Racists Branded, Nazis Ignored

The use of the tactic had gotten so blatant that even commenters on his own side called him on it. “Jon the Anti-Zionist Jew”, a regular poster of the vilest anti-Israel diaries on Daily Kos, had the habit of calling “racist” anyone who disagreed with his opinions—anyone who showed the slightest hint of siding with Israel.

Jon was (or still is?) extreme in his employment of that ruse, hence even his komrades (sic) no longer being able to stand it, but that tactic, of using the stigmatizing term in order to brand perceived opponents as diabolical, has been a staple of the Marxists, and in the mode of operation prescribed by Antonio Gramsci, the word “racist” is the magic wand that anathematizes any desired target.

“Racist” is what Arab members of the Israeli parliament are now calling the law banning membership in it of any citizen of Israel who has visited enemy states. A sensible law, a law which would never have been contested in the past, is now being assaulted by that curse-word, that all-powerful, all-catching, damning whisper: “Racism”. The law specifically says, “Israelis”, not “Arabs”, yet the Arab Knesset Members know full well who would be on its receiving end—“The hat burns on the thief’s head”, as we say in Israel—and they know the best way of countering it: a blackmail tactic, a ploy that appeals not to reason but to the knee-jerk reaction today’s world displays upon the word, “racism”.

Today is also the 17th anniversary of the murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane, may HaShem avenge his blood. This man, the closest the nation of Israel has had to a prophet as could be after the destruction of the Temple (most of the events in Israel from 1993 to this day were foretold in his writings and speeches), was vilifed by the Israeli Left for… you guessed it: “Racism”. In 1988, when he was getting too powerful politically for comfort, the “Anti-Racist Law” was passed in order to bar him from Israeli politics. As regards world opinion, I don’t think this has helped much. Israel is now so basking in its anti-racist veneer, so much that our Dear World has given us a place of honor as the successor of South Africa. But there is something else notable about the Anti-Racist Law: it was passed by unanimous vote on part of both Left and Right in Israel. The Israeli Right was so anxious to be “with it”, so caring for its “moral purity”, that it joined hands with the Left to silence the one leader who had the only non-miraculous way of bringing lasting peace to the Jewish State. Five years later, we got the Oslo Accords, which brought to Israel the Jew-murderer Arafat and his gang from Tunis. In October 2000, we got a mini-redux of 1947 with the uprising of Arabs within our 1949 Armistice Line territories. And now, more and more of our towns are coming within rocket range. Ah, but we just had to be “Not Racists”!

Rabbi Kahane of blessed memory knew, from both the Torah and common sense, that there could be no peace for the Jewish nation in Israel if a rival nationalism were allowed to become a majority within it. The Torah says, in many places (Numbers 33:50–56 being the example I frequently quote), that the Israelites must not occupy another nation in their land, for that occupation would spell enduring trouble; but must, instead, drive out the other nations, expel anyone who does not agree with the idea that the Land of Israel is under Jewish sovereignty, under the rule of Jewish Law. The Beneš Decree, by which all the Germans of the Sudetenland were expelled in 1945, is a historical example of the necessity of insisting on national sovereignty: the region that served as the catalyst for World War II has not been on the news ever since the execution of that decree. But any discussion of expulsion or deportation gets you the boot not just from Daily Kos, but now even from ostensibly right-wing sites like Little Green Footballs and Hot Air. Because, as we all know, it’s (drum roll, please) “racist”.

And there is the word, “Nazi”, which is the same, just on steroids. The right-wing blogosphere is, in part, awash in Nazimania—in the craze of proving how the Counter-Jihad movement in Europe is being hijacked by Nazis. Yes, Nazis, as if this were still the 1930’s in a literal sense! You see, we’re now so done, so finished with the job of neutralizing the Leftists and repulsing the Muslims that we can now concentrate on the Next Big Thing™: ghosts from the past. The impulsive boss of LGF and his like-minded commenters (because the others have all been banned) did not stop to think whether the branding of certain European parties as “racist” and “white supremacist” and even “Nazi” might, just might, have something to do with the Left-Wing Spin Machine. You know, the same propaganda mill that brands LGF itself as a “fascist, racist, hate-mongering site”, and which is behind the move to criminalize all criticism of Islam as “racism”, “Western imperialism” and “Islamophobia”. So now the budding anti-Islamization movement in Europe, in the continent that is in a far worse state than the USA (and in many ways Israel too), has to contend not only with the concerted effort of the Gramscian Left and the Islamic colonialist enemy, but with smears from the American Right as well. Great, just great.

“Are there no Neo-Nazis? Are there still no Ku Klux Klan members? Are there no people in real life behind the screen names you see on Stormfront?” Yes to all, there are all those. But in this fiesta of finding Nazis everywhere, the sense of proportion has been lost: the preference of focusing on classical racists and Jew-haters rather than on the new imperialists and anti-Zionists may be compelling, especially when propped up by a treasonous media and academe managed entirely by people who have been brought up on the Marxist “dialectic”, but it is wrong. Plainly wrong. It’s about as wrong as worrying about “freedoms curtailed by wiretapping and other measures” while turning a blind eye to the real loss of freedom resultant of Politically Correct and pro-Islamic pressure and legislation (or put it this way: How many of those “brave, courageous” artists who’ve displayed unflattering depictions of Jesus are willing to do as Lars Vilks, of Modoggies fame, has done?). Yes, there are some of the scum from the 1930’s, or re-enactors of them, around, but the danger from them is by far eclipsed by the menace of today’s true heirs of the Nazis and their equally nefarious enablers: the Muslims and the Marxists, respectively.

You worry about the Jews of Europe? The Diaspora is on the way out. So our prophets foretold us. Even those of the USA are not guaranteed to stay there for long. In the meantime, there is a state full of Jews on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, surrounded by those who follow the same religion as Hitler’s ally, Mufti Haj Amin Al-Husseini, the religion founded by the one who ordered a mass grave dug and the Jews of the town murdered and thrown into it, thus predating the Einsatzgruppen by about 1,300 years. Hitler was on the march to the British-ruled Land of Israel; he was stopped at Al-Alamein, but no matter, the Muslims are perfectly intent on finishing what he failed to complete (God forbid). All aided and abetted, by the way, by the European Union.

The European Union. That part of the Caliphate-in-the-making, with its open borders and unrestricted immigration policies serving as an irresistible honey-pot for Muslims from all over the world. Marching, under the regime of Multiculturalism, to the abyss of Islamization, of full subsumption into the House of Islam, day after day. And do you know what would fall to the Muslims if Europe fell to them? Not just lands and culture, which would be a tragic loss in itself (remember the Bamiyan Buddhas? The treasures of Florence could meet the same fate), but also technology, and worse, weaponry. We are rightly worried about the prospect of Iran making nuclear weapons, but the threat of the whole European arsenal (or even the arsenal of just one European state is bad enough) falling into the Muslims’ hand like a ripe fruit has to take a back seat to ideological purity, to doing a search-and-destroy of Nazis within the Counter-Jihad Movement. Real smart, people.

Israel gained nothing for its “anti-racist” push to ostracize Rabbi Kahane. The non-Muslim resistance to the Islamic invasion can only stand to lose from taking the Leftist bait. One of our sages was once cursed by a witch, and then replied to her, “Go away; your words have no power over me, for to God alone is the power”. This magic word, “racism”, needs to be treated like the empty curse it is, not given such great consideration. As Baron Bodissey concludes, in the moral of a story:

Ladies and gentlemen, the handcuffs labeling you as “racists”, “Nazis”, and “Islamophobes” are simple to remove and discard.

The door of the PC Multicultural bus unlocks easily, and invites you to jump off and escape.

“In addition”, said Cato the Youngster, “I think the Muslims must be expelled”.

Introductory Math for Pacifists

The crushing of the revolt of Buddhist monks in Myanmar hammers the hard truth home once again, but the diameter of the Leftist cranium is of such extent that even a visual depiction may not be enough:

An inconvenient truth. The building top right is the Parliament of India. Click image to view full size.

Appease away, ye heirs of Chamberlain. And then, as you always do, come crying to your saner compatriots for help when those attempts have inevitably put you in dire straits. George Santayana’s motion is now sufficient for a whole country-wide power station.

The Path from 9/11: Six Years’ Hindsight (Part 1)

The Good War. The Bad War. “Everything was done as it should be”, say the critics, “until Iraq”. There is Afghanistan, which is a good and appropriate involvement, and there is Iraq, which the USA should never have gotten into. Up until March 2003, goes the Narrative, everything went smoothly, and everyone, including the Western Left, stood wholeheartedly behind President George W. Bush.

