the pundits of the mainstream media, it looks increasingly likely that the US election in November will be a landslide victory for Hillary Rodham Clinton. Her only genuine rival, Donald Trump, is all but out,  they say, having wrecked his chances of winning over the ‘moderate majority’ with a series of astonishing lapses of judgement and discipline.

I wish I could say with certainty that these pundits are wrong, but I can’t. To do so would be to place hope over observable reality.

The truth is the past fortnight has been by far the worst of Donald Trump’s short (if dazzling) political career. In rally after rally, the New York mogul has allowed his tongue to get the better of his political intelligence, making statements that can at the very best be described as ‘ill-advised’ and at worst as ‘politically suicidal’. 

And of these clangers, surely none seems destined for greater infamy than the following comment the Republican nominee made in Wilmington, North Carolina on Tuesday, August 9th: “If she (Hillary) gets to pick her (supreme court) judges, (there’s) nothing you can do, folks,” Trump said,  before adding, “although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”

Now, there are two ways in which this remark can be interpreted. One interpretation – one that gives Mr Trump the benefit of the doubt – is that he was simply suggesting ‘2nd amendment people’ might be able to organise into a legal, peaceful political force and persuade the Clinton regime to pick pro-gun judges. Another interpretation – that which the media has uniformly preferred – is that Mr Trump was suggesting – jokingly or not – that pro-gun activists assassinate Ms Clinton before she gets the chance to pick any judges.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is gaining in momentum following a series of Trump controversies.

It doesn’t really matter which interpretation is correct – at least politically speaking. The remark, whatever its meaning, was stupidly vague, needlessly provocative and incredibly unwise.

Donald Trump is not the idiot many liberals make him out to be. He is a clever, competent businessman, a graduate of the prestigious Wharton School of Finance and the son of successful professionals. He must have known as soon as the remark left his lips that it was the vocalisation of a grave error of judgement.

Personally, I do not believe Donald Trump would ever sincerely advocate political violence. It just isn’t the kind of man he is. Those people who know him personally  are unanimous in their testimony that the billionaire is. at heart, a kindly, charitable and honest person; much softer and gentler in private than in public. He is not a Putin, in other words, let alone a Hitler.

But even his supporters must be honest enough to admit that remarks of this kind are a gift to the opposition. Even we should acknowledge (in the spirit of tough love) that if such provocations continue to issue from Trump’s mouth, the November election is almost certainly destined to result in a Clinton rout.

As I said at the top, the media (both in America and Europe) have been quick to interpret the recent controversies as signalling the death knell for Trump’s entire campaign. In the words of the (liberal and pro-Hillary) New York Times: “The effort to save Mr. Trump from himself has plainly failed. He has repeatedly signaled to his advisers and allies his willingness to change and adapt, but has grown only more volatile and prone to provocation since then, making comments that have been seen as inciting violence and linking his political opponents to terrorism… Advisers who once hoped a Pygmalion-like transformation would refashion a crudely effective political showman into a plausible American president now increasingly concede that Mr. Trump may be beyond coaching. He has ignored their pleas and counsel as his poll numbers have dropped… And (even) Mr. Trump has begun to acknowledge to associates and even in public that he might lose. In an interview on CNBC on Thursday, he said he was prepared to face defeat.”

Trump rally in Orlando, Florida.

Of course, no-one can really say for sure whether it is ‘all over’ for Trump at this stage. It is still far too early to jump to any conclusions. Nevertheless, at the time of writing, Hillary Clinton enjoys a terrifying 8 point lead over the Republican in most national polls. That lead represents a massive turnaround from just a few weeks ago, when Trump led in most polls by an average of 2 points. To be honest – and there is no point in being dishonest – this looks very grim indeed.

We – the Western World as a whole – simply cannot afford for Trump to lose in November. If the New Yorker fails to resuscitate his campaign in the next three months, America will find itself led by one of the most corrupt, opinion-less and manipulative executives in living memory.

Let there be not a doubt in your mind, reader; Hillary Rodham Clinton is considerably more dangerous to America’s well-being than Barack Obama ever was.

