Aristocrats and Peasants: The War Between the Genders

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aristocracy, balance of power, female privilege, Feminism, French Revolution, gender

The slogan “The future is female” probably isn’t supposed to be embittering or chauvinistic. A pep talk in miniature, the sentiment is most often used to motivate young girls at nobody’s particular expense. All can use it in this way. The words emblazon shirts for boys as well as girls, men as well as women. They are, like ‘black lives matter’, open to amazing flexibility of meaning if challenged, which they are only rarely.

But now, with all that is happening and all that has happened, the slogan is increasingly taken as a taunt, a trumpet-blast of conquest, backed not only by dreamy aspiration, but cold, hard fact.

It is considerably better, I am quite sure, to be a woman than a man these days; certainly in the West, but perhaps even elsewhere, for the same dynamics and the same model generally apply.

I am surprised to have come to this conclusion. For much of my adolescence the dogma of female disadvantage seemed fairly watertight; women are physically weaker,  after all, which we must remember is a profound handicap, and so all the claims of feminism were made correct in that light; even if women didn’t obviously seem to be a class of victims, I knew they could become one at short notice, whenever the male temper changed. But that I now recognise as a major fallacy.

It is true that men ultimately have a veto on human destiny. If tomorrow we collectively decide to reimpose a patriarchy, nothing can possibly prevent us. The ‘kick-ass woman’ able to defeat men at their own game is a corporate fancy designed to sell pink running shoes. Men are stronger, more dynamic, and so on.

Nonetheless, this says nothing about quality of life or immediate power. It is true only theoretically; true in the same way the working classes can seize the means of production. True but unlikely, then, for much stands in their way.

The working classes are physically and numerically stronger than the capitalists. It isn’t science fiction to imagine ragged-trousered hordes trashing the headquarters of Barclays or Morgan Chase. But it is profoundly unlikely that they ever will; because society, with its guns and its norms and its trained manpower, stands against them, forbiddingly, menacingly.

In much the same way, natural male advantage is trapped in the imagination of radicals; outside of such space, even the mention of it is condemned as evil and terroristic. Theoretical power cannot feed a starving man, or prevent a family of hard-working proletarians from being thrown out of their houses, and nor can it lend consolation to the immiserated men of our current era. The theoretical (as a general rule) is immediately useless.

Men are handicapped today by several key social factors – most obviously the universal bias that exists in favour of the fairer sex. You, the reader, will have this bias. Most people do. We see women as more precious, more valuable and fundamentally worthier of our tenderness, restraint and generosity than men.

Evolutionary psychology makes this easily understandable. In a pure state of nature, it requires only one male to impregnate a hundred females, and so individual men are naturally considered less important than women.

But this is the inherited logic of a state of nature that no longer strictly exists. We are not living in the same jungle as our ancestors, with the same struggle for life day by day. Our societies are no longer even coherent; all kinds exist around us, friendly and hostile, and yet the instinct will not disappear any time soon.

To make matters worse – for men at least – fewer and fewer cultural objections to the exploitation of this instinct by young women are tolerated within liberal society. If a woman plays to this advantage for the purpose of manipulating others, for money or influence or fame or power, it is considered vulgar and bigoted to object, or even to notice it is happening.

Men are everywhere staying quiet, allowing taboos to harden around the discussion of very important imbalances, which in turn tempts more and more young women to take advantage of them, just as men would in the same position.

It must be understood that the charge of ‘misogyny’ today too often functions as a neutraliser of protest or even notice-taking of the runaway development of female privilege. The increasing gap between the genders is precisely the opposite of what polite society insists. And the toll on men is mounting.

Today it is increasingly easy to succeed as an ordinary woman, and increasingly impossible for an ordinary man. While feminists like to argue that the male elite, who invariably and necessarily work harder and with greater dynamism than the female elite, crowd them out at the pinnacle of meritocracy, even a small step down from that elite reveals the majority of men trapped below the majority of women.

Men have degenerated – though no-one’s fault but our own – into a peasant gender, while women have become aristocratic. Men must justify themselves, their portion of space and oxygen, with high intellectual achievement and / or crushing manual labour, or else be counted as worthless. Women, meanwhile, are self-justifying; and more than that, entitled to the protection, gallantry and subservience of the peasants.

