The psychological power of PC groupthink, Swedish version

(Part of this post is in Swedish)

Jihad i Malmö commented upon the Jan Milld discussion at Gates of Vienna. He publishes fragments of the discussion in a confusing way (here and here), with the whole chronology put upside-down. Without backing it up, he declares Jan Milld a Holocaust-denier, and then me as a defender of this position. And finally Baron Bodissey as being weak on such horrible people. The old PC format once again. I didn't even bother to comment, but yesterday I ended up in a discussion with Knute at Every Kinda People. And Knute decided to side with Jihad i Malmö on this. In spite of not having a single Swede who gets what I'm saying at my blog--it's only among Americans, Eastern Europeans and Jews that I have found proper understanding so far--and in spite of Knute being a Swede (and therefore, statistically speaking, probably a hopeless case), I see him as one of the best, and therefore worthwhile to take the discussion with. I see Knute as little bit of a Swedish Baron Bodissey, in his personality type. So I have a positive image of him. But even so I will have to criticize him when he falls into common PC behaviour patterns, whether it is out of laziness or thoughtlessness. Our discussion started in this thread, about other things. Here is my reply to Knute. It's actually the very same criticism I put forward to Baron Bodissey:

Jaha. Istället för att läsa själva diskussionen på Gates of Vienna, väljer du alltså att läsa lösryckta fragment av den på Jihad i Malmö. Jihad i Malmö som vänt bakofram på hela händelseförloppet och överhuvudtaget inte fattat vad diskussionen gick ut på. Men trots att jag redan hade påpekat detta, väljer du alltså att att göra en helt ytlig bedömning baserat på detta känslosvammel.

I PC-världen anses man finare och heligare ju mer vårdslöst man använder begrepp som t.ex. rasist. De som slänger ur sig det helt utan täckning, helt baserat på känslor anses mer trogna den "rätta saken". Den som ödmjukt påpekar det vansinniga i sådan vårdslöshet med begreppen, anses av känslosvamlarna vara ond, och därmed rasist själv. Kronan på verket i hela PC-hierarkin är begreppet förintelseförnekare. Jihad i Malmö slänger vårdslöst ur sig, helt utan täckning, att Jan Milld är förintelseförnekare. Och du hänger glatt på.

Det var detta som diskussionen handlade om. Hur PC-reflexerna sitter mycket djupt bland västerlänningar, inklusive hos sådana som dig och Baron Bodissey. Baron Bodissey fattade iallafall till slut min poäng, och kanske kommer du att göra det också. Anklagelserna mot Jan Milld, från IceViking, byggde helt på intryck och antaganden. Det blir rena inkvisitionen att driva ett mål, och hänga ut någon som förintelseförnekare, helt baserat på ett resonemang som går ut på att "jag känner att det är så".

Knute: Lät som du trampade över i diskussionens hetta.

Läs hela diskussionen i sin helhet! Varje sak jag skrev hade sitt syfte i att väcka upp folk från sina känslobaserade villfarelser. Och det lyckades. Slutresultatet är den ömsesidiga respekten mellan mig och Baron Bodissey vuxit sig mycket starkare. Även om jag kan vara skarp när jag framför kritik, så har jag mycket stor respekt för någon som kan ändra sig och erkänna att han gjort fel. Baron Bodissey är en mycket stor man i mina ögon. Och jag växte i respekt i hans ögon när han hade sett min poäng. Och då skall man minnas att vi hade stor respekt för varandra redan från början.

Knute: Åtminstone ur min synpunkt som står på judarnas och Israels sida.

Min gode herre försöker antyda att jag inte står på Israel och judarnas sida? Du har uppenbarligen inte läst min blogg särskilt mycket. Då hade du kunnat följa det eviga påhoppandet på mig från Political Junkie's sida för mitt stöd till Israel. Jag intar en mycket moderat pro-Israelisk ståndpunkt, men det är samtidigt något som jag under inga omständigheter ruckar på. Det är såklart för mycket för Political Junkie.

Efter amerikaner är judar den gruppen bland vilka man hittar flest som hänger med och fattar själva grejen med mina skriverier. Det kan kontrasteras med att det hittills inte har dykt upp en endaste svensk som begriper sig på mig. Jag får positiva email inklusive ett meddelande från en judisk site som bad att få länka mig. I Sverige är gruppmentaliteten, konsensandan, stark stark. Även om viljan finns att avvika sitter mönstret så djupt. Man läser något ytligt, förvridet och känslosvamlande i Dagens Nyheter eller på Jihad i Malmö, och så hänger man på utan att ifrågasätta. Det just så PC-regimen upprätthålls. Utstuderade manipulatörer som Chomsky och Guillou är en liten minoritet. De flesta bra hänger på i den riktning som vinden blåser, simmandes mitt i stimmet. För jobbigt att kolla fakta själv. För jobbigt att tänka utanför boxen. Gå på det ytliga allmänna intrycket. Du kan nu titta in i dig själv, Knute, och få förståelse för hur dessa mekanismer ser ut. Det är en bra lärdom, för att förstå komplexiteten i det vi kämpar mot.

When I speak above about how there are no Swedes that gets me, you have to take in account that many people who support me do not get me. Some people support me for the wrong reasons or only understand singular aspects of what I'm saying. This is true also specifically about this here discussion at Gates of Vienna. I even had David Duke fans who emailed to support me. (However, in one of the cases I managed to get a site to decide to stop publishing David Duke, since I managed to get through to them how utterly moronic it is.) These people do just as much to uphold the PC shadow theater as the PC elite themselves. As I wrote at the GoV disussion:

[The Holocaust-deniers] are the most moronic people of them all. There's no people helping cementing the reigning PC rule more than them. They voluntarily jump up on the stage of the shadow theater in the Platonic cave with a self confessed "I'm evil". Nothing helps the dynamics of the shadow theater more than that. These are the greatest friends of the PC elite. Without them, the PC elite cannot uphold the image of themselves as brave fighters against evil (in fact a superficial fight against something completely harmless).

This is a deeply Christian pattern. We saw the same play under the heydays of the Catholic Church. Self-confessed sinners, satanists, etc. People with a negative self-image and full of Christian guilt (quite as your average neo-Nazi), indulging in the Christian concepts of self-sacrifice and original sin, throwing themselves onto the stage of the shadow theater. I cannot imagine any people who are more stuck in the box of Christian ethics. They just cannot leave the box. They stay within the box, but switch side to "evil" (and this is also how they see themselves). And listen to their arguments against Israel. The worst sort of Christian inversion of values where power is evil and the weak are good: Israel is bad because it shows strength; Israel is "racist", etc. Precisely as the worst sort of leftists. Perverted! And very very supportive of the reigning PC rule. The PC elite loves them.

