One Week on Parler

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2020 election, Ann Coulter, biden, Israel, n word, parler, trump, Twitter

There is a need for platforms like Parler, the free-speech friendly Twitter alternative recently pulled into the media spotlight for hosting disenfranchised Trump supporters.

There is obviously a limit to what can be said on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and probably even WordPress. Sophisticated algorithmic mechanisms already exist to filter out content featuring contentious words; not only deliberately unpleasant terms like ‘n*gger’ or ‘k*ke’, but also controversial or misused ones like ‘Zionist’, ‘globalist’, among others; the aim being to provide a safe, friendly space that people of all stripes can use for work or pleasure.

But as these platforms have grown, so has their political and strategic value; and with politics comes passion, and with passion inevitable offence. Donald Trump, whose social media accounts are both an asset and a liability to the websites hosting them, has attracted a flood of both pro- and anti-MAGA voices to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube in recent years, ruining them for some, improving them for others. Now, for the former at least, after a contested and fraught election, the official effort to regulate information has become intolerable. Migratory waves to Parler flow thick and fast.

Entirely out of curiosity, I signed up for an account last week. This is a kind of review.

As I mentioned, Parler is modelled on Twitter, and has a similar concept. You broadcast your opinions, post links, pictures, etc. and other people react to them – liking them, commenting on them, or ‘echoing’ them, which is the same thing as retweeting. Like Twitter, you have a username and an @-name; you collect followers, and can receive private messages. On first glance, the only obvious difference – apart from the content of the posts – is the colour scheme, which is paper white and cherry red.

The content is certainly different. Not surprisingly, but still strikingly. The atmosphere is like that of a political club.

As soon as the account had been activated, my automatic ‘hello’ post received automated comments and welcome messages from various official pro-Trump accounts. I was invited to ‘Stop the Steal’ and pledge my support by texting ‘Trump’ to a (now familiar) mobile number.

I decided to explore just how committed the platform was to freedom of speech. I typed the ‘n word’ (though rather more explicitly) into the search bar above the news feed. Sure enough, the word was present – in usernames, bios, posts and memes. There was a user called ‘Certified N*ggerologist’, for example; another called ‘n*gger1488’, and so on. I then tried ‘Zionist’, expecting – foolishly, it turned out – to find a wealth of anti-Semitic and conspiratorial sentiment. But though there were examples of this, the majority of hits were older American Trump supporters proudly self-identifying as supporters of Israel. The difference between this place and 4chan’s /pol/ became clearer.

Looking around at the users, the majority of which were American seniors, I felt a definite sense of unease and out-of-place-ness. There was truth to be found, yes – and even genuine insight; but also a constant, nagging contradiction. Here was freedom of speech expressed as marching uniformity. Something seemed to have gone wrong.

Parler is far from a cult forum. It was certainly never designed to be one. But the automatic messages I received from the Trump campaign at the beginning of my experiment, together with the insularity of the userbase, do not bode well for its promise of greater ideological variety.

On Twitter, the right is persecuted by the left. Liberal users routinely report conservative accounts, paying Stasi-like attention to the language of any post they disagree with. On Parler, at least presently, it appears the right has made a Twitter for itself, flipping the tables. Here it is liberal users who are swarmed and berated (though, notably, not reported).

You would be correct to point out this may only be temporary. Parler is a Trump app at the moment because Trump supporters are the people taking advantage of it; but nothing is preventing left-wing or middle-ground users migrating there as well. A free speech forum will be what users make of it. No more. No less.

My concern is that the owners of Parler are already comfortable with the idea that Trump loyalists are (and will always be) its bread and butter. I am worried that the app will remain a ‘Twitter for MAGA people’ – a safe space where they can agree with each other in peace, protected from opposing views.

***

Donald Trump is the not the arguments he made on the campaign trail, nor the energies conjured up or released by his movement. He is an odd person, with absurd idiosyncrasies. It is vitally important that the cause of truth, no matter how much the president has done for it, does not become the cause of Trump. Truth is eternal and perfect. Trump is temporary and flawed.

One of the most disturbing impressions Parler made on me is the idea that for millions of otherwise balanced people, a meaningful distinction between Trump and truth no longer exists. For such people, if Trump goes down, truth will follow. If Trump wins, truth triumphs likewise. Any evidence or argument against Trump is untrue by definition, and by the same logic, any argument for him is unquestionable fact.

I am confident that if the president suddenly switched places with Biden on any issue, even a sacred cause of the right, a good number of his supporters would follow him regardless. Criticism of his defection would be ‘fake news’, blasphemy, heresy. The divine mystery of the president’s ‘4D chess’ would be deemed beyond the ignorant critic’s intellectual capacity.

