Appreciating Mark Steyn.

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America Alone, Christianity and Islam, Christopher Caldwell, Christopher Hitchens, Counter-Jihad, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, English Defence League, Eurabia, Mark Steyn, Oriana Fallaci, Pamela Geller, Paul Berman, Sam Harris, United States, Zionism

The Counter-Jihad movement (and its underlying intellectual tendency) originated in different places, depending on who you ask. 

For some, ‘Counter-Jihad’ sentiment is merely the delayed reaction to 9/11 by the Western moral majority, with the delay usually attributed to political correctness and a lack of organization in the years following the attack. 

For others, it was the work of the ‘New Atheists’ which first prepared the ground for popular ‘Islamophobia’, and by this they usually intend the work of Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.

For me though, the real turning point, and the one which has enabled the loud, confident voice now afforded to us, was the publication in 2006, of a polemic entitled ‘America Alone: The End of the World as We Know it’, by Canadian author Mark Steyn.

Outside of actual events (like 9/11, 7/7 etc..), this slim volume ranks as one of the most commonly cited reasons for independent conversions to the anti-Islamist cause both in Britain and America. Time and time again, I read or hear people say something like the following –

“I was absolutely convinced by the whole Left-wing argument. I opposed the war in Iraq. I thought the West was evil and trying to steal the oil and that terrorists were just reasonably angry people fighting back…. But then I read this book called ‘America Alone’, and I switched sides overnight.” 

That’s quite something. Great polemical books are known to make you question your beliefs, but it usually take a few of them to spin you exactly around.

There are, of course, a great many other talented authors within this tendency. I’ve mentioned elsewhere the work of Oriana Fallaci, Fjordman, and Paul Berman. Steyn’s book however, unlike the work of these authors, does something more than convince you of a certain position; it makes you pity those who aren’t convinced, embarrassed that you were ever aligned differently, and desperate to go out and persuade others …

The explanation for the book’s quasi-religious power is simple: Mr Steyn is a very funny man indeed.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I like the other authors mentioned immensely, but they all – to varying degrees – neglect the resource of humour as a means of potentiating their arguments, and this is a shame. One can read their books (the content of which addresses precisely the same topic as Steyn’s) and be nothing but depressed, shocked and occasionally stirred to action. By contrast, one can guiltlessly relish reading about pretty much any subject – terrorism, mass-murder, Fascism, American decline etc… so long as it is Mr Steyn describing it.

I am currently reading the follow-up to ‘America Alone’, which is called ‘After America: Get Ready for Armageddon’. In this volume, the author turns away from Europe to consider the prognosis of the American economy should it continue with the Socialist experiment initiated by President Obama. As with the previous book, there is much ‘laughter in the dark’ to be had here, as well as some substantial arguments worth pondering further. Also as in ‘America Alone’, Mr Steyn slips regularly in and out of the comedic voice in order to perfectly frame each argument. The resulting narrative hits the target perfectly.

It might sound like an insult, but Steyn is not just an involving writer, but a very skilled propagandist; his writing is instructive for anyone wanting to learn the art of persuasion, whether for an ideological or personal cause. Consider this nicely phrased and gently stirring excerpt:

“Micro-regulation is micro-tyranny, a slithering, serpentine network of insinuating Ceaucescu and Kim Jong-Il mini-me’s. It’s time for the mass rejection of their diktats. A political order that subjects you to the caprices of faceless bureaucrats or crusading “judges” merits no respect. To counter the Bureau of Compliance, we need an Alliance of Non-Compliance to help once free people roll back the regulatory state.”

That’s so much better than the dry, mechanical, graduate language of the modern press, don’t you think?

On his website, Mr Steyn is not advertised as a strictly comic voice, but more as an independent journalist, similar in kind to those popular on the American radio circuit. I suppose this is accurate enough; the author can be drab and serious when it serves his argument to be so. 

But it’s the ability to make people laugh when they should rightfully be crying that has won Steyn global acclaim. 

His work provides valuable evidence of the power of comedy to carry a political message to greater distances than sobriety and exactness alone.

D, LDN.

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She Told us So: The Brilliance of Oriana Fallaci.