The way to counter the myths and dogmas around the Holocaust is not by creating another myth: that the Holocaust didn't happen. But this is how 99% of the people react. A sound rational view upon facts is extremely rare, people fall in either of the two mythological categories. Emotionalism, mythology and groupthink is the greatest huggy bear to humans. This is why the Platonic cave is the most accurate scientific model of a human society.

When I criticize America I'm bound to get cheers from some moronic anti-Americans, people whose worldview is far more different from mine than the one of Americans themselves. Likewise when I criticize Christianity, I'm bound to receive cheers from Christianity and religion haters, that I have nothing in common with. As I have repeatedly stated, Americans and Christians are over-represented among the people that gets me. And again, when I criticize the way the Holocaust has been made into a myth, the very core myth of the PC regime. I'm bound to get cheers from moronic anti-Semites. These people who do more than anyone else to uphold the PC world order. And apart from being leftists, permeated by slave morality, they support radical Islam. They are clearly a main enemy. As I wrote in one of my emails:

I see that you publish David Duke. You might as well have published Cindy Sheehan or Ahmadinejad. David Duke is an explicit ally of the Jihadists, our eternal enemy. I wouldn't publish in the same place as him.

Look at these video clips from MEMRI-TV. Follow the link, or go to http://www.memritv.org and search for "david duke". See the clips or read the transcripts.

He's very comfortable speaking in front of a Muslim mob, declaring his explicit support for them. And apart from his support for "the peace-loving people of Syria" and their president, he also informs us that he admires Ken Livingstone.

I'm all in favour of diversity of opinion. But why don't you publish Cindy Sheehan and Ahmadinejad too then? They are the ones that would go along with David Duke. I cannot publish at a site that is so openly flirting with Islamists and leftists.

Update: Knute has already answered my comment. He writes "Jag vet inte hur pass medvetet provokativ jag var, men nog fick jag svar på tal!" Translation: "I'm not sure how consciously provocative I was, but CS certainly answered back!" So why do I confront nice and non-confrontational people such as Baron Bodissey and Knute? Why do they deserve it? They deserve it because they are thinking people who can take an argument. I do it because it gives result. While e.g. an eternal tit for tat with IceViking or a David Duke fan would just be a complete waste of time.

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Good-bye, Charles Martel. Hello, Tiny Muskens

Geza sent me this quote of Steve Burton at What’s Wrong with the World:

"Centuries ago, Christianity, in practice, was a fascinating amalgam of fundamentally contradictory elements: on the one hand, the other-worldly, pacifistic doctrine of the gospels; on the other hand, the warrior ethos of the Germanic tribes that conquered and (sort of) converted to the new faith. But today? The last remnants of that warrior ethos are draining away. Soon, all that may be left of institutional Christianity are a few traces of the other-worldly and the pacifistic.

Good-bye, Charles Martel. Hello, Tiny Muskens."
[bolding by Geza]

Tiny Muskens. is the Dutch bishop who said "Allah is a very beautiful word for God. Shouldn't we all say that from now on we will call God Allah?"

Geza comments:

The more thoroughly Christian or liberal we become, the more we lose our will to survive. Christianity and liberalism are not interested in preserving peoplehood rather, both ideologies are more interested in projecting their worldview to the rest of the world. Both ideologies could care less about the consequences of their universal ideas since martyrdom for the sake of an idea is the reward if they fail in their goals. It's nice to see that the TradCons are starting to realize that the West may need a little more than Christianity if it wishes to survive.

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Brussels a go go

I've been giving a far too negative impression about the 9/11 Brussels demo in my comments at Gates of Vienna. Okay, shortly after my first comment I wrote this:

I'm sorry that I wrote something that appeared so negative about this planned event. I think the planned 9/11 demonstration is a great idea and very important. Even though media will distort the whole thing (but we knew that all from the start, right?), the visibility of our kind of anti-Jihadism is a very important one, nevertheless. People have not seen such groups at all before. For those who are brave enough to go there, they will be doing something very important.

The negative tone of what I wrote is about the situation as a whole, not about the idea of this demonstration. But this also means that propaganda-wise this manifestation cannot make it worse, only better!

But after reading Stephen Gash's comment I woke up to the fact of how way out of line that I had actually been. Not so much in what I said, but in the context and timing of it. Anyway, I'm very glad to see how the things I wrote struck a chord with many people, and we should move along with such ideas, but everything has its proper time. And now it's all about the Brussels demo. In spite of what I have written, there's no way around this. This is a step that has to be taken before anything else could be done. We have to act as the good guys. We have to exhaust this way of acting before going to the next phase. The important thing is how we look in the eyes of ordinary people. Therefore: We have to ask permission for a demonstration. We have to invite to a good democratic dialog in the most honest and open kind of way. So yes, I would myself have planned this event exactly like SIOE, and I fully support their actions and plans after the denial of permission for the demo from the Mayor. I already wrote a long comment about this at Gates of Vienna 9 hours ago, but it all got washed away in the Google server crash. So here I'm writing it again. Since then Fjordman has weighted in on the issue. "Don’t Give in to Intimidation" he says. Exactly! I've been describing the general picture as a situation of warfare. But warfare is about psychology and propaganda even before it is about violence.

My mistake in all this has been that due to the fact of my recent identity crisis and general lamentation mode, when I read the Baron's post what resonated with my current emotions was the misery of the whole situation. I saw the thing I'm about to write about already then, but my emotions didn't drive me in that direction at the time, so I ignored it. The thing is, there's something very fishy about that email. The email quoted by the Baron by the end of his post. Let's have a look at it again:

I should warn you that the Mayor is setting a trap! He intends deploying large numbers of territorial riot police and using them to beat the crap out of us as an object lesson. This will be meant to serve as the first lesson of obedience and warning to all those that oppose the Islamisation of the EU. I just thought you would all like to know. The Russians and Nazi used similar tactics. He is priming the public to view us as criminals. Then he moves in the boot boys and they will hand out everything they can muster.

I have seen this all before!

I am thinking about whether it is sensible to go! I do not want my skull kicked in and then be put on trial on trumped up charges. It would only serve their cause and we have more important work to do than succumb to what is in effect entrapment. These are Belgian police not cuddly politically correct British coppers.

Be prepared for deliberate provocation and bullying on the slightest excuse.

This email is all veiled intimidation. How the Mayor is setting a trap. How the Belgian police is so much more brutal then anywhere else, and will specifically target SIOE people to beat the crap out of them. How the likely result of a trip to Brussels is a kicked-in skull.