Consider the plight of the long-suffering paleoconservative Ann Coulter, who has done more than most to support Trump when it counts. For nearly four years now, the New York columnist has been trying to separate the causes of Trump’s election from the character of the man himself. For Coulter, immigration, elitism and future demographics were the underlying factors of the Great Revolt of 2016, not the quirks and talents of Trump alone.

She continues to receive great vitriol for this claim: “What happened to you, Ann?” – “I used to be a fan. Sad you’ve sold out to the fake news media!” Etc.

But Coulter, like a small number of others, criticises Trump from the right, and with a greater goal in mind – the preservation of a first-world America. Trump could reign for another thirty years and not save the country she values; because Trump is not the goal. And the goal matters more.

David

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Letter to the Muslims of Europe

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American Liberty, anti-Semitism, Barack Obama, BBC, Britain First, Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, Counterjihad, Dear Muslims, Defend the modern world, EU, European Union, Islam, Islam in Europe, Islam in Europe and America, Islam versus the West, Israel, Multiculturalism, Muslims, Muslims in Europe, No to Turkey in the EU, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census

*Originally published on this blog in July, 2015

If you (reader) are one of the twenty million devout Muslims currently resident in Europe, I’d like to try explain to you why I believe your beliefs are incompatible with the culture of your adopted home. But more than this, I hope also to persuade you that this view (shared by a growing majority of Europeans) does not emanate from ignorance or racism, and why it may not be a defeat or a humiliation for you to agree with it.

You or your parents probably came to Europe initially for economic reasons, seeking a better life and a more secure future. There is nothing dishonourable or unusual about that. Most non-Muslim migrants make the journey with the same ambitions. The West is very wealthy and safe relative to the rest of the world and so it is only rational to want to join it.

Once here, you or your parents probably planned to exist in a peaceful but separate state to the majority, maintaining your beliefs and traditions quietly in the same way that Orthodox Jews and Eastern Orthodox migrants have done in the past. Increasingly, this doesn’t seem to be possible, if it ever was. And in my view, the reasons for that directly relate to the nature of Islamic belief and the sense of mission that is so inseparable from it.

Unlike Christianity or Judaism, yours is a conquering faith, not a persuading one. Relatively little importance is given to peaceful proselytization in Islam. While there are occasionally stalls set out in front of tube stations or elsewhere in city centres to preach Islamic doctrine, this is an imitation of Christian practice and not something organically ‘Muslim’. Rather, Muslims have historically sought to attain dominion over society by violence, sometimes later permitting religious diversity within that society, but never allowing any symbol to enjoy precedence over the crescent. Their hope, indeed their announced intention, has always been to exalt Islam to a position of cultural dominance and authority. While Christians and Jews have peacefully resided as minorities in many different parts of the world, Muslims have always struggled with the very concept of minority life. Since Allah is supposed to be the only authority to which submission is made, it is seen by most Muslims (and perhaps by you specifically) to be incongruous that a divine authority is subordinate to any non-Islamic regime, whether secular or religious. Minarets are built to tower above all other buildings for grander reasons than amplification. They proclaim symbolically the primacy and authority of Islam over the territory Muslims inhabit. It will simply not do that cathedrals or government buildings are larger or invested with more power and importance. Indeed, it is blasphemous and idolatrous. As Islamists never forget to proclaim before they demolish some priceless artefact – “Nothing and no-one is worthy of veneration except Allah”.

This sense of mission, inherent within Islamic theory, has radically altered human history. The nations of Lebanon, Libya and Syria were once Christian. The territory of what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan was once Buddhist. Persia was once Zoroastrian. That these places are now Muslim is testament to Islam’s conquering urge and military spirit. Islam seeks not only to convert, but to dominate and subdue. It is expansionist by its very nature. It was not designed to be one faith out of many, but to be the one and only faith of all humankind. The Quran itself is not shy of stating this. I would quote the passages urging the subjugation of unbelievers here but this would be so long as to be disruptive to my argument.

Your faith is antagonistic to everything but itself. And since you began settling in Europe back in the 1960s, members of your community have behaved in a way harmonious with that analysis. Just recently in Britain, there has been a wave of serious sexual assault committed by Muslims against exclusively non-Muslim children. Some estimates put the number of girls assaulted by British Pakistanis as high as 200,000. In the town of Rotherham alone, at least 1400 girls are known to have been forced into sexual slavery by Muslim gangs.