One might point out, as feminists are wont to do, that women are markedly underrepresented in the governments of Western nations; but this, too, is fallacious. The whole meaning of the aristocracy in the modern sense is based on a distinction from the actively ruling class. Aristocrats sometimes govern, but only if they wish to. And they usually do not. Lord Byron quite understandably preferred his opium pipe and mistresses to the drudgery of parliament. The aristocrats of the ancien regime, similarly, tended to choose apolitical luxury over needless, bloody partisanship. Government is a job like any other, performed out of a lack of something. When nothing is lacking, what is there to be gained?

The new aristocrats have no war to fight. Indeed, quite like the aristocracy of old, the only time they engage themselves politically is for the defence of aristocratic privileges. The very last thing young women desire is an outbreak of sexual Bolshevism, a rebellion of the peasants, the men.

And that is no longer out of the question. The internet-enabled conversion by young women of sexual power into social, financial and political power is creating the necessary conditions for a future breakdown in relations between the genders.

Already we see the politics of younger generations greatly effected by the processes described. It is taken almost as a given that men at the radical extremes of ideology are motivated at least in part by gender resentment. Uncountable tired-out routines by liberal comedians play upon the theme of right-wing and conservative men having sexually unsatisfying lives, or of them suffering from ‘male fragility’; angry virgins, fragile men, stupid losers. The liberal men who join such accusations, who strive to make clear their lack of anxiety regarding female ’empowerment’, are indirectly boasting of having a relatively satisfying life, as part of a male elite, differentiated from the peasant majority. This is essentially slave-caste chauvinism (field over house) dressed up as moral sentiment.

In the new gender model, men who are not part of the male elite, but who nonetheless wish to enjoy privileges (access to media, publishing, general political and social viability) must stress their good behaviour and adjust to a modern, acceptably castrated type of maleness (the ‘soyboy’ / corporatised ‘nerd’ archetypes, for example).

What is most interesting for those of us who care about political matters is how much the gender breakdown confuses both left and right tendencies. The paleo-right are increasingly divided according to priorities. Here, male interest goes up against ethno-nationalism, with the former creating a pan-racial brotherhood of male solidarity that undermines the goals of the latter. On the left, the militantly castrated ‘woke’ left are falling out with men who wish to see male complaints taken more seriously, and who ultimately shift to the right when they find they cannot have a voice on any non-conservative platform.

This last point is especially noteworthy. Even the most conformist young Zoomer wishing to make a name for himself on the left of politics (in journalism or visual media, say) will likely find himself frustrated purely on gender grounds. Media work is an easy, desirable, aristocratic form of labour, eagerly sought out by women. A peasant may find very few opportunities left after his young female competitors have had their fill.

The liberal Zoomer mentioned may find openings only on the right, and his sympathies, nurtured by resentment, will travel with him.

This really cannot be stressed enough. The de-platforming of men by liberal media and society will drive more and more of them to the right, and when aristocrats begin to take over even those publications, to the far-right.

De-platforming authentic representatives of male interest is an incredibly stupid move. It will accelerate social breakdown and bring the prospect of gender conflict ever closer.

I will close by making clear I do not put the blame for this development on women, especially not on women from older generations, to whom the points made may seem absurd given their own life experiences. This is something effecting mostly younger people. And even in these generations, women are only taking advantage of a situation we have all allowed to come into being.

David

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Lily Allen’s Shocking Naivety

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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

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

Phoney War: Why a French Burkini Ban Would Be Meaningless

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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

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

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’. 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

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

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

Women on the Frontline.

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American Liberty, Anti-Islam activism, Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, Counterjihad, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, Feminism, Feminism and Islam, Jennifer Aniston, Julie Burchill, Rachel, Women against Islam

I have used this blog many times (perhaps too many) to criticise the iconic millionaire Malala Yousafzai. In three articles, I have argued that the Pakistani starlet has none of the qualifications needed to justify the praise lavished upon her, and that (by remaining devoutly wedded to her faith) she actually exerts a harmful influence on the cause of women’s liberation in the Islamic world.

To balance this criticism, or rather to intensify it by comparison, what follows is a roll-call of honor for those women who really do put life and limb on the line for their convictions. People who, when Islam finally crumbles (or is otherwise destroyed), will be spoken of in retrospect as Orwells, Pankhursts and Solzhenitsyns.

1. Caroline Glick.

Anyone who follows the Israel/’Palestine’ conflict with any seriousness will be familiar with the work of Caroline Glick. Her regular columns typically provide the best take on issues pertaining to the Middle East, North Africa and global Islamic terrorism.