"I have seen this all before!" writes the "European contact" of the British contact of Baron Bodissey (who is this guy?). But no, we have never seen anything like this before! Yes, the PC society is like a thick wet blanket, it's suffocating and it's virtually impossible to get through. The deck is stacked against us, sure. But whenever before have traps been set up against us? Why would the PC society even need to set up traps? All the components of the PC society naturally works against us anyway, as if guaranteed by an invisible hand. All parts: police, leftist street thugs, media, courts, etc. There's no need for them to conspire against us, and I never heard of them doing so. And I never heard of any demo incident leading to cracked skulls. Have anyone else? The situation in Brussels 9/11 is no different from other demos. We already know this kind of situation from our home countries. People know from working with BNP, Sverigedemokraterna, Vlaams Belang, etc. This is a very familiar situation, not the horror story of that email. PC Belgium is, after all, not Nazi Germany or Communist Russia. Yes, the democracy is brutalized, our right to open meetings is raped, there is intimidation, material destruction, ostracism and bruises. Tough stuff as it is. But whenever have we seen cracked skulls, traps and conspiracies?

And whenever did we have large numbers of territorial riot police deployed at us "to beat the crap out of us as an object lesson"? Never. This sounds like a victimization fantasy, just the way like the leftists describe Americas objectives in Iraq. The comparison is made with the Nazis and the Soviets, the emailer is painting the image of how we would meet the likes of Nazi troops (as he said the Belgian police is more brutal...). This is ridiculous. The Nazis and the Soviets put strength before goodness. The nature of Western civilization is to put goodness first. They will never act as Nazi police. When I describe things as a theater here in my blog I mean something very real with it. This theater is the first and most important way in which people experience things. Their first and highest level of reality (subjective of course). According to this theater the PC elite and the police are the good ones, and see themselves as such. So whatever they do, they will have to act within this framework. This is the simple reason why they will never act as Nazi troops aiming for beating the crap out of us to nullify us, crack our skulls, etc. The AFA people will act more or less as Soviets of course, but they are not the highest power. And the police are not in collusion with them, even though it might appear so at times (that invisible hand effect). The police will be aiming for hindering violence to happen.

This email is planted among us only to have an intimidating effect. To spread fear among us. This email completely animates superstition and junk, and we should not pay any attention to it at all. I'm very sorry that my first answer to the post of the Baron, ignored the effect of this email. I should have started in this end directly. Stephen Gash makes some very good points about it. Let's repeat his message:

This article has been the most damaging for the Brussels demo yet.

If you were trying to keep people from going to Brussels you couldn't have done a better job than this article.

Anonymous emails are worthless, they could have come from Thielemans's office itself.

Threats, like those described in the article here, are even more likely to come from people who want the demo to not happen as those who really support the demo, but are concerned about violence.

The article warns that we should be careful of police or other infiltrators trying to start violence to discredit the SIOE demo and get participants arrested, yet we are expected to believe what's written in emails!?

Get to Brussels. Fortune favours the brave.

We should be suspicious about infiltrators among our ranks during the demo, but emails like this one are swallowed hook, line and sinker!!?? That is crazy of course. The email paints a situation that strikes fear within us, but this is also its only purpose. Every single sentence in this email is coined to maximize this purpose, and to make people stay home from the demo. Warfare is not violence first, first it is psychology.

We know these kind of demos since before. It's the same kind as we had at home in our own countries. There are no traps set up by the highest office, there are no riot police with the instruction to beat the crap out of demonstrators. There are no cracked skulls.

Will power is number one. It is important that people do not back off from the Brussels demo now. Even if there can only be a symbolic non-protest protest, it is important to be there and to have been there in good numbers. Otherwise it's a major setback for our movement that might be hard to recover from, and any creative ideas for the future (some I which I wrote about myself, irresponsibly with improper timing I admit now) would most likely be useless then.

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Geza on Derbyshire on Spencer

Geza, the one and only guest columnist of this blog, sent me the following comments, yesterday, to John Derbyshire's review of Robert Spencer's book "Religion of Peace?". Penetrating analysis and interesting remarks as always from Geza. We are also awaiting Lawrence Auster's "review" of Derb's review.

Here's Geza:

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Derb has written a review on Spencer's new book and I was wondering if you read it. Despite his idiocy regarding Islam, he makes some good points and talks about the inverted ethics of Christianity and separationism.

He blames globalization on Christianity which I think he is right but I think capitalism shares an equal amount of blame. Christianity did put colonialism into overdrive and made a complete mess of it (for us).

Here is where I think Derbyshire is wrong:

"Spencer's more general assumption that our civilization is a child of Christianity can likewise be fairly doubted. Does religion in fact explain anything about history? It is of course impossible to know how different the world would have been if Jesus of Nazareth, or Mohammed, had died in the cradle; but the suspicion lurks that it might not have been very different. Would the Arabs have come surging out of their desert oases in the seventh century without the Prophet and his faith to inspire them? Would Frankish knights have taken ship to recover the Holy Land, if they had not considered it Holy, only a lost province of the Roman Empire? Would white Europeans have developed science and consensual democracy if they had been only white Europeans, not also Christians?"

The Arabs were too divided to do anything before Muhammad began his ministry. The fatalism which is intrinsic in the Arabs (even pre-Islamic) would have ensured that they stayed divided and unorganized. Science as we know it today I think would have developed with the Europeans due to their high IQ and their special way of thinking (which is quite different from the high IQ East Asians). Things obviously would have been different if Derbyshire is to claim that globalization was caused by Christianity. Either it wouldn't exist or exist in a very restricted form. That right there is a big change, but for the better! This is where Derbyshire's zoology-lite gets him, thinking religion has next to no effect on history. How can that be when politics in itself is derived from religion?

And again:

"One cannot help noticing that in Japan, where Christians form less than one percent of the population, and Christian traditions are not a significant component of the national culture, Islam is neither a problem nor a threat, simply because Japan does not let Muslims—nor any other foreigners—settle in great numbers. The Japanese don't give a fig for the universal brotherhood of man, and still cherish their national sovereignty. We no longer care much about our sovereignty, so long as our bellies are full and we have gadgets and clowns to amuse us; and our bishops, not to mention our Christian President and the globalist elites who surround him, tell us that doubts about the wisdom of mass Third World immigration are unkind, if not actually "hateful" (not to mention damaging to their stock portfolios)."

The Japanese don't care about universalism because it doesn't appeal to their people. It is not their tradition and to them it seems like a foreign curiosity but nothing that should be seriously considered. Not only is this true about the Japanese but all non-Europeans. Egalitarianism is an anomaly only found in European nations. Diversity exists outside of Europe but not in the same sense it does in the West. The laws can be arbitrary and assimilation isn't implemented nor is it even tried.

Japan has been monoracial since its inception as a nation and it has a long history of isolating itself from the rest of the non-Japanese world. A counterpoint to Derb: South Korea is 26% Christian and growing and it is still monoracial, even more so than Japan. Japan is 98% Japanese whereas South Korea is 99.6% Korean. China is also another success story that boasts a 91% ethnic Han majority (the largest race on earth) and Christianity is gaining ground there as well. The lack of Christianity isn't the reason why East Asian countries are so successful with banning non-desirables from coming into their respective nations, but rather it is their attachment to their ethnopolitical ideology, Confucianism, that stops all pleas to open up the borders to the rest of the world. Asians know that their political system only works for them and that their culture cannot be adopted by a non-Asian and that is why they would laugh at any liberal in the face if they tried to argue that an Arab, a Somali, or even a Frenchman could "assimilate" into the culture of Japan, Korea, or China.