And even when it doesn’t lead to assault, your behaviour around women (if you are a man) is infantile and tactless. It would appear customary that upon meeting a woman (Muslim or otherwise, online or in real life) your first words either involve sex or invite a personal relationship that can lead to sex. It might surprise you – it probably has surprised you – but non-Muslim women do not enjoy being asked for their phone number or address by a complete stranger without any preceding conversation. Your lack of charm – indeed, your failure to even understand the idea and purpose of charm – is absolute. To you, women are merely sexual animals, possessing no greater value or agency than cats and dogs. For this reason, perhaps more than any other, I find it difficult to breathe the same air as you.

Then there are the acts of extreme violence. Members of your community blew up the train network in Madrid, Spain and the subway in London, England. Members of your community massacred the staff of a cartoon tabloid in Paris. Members of your community have beheaded European citizens, the most recent case occurring only a month ago. You even hunt your own kind! Hundreds of Muslim women have now been killed in Europe in the name of ‘honour’ – and usually by members of their own family. Every year, thousands of Muslim girls are taken abroad to have their vagina mutilated by a shaving razor and then brought back to lead a miserable, painful existence with the perpetrators.

How could we possibly put up with this? What kind of people would we be if we did?

Face the facts, a growing proportion of the native population of Europe actively despises you, and does so without allowing any distinction for your race, Islamic school or individual contribution to European society. After decades of aggressive dysfunction and sickening crime, people simply hate you. They hate you and they fear you. And it is becoming difficult for even the most committed liberal to propose a reason why they shouldn’t.

There is an obvious – some would say cartoonish – contrast between the Islamic conception of society and the hopes and opinions of the Europeans. We value things you view as Satanic. You value things we regard as barbaric. You put faith before reason. We put reason before faith. You regard women as second-class human beings. We regard the sexes as equal. You view freedom of speech as being limited to secular matters. We believe it should permeate every corner of life and thought.

Even if this weren’t the case, your religious tradition is not the one that we are used to and which has inspired and characterised our manners and rituals over centuries. No European books are dedicated to your God. No statues of your Prophet (even if this were allowed) grace the Piazzas of our cities. Few if any Qur’anic phrases have entered our common parlance. We don’t celebrate your holy days, and have no regard for your heroes and saints.

You might reply that Hindu and Sikh mythologies do not inform our ways either, but then Hindus and Sikhs have proven themselves to be comfortable with that. I have never heard of an act of Hindu terrorism, nor any religiously-motivated outrage committed by a Sikh, Buddhist, Scientologist or Jain organisation. Islam has actively distinguished itself in violence, in readiness to fight and to make war where there is peace.

You are wrong if you take us for fools. We know well enough what the phrases Dar al-Harb and Dar al-Islam mean. We recognise the desire on your part to transfer us from one to the other and by what means. You must have known from the start that a project of this historical magnitude would be resisted with passion and fire. And, please believe me, that passion and fire is already generated in sufficient quantity should we ever be given the excuse to unleash it.

There are people on this (uniquely civilised) continent who would gladly slaughter you like dogs. It is not fantastical anymore to foresee a new Nazi movement emerging in Europe and going on to behave in a Hitlerian fashion. Nobody (save a few lunatics) wishes to go back there. Peace in Europe has been a blessing. Democracy is deserving of all the celebration dedicated to it. But your behaviour is testing the hold of democracy to its white-knuckled limits.

How then can we defuse this bomb? How might we organise a solution that forbids the need for mass violence and the self-destruction of democratic liberalism? This of course is the great question of my generation, and the most important task of the Western World, ahead of the environment, Russia, or any other exaggerated diversion.

That there is – or rather, that you are – an issue in need of resolution can no longer be sensibly denied. We are obliged by everything we hold dear to guarantee that the Islamisation of Europe ceases and that what progress it has already made is reversed. The Western way of life is not just ‘different’ to your own, but a million times superior. We are behaving very rationally by seeking to protect it.

Incidentally, you can deny this last fact as much as you want. It makes no difference to me. Deep down, beneath all the evasions and the layers of self-hypnosis, I’m sure you accept it as much as I do. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t still be here.

And that is the real, embarrassing truth, no? Whatever your friends have scrawled on placards in the past, you don’t ‘hate our way of life’ at all. You are simply jealous of it, and angry that your ancestral lands have failed – and are still failing – to develop in a like fashion.