Unlike the current CIC, Mrs Clinton is not an ideologue. She is something far worse than that. She is an opportunist, a beneficiary of funds and a puppet of the special interests that have so corrupted American politics for decades. She will not, as president, do as she wants. She will do as she’s told. And that (in my opinion) is a million times more unpredictable, dangerous and sinister than the stable, pedestrian liberalism of Barack Hussein Obama.

Barack Obama has been far less damaging to America than Hillary promises to be.

In Trump’s own words: “Hillary Clinton has perfected the politics of personal profit and even theft… She ran the State Department like her own personal hedge fund, doing favors for oppressive regimes, and many others… in exchange for cash, pure and simple. Pure and simple.”

At several of his rallies Mr Trump has listed many of the foreign countries known to have lent material support to the Clinton campaign – states which include such beacons of liberty as Algeria, Morocco, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. What, I ask, do they have in common?

Like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton is notorious for refusing to use the words ‘radical Islam’ when talking of the crimes of ISIS, preferring to use more culturally vague terms like ‘terrorism’, ‘murder’, ‘criminality’ and ‘violence’. Perhaps the list of nations backing the Clinton effort goes some way in explaining this, but not all the way.

The UAE is friendly with the Clinton campaign.

While Clinton is not – as Trump needlessly alleged – the ‘co-founder’ of ISIS, she is nevertheless on the same page as ISIS in regard to certain vital regional issues. Clinton is, for example, quite fanatical in her insistence that Bashar al-Assad (a man who has done more to combat ISIS than anyone) is the greatest evil currently active in Syria and has spoken more often in criticism of his regime than of the band of maniacs currently at war with it.

This stance would appear to be in sync with a school of thought devised in the murkier corridors of the neo-conservative movement; one which argues that ISIS, far from being a grave threat to America, may ultimately be good for it; that if ISIS can overthrow the Assad regime, even by instituting a medieval theocracy in its place, then that will benefit the US by knocking out a long-standing threat to its regional interests  – (by which they presumably mean the Assad government’s stockpile of chemical and biological weapons, some – but not all – of which have been dismantled).

This is all hypothetical, of course; but given the intransigence of the Clinton campaign, we can only be hypothetical. And that, in many essential ways, is just the point, isn’t it? 

Nothing is for certain with Clinton. She has no clear agenda. Everything about her is blurred behind a film of dust, money and Middle-Eastern smog.

So please, Mr Trump – play a smarter game. Stop giving the press exactly what they want. Stop feeding them headlines. Stop lighting unnecessary fires. There is no honour in losing on principle in this election. The stakes are considerably too high for that.

D, LDN

Islam is Ruining Everything

Tags

2001, 9/11, American, BBC, Christianity and Islam, Defend the modern world, DTMW, dtmw dtmw, dtmw dtmw blog, Facebook, german, Hindus, Indian, Iranian, Islam, Israel, Jews, kosovan, Multiculturalism, munich shooting, Muslims, No to Turkey in the EU, political commentary, politics, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, racial tension, Siklhs, taylor, tension, Terror, Terrorism, turk, Twitter, USA, War

The past fortnight has seen Islamic (let’s stop calling it ‘Islamist’) violence in Nice, Turkey, Germany (twice) and the narrowest prevention of terrorism in Latin America. The breathing space between atrocities is progressively diminishing, leaving the public disorientated and confused, and politicians struggling to issue apologies and rationalisations at a matching speed.

The situation is now clear as day. In small towns and large cities alike, Westerners are no longer able to go about their everyday lives without the risk of horrific and merciless slaughter at the hands of people who shouldn’t even be in the same part of the world as them. Even if one still feels moved to deny this, one runs the risk of being interrupted mid-sentence by reports of a fresh atrocity. In the time it takes to say the sentence ‘Not all Muslims are like this’, the chances are some fresh batch of innocent humans have been dispatched to an early grave by Islamic hands. It is no wonder then that even the most doctrinaire leftists are pausing for as long as possible before offering excuses for their pet Rottweiler’s latest ‘aberration’.