And on to his conclusion:

"A sensibly exclusionist, separationist policy like Japan's is therefore not available to us, because of our principles—those principles Spencer tells us are rooted in Christian thinking, those principles that send our author into such raptures of cultural superiority. Well, well: Christianity got its start as a religion of slaves. Perhaps it is fated to end the same way."

Wrong. Liberalism is only a symptom but the cause of it losing our identity slowly over time. We simply do not know who we are anymore. Just "Christians", "Americans", or "Europeans", or even the dreaded "Citizens of the World". All of these definitions are vague and that is how we define ourselves today. We cannot even bring ourselves to say that we are white without feeling ashamed, let alone say where we are from or rattle off (or even remember?) which villages our ancestors came from. You cannot exclude something if you do not know what should be included.

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The clash of the cleavage

Lawrence Auster comments on Caroline Flint's cleavage:

In many cases [women] make it all too clear that they don't take their jobs seriously, and that their jobs are a vehicle for the expression of their vanity; or, as in Flint's case, for the display of their breasts. Can you imagine a male cabinet officer going around in a shirt open to his mid-chest? The presence of women such as Caroline Flint in high office is an unfunny, nihilistic joke, a symbol of a civilization that doesn't respect itself and doesn't want to survive.

Mary Jackson (the latest disciple of the Undercover Black Man conspiracy), polemicized against this:

So Flint went into politics to bare her Bristols? And never thought of Page Three of The Sun? My goodness. She must be topless. Let’s have a look, shall we?

No, let's have a look at Bernard-Henri Lévy instead:


Look at his face! This is a man who is dead serious. He walks around all day showing his nipples in public. He's a philosopher. You cannot get more serious than that. This is his no-bullshit pose with his unbuttoned shirt. He hasn't developed much of breasts yet. But with age and authority--and with increasing wisdom as philosopher--I'm sure he will have developed a proper cleavage, to match his pretty nipples; those nipples that the French intellectuals can never get enough of. He's one of the most popular topless acts in France and gets invited to many venues.

Mary Jackson continues to polemicize against Auster:

And if I were to get above myself and attempt to form an opinion, it would change along with my oestrogen-induced mood-swings. So naturally I must look to an intellectual – and a man – for my views.

Look up intellectual in a proper encyclopédie, and you will find a photo of Bernard-Henri Lévy. This is the kind of serious man that you would want to ask for guidance. Just don't get mesmerized by his nipples.

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Waiting for the numbers

I got a lot of positive reactions to my previous post, in the Gates of Vienna thread, where it was originally written as a comment. The Baron himself was kind enough to populate my blog and give a comment here. He wrote "Our advantage is that we do have the numbers. But whether those numbers can be roused short of the nukes is anybody's guess." Well, I agree of course. Previously he had written:

The only possible advantages we will have will be the rightness of our cause, and superior numbers.

The first of those is taken care of. Can we manage the second?

As you all know, I'm sort of a skeptic regarding Christianity-Democracy-America. But if I would share some words of hope along this line, I would use the help of John Reilly (and Peggy Noonan). John Reilly, who is a very nice and interesting blogger, if you like history and the long view (which I do), wrote the following back in 2004:

There is an old theory on the reactionary right (the real reactionary right, not to be confused with conservatives or libertarians). It holds that liberal democracies are doomed, because, in international affairs, they necessarily lacked the persistence and focus of autocracies. Sometimes, when I listen to John Kerry or Howard Dean, I start to think this too, but it's nonsense: the historical record is clear that liberal societies beat every other kind of society hollow. A clue to why this should be may be found in Peggy Noonan's March 25 column on the recent 911 hearings:

One summer day in the late 1990s I had a long talk with an elected official who was a friend and longtime political supporter of President Clinton. I asked him why, if Bill Clinton cared so much about his legacy, he didn't take steps to make America safer from terrorism. Why didn't he make it one of his big issues? We were at lunch in a New York restaurant, and I gestured toward the tables of happy people drinking golden-colored wine in gleaming glasses. They're all going to get sick when we get nuked, I said; they'd honor your guy for having warned and prepared. Yes, the official said, but you have to understand that Clinton is purely a poll driven politician, and if the numbers aren't there he won't move.

Too bad, I thought, because the numbers will someday be there.

The strength of democracy is that sometimes the numbers are there. That is more than even the most fearsome totalitarian state can say. The Soviet Union collapsed because its rulers never really thought of themselves as legitimate, and so never dared asked their people for anything more than submission. Nazi Germany lost the Second World War because the leadership feared to risk unpopularity by putting the economy on a war footing. Britain, in contrast, was the most thoroughly mobilized of all the combatants; even more so than Stalin's USSR. The very qualities that enabled Britain to do that, however, also made it possible for the country to entertain the self-delusion and evasion that prevailed in the 1930s. Sometimes, what looks like a fatal weakness is really a latent strength.

So if there is a God, who will guarantee a correlation between good acts and success, this is it. Democracy will win. It will happen painfully slow, some tens of millions of extra lives will be sacrificed, but everything will end well. But I guess I'm one of those real reactionary rightists that John Reilly talks about, because I'm skeptical.

Yes, it worked last time, obviously. But that time they had a much simpler situation to deal with. Once they woke up to the situation, they had proper democracies, proper nations of people co-operating on the inside as the home front, against an external enemy met in conventional warfare where the combatants where properly dressed in uniforms. We have none of these advantages in our current situation. It's exactly or democracy that is dying, our demos is breaking apart. And the Muslims won't be putting on uniforms and line up nicely on a battlefield. In this war there is no home front, no safe havens. Our very countries (our home streets) are the battlefields, and the enemies (whether Muslim or PC) are right among us, right under our skins.

And no matter how despicable Chamberlain, Leon Blum, etc. were in their appeasement of Hitler. The were never actually siding with the Nazis against the people of their own countries, such as the appeasement elites of today are doing. They were never staging the kind of witch-hunts against anti-Nazis as the current "world community" elites of today are doing. They never launched the kind of stormtroopers against the anti-Jihadists as the PC elites of today are doing. They were just very weak leaders. But they didn't hate their own people and their own nations. They didn't actively collaborate with the Nazis/Jihadists. But this is what our elites of today are doing.

The whole basis for John Reilly's reasoning is that: this is how a democracy functions. My counter-argument is: very well so, but this is no longer a democracy.