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Counter-Jihad, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, English Defence League, Eurabia, Force of Reason, George Orwell, Islam and the West, Islamification of Britain, Islamisation of London, Multiculturalism, Muslim, No to Turkey in the EU, Oriana Fallaci, Rihanna Muslim, The Rage and the Pride

“Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam. And Italy is an outpost of that province, a stronghold of that colony…In each of our cities lies a second city: a Muslim city, a city run by the Quran. A stage of Islamic expansion.”

The most beautiful, talented and inspiring political writer of the millennial age was an Italian named Oriana Fallaci.

Her name, so musically pleasant to hear and say, unlocks a reputation of beauty, courage and indefatigability (let’s not allow that last word to be forever tarnished by Mr Galloway).

Fallaci wrote, before most of us had found our bearings on the issue, the two greatest books about the Islamisation of Europe ever written – “The Rage and the Pride” and “The Force of Reason”.

These volumes are not like any other book on the subject published before or since. They are written not by an academic, or a soapbox agitator, but by a witness to history of the first rank. The language used in the expression of their content is so passionate, well-chosen and spiritual, it easily ascends to poetry. While the books aren’t particularly complex, they reward slow and thoughtful reading and settle eventually more as philosophy than journalism.

Praise for Ms Fallaci (particularly in her native Italy) often takes on a tone reminiscent of Saint-worship. This is easily explained. As a polemicist, she wrote with an emotional, Latin urgency which tends to either greatly repel or greatly endear.

When her writing repels, it shocks. When it endears, it turns one from an admirer into a devotee.

Fallaci’s prematurity created a strong and strange mystique, much like that which attaches to George Orwell and his lonely stand against prevailing orthodoxies. Fallaci like Orwell, got to the point of the era before the intellectuals. She had the correct answer before the question was widely known. To protest against Muslim immigration now is common-sense, but when Fallaci wrote those books, it was regarded as outrageous racism. Her willingness to be misunderstood in this respect truly deserves the epithet ‘heroic’.

Fallaci was instrumental in waking up the Western intellect to the horror of Muslim immigration (and not just terrorism). Her books predate those which made the anti-Islamisation position easy and fashionable. Her volumes never topped the bestseller stands either here or in Europe. She tragically died of cancer before her opinions were vindicated or broadly accepted. As terrible as such facts are, they have served to embalm her reputation from the arrows of her (numerous) critics.

Fallaci’s physical beauty greatly amplifies the effect of her writing. This brilliant, beautiful, empowered Italian woman when compared against the house-bound wretches of the Islamic World adds great emphasis to our struggle. How could we give up the cultural foundations which allow for this superior kind of womanhood?

Age and ill-health never completely diminished Fallaci’s appearance. At 75, she still looked like a film star. The fight for liberty never looked so dignified.

Leftists – of course – continue to despise her. For as long as they do this, I will despise Leftists. On dozens of occasions liberals have trotted out the same Fallaci quote in which she complains that Muslim immigrants ‘breed like rats’ and held it up as if it was a bleeding knife, hard evidence of some kind of nascent National Socialism in her personality.

But this is ridiculous. As a metaphor, it is nicely to the point and entirely correct. Muslim immigrants are breeding like rats. Rats, rabbits, bacteria…whatever you might want to compare it to, that is what they are doing, and should it continue, we will end up with a continent burning with hatred and war.

Fallaci’s tone was often furious, even – some say – ‘fanatical’, but since our enemies are so easily enlivened by the dictats of Sharia law, we could do worse than become fanatical about our own beliefs and virtues. The Muslims are fanatical about the need for women to be veiled. We can (and should) match that fanaticism with a desire that they should remain free. Let’s not be afraid of anger, even less of passion.

As we go forward in the struggle to avoid the destiny she forewarned us of, Fallaci’s books must be our manifesto. I will continue to read her and take encouragement from her words. I hope that she will not be forgotten now that her views have become widespread. No-one has yet matched her tone of moral anger, her poetry, her cruel exactness. Her words still perfectly define our challenge….

“There are moments in Life when keeping silent becomes a fault, and speaking an obligation. A civic duty, a moral challenge, a categorical imperative from which we cannot escape.”

D, LDN.