The archives tell a different story, however.

Sites that were there in September the 11th and keep archives of that period are invaluable. Beside preserving the pictures and voices of that terrible day, they also smash to smithereens the idea that the current Leftist treasonfest dates from the invasion of Iraq and no earlier. The archives show that, sans Vietnam comparisons (that really took Iraq to emerge), everything we are now familiar with from the Left was already there in the period right after 9/11.

LGF archived post for September 11, 2001: search for the monsters:

Commenter “øivind”:

This is the typical American reaction I completely understand - but at the same time it calls my disrespect and disgust.

It's like the palestinians vs. israelis - at first the palestinians were the big bad wolves - now the israelis are as much a part of the problem as they are - maybe even bigger.

And the israelis say they are God's chosen people? That reminds me of nazism... übermensch if you know what I mean.

I guess religion has fueled yet another conflict here with these attacks on the entire western civilization - maybe even the entire world.

The Israel/“Palestine” conflict brought into this on the very day!

Commenter Nicholas Dunham:

And Reid, yes, we do have a better understanding of what the Israelis have been living with for decades, but unfortunately, that means we also have a better understanding of what the Palestinians have been living with for decades. Both sides have committed atrocities. Neither side is innocent. That doesn't justify an act of terrorism--there is no possible justification for that--but neither is there justification for much of what has been done by the Israelis in recent years.

[…]

I also agree with Charles that some response to these events is necessary. I just think we need to be careful--first, to be sure we're going after the right people, and second, to avoid killing civilians in the process.

Postmodernism (“All narratives are of equal worth”) and the wish to fight a war under Politically Correct rules of engagement.

Commenter “J B”:

Typical American... as I suggest to all Yankies... read Non-American news... everyone else knew this was coming except the American Public... that's what happens when u watch TV Pulp... read the Press to see how much of the world is being f****d up by your "administration". Sad that people died.. but I have to say, as a spectator, u ain't seen the last of this... feelings are high around the world about American involvement in matters that have nothing to do with your country... [Expletive edited. —ZY]

Anti-Americanism, and the hint that the atrocities were blowback for US foreign policy.

LGF archived post for September 12, 2001: bush's moment:

Commenter “thomas”:

Yesterday I saw a posting on indymedia saying "On what happened in NY we had just some thousands more people (and children) dying than on every average day are dying all over the world".

Maybe you should waste some more time to think about the world as one place. [All emphases original. —ZY]

The charge of American self-centeredness.

LGF archived post for September 15, 2001: hatred rooted in failings:

Commenter “øivind” again:

well.. to clarify something... fundamentalism really means that you take your "bible" literary; as in you do whatever it tells you to do and live exactly by the rules it gives you.

these terrorists only take parts of their "bible", the koran, and turn it into a soup of religious trash.

they are in no way fundamentalists.

as for these terrorists - they are sad souls.

The idea that Islamic terrorism is nothing but a perversion of a truly peaceful religion.

And, following a comment by “danny” in which two links, one about Vietnam and the other about Hiroshima, were posted with the close, “try and think about these things before you feel a victim”, commenter “PhotoDude” observes:

Charles, it seems your weblog has become a magnet for a few people who seem unmoved by the death of thousands of innocents. They still see this as a mere comeuppance for the US, not as an assault upon humanity. They seem to forget that up to half the dead did not even come from the US.

Commenter “danny” responds:

[…] A ‘war’ on terrorism? Does bush honestly think that he will win it? I think not. I remember reading a quote once, which said, “The authorities need to get lucky all the time where as the terrorist need to get lucky only once”. What hasn’t been mentioned is the fact that the US, via the CIA, actually sponsored the Taliban and bin Ladin during the occupation of Afghanistan by the Russians. Americans need to start reading the history books again.

The genesis of John Edwards’ quip, “‘War on Terror’ is just a bumper sticker”, and another charge of blowback for past US policies.

Thus much from a few commenters posting on LGF, back when it was beginning its transformation from being mainly about bicycling and web coding to today’s Anti-Idiotarian Headquarters. But let us hear it from official lefty sources. CounterPunch and Common Dreams keep archives of that period.

From CounterPunch’s page, titled “CounterPunch on 9/11 and War on Afghanistan” (yes, war on Afghanistan, not on Terror, let alone Islam—already a damper on the notion that it was regarded as The Good War):

From Sense and Nonsense About September 11, by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair, from September 12, 2001:

The commentators were similarly incapable of explaining with any depth the likely context of the attacks. It was possible to watch the cream of the nation's political analysts and commentating classes, hour after hour, without ever hearing the word "Israel", unless in the context of a salutary teacher in how to deal with Muslims. One could watch hour after hour without hearing any intimation that these attacks might be the consequence of the recent Israeli rampages in the Occupied Territories that have included assassinations of Palestinian leaders and the slaughter of Palestinian civilians with the use of American aircraft; that these attacks might also stem from the sanctions against Iraq that have seen upward of a million children die; that these attacks might in part be a response to US cruise missile attacks on the Sudanese factories that had been loosely fingered by US intelligence as connected to bin-Laden.

All on the lines of, “She had it coming because she was wearing scant clothing”. “Strong Is Wrong”, therefore “Plight Makes Right”, which in the context of this conflict translates to “Jihad Is Just”.

Or take this quote:

Before I support a war that will jeopardize the lives of tens of thousands of our servicemen and women, I want to see the evidence that we are relying on to justify this. So far, I do not see it. I see allegations. I see innuendo. I see winks and I see nods, but I do not see the evidence that you need under international law and the United States constitution so far to go to war. Maybe that evidence will be there, but it is not there now.

It’s about the prelude to the Iraq War, right? Nope. It’s the words of law professor Francis Boyle in a debate with Bill O’Reilly on September 15, 2001.

From the Common Dreams archive, this September 12, 2001 piece from Stephen Zunes: U.S. Shouldn't Fight Violence With Violence (a “promising” title already):

Terrorism is not rational, but an emotive reaction by frustrated and angry people. Yet the common reaction to terrorism is often no less rational, no less a reaction by a frustrated and angry people.

Yes, the approach to it all from the vantage point of the chair next to the patient’s couch. “You want to talk about it?”

More:

It would behoove this great nation not to respond to yesterday's terrorist attack on America in ways that would restrict civil liberties, particularly if the terrorists are from an immigrant community. Already, analogies are being drawn to Pearl Harbor, which resulted in the internment of tens of thousands of loyal U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry.

The seeds of the charge that Bush is taking opportunity of the “War on Terror” in order to assume dictatorial powers.

And more:

Indeed, not only did it avoid resolving the Palestinian question - the key to peace in the Middle East […]

An assertion repeated, again and again, serving as the basis for every Israel/“Palestine” diary on Daily Kos, but given no evidence whatever to support it.

Lastly, from September 15, 2001, by Jesse C. Buikema, the piece Gandhi Knew Not to Fight Violence with Violence:

Gandhi had the wisdom and the courage to stand up to the British Empire without firing a shot, without retaliating after the massacre and torture of his people.

The typical carrying of Gandhi’s (long may he roast in hell, amen) mindset by the “reality-based community” over to a situation where it cannot apply (or, as I once wrote: had Gandhi lived and acted so in the days the Muslim ruler Aurangzeb, he would have won the independence of his head from his body).

And the last quote I bring here:

If we choose the freeway -- the quick solution -- we shall run the risk of being just like them -- hateful, vengeful, cowardly and ignorant.

Ah. “Beware, when fighting monsters, lest you become a monster yourself”. But the monsters have full moral right to keep on being monsters, and to remake the whole world in their monstrous image (God forbid).

I think the idea is pretty clear: the “Iraq blew it all” narrative is either a case of memory deficiency, or worse, a sham. The Leftists have been on the other side since Day One, giving moral support to the enemy, if only through their intimation that 9/11 was the result of the backfiring of past US foreign policy. Afghanistan was never a Good War; the Leftists, right from the start, called for “avoiding innocent civilian casualties”, even at the price of letting the Taliban win by hiding among the women and children. Their call to sacrifice Israel (“an evenhanded Mideast policy”) in order to appease the Muslims’ wrath was sounded on September 12. The shrieks about “the danger to civil liberties posed by anti-terrorism measures” were already present in those days. Everything was already in place—everything that we are now told is the result of Iraq.