Where is all this leading? Where can it possibly end? It is to me entirely infeasible to expect Europeans or Americans to put up with Islamic violence indefinitely. Even a castrated man still possesses adrenaline – the base material of anger and resistance; the same is true of a castrated population. It may take time, and I cannot say exactly when it will happen, but there will one day be a ferocious rebellion against the deteriorating condition of the Western World; a unified, grassroots drive to wind the clock back in order to wind it forwards. Who knows who will start it, or what event will provide the back-breaking straw. We can only be sure that it will happen.

And what will it look like when it does happen? Fascism? Concentration camps? Ultra-nationalist racism and anti-democratic thuggery? On current trends, I see no reason why not. Madame Le Pen, with her indoctrinated anti-German bigotry and anti-free-market fanaticism, is fast rising in France. The anti-Semitic far-right in Austria only narrowly lost out in the country’s last presidential election and look set to make it the next time around. And here in the UK, renegade Brexit supporters, buoyed by their unexpected triumph in June, are attacking foreigners en masse; not only third-world migrants, but also Poles, Bulgarians, Portuguese and Ukrainians.

Let there be no doubt about whose fault this is. It is the doing of Muslims and of Islam, a toxic degeneracy that, having long ago ruined the countries now oppressed under the star and crescent, is actively poisoning the world. Islam is ruining everything.

Before September 2001, the European Union was broadly regarded (by most Europeans) as a noble and constructive enterprise that promoted unity and peaceful cooperation; the dream of such patriotic visionaries as Winston Churchill and Charles De Gaulle. Now, after decades of Islamic violence and rape, the EU concept is seen as being decidedly anti-patriotic, even anti-European. This was never inevitable and it is something worth being angry about.

Before September, 2001, the far-right in both Europe and America was close to oblivion. No-one beyond a few tattooed skinheads took the likes of David Duke or Nick Griffin seriously. Now, after 15 years of global chaos, both men command a social media following of thousands; numbers which continue to grow rapidly by the hour.

Before 2001, race riots in the United Kingdom were small enough and rare enough to be ignored altogether by cultural historians. Though there were often local tensions over black muggers and Indian corner shops, these were minor, resolvable blips on an otherwise shining record of integration and social harmony. Now, with Muslims slitting throats faster than non-Muslim migrants can make positive contributions to society, that happy reality is all but disappearing. All migrants, of all faiths and traditions, are having their record of integration thrown into jeopardy by Islamic misbehaviour.

It matters little to a rage-infected, low-IQ skinhead whether a bearded man adheres to Sikhism or Islam. As long as he looks like Anjem Choudary, he is Anjem Choudary. Muslim evil has endangered all Asians equally, and who can say for sure this wasn’t intentional?

Even Jews, the most valuable allies the Western world possesses against the Islamist hordes, have been assaulted and victimised by numb-skulled hotheads intent on punishing Muslims. It would take a very imaginative mind to come up with a more appalling irony than that.

And the fallout continues to get even stranger. Though the details of the story are still developing, the massacre in Munich yesterday is thought to have been carried out by an 18-year-old Iranian migrant suffering (as many Iranians do) from a cultural identity crisis.

According to the Guardian – just before the killer turned the gun on himself, he is said to have engaged a member of the public in a vicious argument about his national status, screaming at one point “I am a German!” and cursing ‘Fucking Turks’ and ‘Dirty foreigners’. This makes a lot of sense to me.

Not only does Muslim misbehaviour poison attitudes among the natives of the West. It also distorts and deforms the thinking of those unfortunate enough to be caught somewhere between modernity and darkness. Think of it this way: If you were a young Moroccan, Turkish or Iranian migrant in Europe, in love with modernity and desirous of shedding your Islamic identity, you might well find yourself whipped up into an anxious frenzy by the growing backlash against people who look like you, and for whom you might naturally be mistaken in the whirlwind retributions to come. In order to make yourself safe from those future pogroms, you would have to strive to differentiate yourself from your own community, all the while risking the disapproval of your family and friends (some of whom might be inclined to punish your cultural apostasy with death). And even if you managed this, you would still have to find a way of marking yourself off physically or bureaucratically from the community you have left. And so on.