Last year, Ms Glick (author of ‘Shackled Warrior’ and editor of the Jerusalem Post) used her formidable talent to achieve the seemingly impossible, summing up one of the ‘world’s most complicated conflicts’ in a single paragraph. And this is it:

“The absence of regional peace (in the Middle East) has nothing at all to do with Israel. It stems from the virulent Jew hatred that is endemic throughout the Islamic world. Due to this hatred Israel’s neighbors seek its destruction. The centrality of their irrational, obsessive desire to seek the eradication of the Jewish people and the Jewish state is the reason there has been no true peace between Israel and its neighbors – including its Palestinian neighbors. And because their hatred is irrational and all-encompassing, there is nothing Israel can do to appease them.”

As a piece of writing, as a work of compression and articulation, this is faultless. Glick is a hero of exposition and a priceless asset in the struggle against our enemies.

2. Wafa Sultan.

Female activists from the Islamic world are a rare breed. Female activists from the Arab world are rarer still. This considered, the Syrian born commentator Wafa Sultan is a women of incalculable importance.

A life-risking apostate, Sultan has used the sanctuary of the West to take aim at her native culture with a fury unmatched even by her enemies. On the subject of terrorism – now tearing the civil society of her homeland into bloodied rags – Sultan wrote the following:

“Why does a young Muslim, in the prime of life, with a full life ahead, go and blow himself up in a bus full of innocent passengers?… He was not born a terrorist, and did not become a terrorist overnight. Islamic teachings played a role in weaving his ideological fabric, thread by thread, and did not allow other sources to play a role. It was these teachings that distorted this terrorist, and killed his humanity; it was not (the terrorist) who distorted the religious teachings, and misunderstood them, as some ignorant people claim. When you recite to a child still in his early years the verse ‘They will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternative sides cut off,’ regardless of this verse’s interpretation, and regardless of the reasons it was conveyed, or its time, you have made the first step towards creating a terrorist.”

3. Pamela Geller.

I’ve already written a celebratory essay on this lady. Despite its length, my praises are not yet exhausted.

Where would we be with Geller’s dedication to raising awareness of Islamisation? I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I first read that dark, foreboding phrase on her website.

Geller arrived on the scene before Fjordman, Mark Steyn or the EDL. She realised before everyone (and long before it was safe and fashionable to do so) that 9/11 was not an isolated case destined to remain a quirk of history. She saw all too keenly that the curtain was going up on a horror show far richer in death and detail than anyone could imagine.

4. Katie Hopkins.

You might think this a bit unserious. Katie Hopkins, the middle-class fury from the Apprentice… A potential Solzhenitsyn? Well, who are we to say how things will turn out?

Over recent weeks, the columnist has spoken with a thrilling, suicidal bravery on the topic of Islam, tweeting things that can all too often result directly in injury or even death. Her fearless style is the best of British. It demonstrates that someone from the apolitical mainstream, someone from planet celebrity no less, is willing to maintain our cultural frontline. I for one, find that rather splendid.

5. Brigitte Gabriel.

The Lebanese civil war must rank as one of the greatest tragedies in the history of Islamic colonisation. A beautiful, civilised Christian nation, blessed with natural splendour and decorated with ancient grandeur was slowly dismantled, disfigured and destroyed by a violent wave of barbarism.

For centuries, the Lebanese have fought gallantly to overturn the demographic conquest of their land by Muslim Arabs. Alas, they have failed, and with much destruction having been done and a huge diaspora having been created in the process.

A notable member of the diaspora is Ms. Brigitte Gabriel. Via her organisation ‘Act For America’, Gabriel campaigns boldly against an enemy she knows all too personally.

–

These five women put liberal feminists to shame. Nobody stands to lose more from the Islamisation of the West than members of the female sex. Bravo to those who resist. Shame on those who acquiesce.

D, LDN.

Pain and Gain.

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American Dream, American way of life, Bodybuilding, Dwayne, Feminism, Mark Wahlberg, Michael Bay, No pain no gain, Pain and Gain, Palm Trees, Philosophy, Positivity, Rock, sex, Steroids, Sunshine, Taylor Swift

I sat down to watch the Michael Bay crime-comedy ‘Pain and Gain’ with the iconoclastic reviewer Mark Kermode’s critique still ringing in my ears. As the journalist made more than clear, this was not a movie that appealed to him:

“(It) was absolutely loathsome and morally repugnant and vile and evil and bad.”, he sighed with his usual laid-back, folded arms, schoolmarmish shtick.