Continue to Part 2 »

[Blogmaster’s note: both parts are really one post that I split up after finishing their writing, because of the exceptional length, even for an essay blog like mine; but I wish to treat this as one post as far as comments go, so please go to Part 2 if you wish to comment.]

The Path from 9/11: Six Years’ Hindsight (Part 2)

« Continued from Part 1

So the myth of the Afghanistan Good War is here shown. And yet, whether you think the invasion of Afghanistan was a good move or a bad one, there is one thing shared by both sides regarding it: the knowledge of its inevitability. No one, and that really means no one, was in doubt that the USA had its eyes on invading Afghanistan. This was so because it was the most obvious, and, dare I say, knee-jerk—but not in the way the Leftists mean it—reaction.

Today, six years after, we have new footage of Osama Bin Laden (may he go to hell soon, amen, or burn there long if he already is there), with him sporting a modified beard to give him a younger, more healthy look, probably to serve as an allegory of the state of the worldwide jihad for the infidels. Whether that is really him, or someone dressed up as a look-alike, or perhaps the fruit of the wonders of Photoshop (which the Muslims got acquainted with in the 2006 Lebanon War), the focus on Osama Bin Laden (and, therefore, on his hiding place of Afghanistan) was as erroneous then as it is now.

What foolishness has gripped both sides of the political map as to think that this war is tied with the fate of Osama Bin Laden? What would the capture or killing of Bin Laden do except provide us a few moments of cheering, only to be followed by the continuance of the same, same, same process we have been going through all these years? Did the killing Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi (long may he roast in hell, amen) end the terrorism in Iraq? Is Osama Bin Laden the sine qua non for the Demographic Jihad of Muslims in Europe, or for rioting and demands for appeasement after every perceived outrage toward the Muslims? What are the Taliban even, if not a localized branch of the global jihad, on an equal footing with the Kashmiri jihadists, with Hizb ut-Tahrir in Britain, with the Kosovo and Southern Thailand “separatists”, and with the fictitious “Palestinian nation” in Israel? Osama, the Taliban and Afghanistan are non-issues now, as they were on September 12, 2001.

“We fight them there so we won’t have to fight them here”. But they are here, in great and ever increasing numbers. And wherever they are found in sizable numbers, there the state has to take costly anti-terrorism measures, and to go through “racial strife”, so misnamed by the left-leaning Mainstream Media, that would never arise without them.

Every state in the world today can be seen to be in one of four stages regarding Islamification:

1. Small numbers, sufficient only for forming interest groups and litigation forums (such as CAIR). Examples: the USA, Australia, Eastern Europe.
2. Large numbers, forming effective Islamic colonies, each a law unto itself. Examples: London, Brussels, Malmö.
3. A fully armed grouping, within or on the border or even both, forming a physical threat. Examples: Israel, Serbia, (Southern) Thailand, Ethiopia.
4. Islamic. Non-Muslim subjects face discrimination in court at best (Egypt, Malaysia), regular persecution in most cases (Pakistan), and at worst the threat of elimination (Iraq).

The biggest mistake is the particular, parochial, piecemeal view of this conflict, taking every part of the world in isolation. To talk of “Kashmiri fighters for self-determination”, of “Malay separatists in Southern Thailand” or of “The Palestinian struggle” bespeaks cluelessness about the whole conflict. Many of the Leftists do better than that: by talking of “the desire of Muslims for real freedom from the increasing political domination over the Islamic peoples by Western (Christian and Jewish) parts of the world” (thus from CounterPunch’s Bill Christison), they get things completely backward, but they don’t make the mistake of viewing every part of the world to itself. The pattern of suicide terrorism, rearing children to be suicide terrorists, riots following every small outrage, and demands to accommodate the needs of Muslims after every such rioting or terrorist attack, just recur all over the world. The same everywhere. It has turned out to be an elephant in the room, such that one needs to be a “reality-based thinker” in order to miss it.

And there is another mistake: the Western sense of obligation. In his essay from October 10, 2006, Recommendations for the West, Fjordman says:

The West is declining as a percentage of world population, and in danger of being overwhelmed by immigration from poorer countries with booming populations. Westerners need to adjust our self-image to being less dominant in the 21st century. As such, we also need to ditch Messianic altruism: The West must first of all save itself. We have no obligation to “save” the Islamic world, and do not have the financial strength nor the demographic numbers to do so even if we wanted to. We are not all-powerful and are not in the position to help all of the Third World out of poverty, certainly not by allowing all of them to move here. [Emphasis mine. —ZY]

While Afghanistan was born of the error of focusing on Osama Bin Laden, Iraq—under the premise that it was about “winning hearts and minds” through democratization—was born of that error, the sentimental sense of obligation, that carryover of Rudyard Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden” days. So it is that American soldiers, meant to fight wars and kill enemies, could be seen in Iraq, and later also in Afghanistan, giving sweets and toys (among others, footballs with the name of Allah imprinted on them, which “provoked” swift outrage from the parents of the beneficiaries) to children, like a group of Europeans giving presents to the natives upon whose island they had stumbled. “Winning hearts and minds”—a phrase directly from the Vietnam days! And a patronizing mindset at that. For, as Rabbi Meir Kahane (HY"D) said, in a different time (1990) and concerning other people (the Arabs of Israel), in his last essay, Israel: Revolution or Referendum:

For years, the contempt of Jewish leftists and liberals for Arabs was stupefying. The myth of the happy Israeli Arab, so much better off than the Arabs of Iraq or Egypt. We have given them electricity and indoor toilets and now they sit happily grateful. Loving us. What contempt! Is there one person with a shred of respect for himself who believes that Arabs will trade their national pride for electricity or indoor toilets?

Yes, that patronizing error, of “winning hearts and minds” by giving people the opportunity to improve their material situation, when, all the time, their hearts desire the fulfillment of an ideological goal.

“Tiny minority of extremists”. “Material improvements will moderate them”. “Religion is just a dress for pragmatic goals”. Wrong, all wrong. Jihadists may be few, but their support base is huge, making up the majority of Muslims worldwide. Material improvements only increase their loathing toward “the corrupt and immoral West”, just as they did for Sayyid Qutb when he spent time in the USA as a student in the 1950’s. And religion for the Muslims, unlike for many Christians today, is all-pervading, and taken seriously by all. You talk of secular Jews in Israel, and everyone accepts its reality, even if they do not approve; but if you talk of “secular Muslims”, eyes widen in disbelief. They pride themselves on “being untouched by the tide of secularism”; and whoever of them wishes to eat during daytime in the month of Ramadan must do so in secret. Think of Medieval Europe, not of your own present existence, and you will gain some understanding of their mindset, remnant of an age when being an open unbeliever was not an option. They really do nearly all of them take their religion seriously—including its supremacist doctrines, which are supported by canon. There is no “moderate Koran”.

Thus the USA plodded from Afghanistan to Iraq, when, as one Hot Air commenter said, the surge should have been carried out in Europe. And now the sights are set on Iran. Considering that Iran is being made into a suicide-martyr country by its nuclear mullahs, that move probably makes sense—if only a way can be found to take out all the threats, which could be hidden underground anywhere in that vast country. But I cannot help saying that this could be the culmination of nearly a millennium and a half of a great tragedy. The Persians are an ancient and noble people who have been forced to wallow in the excrement of the Arabian camel for over 1,300 years. Some may be in glee over the prospect of “turning Tehran into glass”, but I, if alive to see that, could not regard it as anything but the tragic end of the cultural rape of what was once the light among world empires. Such a fate for the cities of Saudi Arabia would leave me thinking, “Ishmael has met his reward”; not so for those of Iran.

It is on this note that I count the movie 300 as a notable expression of erroneous thinking. Perhaps the timing was coincidental, but it has not been interpreted as such, so I too take that movie to be as rallying for the war of Freedom (Sparta) against Oppression (Persia). I view that in utter contempt, for it makes not one but two errors: the assumption that the present conflict is about Iranian nationalism, and the construing of Sparta as a bastion of freedom. Iranian nationalism, just as Russian nationalism was during Uncle Joe’s day, is occasionally used as a tool for agitation, but that is a disingenuous use; in reality, Iran is being led by the interests of Islam against its own, even to the detriment of its very existence. And Sparta—Sparta as a bastion of Western freedom?! Sparta was one of the first fully-documented fascist states! Sparta, with its top-down micromanagement of every man’s life, from cradle to grave, a bastion of freedom?! Sparta was an abomination that foreshadowed Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and from which the fighters for the Islamic Caliphate do not hesitate to learn a thing or two! Sparta, where unfit babies where left on Mount Taygetos to die—a model for eugenics and abortion. How can any lover of freedom not recoil in disgust from identifying with Sparta?!