This is a very hard task, and many see no way of getting all the way through it. (*As I say, details are still emerging about Munich. Even if I am wrong about the intentions of the shooter, I will leave this part of the text as it is because I feel the point is worthy of being made).

When liberals, despite their doubtlessly manipulative intentions, claim that Muslims are the principal victims of radical Islam (or Islam – as it’s more accurately called), I tend to believe them. No-one is born a Muslim. No child believes in Allah before he or she has learnt to fear violence and hellfire. To reflect on what 1.6 billion people could have achieved were it not for Quranic indoctrination is one of the saddest thoughts one can entertain.

In so many countries and in so many ways, Islam is ruining everything.

D, LDN

The Banality of Terror

Tags

anti-islamism, antijihad, banal, BBC, blogging, Christianity and Islam, Civilisation, Coffee, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, DTMW, dtmw dtmw, Facebook, facebook twitter, france attack, france terrorism, hashtags, hollande, Internet, ISIS, ISIS France, Islamism, Jihad, Multiculturalism, nice, nice attack, nice france, No to Turkey in the EU, online, politics, radio, Television, Terror, Terrorism, Twitter, United States, War

The attack in Nice, France – which resulted in the death by crushing of over 80 innocent civilians – has hardly caused a ripple on social media.

After the news had come through the place-name ‘Nice’ trended on Facebook for little more than an hour or so, after which it rapidly tumbled out of the ranking, replaced by such stories relating to the appointment of Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary to the UK government, speculation over Donald Trump’s VP choice, and the latest gossip relating to the Palin family.

There have been no diaphanous tricolours draped over the profile pictures of my friends this time around. Few have chosen to mention the incident in a status update, or even to share a relevant news story. And I have been no different.

I just can’t quite bring myself to be angry over this latest atrocity. I am not shocked, frightened, or agitated by it. The news of the attack has hit me rather like a report of sleet in Scotland, or wind in Wales. Terrorism, especially terrorism in France, now seems ordinary, banal, unremarkable.

This attitude (which is largely involuntary) is especially disturbing when one contemplates the gruesome manner in which the victims of the Nice attack perished. Unlike the more professional attack of last November, the victims this time were not put out of their happiness by a painless bullet to the head. They were crushed by several tonnes of metal and rubber; flattened, deformed under wheels. As banal as the observation might be, this must have been a hellish way to die.

But still, I’m not outraged – only bitter and depressed. I want all this to stop, but I really don’t think it will. And if an anti-Islamist blogger is becoming desensitised to terrorism, how on Earth can we expect the average Joe to maintain the required level of interest?

The man suspected of carrying out the Nice truck attack: French-Tunisian – Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel

The official response to Nice has been just as lacklustre as the public reaction. Boris Johnson, (whose appointment as Foreign Secretary must rank as the worst national embarrassment in years), has expressed little more than sadness at the news. In America, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton offered only cheap, hollow solidarity on her personal Facebook page. Even Donald Trump has been more muted than usual.

The only exception to this icy disregard has been (or seemed at one point to be) former US house speaker Newt Gingrich, who used the aftermath of the attack to suggest a very sensible policy by which the US would quiz individual Muslims upon entry to America on their views of Sharia Law.

Unfortunately, if also inevitably, when this commonsensical notion received the usual abuse from the usual abusers, Gingrich promptly drained the idea of its force, over-clarifying the concept to the point of retraction. How pathetic; how telling.

The reaction of the Western media (or at least the UK/US media) was to dampen out any loose sparks of anger that might have escaped the general apathy described. The ever-reliable ‘don’t panic’ libertarian Simon Jenkins, for example, hot-footed it into the Guardian offices to inform us that: “A Nice truck driver does not remotely threaten the security of the French state, any more than such acts do the security of America or Britain. The identification of the nation state with random killings of innocent people has become a political aberration….The implication that leaders can somehow prevent such attacks by armed response is a total distraction from the intelligence and police work that might at least diminish their prevalence. It nationalises and institutionalises public alarm. It leads governments into madcap adventurism abroad and “securitises” the private lives of citizens at home…What has happened in France is tragic and calls for human sympathy. Beyond that, there is nothing we can usefully do – other than make matters worse.”