Having a lot of respect for Kermode’s judgement on this art-form, I fully expected to loathe the film myself. And ultimately, yes, it is a haphazard work in parts, filled with lumpy, half-digested ideas and jokes in questionable taste. But for the first half hour, it can’t be denied, I was strangely enthralled.

I won’t go into the plot. Just know that the story and the crimes depicted are based in fact and that it all grows increasingly ridiculous as things go on. I only want to talk here about the opening, because this is something that – even if it was meant satirically – struck a chord deep within me.

Mark Wahlberg’s character Daniel is the film’s narrator and for the first half an hour, he explains to the viewer exactly why America is great and how this relates down to the conduct and attitude of the individual.

He informs us that be believes in physical fitness, self-starting, body-building, masculinity and self-reliance. He notes by way of illustration the example of US history; the story of a colony that went on to dominate the world through guts, determination and a terrifying kind of self-belief.

As I say, this is all meant to be a satire on the American mindset, and the film later tries to make nonsense of the opening premise. Still, I found myself in agreement with every word Wahlberg’s character spoke. He described in a simple and powerful way, the aspects of America I most admire. I also think the linkage between physical fitness and philosophy is a valid one.

I took up bodybuilding a few years ago under the influence of the work of Yukio Mishima. I really don’t think there is a better or more virtuous hobby available to a person, especially to a man. Bodybuilding doesn’t just build muscle, it builds confidence and ambition. It opens doors in the mind. The increase in dopamine triggers goal-orientated behaviours. I can write a thousand words in one sitting after working out. I feel more sure of my views, less tolerant of doubt, moderation and of those who would dare oppose me. This is the way nature inspires us. With every kilo added to your routine, you justify yourself. Bodybuilding – unlike intellectualism – counts for something in the Darwinian game. I may be able to write well (or so I’ve been told) but what does literacy matter in the end? When the struggle is unleashed and the contenders amass, I won’t be writing the enemy to death. To be a man, one has to be prepared to be a brawler, a thug even.

A well-built body is the physical manifestation of a determined mind; it is the ‘will become flesh’ – to quote Mishima. It is also an ideal metaphor for the American can-do attitude that is infinitely superior to the drizzling self-deprecation of England.

D, LDN.

Second Thoughts on the Veil.

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Ban the Burka, Burka, Burka prison, Defend the modern world, Feminism, France, Guardian, Hijab, Imprisonment of women, Islamisation, Liberal Feminism, Liberalism, liberty, Niqāb, veil, West, Western Feminism, Western world

A few months ago on this blog, I wrote that I could not support a move to ban the Islamic veil in Britain. The reasons I put forward in support of this stance were straightforwardly libertarian:

“It’s true that the Burka (actually called a ‘Niqab’) has no place on English streets, and it’s also true that the veil is impractical and hazardous in many social contexts… But that said, I don’t want to live in a country where the government can decide what people may wear… Should we concede to government the power to choose how we dress, there would be no turning back. The outlawing of the veil could soon become the outlawing of hoodies, baseball caps and any other item of clothing which obscures identity.”

Well, I’ve changed my mind. There has been no particular catalyst for this, or at least not one I can identify, but I regard the reasoning quoted above as adolescent and knee-jerk. Those who objected to my post were correct. The veil is a revolting garment, an affront to women and a moral stain on the standard of our whole society. It should be outlawed across the continent of Europe.

In the same post alluded to above, I went on to say that a ban – as well as being undesirable – would be difficult to enforce. This is now an argument that can be turned the other way. A confrontation with Islamic misogyny in England is just what we require, and the more aggressive, public and discomforting to the multicultural idea it is, so much the better.

D, LDN.

Why Aren’t They Screaming?

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Christianity and Islam, Christopher Caldwell, Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, Counterjihad, Cultural Marxism, Defend the modern world, Europe, Feminism, Feminism and Racism, Multiculturalism, Muslim, Muslims, No to Turkey in the EU, Why Don't Women rebel?, Women's rights

Residents of London and other major European cities will be increasingly accustomed to the sight of a fully-veiled Muslim woman strolling awkwardly down a modern high street. Perhaps the only more depressing sight is that of a fully-veiled Muslim woman with a hijab-wearing daughter, in whose unsmiling eyes one sees a recognition that she too will one day be hidden from view.

