The Left is Starting to Crack

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apologists for islam, BBC, Britain First, Christianity and Islam, Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, Counterjihad, Daily Mail, dawkins, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, Facebook, facebook bbc, Hitchens, Islam and the West, Islamisation of London, Islamism, Islamophobia, left-wing islam, Leftism, leftists, Multiculturalism, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Telegraph, towns, Twitter

Ever since hijacked airliners made toxic dust of the World Trade Centre in New York, there has persisted an intellectual struggle in Europe and America the furiousness and range of which has very few historical parallels. As soon the smoke cleared from that gigantic crime scene (and after the criminal force behind the attack was exposed) a thousand journalists, philosophers, historians and artists set out feverishly to make sense of the event. In the blink of an eye, the global intelligentsia split down the middle into two haughtily confident factions; factions we will brand simply as the ‘Left’ and the ‘Right’.

According to the Left, 9/11 was a revenge attack for the depravities of American, British and Israeli foreign policy. In this sense, the attackers were little more than Quran-carrying Che Guevaras or Guy Fawkes’s; freedom fighters, essentially, who had been forced by cruel circumstance to choose a nasty response to past-nastiness. The Right saw things as differently as can be imagined. For them, the attacks were not revenge for anything, but simply the perpetuation of an ancient theological grudge-match between East and West. No moral case, they considered, could be made to justify the barbarism so photo-realistically witnessed.

We are now 14 years on from the attack on New York. In the intervening period, wars have been launched; numerous smaller-scale atrocities have been committed all over the globe; protest and counter-protest have gripped every Western capital; every thinking person has found themselves in some way drawn in. After all that – which set of arguments has won? Which narrative has triumphed? Or, if we allow that the debate still persists, who is winning?

If you caught me in a bad mood, I might tell you that the Left had won. For this contention I’d probably offer such evidence as the continuing Muslim immigration into the West, as well as the enduring taboo on blaspheming the holy figures of Islam.

But if you caught me in a calm, rational mood such as I find myself in today, I would likely decide the other way, and I’d be correct. The Left has lost the Islam debate and lost badly. Outside of the media crèche itself, the number of people still arguing for appeasement of Islam is infinitesimally small. Don’t believe me? Just look at the Guardian newspaper coverage of the Paris attacks of this month. Though the columns themselves were designed to promote ‘understanding’ and inter-communal ‘tolerance’, the comments made in reply to them exhibited frank disagreement, even mockery. The following comment is representative of the general trend:

“I detest Islamism. No-one is ever going to change my mind on that…The more Muslims we import into Europe the more our security services will be burdened. If the truth offends you, tough.”

Remind yourself that this is from the Guardian’s ‘comment is free’ website; a bastion of orthodox anti-imperialism and left-wing inflexibility. Most people registered to comment are Left-leaning in almost every other respect (take a look at the comments on welfare sanctions and climate change). The reorientation of such attitudes on an issue of this divisive nature is telling, shocking, encouraging.

Further evidence for this new and pleasing reality is found in online polls. Whenever a newspaper (whatever the stance of that newspaper) sets up a two-answer poll involving Islam, the anti-Islam option wins by a landslide. And not only is this trend ongoing in the general public. A similar process is underway in the intelligentsia itself. It is surely amazing from this historical distance to imagine an argument like the following being taken seriously:

“On the morning of September 11, 2001, a few more chickens – along with some half-million dead Iraqi children – came home to roost in a very big way at the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center. Well, actually, a few of them seem to have nestled in at the Pentagon as well…The most that can honestly be said of those involved on September 11 is that they finally responded in kind to some of what this country has dispensed to their people as a matter of course… That they (the terrorists) waited so long to do so is, notwithstanding the 1993 action at the WTC, more than anything a testament to their patience and restraint…They did not license themselves to “target innocent civilians.” There is simply no argument to be made that the Pentagon personnel killed on September 11 fill that bill. The building and those inside comprised military targets, pure and simple. As to those in the World Trade Center . . . Well, really. Let’s get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire – the “mighty engine of profit” to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved.”

This quote is taken from a lengthy essay entitled “Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens” written by Native American professor Ward Churchill. At the time of its publication, this amoral screed encapsulated the mood and feelings of uncountable academics, both in the West and outside of it. Now, post-Iraq, post-7/7, post-Madrid and post-Hitchens, such views are weighed as wicked, childish, unbefitting of intelligent consideration.

Though the nightmare of Jihad is far from resolution, we must yield to optimism when reason allows for it. More and more people are waking up to our position. We are no longer ‘extremists’ lurking about on the half-lit fringe. We are pioneers. We are being followed.