Though this argument has the flavour of reasonableness, the implication of it is surely that we should do absolutely nothing in response to terrorism; indeed, that we should actively prevent our governments from doing anything about it – on libertarian grounds.

Someone should really inform Mr Jenkins that Western states in fact need little encouragement to under-react to terrorist atrocities. Doing nothing has been standard operating procedure ever since the twilight years of the Bush administration.

I personally have no doubt that Francois Hollande’s bungled security measures (including his declaration of an extended state of emergency) will end up doing more harm than good. Nevertheless, the general preference of the public must surely be for the state to do more to address this threat, not less. Jenkins and his ilk appear obsessed with getting the masses to calm down and to put things in a rational, non-emotional, context. We have been doing that for over a decade. A bit of non-rational rage really wouldn’t go amiss at this point.

French President Francois Hollande

All things considered, Nice has been an unmitigated triumph for ISIS. Not only have the swinish degenerates managed to send dozens of unbelievers to perpetual hellfire, they have also further diminished the life-force and rage-reflex of the continent on which they resided.

(On a side note  – It is worth noting that Westerners have not become incapable of getting angry about anything. We are still liable to go ape over the unlawful killing of gorillas and lions. It is only the value of human beings, and of Western culture, that is collapsing. One might justly speculate that if a dog or a cat had been caught under the wheels in Nice the reaction would have been rather more vigorous.)

Europe seems ever more like a wounded animal, yelping and moaning, bleeding and weakening. The old spark, the energy behind colonisation and empire, has been all but exhausted. The deathly prefix ‘post’ is now attached to every formerly noble concept: post-modern, post-national, post-racial, post-Christian etc… Everything is watered down and submissive enough that even the most barbaric challenger can overcome it.

I have nothing original to say about Nice. I will simply close by reiterating that Islam does not belong in Europe and never will. It is backward, violent, boring and false down to the letter. It must be resisted with everything with we have.

If indeed we still have anything at all.

D, LDN

There Are No Noble Savages

Tags

America, American Liberty, BBC, Blog, Civilisation, civilisation West, Coffee, concepts, cultural evolution, cultural issues, Culture, Defend the modern world, DTMW, dtmw dtmw, Egalitarianism, Facebook, facebook facebook, first world, first world third world, ideas, Internet, Memes, Multiculturalism, noble savages, Philosophy, politics, primitivism, savage, theory, third world, Twitter, United States, web, West, Western world

If the reader is a user of facebook or any comparable website, he or she may be familiar with the following viral post:

“An anthropologist proposed a game to the kids in an African tribe. He put a basket of fruit near a tree and told the kids that who ever got there first won the sweet fruits. When he told them to run, they all took each others hands and ran together, then sat together enjoying their treats. When he asked them why they had run like that as one could have had all the treats for himself, they said: “Ubunto. How can one of us be happy if all the other ones are sad?”. ‘Ubunto’ in Xhosa culture means ‘I am because we are'”

Though the authenticity of the Ubunto story is uncertain, the word appears to be real and to have roughly the same meaning attributed to it. If this is the case, the concept is surely pleasant, even admirable. But is it really so original or sophisticated?

If the adoring Westerners cooing over this story could stop crying with happiness for one moment, they might recall the similar Western phrase ‘all for one, one for all’ – or indeed many hundreds of other equivalents around the world.

Human solidarity, yet another way of describing ‘Ubunto’, is an innate quality invested in the human condition by the legacy of biological evolution. It is not something one needs to give a name to. It just exists – ineradicably, albeit in differing endowments from person to person.

As many cynics have noted, the only reason Western audiences are so enamoured of the Ubunto story in particular is because it appears to align with a very old and sentimental fallacy; that of the ‘Noble savage’.