And witnessing this sight, a European man in particular may suffer a predictable series of emotional reactions. At first, a potent, uncomfortable disgust and a stupid urge to condemn his own sex; and then after this, a foggy confusion which evolves into a question – As Philip Larkin asked of the old and dying:

“Why aren’t they screaming?”

Do Muslim women realise their condition? Do they care? Do they think the smiles of unbelieving women are painted on, or that the laughter and light-footed calm they exude is merely the symptom of a toxic soul? How do they rationalise themselves?

It is very easy for Leftist commentators to presume such women dress this way because of a personal, independently arrived-at religiosity. This at least allows for a quieting of their conscience. In reality of course, it cannot simply be a coincidence that those veiled women we see are usually the product of hyper-devout families structured according to a patriarchal social tradition; that they are the daughters of long-bearded fathers and house-bound mothers; that they often know no more about alternative ways of existing than someone raised in a cult. Whatever this may be called, one cannot call it a choice. It is a mould into which they were forced to grow, and for which their desires have been forced to deform themselves into enthusiasm.

Every day, a news story from the Muslim world demonstrates the lowly position afforded to the females of that region. Recent weeks have been especially hard-hitting. In Pakistan a woman was stoned to death by her own family for marrying without parental consent. In Sudan, a formerly Muslim woman, having converted to Christianity, was due to be stoned to death whilst carrying inside her body an unborn child. There was also a ‘corrective’ gang-rape in Pakistan, the sentencing of an Iranian actress to 100 lashes, and a brutal sexual assault in rural Malaysia.

Do Muslim women really believe (and with a sincere, non-fearful mind) that they are better off on that side of the cultural divide? And if they don’t, then why don’t they rebel? I could ask these questions all day long, but that would be pointless. Let’s try to consider an answer.

As you’ll be aware, the penalty for apostasy from Islam is death. Despite international efforts aimed at halting the practice, this ruling is still enthusiastically enforced in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen, and occasionally even in ‘moderate’ states like Turkey, Tunisia and Morocco.

The fear of this – that is, of death is obviously an effective deterrent for any human being and requires no further analysis by itself. It might not be however the most effective.

Another deterrent, this time particular to women, is the judicial theft of children. Even in the most moderate and Europeanised Muslim countries, a female apostate will almost certainly lose access to her progeny. Her appeals – if she survives long enough to make any – will be denied. In such situations, her offspring will be placed in the care of the father or a conformist grandparent.

These deterrents, the threatened destruction of both life and motherhood, are easily sufficient to explain female conformity in the Muslim world. They are not sufficient however to explain the behaviour of their sisters resident in the West.

Imagine if a North Korean defector moved to the West with a devout guard of the regime in tow, having been unable to shake him off at the airport. After a day or so on Western soil, the defector would flee into the protective arms of the majority, letting the regime guard be damned. What is different in the case of Muslim women?

Perhaps it’s actually our fault. Whilst we’d surely welcome a North Korean defector to our ways of liberty with a warm smile, we’d be more suspicious of a Muslim woman rejecting her own culture. Why?

The answer is Cultural relativism. Our official policy on minority cultures is that they are like Pandas and Whales – precious species vulnerable to the brutal heat of modernity and therefore in need of protection from it.

Language alone is incapable of portraying the damage this belief has done to individual liberty and individual happiness.

D, LDN.

Somalis in Minnesota? Really?

Tags

BBC, Christian, Christianity and Islam, Counter-Jihad, Cultural Marxism, Defend the modern world, Feminism, Islam, Islamization, Islamophobia, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Multiculturalism, Muslim, Muslims, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Somali American, United States

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

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

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

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

Perhaps I was too hasty.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

D, LDN.

The Heroism of Pamela Geller.