For an effective and rapid solution to this problem, I propose the following measures – If you are brave, honest and intelligent enough to rid your mind of the numbing circularities of Islamic thinking, a space in the European future can and should be found for you. If not, and if you continue to display the toxic side effects of Islamic belief, then no more kid glove treatment should be forthcoming. If you espouse anti-Semitic, anti-Democratic and anti-Western ideas, you should be arrested and receive criminal records, with all the implications that has for finding employment, pursuing political office and securing tenancy and accommodation. The wearing of the Niqab must be outlawed and repeat offenders deported to a country where it is still the prevailing fashion. All Muslims involved in the mass-rape of British children must hang. Any Mosque preaching violence against Jews, Christians or Homosexuals must be shut down and demolished, and the same with colleges and Islamic faith schools. There must be an end to all immigration from Muslim countries, including from those cultures touted as exceptional (like Tunisia, Turkey or Iran). The culture of the West must be openly celebrated as the supreme culture of the world, and no ‘noble’ savagery must ever be taught as a desirable alternative to our children.

Our foreign policy must also be redesigned to reflect our desire to survive. Turkey should be expelled from NATO and replaced by Armenia. Any sanctions lifted from Iran must be reimposed. Investment in alternatives to Middle Eastern oil, including fracking (in lightly populated areas), fusion technology, nuclear and renewable energy must be radically increased. Western arms should only be exported to regimes which ruthlessly suppress Islamist activity (like Egypt and Jordan) and never to theocratic countries, whether ‘allies’ or not (Saudi, UAE, Kuwait etc…). Needless to say, our support for Israel must be great and unconditional.

In all these efforts, our motivating principle (and final goal) must be that Islam is forever segregated from the Western World.

Finally, reader, I promised at the beginning to tell you why it isn’t a humiliation for you to agree with my arguments… This is for the simple reason that you were a human being long before you were a Muslim, and this will always be the most salient fact about you. You are no more biologically predestined to ignorance and poverty than a Swede or a German. If you wish to become free, you can become free! And if you prefer slavery, well, then there is no defeat in relocating to pursue it, if that is your dream. There can no ‘shame’ in wanting to be where you belong. Nothing is more human.

Whichever condition you choose (and we will make you choose), understand that the West is the homeland of the free, the creative and the happy. A slave will always be foreign here.

D, LDN.

Islam is Ruining Everything

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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 Neo-Conservative Tragedy

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America, America 911, American Liberty, Barack Obama, BBC, Christianity and Islam, Civilisation, Coffee, Counter-Jihad, Defend the modern world, Democracy, Facebook, Iraq War, Islamisation of London, Islamism, Israel, jordan, Liberalism, Multiculturalism, neo, neo con, neo con iraq, neo conservative, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Twitter, United States, Zionism

I used to consider myself something of a neo-conservative (pejoratively abbreviated ‘neo-con’ by the left, often with an anti-Semitic edge to it). I was genuinely enlivened by the prospect of the West enforcing its moral and political standards on the rest of the world, believing for some time that the project was a simple yet complete fix for the problems of our time; most importantly, the problems of terrorism and Islamic anti-development.

Like many, I now know better. Neo-conservatism has failed, and failed badly, in practice. The use of the doctrine to liberate and improve the condition of Iraq has barely succeeded. While the country is now technically democratic, it remains crippled by religious tradition, unable and unwilling to develop beyond the limitations of that tradition. This should really have been predicted from the get-go. The fact that it wasn’t exposes the fundamental naivety at the heart of the neo-conservative experiment.

Put at its most basic, neo-conservatism pushes the idea that democracy has a positive value. Neo-cons (if there still are neo-cons) believe that democracies are less likely to go to war, less likely to collapse into chaos, tolerate corruption and extremism or shelter terrorists than are dictatorships and autocracies. On the surface this sounds reasonable enough. The Western democracies of today are certainly more averse to these evils than the third world; as are the remodelled nations of the far-east. Why wouldn’t the same be true for the rest of the world?

The answer in the case of the middle east is Islam. As political equations go, Islam plus democracy equals regression is one of the most reliable. The evidence for this can be found in modern ‘liberated’ Afghanistan – a country which has gone from a tribal theocracy controlled by the Taliban, to a democratic theocracy policed by the Taliban. One can also point to ‘liberated’ Iraq, which itself has gone from a secular Baathist dictatorship to a democratic Shia theocracy. Looked at from this vantage point, was either project worth thousands of free Western lives lost in the course their completion?

I was a fool to have ever thought so.