Democracy or not, what will happen with those numbers? How will it turn out? When will they come? What will the situation look like by then? I will have reason to come back to this.

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Guerrilla warfare

In his post The Criminalization of Peaceful Protest, Baron Bodissey describes the situation around the planned 9/11 demonstration in Brussels. Mayor Thielemans has made it clear that anyone who intends to participate is a criminal under Belgian and European law. Baron Bodissey continues to describe the situation:

Let’s not be babes in the woods about this. The deck is stacked against us.

I wrote yesterday about the autonomer in Denmark and their tougher cousins in Brussels. Assume that these anarchists of the “Antifascist Action” squads will be out in full force in Brussels. Assume also that the Belgian riot police will be primed to suppress the slightest hint of questionable behavior by the SIOE demonstrators, while turning a blind eye to anything that the AFA goons do in response.

Expect that agents provocateurs will be planted among us. The guy standing next to you with the “Say NO to Sharia” sign may be an AFA plant or even a police infiltrator. When he lobs a rock over your head into the police lines and then disappears, it will be you who get cracked in the skull by a police baton, with a free ride to the hoosegow to follow, courtesy of Belgium’s finest.

Any media coverage of the event will be artfully edited to place SIOE in the worst possible light. If a neo-Nazi skinhead finds his way into our ranks, you can guarantee that the footage of him will be looping over and over again that night on TV screens all over the world. The counterprotesters — with their all-inclusive peace ’n’ love Multicultural signs and tame imams uttering perfectly-phrased bromides into the microphones — will be featured in the best news spots and sound bites of the event, complete with subtitles in all the relevant languages.

We will be caught between a rock and a hard place, with the police on one side and the autonomer on the other. Both will be better-armed and meaner than we are. Both will have the iron fist of sympathetic media coverage multiplying their firepower.

The only possible advantages we will have will be the rightness of our cause, and superior numbers.

To this I answered in the comments section:

Yes, I think this is more or less how it would happen. And the best case scenario is the same, but without the neo-Nazi in our ranks, and without any cracked skulls. But the media coverage will be the very same any way, and the whole thing is likely to end up as a disappointment for our side and a victory for the PC elite, AFA and the Muslims.

This puts the finger on our greatest weakness: our honesty and willingness for dialog. It's been clear to me for quite some time back that this issue is not going to be resolved by dialog within a democratic framework. This is a situation of warfare and can only be handled as such. Democracy is already dead. We shouldn't ask permission for manifestations, and give the police, the AFA groups and the Muslims time to mobilize against us. I think it is better to do smart actions, Greenpeace style, where everyone is taken by surprise. I think we should think in terms of guerrilla warfare (propaganda style). And even if these groups (police, AFA, Muslims) are all the extended arms of the PC establishment octopus, it should be possible to manipulated them into fighting each other.

But maybe some honest anti-Jihadists need to get their skulls cracked first, before people will see it as the guerrilla warfare I think it will actually have to be. It comes with the package of Christian ethics. Just like we have to wait for some Islamic nukes to kill some hundreds of thousands of us, before we would do anything to put a decisive end to the Islamic empire.

Our advantages, that we could exploit, is having an underground network. Being able to act smartly, by knowing our enemies. E.g. Muslims are very easy to fight, because they are so dumb. I do not know if the story is true, but I heard about American troops going into a street in Iraq with loud speakers where a voice shouted in Arabic "you are all impotent and cowards, etc.". The "insurgents" came out of the houses in rage with rallying cries and could easily be shot down. This really works!

I'm sure that if we put our mind to it that we would be able to stage situations where the leftists, the Muslims and the police would be in street wars with each other. Since democracy is dead, and we are prey to naked brutal power, it would be good if that actually showed in the streets where we live.

Honesty and willingness for dialog are our strong sides when acting on the Internet. But when we want to take it beyond that and into the real world, it becomes weaknesses instead. In the real world our best shot is guerrilla warfare. Burning of Muhammad effigies and pouring pigs blood on mosques are small steps in this direction.

At least this is true for countries such as Belgium and Sweden. In Denmark and America honest dialog in the public arena is still possible.

Nevertheless, the Internet activists, the honest and truthful ones, are not the good fist-fighters. Looking at recent events in e.g Holland and England it seems that it's rather the generally despised hooligan types, who do not care if they get their skull cracked, that will stand up and take the street fights for our side.

I'm going to drop "conservative" as part of my nickname. One of the reasons is that the right-wing never can get anything done. We'll have to think as leftists if we are going to win this.

The best shot for the right-wing to get anything done is a military coup. But where's the military? For the countries in the most developed stages of this pathology, such as Belgium and Sweden, a military coup is no longer an option. There simply is no military around that could do it. The only country that is powerful enough do reverse the whole situation is America. But America can only act within the framework of Christian ethics. So what we can expect is the same as what we saw from the Crusaders: too little, too late and with no lasting effects. Maybe we should just wait for those Islamic nukes, and hope that the Americans will have the sense to retaliate with nukes in the proper strategic places.

It's funny how the people still use the Crusades as a symbol for Western strength. To me it's the most clear symbol of Western weakness vis-a-vis Islam, and shows why we must leave Christian mentality before we will be able to deal decisively with Islam.

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The coffee klatch has judged me

It all started with Lawrence Auster and his "Chicken Little" reaction to my pointed criticism. Unlike real men, such as Baron Bodissey, Auster reacted with a whole stream of cry-baby whining about how I was rude, hostile, aggressive, insulting, etc., etc. And then continued with his coffee klatch Freudian psychobabble.

Now Vanishing American joins the coffee klatch at John Savage's Brave New World, writing:

[Conservative Swede] visited my blog once and left a sort of snarky comment mentioning Christianity negatively; I don't remember the substance of it.

To which John Savage replies:

VA, I'm sorry that CS was rude to you. I understand why he probably would be, and I won't be surprised if he ends up doing the same to me.

The coffee klatch has already judged me. But let's have a look at what I actually wrote at Vanishing American's site. VA had published Fjordman's article "A Christian Background for Political Correctness?", where I was mentioned. And I made the following comment, and VA answered.

Conservative Swede:
For those interested in the discussions I had with Fjordman, about the role of Christian ethics, I invite you to read my blog: Conservative Swede. Is Christian ethics truly a major force behind the suicide of our civilization?

Vanishing American:
Conservative Swede, interesting blog. I agree with much of what you say.
However I think the problem is not Christianity per se but the modern, liberalized variation of it, [...]

So this is what was really said. But what does truth matter to a coffee klatch? And the thing is that when a coffee klatch has turned against you, there's no way you can get it right, no way to obtain redress. When you describe how ludicrous their claims of your rudeness are, they will take this as the decisive evidence of how they are right about you. They stick together. and emotions and group identity are more important than truth.

Update: John Savage decided not to join the coffee klatch.