In the end, the only argument that had any merit for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq was the argument that they were support bases for the jihad—that arms and funding flowed from them. But then that leaves as a wide, gaping hole the treatment of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, with whose fanatical Wahhabi leaders President Bush unashamedly holds hands; Saudi Arabia, with which Bush has made student exchanges, thus bringing more potential terrorists to his own soil; Saudi Arabia, which is regarded as an ally of the USA, all while churning out anti-non-Muslim, anti-American, anti-Western and anti-Jewish literature with no holds barred; Saudi Arabia, whose oil money finances the Demographic Jihad in Europe and the Legal Jihad over all the West. If there was ever a case for invasion and complete takeover, this is it. But no, that could not be done, for it would “alienate all the Muslims of the world”. As if the Muslims needed a good reason to be alienated.

Six years after 9/11, the man in the non-Muslim street is in various degrees of having come to those insights, away from the past errors; the leaders, however, have mostly not, and even if they have, lack the will to act upon them. Mass deportation or expulsion, for example, is, in my opinion, among the first steps for Fjordman’s vision of saving the West, but how could it possibly be put into practice when the academics, the media and the chattering classes insist on portraying such measures as “racism”?

It has been asked, “What would it take to wake people up?” Some have said it would have to be a nuclear attack (God forbid), but I disagree: if 9/11 didn’t do that, nothing of that same sort (violent attack) will. The Danish Cartoons Affair woke up much more people than 9/11 did. My question is, instead, “Will the fall of some Western state to shariah law wake people up?” 9/11, in hindsight, could never wake people to the threat, because the best analogy they could come with for it was Pearl Harbor, while the enemy at hand is not dependent on a state (Afghanistan or any other) and not dependent on a charismatic leader (Bin Laden or any other). 9/11 was a demonstration of intent; but it was the Danish Cartoons Affair, and the Pope Benedict Quotes Affair, that did something in the way of showing the nature of the threat. A military threat on the part of Muslims is only the third stage, a late one; the first two are equally dangerous, and perhaps more so, because they can catch a country unawares, especially when aided and abetted by the Muslim-sympathizing media of today.

In a way, 9/11 might be remembered one day as a saving grace of the non-Muslim world, waking it up to what could have been a silent takeover through the Demographic Jihad. But whether the non-Muslim world will be saved depends on having the correct interpretation of it, and on the ascension to power of those who adhere to that interpretation.

In the prairies of North America, in the fens and heaths of the British Isles, near the lakes and rivers of the Balkans, on the snowy mountain-tops of Ethiopia, at the foot of the world’s highest mountains in India, in the rice fields of Thailand, in the vast deserts of Australia, and last but not least, on the holy soil of the Land of Israel, may HaShem be with you all in this fight. “And he shall be a wild ass of a man: his hand shall be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the face of all his brethren.” (Genesis 16:12)

“Kos Eisley. You will never find…”

Only a Sith deals in absolutes, good is a point of view, yada yada, but when push comes to shove, there are facts on the ground that a man must face, even if that means having to leave a whole childhood’s worth of postmodern “fuzzy logic” indoctrination. And then those who defend the indefensible, even going against the very core principles they stand for, can’t be called anything but, “lost”.

Even an herbivore like Yoda knows there’s a time to switch on the lightsaber. Click image to view full size.

To all the bleeding hearts: the comparison is actually tame. The Muslims are worse: they kill their own younglings.

(Nope, this post doesn’t have anything to do with Daily Kos this time. But I needed a catchy title!)

Wikipedia: Golding Digitized

From time to time a new scandal arises, such as the Siegenthaler affair and now the launch of a tool for listing anonymous Wikipedia edits by organizations, raising to the fore the problematic nature of an “encyclopedia anyone can edit”. This post, however, is not an addition to the already saturated opinion-market of essays telling the world how Wikipedia sucks; Wikipedia is here used only as an illustration, an exemplar of a general problem. In the world of computing, Wikipedia is just a vivid and expanded demonstration of the truth that “permit all” is usually followed by “delete all” (or, as Unix buffs say: chmod 777 usually comes before rm -r -f). In the world of culture and human anthropology, which I have an inordinate interest in, Wikipedia is an illustration of the tabula rasa (blank slate) fallacy.

Wikipedia is just another in a slew of anarchist ideas—the idea of “a smoothly-functioning anarchy” (the words of Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Project), the idea of “a self-policing system”, the idea of “a consensus-driven community”, the idea of “the dictatorship of the proletariat”, and you get the drift. It doesn’t matter if Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, is an anarchist or not; the idea can be traced to that pedigree, even if Wales developed it independently. Whether intentionally or not, Wikipedia has its place in the long list of enterprises in which the creator or founder really plays God, making an experiment whose pillar is creation from scratch—the aforementioned tabula rasa. A very interesting fact, for the Bible describes how God Himself, because of the free will and the passions He has given humans, voices His total rejection of the concept of tabula rasa.

Successful art is usually deemed as such because it stands the test of time. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is relatively recent (1954), but its ideas are timeless, and its core idea (as far as I gather) is that Biblical idea that tabula rasa utopianism is a grave error. A bunch of little kids is stranded on an island paradise: they have a goal (returning to civilization), they have their needs provided (the fruits of the trees on that island), and they have minimal sources of friction (no girls to fight over, for example). It is really a clean slate, and by rights it ought to function smoothly. Yet little time passes before they partake of the same afflictions of all other societies: factionalism (the Merrydew schism), murder and—finally—the burning of the trees, the source of their sustenance. The beast is indeed within those kids, no matter how favorable the external conditions have been from the start.

Wikipedia’s lack of professionalism is the hot topic, the popular point of discussion; under the radar, however, slips the issue of what Wikipedia was conceived to be as opposed to what it has become. Bureaucrats, administrators, piles upon piles of rules, vital actions bogged down by procedure, pages put under protection or semi-protection—a complex, elaborate, monstrous, labyrinthine system that belies the entire initial concept. Yes, you don’t need to tell me: those changes were necessitated by the circumstances. No argument here. But this is proof of the fallacious nature of tabula rasa utopianism. This is the same, exact same idea as in Golding’s Lord of the Flies, and in its (conscious or unconscious) source, the Bible, the Word of HaShem.

How many times have we seen that happen? “Such if we do, heaven will be created on earth”, only to prove dismal at best, forcing the founders to take a turn diametrically opposed to their original vision. The “smoothly-functioning anarchy” envisioned by Richard Stallman and Eric Raymond is most popularly demonstrated by the Linux kernel, but the Linux kernel is free of the schisms and bureaucratic creep that have plagued other open-source projects because it is under the rule of a dictator (Linus Torvalds), even if that dictator is semi-jokingly called a benevolent one. The Marxist experiment, spawning one of the cruelest dictatorships in history (Stalin’s, long may he roast in hell, amen) and 100,000,000 deaths in its wake, was another attempt to solve humanity’s problem by creating from scratch, as if human beings were program source code to be cleaned by doing a complete rewrite.

Or religious reforms. Many an attempt at religious reform aims to clean up the religion from what are considered sinful accretions, such as commercialism, ritualism, legalism and getting entwined with the state, only to become a religion in its own right, moreover usually succumbing to the same accretions that the reformer-founders aimed to dispose of. For example, the Jewish reformer who is described to have railed against the commercialism near the Temple, turning the stalls, spawned a religion in which, a few centuries afterward, many of the men of cloth engaged in their own forms of crass commercialism (such as the sale of relics). Similarly, Protestantism had the goal of “ridding the religion of all the priestcraft, of the priests and popes telling people how to read the Bible”, but ministers and reverends fill the niche quite nicely. The Muslims pride themselves of belonging to a religion without priests, to contrast with the “Jewish and Christian corruptions”; true, Islam has no priests, but, once again, it has a class that fills that hole well. Buddhism may have started as a rebellion against the excesses and empty piety of the Hindu Brahmins; Buddhist functionaries can compete with the best (worst) of those. Sikhism was meant to purify religion of empty ritual, focusing instead on “God’s True Name”; there is no shortage of ritual that has accumulated there over time. And finally, scientific rationalism aimed to purge humanity of all the “primitive superstitions born of unreason”, all the religions, all beliefs in the supernatural; secular religions quickly took to fill the void, and, on the way, drenched the world in blood in the course of the 20th century.