As well as Iraq and Afghanistan, neo-conservatism has also destroyed the nation of Libya, a country that previously had the highest Human Development Index ranking in the world. Post-liberation, the country is a sharia-ridden desert, robbed of its infrastructure, foreign investment and political coherence. As to whether Syria falls to the neo-con wave remains to be decided. One can justifiably presume that if democracy does strike the country, it will swiftly go the same way as Iraq and Afghanistan have.

If neo-conservatism was – as its detractors have always maintained – merely an ideological cover for destroying the Muslim world, then it has been remarkably successful. But I don’t believe in that conspiracy. Neo-conservatism – I think – was simply an embarrassing misfire of the Western intellect. We will be living with the consequences for a very long time.

D, LDN

Anti-Semitism: Real and Imagined.

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anti-Semitism, BBC, Britain, Daily Mail, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, Family Guy Jews, Family Guy racism, Hatred, Immigration, Islamic terrorism, Israel, Jews, Kevin Macdonald, Multiculturalism, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, United States, War, Zionism

Ever since the rather hysterical reaction to Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech to congress and later re-election as Prime Minster of Israel, I’ve been thinking at length about anti-Semitism in the modern world, how intense it is, and where it might ultimately lead. I’ve also tried to properly define ‘anti-Semitism’ – that is, of the most serious kind, as opposed to the ethnic banter that occurs (between all groups and cultures) on a daily basis.

After all, not all anti-Semitism leads to Auschwitz. Some of it is simply laziness. I remember, many years ago, passing a London Synagogue with a friend. As we were directly outside of it, he pointed at the building and sighed “Look at that” in a low, defeated tone of voice.

“What?” I asked, adding “It’s a Synagogue.”

Frowning at my reply, my friend shifted his fingertip to the parking lot outside. “Those cars, I mean… Jags, BMWs, Mercs. You know what I mean?”

And the conversation (if it can be called that) ended there. The insinuation was obvious and was duly taken on board.

Now, is this Anti-Semitism, or just plain envy? Many people readily confuse the two, and this, I think, detracts from our ability to face down anti-Jewish hatred of the most serious kind. (My friend incidentally is a working-class, apolitical Irishman, with whom I used to bunk off school and who more or less belongs to the ‘salt of the earth’ type.)

If that is ‘casual’ anti-Semitism, another modern type is comical or ‘ironic’ anti-Semitism. In an episode of Family Guy, a Jewish high school pupil objects to being asked to dissect a pig, to which the teacher drily replies, “Believe me Neil, it’s no thrill for the pig to touch a Jew either.”

This is clearly near to the bone, but nobody upon hearing it would think of joining the KKK or ANP. This is sub-political thinking and doesn’t treat Jews with the seriousness preferred by genuine fascists.

Of course, even I have at one time or another been accused of anti-Semitism, as has anyone who forwards arguments of the political kind. I once noted for example that American Jews enjoy a dominant position in the American film industry. I found (and find) it bizarre and unnecessary to deny something so obvious. For this, I received emails of mockery and hateful accusations.

The use of the ‘Anti-Semite’ label in cases like that is irresponsible, especially as anti-Semitism of the most lethal kind appears to be enjoying a secretive renaissance. Let’s break some more taboos…

Jews have vastly superior verbal intelligence scores than Gentiles. Ashkenazi Jews are more intelligent on average than any other division of the human population. Jewish representation in the scientific, political and cultural elites of the West is massively disproportionate to their numbers. Jews have taken pains in their history (for religious reasons) to prevent integration with non-Jewish communities. The Jewish religious belief that they are a chosen tribe favoured by God has often contributed to the hostile attitudes of those who live alongside them.

Not one of these observations is powerful or scurrilous enough to unleash a new Holocaust and should not be treated like that. The ideas motivating real hostility to Jews in the modern world have nothing to do with widely known, if publically denied, facts. Rather they are the product of a uniquely complex style of conspiratorial thinking.

Kevin Macdonald, a Canadian professor of Evolutionary Psychology, should be considered the grand wizard of modern anti-Jewish feeling. His trilogy of books – The Culture of Critique, A People Who Shall Dwell Alone and Separation and Its Discontents – have encouraged millions to sign up to a hatred that had been in a period of terminal decline.

Macdonald’s basic theorem is that Jews have organised in such a way as to degrade the spirit of kinship in their ‘host’ societies, thereby preventing an ethno-nationalism that could exclude or threaten them from coming into existence. They are said to achieve this by organising cultural, political and intellectual movements that complicate or oppose White ethnic interests. Examples of this include Bolshevism, Psychoanalysis, interracial pornography and open-door immigration.