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Just a note

I think I might have found myself a new career in the entertainment business (and while I'm at it I'd like to affirm my recognition to black culture for their wonderful and essential contributions to music and dancing). So I might not be able to blog so much. Expect me to come back at an irregular basis.

What I just wanted to say is that when I get the time to write again I will have several positive things to say about Baron Bodissey and Gates of Vienna. Baron Bodissey gained a lot of respect from me. Not mainly for reconsidering, but for the whole way he handled the situation. I had directed very pointed critique at him, but he handled it respectfully and decently as someone honestly interested in intellectual discourse. This should be contrasted with the actions of Lawrence Auster (which you can read about below in the blog). The View from the Right blog has lost much of my respect.

Another thing, after my "I'm an island" post many people concluded that I had given up and also that I said that Western civilization is doomed. But I didn't say that Western civilization is doomed. The point is that I do not care anymore. I'm leaving the destiny of the Western civilization to the people of the two Christianities. I'm leaving the mess that they create for themselves, for themselves to sort out. And by the emails and other comments I get, it's clear that my island is becoming populated. If I get the time to blog more regularly again, I'm sure it would be crowded. The end of the West is not the end of European civilization, no more than the end of the Roman empire was the end of European civilization. From this island we will watch the civilization of the two Christianities falling apart (this reflects an attitude rather than a prediction), while getting prepared for building the third generation of European civilization, Rebuilding Rome with sugar on the top.

I get comments from people nowadays of how great they think it is to meet a person that is so completely happy, and how I spread happiness around me. I have found balance in my life, and unfortunately right now it does not allow for too much blogging. But don't worry, the things I have to say can be equally well said a few months from now.

Paul Belien also won my sympathy. I can see myself in him. And it's great with comments as the one from Phanarth from Denmark, who completely gets what I'm saying. He writes at GoV:

Your voice has been unique. I have never seen anyone like you who understood how most of the things American conservatives blame Europe for are in fact imports from America. You are one of the very few who see things clearly and can also explain it in an understandable way.

I hope Phanarath would send me an email to conswede (at) mailbolt.com like so many others of those who gets me.

There also an endless stream of golden nuggets sent to me by Geza, that should be shared with the world.

Update: Lawrence Auster commented again at his site, and while he himself is often blind to a good sense of humour (and in general blind to many things that do not relate to his ego), his posts have been getting increasingly funnier, and now they are absolutely hilarious. Me and Political Junkie had a good laugh over Auster's pompous silliness, and his new career as a Freudian Guru.
Anyway, Auster doesn't get what I'm saying, and he doesn't even try. Who cares anymore?

Update 2: I have written a post regarding Auster's reaction to my comment in the first paragraph: On black culture, Islam and "moral thinking"

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Gee, can't you leave me alone :-)

Gee, I just saw that Paul Belien quoted me too.

Yesterday I had an epiphany. The bad signs from the people I had previously put hope in had piled up, and yesterday came the last blow that made the picture complete. I opened a bottle of wine and called my best friend. I described the full picture to her, and the futility of it all, and how I had come to a closure. Then I finished the bottle of wine while writing my "I'm an island" post. I've been thinking for a while about how to formulate a hiatus or goodbye post, not really knowing what I wanted, It's not until I get filled with a decisive emotion that I know what to do and what to write, such as it happened to me yesterday. The emotion was "I'm out of here", "I'm gonna disconnect", and that allowed me for spilling it out. A paradox, the decision not to write any more made me write.

At the core theme of this post was my disconnection and strong criticism of my blogroll shortlist blogs (the ones I read regularly): View from the Right, Brussels Journal, and Gates of Vienna. And within 24 hours they all link and quote me favorably. The quote at Gates of Vienna is by Fjordman (whom I didn't put under much heat, but I did the site of GoV). Even Lawrence Auster writes nicely about me, he's even trying to be helpful in finding me a new moniker. He doesn't go nuts as the last time. And this in spite of me presenting mush stronger and more devastating criticism of him than last time, and directed exclusively at him and not at Jim Kalb. And now Paul Belien. Gee guys, can't you leave me alone! :-)

During my summer break much has been going through my mind. I have rearranged my life and job situation, so now I don't have time to blog anymore. I have filled my life with other things. So don't encourage me! Why is it that these people who I criticize, and lately even want to detach from, are the ones the find me interesting and refer to me favourably? I'm not saying they like me, but it's clear that they appreciate me and find me interesting. My secret dream had always been to have an audience of secular liberals (or rather non-believing ordinary people). They are the ones that should be ripe for the purge of the last elements of Christianity that I'd like to offer--I thought. But no show. Instead I get the Christian pro-Americans. Misunderstand me right here. I think you are great people. But when I was still full of weltschmerz and blogging lust I had the idea of a Tordesillas kind of demarcation line across the Atlantic Ocean leaving the for the Americans to attempt to reinstall the Christian God, while the Europeans should be pushed out of Christianity altogether. The latter one I considered my domain. But no show.

The appreciative responses I've got has come disproportionally from Christian Americans or pro-Americans. Yet another paradox. Does this mean I have to reevaluate my view? Or should I just accept that the world is full of paradoxes? I often wondered recently: Why does Lawrence Auster link and comment upon my posts? I just have this mini-blog that nobody would care about otherwise. He could easily just have ignored me. The same with Paul Belien. Everytime I write something strongly critical about him he links and quotes from that post (even though he doesn't quote those parts). Then it strikes me how they are just lonely alienated guys, just like I am. Driven by curiosity, constantly searching searching. Wanting to bring things to the surface in order to find answers. Of course we have a lot in common!

Back to my secret plan. The post-Christian seculars should be ridiculed out of their Christian ethics. Since they despise Christianity so much I figured that constantly pointing out to them how they act like priestly Christians, yes even Christian fanatics, would be the way of purging them of their slave morality. Someone should draw a cartoon called "The Leftist" featuring monk-looking figures running around like anti-globalist in the street throwing stones--exposing their fanaticism and superstition.

I've been called a prima donna and yes I am. I'm a sensitive soul, and my process of thinking takes quantum leaps by periods of passionate devotion, when I'm all possessed by the fervor. It gets started when I see an anomaly in a picture and a new period of fervor is launched, trying to find a perspective from which to set the picture right. And yes there is pain an agony in these periods. So please don't encourage me!

I'm never going to be anything even close to a poet. My mind is far too square for that. But apart from this, the following quote of Kirkegaard struck a chord within me already as a young man:

What is a poet? An unhappy man who conceals profound anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so fashioned that when sighs and groans pass over them they sound like beautiful music. His fate resembles that of the unhappy men who were slowly roasted by a gentle fire in the tyrant Phalaris' brazen bull—their shrieks could not reach his ear to terrify him, to him they sounded like sweet music. And people flock about the poet and say to him: do sing again; Which means, would that new sufferings tormented your soul, and: would that your lips stayed fashioned as before, for your cries would only terrify us, but your music is delightful. And the critics join them, saying: well done, thus must it be according to the laws of aesthetics. Why, to be sure, a critic resembles a poet as one pea another, the only difference being that he has no anguish in his heart and no music on his lips. Behold, therefore would I rather be a swineherd on Amager and be understood by the swine than a poet, and misunderstood by men.