D, LDN

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How Does Denial Work?

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Argument, Ben Affleck, Bill Maher, Counter-Jihad, Counterjihad, Defend the modern world, Denial over Islam, Hitchens, Left wrong about Islam, Liberalism, Liberals, Niall Ferguson, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Real Time with Bill Maher

The showdown between Ben Affleck and Bill Maher (regarding Islam) has been widely publicised. Affleck’s warped arguments have been subjected to great and detailed criticism (including by ‘liberal’ Muslims) and yet the ideological trenches on both sides remain almost completely unmoved.

That’s no surprise, really. On the issue of Islam, people are only semi-rational. Left-minded folk especially are wedded to their ideas in a very intimate way. Arguments that go against their position are evil spirits. The orthodox defence of Islam is their religion.

I won’t therefore offer yet another analysis of the Maher-Affleck conflagration. I think it will be more worthwhile to consider the human aspect behind the politics; to pose the broad and vital question – How does someone deny the terrors of Islam in the modern world? If we answer this, we may be able to better understand how far we are from winning the argument.

Imagine for a moment that you are a ten-a-penny liberal. Imagine that every night you sit in front of Fox news and scoff at Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity and all their stupid bigotries, that you know for certain that they are wrong and that you are convinced Islam is an unfairly maligned religion of peace.

Let’s say that on a single evening, newly severed heads are reported in Syria, Muslim women are reported to have been executed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, and terrorist plots are frustrated in America and London. As a liberal, your goal is to fail to integrate these events, or else to find an equivalent in the West or its allied nations. If you can’t, then the evil spirits will break through your defensive positions and your political identity is threatened.

Where do you go first? Perhaps Israel. Yes, Islam is surely no worse than Israel. What about all the heads severed by IDF missiles in Gaza? Perhaps if we didn’t bomb the Muslims, they would be perfectly friendly.

Where else? How about America? Damn right. The US army bombs Muslims all the time. So what if those bombs are dropped to liberate Muslims from tyranny? America is a fucking tyranny, right? It’s run by evil corporations and hook-nosed, cigar-sucking Zionists. If anything, the Islamists have come to liberate us.

But you’ve used these self-consolations before and this time, for some reason, they’re not helping. You feel that you might be lying to yourself. In a desperate mood, your mind reaches for the stronger stuff…

Well, what does Bill Maher suggest we do with the Muslims? Kill them all? Put into gas chambers and close the door on women, children and innocent moderates? So what if Islam is violent. Where is all this headed? This isn’t actually a bad argument and so it soothes your mind enough that you are able think about something else.

That’s the end of our experiment. You’re back in an educated, rational mind again. I hope that wasn’t too traumatic. The sort of thinking we have described here has a name. It’s called ‘bad faith’, for which the internet definition is as follows:

‘(in existentialist philosophy) a refusal to confront facts or choices.’

Sartre, one of the greatest popularisers of the concept, chose this illustrative example in his Magnum Opus ‘Being and Nothingness’:

“Let us take the case of a woman who has consented to go out with a particular man for the first time. She knows very well the intentions which the man who is speaking to her cherishes regarding her. She knows also that it will be necessary sooner or later for her to make a decision. But she does not want to realize the urgency; she concerns herself only with what is respectful and discreet in the attitude of her companion. She does not apprehend this conduct as an attempt to achieve what we call “the first approach”; that is, she does not want to see possibilities of temporal development which his conduct presents.”

This example fits our subject rather well. The Leftist does not fail to see what we see about Islam because he is ignorant, he does not see it because he does not want to see it. The Leftist has chosen a mindset, not a position. A mindset is invulnerable to temptations from other ways of thinking because it is bigger than the views it holds.

The Western Muslims who are content to smile and proselytise to us now, desire ultimately a society that offends the human spirit. We understand this intention clearly and would rather stop its potential altogether. The Leftists – so expertly cynical in other contexts – deliberately fail to recognise that potential, seeing only the pleasant signs and chastising those who notice the ominous ones. To put it simply, they deploy strategic ignorance.

I really do wonder how they sleep at night. Surely human dignity must naturally spring back from this poise and keep them disturbed. But perhaps I’m wrongly presuming that they retain any humanity at all.

D, LDN.

What We Owe Christopher Hitchens.

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Counter-Jihad, Defend the modern world, Hitchens, Iraq War, Islamism, Martin Amis, Michael Moore, New York Times

I’ve recieved the accusation before that I am inspired by the literary style of the late Anglo-American journalist Christopher Hitchens. It’s possible to take this both as a great compliment and a sly insult. People (often Americans) can mean it as a way of saying ‘you write very well’. Others (often English) use it less kindly to mean ‘you aren’t original’, or ‘you’re a copycat’.