Macdonald backs up his assertions with a heavy weight of evidence and quotation, giving the ideas expressed a veneer of scientific detachment and legitimacy. Despite this, no respected figure in Macdonald’s field of evolutionary psychology takes his contentions seriously, and luminaries from other fields – including Steven Pinker and Jared Diamond – treat them with lofty ridicule.

They are wrong to be so dismissive. Macdonald’s thesis is spreading like wildfire. The explanatory promise of his ideas makes them irresistible in an age as distrustful and anti-political as ours.  On websites like 4chan, Stormfront, reddit and on innumerable blogs, the idea that Jews have damaged the prospects of White civilisation is omnipresent. I spend a lot of time on these sites (to attune myself to the popular zeitgeist) and come across arguments traceable back to Macdonald on a daily basis.

Part of what makes Macdonald’s theories so strong is the inbuilt defences he has implanted in them. His family of theories are designed in such a way as to make Jewish counter-arguments seem like a confirmation of their validity. In ‘Separation and its Discontents’, Macdonald argues that the charge of ‘anti-Semitism’ is an integral part of the Jewish project to stop Whites finding an independent voice.

I don’t know how this shadowy renaissance will pan out, but the fact these ideas remain plausible should teach us all a vital lesson: that Anti-Semitism remains a dangerously toxic and regressive element in the global system, and that if it ever reaches 20th century proportions again, it will not be due to comical or political asides, but to the semi-scientific theories of the intellectual fringe.

D, LDN.

Are Shia Muslims an Exception?

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Are shia more moderate?, Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, Defend the modern world, Hezbollah, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East military balance, Nuclear program, Persia, Persians, Shia vs Sunni

It has been put to me more than once that Shia Muslims represent a more civilised portion of the Islamic multitude than the Sunni majority. For evidence, those who hold to this argument present the cases of Iran and Lebanon.

Despite their troubles and imperfect governments, it is undoubtedly the case that these two countries enjoy a higher and more recognisably (to a European) civilised form of social order that the lowly standards of the Islamic world. Iran, regardless of its theocratic state, rarely experiences beheadings and terrorism. Lebanon, despite Hezbollah, has retained a level of social peace conducive to a flourishing tourism industry. It is less surprising to hear of an Iranian or Lebanese intellectual being nominated for a Nobel prize than it would be to hear of the same honour bestowed on a Saudi or Afghan. And when one looks at a photograph of Tehran or Beirut, it is easy to imagine one is looking at a city in Eastern or Southern Europe.

In Iraq, where 70% of the population is Shia, the civil war further revealed this distinction. During Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s reign of terror, almost all of the acts of terrorism in the conflict were Sunni against Shia. And when the Shia did respond, it was more often with law and state, rather than bomb and machete.

It’s all very convincing isn’t it? To be sure, an increasing number are very convinced of it. I’m not yet one of them though and I have 3 reasons to support this stubbornness:

1. Despite the undeniably unique aspects of their religious system, Shia Muslims nevertheless revere and follow the Qur’an as their infallible manifesto of life and behaviour.

2. Despite the moderation of the Iranian population, the Iranian state continues to stone women and hang gays for explicitly Shia Islamic reasons.

3. (related to No. 2) Shia Islam exercises Sharia law just as fervently as Sunni Islam and believes it should supersede civil legislation.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t add greater nuance to our dealings with Shia countries than with Sunni ones, because we probably should. But I don’t believe (or have yet to be convinced) that a Shia country can serve as a reliable ally of the West. Too much separates us and that which does so is of crucial importance.

D, LDN.

Bomb Iran.

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Bahrain, Christianity and Islam, Counter-Jihad, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, Iran, Islamic Republic, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Multiculturalism, No to Turkey in the EU, Pakistan, Persian Gulf, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Saudi Arabia, Soviet Union, Strait of Hormuz, Tehrangeles

Like Saudi Arabia, the Islamic Republic of Iran is not a country whose ambitions are limited by its borders. Tehran’s ruling clerical elite views itself as the logical executive of the Shia Muslim world, for which they would claim Iraq, Lebanon, North-East Arabia, Bahrain, and parts of Pakistan.

For this purpose, the Iranian military (including paramilitary forces) now marshals over 2.5 million men; the largest standing army in the most heavily-armed region in the world. Given its geographic position, the Iranian republic is also able to fire sophisticated missiles at Europe, Saudi Arabia and Israel, as well at US bases in the Persian Gulf. The Iranian navy meanwhile can halt oil transit in the Straits of Hormuz, potentially devastating the global economy.

And perhaps to all this, Iran may be about to add a nuclear capability.