All this consistent track record, of the failure of tabula rasa experiments, could have been avoided, had mankind listened to what God has to say on the matter. The Bible lists these occurrences from start to finish, and even if some parts of it are not taken literally, the lesson is a stupefying one. Adam and Eve; the post-Flood generation that built the Tower of Babel; and then the periodical fall into transgression by the one nation that HaShem had consecrated for His purposes, the Israelites. A clean slate, followed by a fall into weak human lapses. Golding set out the idea in another form, but it’s God’s lesson unto us anyway you put it.

These falls into transgression from an initial pure state—are they oversights on God’s part, as the unbelievers say? Perish the thought. It is not but our Creator drumming the truths of our nature—and He knows best, for He is the manufacturer—into our thick skulls. God says (Genesis 6:5):

And the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

And he also says (Genesis 8:21):

For the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth. (&c)

Now the Jewish view differs from the Christian one, in that the latter says humans are incapable of standing up to their evil inclination while the former says they are (based on HaShem’s words to Cain, in Genesis 4:7: “[…] But thou mayest rule over it”). But the view that humans are inclined toward evil is shared by the two religions, because the Bible (in the above two passages, for example) is absolutely clear about this. God’s word brings the rational explanation to the phenomenon that every eye—every eye not letting the predetermined opposite doctrine get in its way, that is—can see. Every eye can observe the scrapping of tots with each other at kindergarten: the selfishness, the vindictiveness, the cruelty. And all of this, unlearned. Did the parents teach them to be that way? No, most chances are that the parents, when they see it, react in shock and try to do something to counter it. Untaught to be evil. Unimparted propensity for bad behavior. Goodness has to be taught to the child, and fought for throughout all his life; badness comes naturally.

Do you now realize the secret behind the tabula rasa fallacy? God tells us: there is no such thing. There is no clean slate. There is no escape, not even an island paradise setting as in Golding’s book! Those kids had the benefit of an external clean slate, yes, but internally they started with the same fully-occupied slate as every human being—the basic fact of human nature, the inclination of human beings toward wrongdoing. Judaism says it can be overcome, through effort—but Judaism rejects the idea that good and thoughtful planning by human beings can guarantee the neutralization of that basic evil. It’s not ours to create humans anew; God has the first, last and only say in that matter.

So many times, before I got religion, I looked at passages in the Torah and said, “This is open to abuse!” I was reading it with the critical eye of a hippified anarchist, regarding it as a book authored by humans for furthering their tyranny over the masses. “This is for giving an unlimited supply of food to the priests! How convenient”, I said. “This passage means the rabbis have unlimited power over the common man”, I said. But now I see, that even if the spirit of those thoughts still has a grain of truth in it—there is free will for everyone to abuse his power, after all—I know that such attempts at correction as humans (particularly leftists like I was then) have undertaken have never led to the desired effect, to the utopia hoped for.

The fact is there is no human guarantee in anything. From the 18th century, scientific rationalists envisioned a world in which science and reason provided the solution to most (if not all) of humanity’s problems. Quite apart from the world wars caused by non-religious ideologies, the fact is technological advances have brought a mixture of blessings and curses, which add up to the same situation as humanity has always been. Courses on “success in business”, rationally-sounding though they are tailored to be, are a mass of superstitious nonsense that would make any Middle Ager proud. Just as you can take all the steps detailed in a book by Bill Gates or Donald Trump telling you how they got rich, but to no avail, there is no reason why scientific rationalism should improve the human condition. And the various medical suggestions given for evading the mortal diseases of our time (HaShem guard us and save us) can only improve statistical probability, which is no help if genetics or some other unexpected thing gets in the way (example: a young, healthy sportsman dying of a heart attack in the middle of a game, HaShem guard us).

Therefore there is no good word except HaShem’s mitzvah from last week’s Torah portion (Deuteronomy 18:13):

Thou shalt be whole-hearted with the LORD thy God.

Tamim: whole-hearted, complete, childlike in trust. Working with what He created, not trying to get around it through sophisticated attempts at improvement. Recognizing that His creation, because of the very fact of being His creation, is not a blank slate. Not attempting to play God by creating a micro-world or micro-humanity, but building on what He created. Asher bara E-lohim la’asot (Genesis 2:3): literally “Which God created to do”, and our sages of blessed memory say of it: He created it for humans to build on it. Not for humans to dispute it and try their own hand at creation. If you have any doubts about the error of that, just look at the track record.

Shabbat Shalom!

Desert, but no Manna

It is one of the countless examples of the hypocrisy of Cultural Marxism, that it can lump Judaism, Christianity and Islam together in “primitive backwardness, Abrahamic morality and divinely-ordered atrocity”, but then turn an admiring eye to the one religion that has not been tempered by any form of Enlightenment, the one religion whose adherents are overwhelmingly in the mindset of an age which in the Western world is now deemed to be all but a historical curiosity. I find no more interesting an endeavor than unraveling the system that makes such seeming doublethink possible.

I have seen the phrase, “Desert Monotheism” used in the conflation of Biblical and Koranic religion. The Cultural Marxists say it refers to the origins of both: the giving of Torah at the foot of the mountain in the middle of the Sinai Desert, and, l’havdil (“to distinguish”), the alleged revelation of the Koran to Mohammed in a cave in the middle of the Arabian Desert. To frame both religious traditions as desert monotheisms because of a single event is already something to be suspected of superficiality; in truth, the Marxists do not believe in it themselves, but use it as their tu quoque (“You too”) club, whenever someone points the violence of Islam from the Koran. If they believed in it, they wouldn’t accord Islam a special status. Is it a cynical ploy? Is it born of fear, fear of the one religion whose followers are not reluctant to wreak revenge for any perceived slight to their feelings? Or is there something real, inner and spiritual about this exception-making? My attempted answer cannot cover all of them, and I am sure there are a few of them who parrot words without inner conviction, but my experience with the modern Left tells me there must be some inward convergence, otherwise there would not be such zeal and fervor in the Left/Islam alliance as we see today. And I believe the phrase, “Desert Monotheism” is where it begins and ends.

As with many foundations underlying the Left/Islam alliance, the “Desert Monotheism” grouping of Biblical and Koranic traditions is a lie. The role and perception of the desert in the Biblical tradition is far different from that in the Koran. If cultural truth were allowed to have a say in naming names, then only Islam would be called a desert monotheism. Only Islam was born in the desert, is culturally bound to it and brings it along to every place it comes. Judaism was not born in the desert, despite the location of its founding event, and is not culturally tied to it. Christianity, having the Greco-Roman world as its background, is even less so. In the Biblical tradition, the desert occupies a place in the sidelines and is a tool in HaShem’s hands; in the Koranic tradition, the desert is the whole setting, the stage on which the entire drama takes place, and without which the religion cannot be fully understood.

The founding narrative of the Jewish nation is based on three points in a line:

• Egypt: the gilded cage to be escaped.
• The Sinai Desert: the necessary route to take in order to reach the goal.
• The Land of Israel: the goal, the hard-won but spiritually unique destination.

Egypt, the rich land, whose generosity is guaranteed by the regular flooding of the Nile, is a gilded cage, both spiritually and (later, and also symbolized by that) physically. Because of the confidence in the Nile, the Egyptians’ eyes had no need of being raised upward in beseeching of the divine, with the result that they created their deities in such images that even the Greeks and the Romans, masters of creating the divine in human image, were shocked. Our sages of blessed memory tell us how defiled Egypt was, how filthy with dark spiritual practices, like sorcery, divination, necromancy and sexual immorality. After generations of living on the fat of the land, the time came for the Israelites to pay up, with the currency of physical slavery—real, but also a symbol for the high price paid by those who are lost in their estrangement from HaShem, slavery of the worst kind.

The reality behind the most famous tourism site in the world is necromancy.

To an outside observer, the Land of Israel would not look as rich as Egypt; in our day, the joke about Moses meaning to bring the Israelites to Canada, but saying, “Canaan” instead because of his stutter, comes to mind. But they err that compare Egypt and the Land of Israel through physical eyes alone. The Land of Israel has the vast, incomparable bounty and advantage over Egypt—over any other land in the world—in that it is under the direct rule of HaShem. It can produce ample physical bounty—a land flowing with milk and honey—but it does so in direct proportion to the spiritual rectitude of its inhabitants. The Torah warns us of this so many times: walk with HaShem and you will prosper in the Land of Israel; disobey (God guard us), and the Land of Israel will spew you out. The bounty of the Land of Israel cannot be measured, because it is a spiritual one.