Either way, they are close to the mark but a little off. The greatest prose stylist in modern English letters is Martin Amis, Christopher Hitchens’ best friend. Whenever I’m looking to sharpen up my own style, I read a random book review written by Amis to remind myself of what perfection on a page looks like. I imagine Hitchens himself was greatly inspired by his lesser known friend and may have been subject to the occasional stylistic over-ruling by him.

But Amis will never be a big a name as his late comrade. That’s for sure. Hitchens, who just days before 9/11 was a charming but marginal leftist known only to the most geekish political observer, ended his life with a full page obituary in the New York Times and a headline announcement on BBC news.

The reasons why have a lot to do with style and a little to do with substance.

Hitchens was an undoubtedly brilliant author. His essays must have inspired a million bloggers and his opinions have changed a million minds. He was not the greatest stylist ever. In fact from an English perspective, he wasn’t even unusually poetic, but it’s easy to understand how he came across as exotic in the staid environment of American politics; a fact of course that was amplified many times over by his ability to speak as well as he wrote.

I do not speak as easily as I write. In debates I rise too quickly to anger. I’m ok with everyday conversations, but otherwise emotion overtakes me, especially when I talk about politics.

Compare this to Hitchens, who seemed able to make his emotions dance perfectly to the tune of his intellect. He never got angry when it didn’t serve his point to do so. He never laughed out of time, or shook, or retreated. A suicidal masculinity oozed from his deep voice and steady eyes, turning his opponents into furniture. 

It’s conventional to say that the legacy of Hitchens will be dominated by two things – Anti-Christianity and Iraq. I’m not so certain. He will of course be remembered by many as the man who held on to the pro-Iraq war viewpoint like a rottweiler with a bone. And for others, his contempt for Evangelical Christianity will remain his largest contribution.

But for me, his impact was greatest upon the specific issue of Islam and its relationship with the Western Left.

Despite devoting very little in his ‘God is not Great’ volume to Islam, it was easy to tell that it was the faith most contemptible to him. The launch of his most prolific period (during which he became familiar to all) was shortly after the Islamist attacks of 9/11 when he posted some commonsensical articles about the attack in the distinctly un-commonsensical magazine The Nation.

But let’s not make this a biography. What do we, in the Counter-Jihad tendency owe Hitchens?

Well firstly and most obviously, it is a lot easier to speak about Muslim extremism now than it would have been had Hitchens never existed.

Few take time to recall what it was actually like during those few hot months after the attacks. The Islamist onslaught had the precisely opposite effect to the one rationally expected. People turned on America in their millions. Sympathy broke out in Western capitals for the new, glamourous savages. ‘They had it coming” was the popular refrain from the Left. Criticism of Islam itself was deemed completely out of line.

Nowadays, the wall of political correctness around Islamism has collapsed. If it weren’t for Hitchens and his popularisation of the anti-Islamist position, this might not have been the case.

And ‘popularisation’ is entirely the right word. Hitchens was a pop-culture intellectual. He was appealing even to those who hate the intellectual. This allowed the anti-Islamist argument to penetrate into the parliament of youth, an arena usually dominated by Leftists like Michael Moore. And once it was inside the door, people began more and more to open up to it.

Secondly Hitchens, whether intentionally or not, inflicted massive damage on the conventional Left. Leftists still hate him for what he did during a period that would otherwise have been a bumper harvest for them. Michael Moore was discredited at the peak of his career, and many people fondly remember Hitchens showing the finger to the liberals in the audience of Bill Maher’s show. He made Leftism look soppy, sorry for itself, hippyish and outdated.

Thirdly and lastly, Hitchens elevated the quality of writing in American journalism to an English standard. I’m sorry if that sounds offensive to America. I adore America, but I also adore the English language and the way it is used by the English.

I can’t foresee a time soon when Hitchens will be forgotten. A new book called ‘Unhitched’ attempts the same type of character assassination on Hitchens that he himself became famous for. Even if the criticisms are valid (and there are many that could be made), Hitchens is more than a cult figure now. He has achieved the same kind of status-invincibility as the boxer who has never lost a bout achieves when he retires early. It doesn’t matter how well you can hype up your retrospective chances of defeating him, you’ll never get the chance. One may as well invite Genghis Khan outside for a fist-fight. It means nothing. He’s gone. And when he was here, no-one could match him.

D, LDN