My words would strike people as structures of angular metal rather than anything like the sweet music described above. But it's equally true that the day my soul is no more tormented with new sufferings I would have nothing more to write. And even if I did, I wouldn't know where to start. Not without a decisive emotion driving me. And I actually do not want to do this, I'm looking for a way out. Right now I looking to be a swineherd among swines.

Update: Hmm. I just remembered. A similar thing happened two months ago. Calling the same friend. Likewise declaring that this is it, that I will quit blogging. During my period as Christian civilizationist I had made good friends with great people. I knew, and at this point I felt strongly, how my strong criticism of Christian ethics and the Vatican II would forever change the nature of my friendship with these people. I could see clearly that the phantasmagorian answers I would get in return would make me lose my respect for them, and that to them I'd be a henchman of the evil side. I felt strongly that it wasn't worth it. That friendship is more important than politics. But in the nakedness of this certainty, when relaxing in the completion of the decision, that inner voice appeared saying "No!". And I wrote my series of five articles about Catholicism in one go.

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I'm an island

I'm an island. I do not belong anywhere. I'm questioning the meaning of my blogging. I'm questioning the moniker I have adapted. "Conservative" like whom? Like View from the Right? Like Paul Belien? Like Gates of Vienna? No, no, and no. And definitely not like MajorityRights or Jim Kalb. And of course not like neocons and paleocons.

The West consists of Christians and post-Christians, the latter better known as liberals. And of course the fringe group of far whitists (neo-Nazis or otherwise). All three groups having more in common with each other than I have with them. All stuck in Christian slave morality. The liberals and neo-Nazis doing everything to oppose and leaving Christianity but only managing to get even more deeply stuck in Christian slave morality, exposing even more of the whining priestly Jewish attitude, participating even more eagerly in the Christian shadow theater down in that Platonic cave.

We are witnessing the historical demise of Christianity. When a star dies, in its last phase it expands into a red giant, before it shrinks into a white dwarf. Liberalism is the red giant of Christianity. And just as a red giant it is devoid of its core, it expands thousandfold while losing its substance and is about to die. The world I live in consists of Christians and liberals. It's their world and I do not belong to them. I leave their limited wars, knee-jerk Islam apologism and WWII mythology to them. They are not about to change. On the contrary, they are continuously generating new problems with their way of acting.

There were certain sites, certain bloggers, even certain countries, that I had put hope in. But now it has become clear that they are all part of the same big train of lemmings. Bye bye! Denmark, nope. Brussels Journal, nope. View from the Right, nope. Gates of Vienna, nope. I do not know if the news have reached the English speaking world, but Muslim immigration has increased in Denmark the last five years (as reported by Snaphanen). Yes, the "extreme far-right" "near Nazi" immigration laws of Denmark inspired by the Danish People's Party has lead to more Turks and Pakistanis. This is the way it goes in the world of liberals/Christians. It's their world. I can do nothing but sit on the side and laugh at it. They are too stuck in their inner fears and hang-ups to be able to do anything useful. They will do what they are programmed to do: demise.

It's seems that politics is not something for me to be engaging in, after all. Politics is by definition a social activity, but all the other people are stuck down in the cave, while I sit alone at my island. Robinson Crusoe couldn't have engaged in politics even if he wanted to. Western politics is the game of whether our nations should commit suicide fast or slowly. Conservatism is a joke. There are only Christians and liberals (and the occasional far whitist who's often the most extremely Judaoid priestly character of them all), and they all adhere to the same Chrsitan ethics, the same slave morality.

So what's the future for people like me? Because even if I belong nowhere politically, I belong somewhere socially and ethnically. Well, the world is being homogenized. Tomorrow the whole world will be like the Third World. People like me, of European ethnicity, will have no home, no nation. We will live like the Jews as elites in other people's nations (preferably a non-Muslim nation). This doesn't scare me. The Jews have lived thusly for two thousand years. It's a pity, but this is our destiny. This is what the Western Christians and liberals are working eagerly towards. This is what they are programmed to do. This is what they will achieve. I'll let them have it. As an individual I cannot change this. The only thing I can do is to prepare myself for it. A good plan is to live as a "Jew" in Catholic/Mestizo Latin America rather than a Muslim Europe, or the sinking Titanic of America. Even China looks like an option, in comparison.

All while Paul Belien is praising the Turkish Islamic party, AKP, for keeping Allah in the equation. To throw away Allah is not acceptable in the eyes of Belien, which he sees as leading to evil secularism where the state is put in the place of god.

Note also how he's using "conservative" exactly in the way I always opposed to. Kalb, Belien, Steven, Auster, D'Souza etc. They are the conservatives, they have the privilege of how it should be defined, Not a conservative-wannabe like me. Who hereby jump off the conservatism bandwagon: since I found that anecdotal conservatism is actually at the very core of conservatism, and since according to conservatives themselves it is correct to label Ahmedinejad as ultra-conservative. And not ultra-radical, as would have been the case with my interpretation of conservatism, which appeared to be a mirage. Bye bye idiots!

I'm sure Belien is very pleased also with the fact that the Turkish surge that lifted AKP to power, is forcing the Turkish women to dress more "conservatively". "Moderate devout Muslims" are better than secular claptrap, aren't they, Belien?

I can see exactly how creeping dhimmitude happens, as described by Bat Ye'or, when Christianity gets confronted with Islam. Christianity has two sides, the left side and the right side, and both are inviting Islam while trying to defeat each other. Muhammad's brain child is a perfect organism to parasitize on Christianity.

As a Christian, Lawrence Auster adhere to the Jewish god like so many others. But to him the Jewish god is not the foreign, alien god as he is to all the other Westerners, thereby weakening them and their self-esteem. To Lawrence it's his old nationalistic god, a situation which provides Lawrence with substantially more self-confidence than any other Westerner, when speaking as a mouthpiece for Christianity. But it's still the same universalist god of good (and weakness, meekness etc.). Lawrence can only provide a fake impression of what it is to adopt the Jewish god. It won't work the same way for you, since you are not a Jew.

In geopolitics Lawrence is all about good ol' American apple-pie limited war. Something that never worked and a doctrine that left this planet in the worst kind of mess, seen in history, during this last century. The bloodiest and most murderous century of mankind, under the "guidance" of America. Pax Romana and Carthaginian peace are well-tried concepts that works, and that provides mercy and peacefulness for innocent people. But the American way is to leave the world in chaos, the American way is limited war. While any really useful and effective measure against the Islamic empire is seen as "playing god" by Lawrence Auster.