The focus of Jewish hopes for generations, and why they desire no other land than the Land of Israel.

Between Egypt and the Land of Israel is the Sinai Desert. No other way to get from Egypt to the Land of Israel by land. The desert is an ambivalent place, a place full of doubt: physical hardship that, on the one hand, prepares one for an existence of trusting in HaShem, but, on the other, is the opposite of both Egypt and the Land of Israel as regards permanence. Nowhere is this more illustrated than by the Tabernacle, which was dismantled and rebuilt each day, while the Temple in Jerusalem was a permanent building.

We received the Torah there, but it was not the destination.

The Biblical story of the Israelites’ passing through the desert cannot be told without reference to the manna, the bread given from above. Our forefathers did not desire to adopt Bedouin ways; when they sensed the hardship of desert life, all the more so after Egypt, they cried out to HaShem. He answered them, and sustained them all the years with food from above. It was another symbol of the impermanence of the desert: since one cannot live on miracles forever, it is clear that the manna was only a temporary measure, until the arrival at the Land of Israel. The desert was where we received the Torah, but the Torah given at Sinai contains such mitzvot as the Sabbatical Year (one in seven years of ceasing to work the fields), which cannot apply to the desert. And the desert was also a punishment: for believing the lies that the Ten Spies uttered about the Land of Israel, the entire generation was condemned to roam the desert until dying out. All in all, the desert was a necessary evil, the place of Israel’s birth-pangs. The Biblical narrative is conclusive: it is not HaShem’s requirement for mankind to be desert-dwellers in order to be spiritually fulfilled. The desert was preparation for a life of trusting in Him, but the life itself, a life of completeness through carrying all His 613 mitzvot, was to take place in inhabited land, in the Land of Israel.

Islam sprang out from a totally different setting.

Islam emerged in the Arabian Desert, in the area of two oases surrounded by uninhabited desert. The desert was not merely a transition between Mecca and Medina; those two cities were enveloped by it, and served as a life-belt from it. The contrast was not between a rich but defiled land and a rich and sacred land, with a desert separating them, but between desert and non-desert: between the sanctuary and life hanging upon a thread. The Arabian desert-dwellers would come to those fertile points to set their livestock to graze—another important point. Whereas Egypt was marked by lethargy, born of the consistent flooding of the Nile, Arab Bedouin existence was marked by a life dependent on taking what one had not toiled for.

Bedouin existence was, spiritually, a little better than that of Egypt, in that the circumstances forced the desert nomads to raise their eyes upward; but they did not raise their eyes in expectation of manna, they raised them for a reprieve from the fate of next day or month or year. For the Israelites, desert life was a transition, and continuous roaming of the desert was a punishment; for the Bedouins, desert life was their main existence, punctuated only by forays into fertile fields worked by others. The Bible is centered on the arrival at the Promised Land; but for the Arab Bedouin, in contrast, there is no Promised Land, there is only an oasis for refueling, a race to reach there before dying of thirst.

The tenuous existence in the desert shaped the whole worldview of the Bedouins, and consequently of the religion of Islam.

The Koran advertises itself repeatedly as a “clear guidance”. The term for that, huda, according to Malise Ruthven’s Islam and the World, means “desert guide, the tribesman on whose navigation skills the tribe depends in order to reach the oasis”. The word “shariah” itself means, “the way to water”. Islam views mankind’s entire existence as a roaming in the desert, with Allah being the only reliable guide to the oasis. Desert life being such a stark struggle between life and death, it is no wonder that Islam’s afterlife paradise is described in the most lurid of physical terms. Jewish commentators on Islam have long faulted the religion for promising its adherents a reward that can be had in this life. It is only natural for adherents of a Biblical worldview to look down upon that, just as it is natural for a religion born in the harsh world of the desert to promise rewards of this kind. The Biblical worldview promises the follower that God will take care of his physical needs if he does His will, leaving him with the leisure and desire to seek out God Himself, His spiritual splendor; in contrast, the Koranic worldview, desert born, has the physical promises running over, splashing out from the cup of this life onto the afterlife. “A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity”, said Winston Churchill on Islam, more than a century ago.

The desert nomad sustains himself by punctuated forays into fertile lands; he sets his livestock upon fields tilled by others. This modus vivendi has been carried over to Islam and its adherents to this day: appropriation of the accomplishments of others, both physical and cultural, has been the hallmark of the Islamic colonialists from the 7th century to our times, each appropriation often followed by a fraudulent claim to original ownership. The golden cow-udder standing on top of the ruins of the Temple in Jerusalem is the most prominent example of this, along with the usurpation of the Jewish ownership of the Land of Israel by means of the Fakestinian Nation narrative.

And it is an object of admiration for many Cultural Marxists worldwide.

Oh, the desert! Pristine land, unsullied by the hands of capitalism, industrialism, commercialism and other forms of man-made modifications of the original state! Oh, the Bedouins! Free as the air, authentic, sprung from the soil, untouched by the artificial mannerisms of townspeople! Oh, all that we had but have lost! All the things we once were (according to the Primitivist narrative, conceived by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Father of All Hippies) and would wish to have once again! Can we have them? Can we turn the clock back? Maybe, maybe not, but if not, at least we can support the Bedouins in their moves against that hated Western, Bible-based civilization, use them as proxy avengers of our wrath.

Those Cultural Marxists understand what eludes many scholars: the primitivist affinity between Marxism and Islam. Marxism longs for return to a mythical world “Before Capitalism”; the Bedouin nomad looks like an authentic remnant of that long-lost paradisical age; therefore the alliance between the Marxist primitivists and the active representatives of Bedouin life, the Muslims, is a natural and spiritual one.

It is also natural because Marxism is built upon legalizing theft. Communist regimes had their upper class and their vast stratum of poor, downtrodden people, just as—usually far worse than—did the hated capitalist countries of the world, but the upper class justified it as “taking from the rich in order to give to the poor”, and with the mindset, both internalized and externally voiced, that the wealth never belonged to the original owners in the first place (“Property is theft”). As today both Venezuela and Zimbabwe, once rich countries reduced to financial ruin under their Marxist dictators, show, the micromanaged economies espoused by the Far Left are total failures at production; therefore, the only recourse for those countries, or for their rulers, is to live off the work of others. Marxist robber, meet the Bedouin setting his livestock to graze on another’s field—or the Bedouin’s representative on the modern geopolitical stage, the Muslim.

This World War is between those who wish to desertify the whole world and those who believe in the Promised Land, in eating the fruit of one’s labors (Psalms 128:2); between those who believe mankind’s pristine existence is a canonized goal, and those who believe the world was meant to be worked, those who believe the Garden of Eden is not the initial state but the result of mankind’s toil (Genesis 2:15); and between those who are trapped in viewing prosperity as either a brief respite from the harsh day-to-day reality (an oasis in the desert) or a fantastic, patently unrealistic cornucopia (a lustful carnal paradise), and those who set their eyes onto bountiful, yet moderate and spiritually conducive, prosperity.

This war begins with the idea of how the world should be, and there it also ends.

The Poor of Your City

Long before the NY Times, the BBC and Haaretz, there were the geographic magazines.

Starting from an issue I got as a birthday present, I’ve been a consistent reader of geographic magazines, such as the local Masa Acher and international ones like National Geographic. When I started reading them, Al Gore had not yet invented the Internet (just kidding—I meant to say this was before the popularization of the ’Net in the early 1990’s), so these were truly my first window onto the large world. Fascinating reads, all of them: chock-full of descriptions, narrations, background stories and, best of all, photos. Intriguing cultural customs from all over the world. Many instances of shattering misconceptions as to what was universal throughout humanity and what was not.

Formation of political opinions was far off—this little kid was still at the stage of believing everything his parents said. And yet, the more I read those magazines, the more I found something disturbing.

One thing adults tend to overlook in little children is the fact that, because of their innocence, they are the most rigorous comparers of the ideal with the reality. I was sold on the idea that geographic magazines were unvarnished descriptions of other places and all that is in them. I thought, in simplicity: the writer would go to the destination, take notes and photographs, return to his offices, prepare the article, and that would be what every reader would see. Only a child could think like that, of course. How educating, then, howbeit in a shocking way, to find otherwise.