Tags

America 911, Bravery, Christianity, Christianity and Islam, Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, Defend the modern world, EDL, Feminism, homosexuality, Islam, Islam and the West, Islamism, Judaism, Muslims, No to Turkey in the EU, Pamela Geller, War, Zionism

The community of people threatened by Islam contains many colors and creeds. The intellectual luminaries of its activist community reflect this, in so far as they are as diverse as the swathe of humanity they represent. There are ex-Muslims (Ayaan Hirsi-Ali, Ibn Warraq), Hindus (VS Naipaul), Leftists (the late Christopher Hitchens, Nick Cohen, Paul Berman), homosexuals (Douglas Murray), feminists (Lionel Shriver, Fay Weldon) all grouped among that number, each bringing with them their own reasons for standing up to this nefarious global bully and their unique insights into how best to do it in the future. Homosexual defiance of Islam is roundly applauded even by sections of the left. Non-white ex-Muslim females, having escaped confinement in the third world, such as Ms. Hirsi Ali, are also – though they are sometimes controversial – accepted as having naturally come to their opinions. The same with feminists, atheist Marxists and Christian conservatives. Whether or not, people disagree with what these people have to say or with the way in which they say it, they are ‘trusted’ to have arrived at their views via an organic, understandable process; one that we can all relate to. Even the most doctrinaire leftist still has enough insight within him to imagine what it must be like to be gay in Pakistan, or a woman in Saudi Arabia, or a feminist locked in an abusive marriage in the West. The leftist would rather we don’t dwell on these things too much, but he is happy enough to allow these things to be opposed.

What cannot be tolerated however, is the opposition of an ordinary civilian; that is, someone who did not need to fight Islamism but chose to do so. This is a problem because choosing to fight for justice when one could have had an easy life is a heroic myth jealously guarded by the left. As such, it simply cannot happen on the right. There must always be another explanation. Nobody can come to right-wing views except by an unromantic or devious process. This belief is well represented by the case of Pamela Geller.

Ms. Geller is what we might call an extraordinary ordinary person. Brought up in the West rather than in the Middle East, Ms. Geller had no obvious reason to stand up for the millions of Muslim women whose path she never needed to cross. Educated in the relatively plush surrounds of American colleges, she had no obvious reason to stand up for those denied the right to learn to read. She chooses to do this. She stands up for her sex, her society and her civilization (and allows herself to be hated for it) simply because it is the right thing to do as a Woman, a Jew, and an American.

This kind of explanation, the Left simply will not stand for. It tramples over so much of what they hold dear. The presumptions which undergird their rationale – the imagined world of selfish, cigar-smoking bankers, facing off against a righteous world of hungry brown people, is at odds with the Geller story. In this story, one has a Jew (which as an innuendo is almost interchangeable with both ‘banker’ and ‘capitalist’), who is also an American (once again =’capitalist’), and a defender of Israel (interchangeable with both ‘Zionist’ and ‘racist’) – in other words, a racist, Zionist American Banker.

Even one of these charges is deemed sufficient for the Left to scream ‘evil!’, but having them ganged together in the same person is enough to make a liberal choke up Bran Flakes. And yet in the Geller story, this Zionist banker is working everyday not on behalf of Goldman Sachs, but on behalf of ravaged women in Afghan villages, acid-scarred schoolgirls in Pakistan, and illiterate Egyptian, Tunisian, and Iranian women – all of whom have been trained to see her as the enemy.

Not for the first time, the Left is here wholly wrong. Geller is not a monster but an icon of bravery, and a much underappreciated and abused one. Her heroic blog Atlasshrugs has done more to raise awareness of the  Islamist issue than any national newspaper. She goes further than most but never over-steps the line separating truth from falsehood. She is rarely sued (or at any rate successfully) despite being vehemently despised by many powerful (and wealthy) sections of society. In a more honest age she would be setting the standard for feminist activism and courage. In this age, she is ‘sowing hate’ and ‘division’, or she is a ‘Zionist’ aiming to launch an offensive alliance against Islam by manipulating evidence.

And there are various other theories.

But as with so many cases, the simplest answer here is the correct one. Ms. Geller is Jewish. Islamists have declared a war of annihilation against the Jewish State and on the Jews who live outside of it. Ms. Geller is offended by this and has decided to fight back.

Why should it be more conspiratorial or complicated than that?

Why is the left less keen to accuse homosexuals or atheists of self-interested conspiracy when they oppose Islamism. The answer should surprise no-one. There is a typical racist tendency to imagine that a Jew cannot react with natural, universally-understood instincts, but only with a devious slowness of forethought; a slowness suited to conspiracy and cunning.

But imagine for a moment if this was not the case, and that Ms. Geller was merely a ‘normal’ woman, belonging to an unexceptional social group marked out unjustifiably for destruction by one-in-five human beings…. What is such a woman to do then? How is she to talk of those who, were they ever victorious, would kill her family and loved ones, and then enslave her fellow women? If Geller’s is the unreasonable reaction, then the left must inform us of the reasonable one.