The day the Islamic Republic first tests a nuclear device will mark the birth of a new Great Power; an Islamist Soviet Union, shielded by the threat of apocalypse to arm and manipulate the world, from Bahrain to Mexico to Tehrangeles.

The Obama administration has today consented to lay off the Islamic Republic for a period of six months, being assured of a ‘freeze’ in Iranian nuclear development. Given that Iran once hid a secret enrichment facility under a mountain, this seems foolhardy in the extreme.

Of the deal this weekend, the Israeli Prime Minister has said the following::

“Today the world has become a much more dangerous place because the most dangerous regime in the world has taken a significant step toward attaining the most dangerous weapon in the world… This agreement and what it means endanger many countries including, of course, Israel. Israel is not bound by this agreement. The Iranian regime is committed to the destruction of Israel and Israel has the right and the obligation to defend itself, by itself, against any threat.”

It appears only Israel and Saudi Arabia are now willing and able to do anything about Tehran’s drive for the big league.

If, in the coming weeks, the former decides to act alone, and if the press tells you that Israel is being reckless, or selfish, or fanatical, or is somehow a ‘rogue state’, know this: This is the same state which stopped Iraq and Syria from developing WMD; weapons which could have just as easily been aimed at London as Tel Aviv. There is a clear and undeniable overlap between Israel’s security and our own, and Iran, along with Saudi Arabia and Turkey, is part of a terrifying cultural revival, aimed ultimately at our common destruction.

We have been warned.

D, LDN

Stop Arming Turkey.

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Christianity and Islam, Counter-Jihad, Cultural Marxism, Defend the modern world, Israel, Middle East, Multiculturalism, Muslim Brotherhood, Muslim world, No to Turkey in the EU, politics, Saudi Arabia, Soviet Union, Turkey, United States

The American Cold-War network of alliances is out-of-date. The power they were designed to deter – Russia – is no longer an aggressor, or at-any-rate, an aggressor capable of mounting a military threat.

Within the Islamic world in particular, US alliances were created with defensive politics in mind. The Soviet Union was a perpetual menace, and so to prevent its influence expanding, America shipped billions of dollars of advanced weoponry to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. These three advanced military powers helped repel the advance of socialism (Arab and otherwise), allowing America to secure critical access to the materials of the Gulf.

But times have changed since then, and yet the network remains in place.

Only one of these powers – Egypt – is it in America’s interest to arm. The Egyptian army has arguably proven its worth by removing the Muslim Brotherhood from power and tackling terrorists in the Sinai. The ‘alliance’ with Saudi Arabia meanwhile, as a matter of crude economics, cannot be ended until America becomes self-sufficient in energy. For that we will have to wait for ‘New Nuclear’ and Shale technology to be developed.

The remaining alliance however, that with the Republic of Turkey, can and should be dropped sooner.

For a long while, Turkey was a reliable and obediant cog in the American security complex, taking part in military drills with the Israelis, but otherwise keeping out of the politics of the Middle East.

But recently the Turks have reverted to type. A 99% Islamic country has become (once again) an Islamic state. The regime of Recep Tayyip Erdogan has single-handedly cancelled out decades of modernization and attempted (with great cynicism) to re-attach the country to the Islamic world.

But this is only natural. Despite what its aspirational elite might think, Turkey is not and has never been a European country. Considered thus, Europe is not strengthened but threatened by Turkish military prowess.

The Turkish Armed Forces are currently stronger than any of their European equivalents. Turkey’s Air Force has over 700 manned aircraft, including over 200 F-16s. The Turkish land army possesses over a thousand US and German-engineered battle Tanks. The Navy operates over 100 ships, and as part of he NATO nuclear sharing agreement, Turkey possesses over 200 Nuclear weapons.

In a war situation between Europe and the Islamic world, Turkey would blunt the European sword from the get-go. Similarly, should Germany ever decide to remove the Turkish, Kurdish and Arab Muslims currently within its territory, Turkey could threaten the country with annihilation. The same goes with France, Britain or any other country within the range of Turkish missiles.

America is doing its European allies no favours by continuing to pour weapons into the Turkish leviathan, and it would be nice if our leaders had the guts to say so.

D, LDN.

Modernity or Barbarism? : The strongest argument for Israel is the most simple.

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anti-Semitism, Case for Israel, Counter-Jihad, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, Eurabia, Fateful Triangle, Islamisation of London, Israel, Jewish State, Multiculturalism, No to Turkey in the EU, Rihanna Muslim, Zionism

I wanted to write a post this week defending the legitimacy of the Zionist project but I quickly realised that with this conflict, most of the arguments have already been made.