More and more as I read, as I became aware of it, I found out a proliferation of statements which, I realized, were not descriptions but opinions. They were usually integrated seamlessly into the descriptive whole, but the more I thought about it, the less I could mistake it: those were opinions. Not merely reports of the locals’ sentiments, which were OK, but interjections by the writers themselves. I did not yet have a good eye for the themes, which I do now, but I did not have to recognize themes in order to know that the subtle hints of pre-colonial bliss, of Western blame and of the curse of mechanization were opinions and not descriptions. I did not yet know the exact system behind an article describing life in traditional villages in Ladakh as a good model contrasting with the “soullessness, cheapness and despair” of modern life in the West, but I did not have to know that—even for a little kid, it was crystal-clear that the message here was educational, not informational. It was all clothed in the semblance of telling of exotic things, as if in the tradition of Marco Polo, yet it had an agenda.

Long, long before our Mainstream Media started giving us our daily dose of self-skepticism, nay, self-flagellation, in the mantle of reporting, reporters of the Other had been doing that for thousands of years. Already in Herodotus one finds criticism of his own society inserted into his descriptions of other peoples. Tacitus’ Germania contains a wealth of information on the Germanic tribes that is true and has been verified, yet the opportunities which he took to use his work as criticism of contemporary Roman society necessitate caution. And I need hardly mention Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, Diderot’s descriptions of exotic tribes and the rest of the offerings of Enlightenment writers—all social criticisms presented as descriptions of the Other. Bias and agenda in the form of unbiased description.

Those were in the days when the media was open about its biases. The media has never been unbiased, but the difference is that in our times it takes after the geographic magazines, impressing the readers with the cloven hoofs of neutral-sounding language, while the inside, the spirit, the facts that a trained eye could see, was deep and unrepentant bias. Today, the more neutral-sounding the name of an organization is, the better its chances of being an organization with a single-minded agenda. Take the website Information Clearing House. Such an innocuous name, is it not? Judging by the name, it sounds like a repository of plain facts, much like a telephone book. But in truth, that site is a conspiracy theory website, one of the wackiest and most uninhibited on the ’Net.

Why did it begin that way? How did covert bias, and self-flagellating bias at that, creep through what was supposed to be mere reports of faraway places? What is it about the Other that attracts people, in such a way that it dominates today’s political discourse? How have we reached this state in which it is possible to reduce all the problems in the world to “racism” and “xenophobia”? How have we come to a world where the cycles of victimization, guilt and reparations now trap all discussions of policy, even to the detriment of national security?

I said geographic magazines were my first window to the world. For those who have not found answers to the problems besetting their societies, whether out of ignorance or by rejection of traditional answers, the window to the world is their beacon of hope. They crave the global view of humanity because it might provide them with answers. The parochial view, they think, cannot provide answers, because of the very fact that it is parochial, while a larger view of humanity could inform us of human universals, the key to answering the human problem. Utopianism and cosmopolitanism often go hand in hand, and in the past century have done so spectacularly, with more to come for sure.

The window to the world has grown ever wider. When I started reading geographic magazines, the old method of word-of-mouth was still the best way to rally people; a few years afterward, the entire globe was connected by computer-to-computer interaction. With the popularization of the Internet in the early 1990’s, the famed (and worn-out phrase) Global Village was born. There could no longer be a situation in which humans no longer cared for the plight of other humans elsewhere—or so it was believed, even when events like the Rwanda Genocide of 1994 showed otherwise.

A big mistake. A mistake identical in cause, even if not equal in victims, to the mistake of Communism. The mistake of assuming the malleability of human nature.

Olam chesed yibaneh—the world is built by charity (Psalms 89:3)

The sages of Judaism say: “Aniyei irkha kodmim”, meaning, “The poor of your city precede”. It is in the framework of discussing the duty of giving to charity, but it touches human nature deeply. It is both descriptive and prescriptive. And it is more relevant than it ever was.

Geographic magazines, then media outlets, and now the Internet have supposedly brought humans closer, thus increasing the awareness of human commonalities and shared troubles, thus leading to greater empathy in the world. Or have they? No. Not by a long shot.

Contributions to Live Aid or Live Earth concerts are a good way to assuage one’s guilt over enjoying life while others are struggling with the necessities, but the things a particular human involves himself—really involves himself—with are the same as they have always been: the causes that are close to his heart. To his heart, not to his sight on the computer monitor. Of those who say, “All humans are my brothers and sisters”, how many act it? To which the reply will inevitably be a list of good deeds and philanthropic activities, but that misses the point: people who claim empathy for all humans don’t have that. Oh, they do have empathy—I didn’t say they didn’t—but their empathy is limited to a set of concentric circles. Greatest empathy to friends and family, then to people they are familiar with, then to those of the neighborhood, then the town, and so on. And whenever you find they have empathy to those faraway, then on further investigation you always discover that this is because those people faraway have some affinity, some emotional similarity, with the empathizer.

Or take activism for animals as another example. How much of it is for the welfare of dogs, cats, mice, horses and monkeys, and how much for flies, mosquitoes, fish and worms? Is it a coincidence that human empathy for animals is nearly always reserved to those animals that share important features with humans, foremostly the ability to show pain and other emotions? No, there is none of the fabled “Empathy toward all creatures, born of the feeling of Being One With The Universe” here; it is all “Like attracts like”, the tendency of humans to open their hearts to what those hearts regard as kindred, while—by necessity—closing their hearts to what is remote. Remote, in a sense that all the geographic magazines, media outlets and websites cannot counter.

How many of the “Free Palestine!” crowd have exhibited even a quarter of their zeal for the cause of Tibet, or for righting the (true) wrong of the setting up of an Islamic state on historically Hindu lands (Pakistan)? They will all say, of Darfur, “Yes, I agree, we must do something”, but where is the zeal? Giving to charity can easily be perfunctory; zeal, in contrast, bespeaks something inward. The anti-Zionists do not care much for the “Palestinians”, for they did not make the tiniest squeak when “Palestinian” refugees were forcefully expelled by the Kuwaitis after their liberation from Saddam, or more recently the Naher al Bared massacre in Lebanon. The causes of Iraq and “Palestine” resonate only because of some affinity with the activists’ own purposes. Just as my empathy with the victims of Islamic terrorism in Southern Thailand (and elsewhere) can only be explained by the affinity of the situation in Israel. Like attracts like.

The mythical Global Village is nothing but conceptual smoke and mirrors; in reality, we are as parochial as ever, choosing even our worldwide interests according to our very, very local leanings. More: the towering Marxist catchphrase, “We are all Citizens of the World”, has proved to be bankrupt by none less than the sons and daughters of pluralistic education themselves.

You are Citizens of the World? Really? Then why do you try to find your identity? Why do you play Indian? Why do you seek out a shaman from the Wannabi Tribe, in order that he may initiate you into the mysteries of the Smelihipi Tribe? Why does Abe Cohen, a Jew brought up on the idea that Jewish tribalism is an outdated, even dangerous, concept, seek out the tribal knowledge of a Hawaiian Kahuna, after having been indoctrinated against his own tribal heritage of the crown of kehunah (priesthood)? Why do Citizens of the World so often exchange the “elitist, Eurocentric” (et cetera) philosophy of Greece and Rome with the philosophy of India and China? (Not that that’s bad, but I’m pointing out the inconsistency here.) Why is there such a tendency for activists against white racism to excuse, even condone, anti-white racism? Why are those that issue the strongest condemnations of “dualistic divisions”, calling for the end of all distinctions as the only way of bringing world peace, so keen on propping up divisions themselves (support for the “Palestinian” and “Iraqi” nations, to name just one example)? Because, when you think about it, being a “Citizen of the World” is a state that is contrary to human nature. Humans cannot feel all-embracing empathy toward the whole world; their empathy, as I said, is a set of concentric circles.

Some rootless kids embrace Trustafarianism, others wear a keffiyeh.

Geographic magazines pioneered the demonstration of human diversity. Diversity has become such a potent watchword today, to the effect that it can be invoked to shut down sane initiatives against threats of terrorism. But diversity, like empathy, is not absolute. It could be absolute only if every human were his own group—his own ethnicity, his own religion, his own culture, and so on. There is no diversity in humanity except the diversity of groups, and that cannot exist without—oh, the horror—sameness within each group. Sameness, or more accurately a sufficient amount of affinity between the members. “Affinity” again. That dreaded, reviled parochiality once more.