D, LDN.

The Thankless Heroism of the English Defence League.

Tags

anti-Semitism, Christianity, Christianity and Islam, Defend the modern world, EDL, English Defence League, fascism, Feminism, Islam, London EDL, Resistance

Have you ever wondered as I have, exactly what would happen if a totalitarian government was established in Britain?

The phrase ‘totalitarian’ like its sibling ‘fascist’ is usually misused in the modern age and perhaps no more so than in the UK. There are people in this country leading free, mundane lives who believe that because of the CCTV camera at the top of the parking-lot wall, or the trail of speed cameras along the motorway, that we already have a taste of what these systems of government are like. They’re wrong of course, but then this is obvious. What is more interesting is to ponder as to why, if these folk really believe the UK to be in the grip of fascism – are they so passive in the face of it? If this really is a totalitarian state engaged in systematic national oppression, then why are they mowing their lawns and shampooing their dogs? Why aren’t they making shelters, gathering weapons and buying tinned food? Why aren’t they preparing – in other words – for an organized rebellion?

The answer to these questions is that it isn’t in their nature to be rebellious. Those who believe speed-cameras to be a harbinger of state-sponsored genocide are almost always middle-class Mail-readers. They are Surrey-dwellers who lead lives so comfortable that it would take the sound of their neighbours falling to the floor after government gunshots to rile them to political action. They would be truly useless in the context of any fascism deserving of the name.

And a genuinely fascist Britain is not a lunatic idea. It could happen. Indeed it might happen. Then, in the midst of a genuine police-state, we would have to rely on other sections of society to defend us.

The English Defence League have been a feature of British life for some years now. In that time, they have risen from obscurity to a position of national familiarity. There can be few adult Britons who do not know by now what E.D.L stands for, and what the organization was created to stand against. Every time a march is announced in a town or city centre, anti-Racist orgs and local police react in a swift and uniform way, giving the impression of a routine long rehearsed. Law enforcement are deployed on a large scale to control EDL marches. The recently incarcerated leader of the EDL Stephen Lennon, is already an old hand on international news networks and was among the first to be consulted for his views after the attack on the Norwegian labor party in 2011. As a political force, the group has eclipsed the fading BNP and is feared more by the Left than a plethora of other ‘far-right’ vehicles.

This is some progress for a group whose origins lie in one of the most downtrodden parts of the UK and who have had all the muck the media could scoop thrown at them since their inception. As to membership, the figures vary – but at the high-end, the EDL  (after just a few years of existence) could conceivably marshal a force of thousands should the need ever arise. Even if these numbers are swollen by the cowardly or insincere, anything above a thousand is still impressive in the crowded market of nationalist politics.

But what’s the point of the EDL? Sadly, more and more people are asking this question up and down the country. After a run of drab, unsuccessful marches in Walthamstow, Hartlepool and Cambridge at which the group was totally outplayed  by anti-fascists, and now – to compound this – the imprisonment of its leader, some are questioning whether the EDL can survive even another year.

I can understand these worries and also the view that the end of the EDL is nothing to be sad about. To be sure, if all the EDL was ever about was showing up in some rainy market town and shouting slogans – then nobody should mourn its dismantling. But this was never the promise of the EDL. The promise of this collective was to provide a reserve of organized resistance to something very real and ongoing – the unwanted and socially damaging Muslim presence in the UK.

Though it’s horrible to think about, at some point in the future, there will likely be another 7/7 type attack in the United Kingdom. When this happens, the British people will not, unlike on 7/7, have to rely on the stiffly PC maneuvers of the police to protect their local communities, but can take quick and visible action to let the world know of their anger. The middle-class anti-fascists who obsess over speed-cameras won’t be of any use then. It is a job that requires real, masculine anger, not hands-thrown-up-in-the-air exasperation and surrender. These brave young people, judged unworthy by the same nation they would have (in older times) been mistaken for, are not a menace. They are unpaid heroes willing to provide a public service; a social fumigation that – were it allowed to be successful – would benefit above-all the coffee-shop liberals who have most scorned them.

If it can hold itself together, the EDL can shine brighter in the future than it ever has before. With a demographic threat that can only increase, the resistance must for now, dig in and prepare for the nations darkest days. 

D, LDN, UK