Just as some people are right-handed and some left, everybody seems to have an inbuilt bias on the Middle East dispute.

People with no interest in politics whatsoever nevertheless reserve a space in their hearts for either the Jews or the Arabs of the near-east, rarely both. They may have never met a Jew or an Arab in their lives, but they still fight for ‘their’ side with all the determination of a brother coming to the aid of a brother.

If you think about it, this is actually quite strange. It certainly isn’t the case with other conflicts. When the Sinhalese and the Tamils fight each other in Sri Lanka, a majority of people require an explanation as to who the Sinhalese and Tamils are before the reasons behind the conflict themselves are elucidated. Some might even need an index finger on a map to show them where Sri Lanka is.

Why is Israel and Palestine different? One reason could be religion.

I grew up in a religious household and remember going to Sunday-school each week where I read the Bible with the teachers. The word ‘Israel’ was familiar to me long before I knew anything political, as were Jews, Syrians, Egyptians, Lebanese Cedar trees and the concept of the promised land. When I become politically aware and learned about Zionism, I already had a basic grasp of the actors and religious stakes involved.

Most Westerners (or at least Christian Westerners) therefore are bound to see the conflict as an interesting one. The same I imagine is true of Muslims, who are taught from an early age about Mohammads alleged journey to Jerusalem as well as more explicitly about the politics of Palestine.

Another reason of course is race. The Jews are a subject of unending fascination for Europeans, who can’t quite fathom whether to adore or despise them. In America too, the Jewish people are both liked and disliked but rarely ignored. 

Anything involving Jews therefore tends to attract scrutiny.

Reflecting this interest, the Middle East conflict has inspired passionate and important political books on both sides of the debate. On the Pro-Israel side there are volumes like “The Case for Israel”, “From Time Immemorial”, and “Shackled Warrior”. On the anti-Israel side, there is “Beyond Chutzpah”, “Fateful Triangle” and “The Gun and the Olive Branch”.

Some of these books have become classics of political writing and their authors are looked to as intellectual sages not just on the Middle East but World Politics more broadly.

But for me, the strongest political argument for Israel arises naturally from an examination of the realities on the ground.

Israel as a country can easily deceive people. It looks so Western and sophisticated, so calm and cosmopolitan that it’s scarcely believable to think that in a coastal strip just to its south, there is a nightmare territory of illiteracy, genital mutilation, veiling and stoning to death.

Just a mile from beachfront Israeli coffee shops, in which young Jewish women and young Jewish men drink Cappuccino and chat about sport, literature and fashion, there are other women, forbidden to leave the crumbling houses of men they were forced to marry as children, and whose children dance on the unpaved streets outside praising suicide bombing.

These are not, as if often claimed, ‘two different cultures’. These are two different stages of cultural development. One is in the 21st century, and the other in the 13th.

In Israeli cafes, a heated argument might break out over which marks the greater artistic leap forward, “The Bends” or “OK Computer” (the answer incidentally is the latter). In a Gaza shack, a brawl might ensue over whether music (of any kind) should be punishable by fine or amputation.

It pays to remind oneself every so often just how weird this contrast is. Imagine Denmark sharing a border with Afghanistan. Switzerland with Pakistan. Tokyo with Darfur.

And yet – knowing all this – how does the West, so comfortable in its own version of the 21st century, react?

It gathers both sides together and shouts “Make a deal!…”, and then reacts with feigned surprise when nothing comes of it.

I suppose this isn’t strictly-speaking ‘betrayal’. Israel is not in Europe. It’s more a simple kind of hypocrisy, as well as a motivated failure to comprehend an obvious truth; that the age of mutilation, dogma, and suicide bombing cannot be reconciled with the world of fashion, irony and relaxed society. They are not equal and – more importantly – they are not equally valuable. This simple, cartoonish contrast may prove to be the strongest argument for Israel, even after all the academic head-scratching and moral grandstanding has fallen away.

If you wish to defend the West from Islamisation, and modernity from barbarism, you must be a supporter of the Jewish State and defend what it represents. It is a border of the civilised world and an armed front against its darkest enemies. The Jews are a talented, humane and indispensable race and their state should reflect this in security, prosperity and size.

These are the vital arguments. So if you’re asked again to choose between modernity and barbarism, or whatever else you might wish to call the same choice, ‘Civilization or madness’, ‘Israel or Palestine’…. don’t think too deeply about it. Despite the weighty books, complicated theorems and wars of interpretation, honesty alone should lead you to the century you belong in.  

D, LDN