There is no “near” for humans except “near and dear”—that is human nature, and no window to the world can change that. It is not possible for the state to replace the family, hence the need for repression whenever an attempt to do that has been made. A bureaucrat can never be a true helper, even if he does do his job of giving the applicant the desired government handout, for in most cases he does not know the applicant. The wider the circle becomes, the farther it is from having your interests in mind. If the state is uncaring to the individual due to its distance from his life, then the superstate is sevenfold so. The European Union and the Islamic Caliphate cannot be anything other than monsters of bureaucracy or repression or both.

“The poor of your city precede” is not a call for apathetic withdrawal into one’s tiny shell—far from it, it is the only way you can realize those human traits you have been raised to cherish so much. Charity begins at home because that is where charity really flows from an inward source—love, empathy and the “up close and personal” angle that no geographic magazine can give you. The farther causes are built on top of that, and not the other way round. In our day and age more than ever, redemption is brought to the world by local efforts, made enthusiastically therefore thoroughly, widening and widening, until the feeling of “all in the same boat” forms the needed cohesion. In this period of government betrayal, this is the only way. It is the only way because it is authentic, while all-embracing cosmopolitanism is fake.

If there is just one thing for which I am grateful to the geographic magazines for, it is this: the realization that happiness in our age lies in turning away from being a global tourist and reporter, to finding one’s particular heritage and local existence—turning into one of the groups which a rootless, world-citizen geographic magazine reporter would describe in one of the issues of his magazine.

“Be strong, be strong, and we will be strengthened”.

Existential Threat, Radical Appeasement

It is not hard to find Leftist articles telling us the Muslims hate us because of our actions. (Random pick from yesterday: Prescribing World Terrorism, by Eric Margolis.) This idea, that Muslim rage is fueled by “Western imperialist aggression” meted upon Muslims, is so commonplace on the moonbat side of the blogosphere that I now hardly consider it worthy of mentioning (but see Herbert E. Meyer’s recent article on The American Thinker for a well-considered write-up). I have, however, found an article written from the self-blaming, appeasing point of view that is significant and worthy of a post of its own: US Role in Islamist Terrorism, on Antiwar.com, by Ivan Eland. The title may make it look like another one of those “our bombs made them hate us” articles, but inside there lurks a new and important kind of argument: the existential argument. The argument that says the mere being of US troops on non-Muslim lands is fueling their hatred. First quote:

To fully understand Islamic terrorism, one needs to understand what triggers this extraordinary rage. And throughout history one factor stands out above all else: the occupation of Muslim land by non-Muslim forces.

This is something else, beginning with the word, “land”. This isn’t the usual talk of bombs and projectiles and body counts; it’s about mere existence. The argument is reinforced the deeper we go down the article:

There is much the United States could do to defuse the problem, and a good place to start would be by removing land-based U.S. forces from the Persian Gulf.

Even Osama bin Laden claims he attacks the United States primarily because of its military presence in the region. Other reasons, he claims, are secondary.

This, never mind that the writer approaches it from an entirely erroneous point of view (appeasement), is perfectly true: the weapons of the non-Muslims, whether American or Soviet or Israeli or anyone else, are only a secondary affront; the real red rag in front of the Muslims’ eyes is the idea that parts that once were under the rule of Islam are now under non-Muslim control, with a non-Muslim presence in them. A core issue, an issue which makes the post-colonial rantings of other Leftist writers sound childish in comparison. Eland sees the truth on that matter. He writes also:

Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza after the 1967 Six Day War and its military interventions in Lebanon triggered similar reactions, as did the U.S. military presence in Lebanon in the early 1980s. Indeed, it’s fair to say that Israel’s very existence—a non-Islamic state in land claimed by the Muslims—is part of the same pattern, as is the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. [Emphasis mine. —ZY]

An accurate perception. Military intervention, “Apartheid Wall”, checkpoints and all that yang are not, and never have been, the issue—from the start, indeed from the beginning of the 20th century, the disproportionate opposition of the Muslims to the peaceful and most un-colonialist-like Jewish acquisition of land cannot be explained except by the idea, a basic Islamic tenet, that Islam is programmed for perpetual gain of land and against the smallest loss of it. The demand of the Muslims, in all times, has been nothing less than the demise of all non-Islamic polities on earth. Gains for shariah could be postponed in the case of lack of feasibility, but losses of shariah-governed lands had to be countered immediately.

Eland sees the truth of this existential struggle, but if he reacted to it the way any sane, self-preserving non-Muslim would, he would be on our side, and I would not be writing this piece. Instead, he reacts in precisely the wrong way, counseling appeasement:

Only by minimizing the permanent U.S. military presence in Arab and Islamic lands can we hope to stem anti-U.S. terrorism.

A half-truth can be worse than a lie. Eland has half of the truth in that he perceives Muslim enmity to be rooted in the issue of governance over lands, and not in military actions against them. But he is missing the other half of the truth: the vision of Islam is not limited to the Middle East or to any of the lands now currently under Muslim rule. The vision of Islam is not limited, period. He shows his error near the beginning of his article:

From the time of the Crusades, the pattern has been consistent.

Like all of this article, that sentence is a maddening combination of deep insight and sheer blindness. The deep insight is that of winding the clock back to far-off ages, something that many on the Left refuse to do because (in ironic Occidental snobbishness) they do not imagine people could retain the memory of events so ancient. And he shares with me the emphasis on Muslims rather than Arabs, a necessary step if one is to succeed in understanding the current global conflict. But he does not go far enough in riding the Wayback Machine: he neglects to go further beyond the Crusades, back to the beginning of it all—to the 7th century CE.

Go to the beginning of the 7th century and you will see two kingdoms locked in combat: the Christian empire of Byzantium, and the Zoroastrian kingdom of Sassanid Persia. The Land of Israel, Syria, Egypt, Lybia and the Magreb were all Christian lands, part of the Eastern Roman Empire; and Mesopotomia and Persia boasted of a history and culture already stretching back more than a thousand years. Then, in the 30’s of the 7th century, Arab bedouin tribesmen, motivated by the religion of Islam, took it all: the Byzantines were left with Asia Minor and the Balkans, whereas Persia fell whole to the invaders, whose religion, heritage and values they subsequently imposed upon it, in what was one of the most egregious acts of cultural imperialism in all of history.

The attacks, invasions and conquests were unprovoked; under the standard Leftist “tit-for-tat” view, they would have to be on the side of the Crusaders, excusing the Crusades as blowback for the Islamic aggression of the 7th century. But it would not fit the agenda of allying with the Muslims to defeat the hated white, capitalist, Bible-believing (et cetera) West. So Eland does as he must in order to prevent cognitive dissonance, and avoids going any further than the Crusades, thus securing their place as the first instance of Western aggression toward Muslims in his narratives. But that is not the truth.

Spain sheepishly withdrew its troops from Iraq after the Madrid terrorist attack of March 2004. Surely, pace Eland, this should have been the end of all Muslim enmity toward Spain? Ah, the difference between what we wish and what really is… No, Spain has not been freed; of the rallying cries for jihadis worldwide, less known than the “Palestinian” cause but no less real and significant, is the call for “liberating Al-Andalus from the infidels”. Al-Andalus is the Arab, Islamic name for Spain. What was once brought under Islamic rule, say the Muslims, is to stay there, and to be prevented from being taken away by the non-Muslims; and what has never yet been under Islamic rule is to be brought under it eventually. The goal of Islam is world domination. “Islam will dominate”, say the signs.

The crucial half of the truth that Ivan Eland missed.

The existence of any land in the world not under the rule of Islamic law is the one and only root cause of Muslim rage. Entitlement to the whole world is that which, when deprived of it, the Muslims react in anger. Reasoning is not possible here, only resistance, resistance by those who know the whole truth and wish to preserve their freedom intact. The alternative is, at best, dhimmitude—an apartheid system where non-Muslims are second-class subjects constantly at the mercy of their Muslim overlords.

Closing quote:

The lesson learned is that empire does not enhance security—it undermines it. U.S. power on Islamic soil is especially problematic.

Only a few changes are needed for the truth: “The lesson learned is that caliphate does not enhance security—it undermines it. Islamic power on non-Muslim soil is especially problematic.”

To use a Leftism in an appropriate place just for once: to resist is to exist.

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[UPDATE, Wednesday, July 11, 2007, 14:17] Ivan Eland is not a left-winger but a paleoconservative—a member of the Old Right, remnants of the bad old party of Charles Lindbergh. That I could mistake him for a Leftist is testimony to today’s shift of isolationist, appeasement-supporting and fascist-sympathizing positions from the Right to the Left in the West. My thanks to Jason Pappas for the correction.