The Noble Savage has been part of Western art – particularly literature – for centuries. Put simply, the idea is that undeveloped cultures (especially African, Amerindian, Asian and Middle Eastern cultures), though on the surface less sophisticated and morally developed than those of Europe, nevertheless retain valuable ancient wisdom the West may profit by relearning.

You can see the cultural effects of this notion everywhere you look; from fridge magnets emblazoned with Confucian and Native American spiritual maxims, to the kind of the meme mentioned above. The West cannot seem to get enough of ancient non-European ‘wisdom’. It is substantially more popular even than Western philosophy, including the immortal works of Nietzsche, Kant and the ancient Greeks – (when was the last time you saw a Plato fridge magnet?).

Of course, being the cultural bigot that I am, I do not believe that Crazy Horse is the equal of Nietzsche. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I don’t think they even belong in the same category. Nietzsche was the greatest philosopher of the last 500 years. Crazy Horse, though undoubtedly noble in the military sense, made only commonsensical remarks about his own life and about a political struggle he ended up losing (to Europeans).

Historic Third World philosophers, like historic Third World mathematicians, physicists and inventors, are extremely thin on the ground. The vast majority of celebrated non-European thinkers are products of the past 100 years, a century marked by non-European adaptation to European domination and cultural hegemony.

This is not a coincidence. When European civilisation – now de-racialised as  ‘The West’ – made the first breakthrough from localism to worldliness, the broader world was still filled with savage darkness. And long after the enlightenment began, Asians (including those dwelling in the now impressive Japanese and Korean cultures), Africans and Amerindians continued to exist in a twilight condition of subsistence agriculture and mind-numbing ritual.

In India, now home to internet entrepreneurs and industrialist billionaires, widowed women hurled themselves onto burning funeral pyres to satisfy perverse notions of marital duty. In Japan, now the epicentre of global technological innovation, Samurai (normal people in strange clothes) cut their stomachs open to amend for ‘dishonourable’ failures in martial etiquette. There is evidence of cannibalism in Southern Africa as late as the Victorian era. And so on…

The European explosion – the multinational enlightenment – was the beginning of true civilisation. Though periods of greatness in North Africa, the Middle East, Mexico and China had been observed centuries before this point, it is only after this seismic event that civilisation in its contemporarily recognisable form began.

So why do Westerners, those to whom the most credit belongs,  now look back at pre-civilisation with such a powerful nostalgia? Why do Brits and Americans, looking at memes on Apple Mackintosh computers, interpret the word ‘umbunto’ as a proof of Third World superiority? And why are non-Europeans, Asians especially, increasingly more cognizant of Western superiority than Westerners?

Since these questions are interconnected, a single answer may suffice for all of them. The West, unlike the rest of the planet, is infected with a virus of civilizational exhaustion; a crisis of civilizational confidence. We Westerners have grown so used to the blessings of modernity that we have come to take them for granted. It takes real mental exertion for us to imagine (honestly and accurately) a world without the internet, refrigerators and Starbucks restaurants. And with a thick fog of relativism further obscuring our vision we are inevitably tempted by the idea that such a condition is more ‘wholesome’, ‘substantial’ or culturally complex than that in which we now live.

Westerners have become bored of affluence and modernity

But it isn’t more wholesome, of course, nor more substantial, complex, romantic… It is inferior by almost every measure. And if anyone needs evidence of this contention, one can experience pre-civilisation for a very paltry sum these days. One can fly over to Ghana, Chad, North Korea or Afghanistan and live cheaply for whole years at a time. The reason we don’t want to dwell in such places, would not even dream of doing so, is because anti-Western sentiment is based on lies, illusions and errors of logic.

The West (including the Western-inspired cultures of Japan and Korea) is the only true civilisation on Earth. The further you go away from it, the further you go away from all that is valuable, good and worth living for.

The Noble Savage myth is the first step down a very slippery slope. It is best not to take it, even if that means not sharing a heart-warming post on social media.

D, LDN.