At Gates of Vienna Baron Boddisey acts as the perfect PC Inquisitor when ostracizing Swedish blogger Jan Milld, as anti-Semite, for questioning the exactness of the symbolic figure of 6 million Jews, along with pointing out that the case, about gas chambers, was built on witnesses rather than technical evidence. This made Baron react with his reptile brain, quite as we have seen Lawrence Auster do with regards to me a month ago (on a completely unrelated issue).

These people are just not prepared for a proper fight. They are too much driven by superstitious fear and emotions. And there is not exactly anyone else around.

I'll withdraw and cultivate my garden.

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Summertime

...and the living is easy.

My vacation has started, and I will travel some. So my frequency of posting will be low during July. But as soon as I find the proper time there is a whole range of topics in pipeline for me to write about: The history of Christianity and how the genie left the bottle. How to understand the concepts of left and right in politics. About our Roman heritage and how it was not broken until the nascence of the Wilsonian world order. The main issue of this century will be about our collective survival--how to define "us and them"? Must cults be destroyed? Is anecdotal conservatism at the core of all forms of Christian conservatism? Islam and Brazilian bikini wax--forbidden or prescribed? Can the national god of the Arabs be the creator of the world? Do transcendent entities fade away when we stop believing in them? (nations, gods)

And an article about the centrality of Nazism in our moral thinking. Our Christian ethics is based on the inversion of values. Evil is defined first. Since WWII evil equals Nazism. Thus ethics in the West has become all about reversing Nazism, and anything that in some context could be viewed as resembling Nazism. A negative idea as basis for morality becomes destructive, and our moral system and society is breaking down. It's time to let it go, and base our morality on positive ideas. It's time to ask ourselves, not "what is evil?" (we should never see ourselves as evil), but what is good for us? what are we fond of? what is egoistically best for ourselves? Start by enjoying this summer!

Since I post irregularly, you might want to subscribe to my RSS feed, so that you will be notified about new posts I make, rather than having to peek into my blog to check. Click on this symbol at the right end of your browser's address field, or click here, to subscribe to my feed. Different browsers handle this differently. Firefox and Opera already have built-in support (Firefox as Live Bookmarks or with the Sage extension, and in Opera under the Channels menu). Read more about RSS feeds and how to use them here. If you have not been using RSS feeds before, give it a shot. Subscribe to your favourite blogs, and lean back. Now the news will come to you, instead of you clicking around searching for updates.

You might also want pop in to keep an eye on the Recent Comments roll in the side bar. I will try and answer comments even if I do not write longer posts.

And if you haven't done so yet, read the following posts by me, which I consider my most important ones:

• The power configuration of the Wilsonian West
• Christian ethics—to be or not to be?
• Jewish God, anti-Semitism and Oedipus Complex
• Catholicism—anecdotal conservatism
• Islam—perverted parasitical psychopathy

And there is more on each of these themes, if you browse the archive.


Update:
A convenient RSS service, independent of the browser you use, is Google Reader. Once you've signed in, you can subscribe to new feeds by clicking on the Add subscription button. This opens up a search box that invites you to enter either a search term or a feed URL.
Example:

• To subscribe to this blog, you would copy the feed shortcut from the Subscribe to: Posts (Atom) line, at the end of the blog page.
• Then, paste this URL, which happens to be http://conswede.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default, into the search box.
• Click the Add button, and it's all set up.

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Appreciating Auster while criticizing him

I will get to Lawrence Auster's reply to Geza's "Night and Day" comparison further down, but first something about what's going on at the general level.

Characteristic of the human mind is to organize our impressions about something as a Gestalt. To see something as something. This is our way of attributing meaning to something. Islam can be seen as a cult or as a world religion worthy of respect. The (contemporary) West can be seen in the Gestalt of for example a Jewish-Capitalist conspiracy, or as an ultra-liberal tyranny. The (solution for the) West could reduced to the issue of white genes or Christianity.

The way Lawrence Auster sees my recent criticism of him, it is a personal attack on him. He sees me as someone who has turned against him. By giving my criticism this Gestalt, in his mind, every little thing I do and say gets interpreted by Auster in this light (how I'm supposedly being openly hostile, etc.). Auster is visibly shaken by this issue. There is a lot of emotions and disappointment stirred up, and it has to be directed somewhere. And it gets directed at me.

But the fact that the issue is sensitive to Auster shouldn't stop us from discussing it. Even Auster himself admits that there is substance to the issue brought up by me, as he wrote in his latest answer to David G. It is good that this issue is also carried on by David G and Geza, since I am now a red cape (and everything I write) in the eyes of Auster. This issue is hot for Auster, and while he gives credit to David G's comments, he wouldn't bring it up himself with Jim Kalb, but instead suggests that David G should do it. We have seen before how Auster simply cannot properly criticize Kalb, instead he always end up in his "on one hand, and on the other hand" procedure.

- - - - - - - - - -
In spite of Auster's gross mischaracterization of my actions, I have strived for continuing to focus on the actual discussion and avoided to stoop into the same kind of behaviour. Instead I have continued to write positively about Auster. But through the prism Auster is looking through now, my expression of admiration of him, and my criticism of his stance and conduct regarding a specific issue, are irreconcilable. In his current state of mind, Auster cannot see these two things happening simultaneously. Instead he claims that I have jumped to the opposite extreme. That I have turned against him. That I shifted from admiration of his work to denouncing him as a groupie, a thrall, of a pro-Islam "fifth columnist". That I'm waging a campaign against him, driven by emotion. That I'm speaking in a hostile and insulting manner about him personally. That it's an Oedipal phenomenon set off by explosive psychological forces of a younger man [this younger man is in his forties]. That I have declared, by implication, that all of his work is mistaken.

People who get linked to my site from VFR should step out of the Gestalt that Auster puts on me, and look for themselves what is going on in this blog. You will find a community of people who greatly values Auster's work, while finding Kalb's position on Islam very problematic. You will find an intellectual exploration about the position of Christianity in European civilization, where the positions are tentative as well as diverse. You will find no personal attacks, hostility or insulting rudeness against Lawrence Auster. Look for yourselves.

In his last reply Auster writes "This brings us, finally, to what CS sees as the deeper implications of my supposed contradictions: he suggests that in the future I may change my views on Islam in possibly sinister ways, because I am 'not a constant.'"

There is nothing in what I wrote that suggests that Auster would change his views on Islam "in possibly sinister ways". On the contrary, I suggested that the thing that could hamper him is an excess of decency. Due to his fundamental respect for Islam as a world religion that is "devoted to a transcendent God". And the "not a constant" comment was, as explained in my previous post, my (clumsy) way of giving him the benefit of the doubt. But since Auster is convinced that I'm waging a campaign of personal attacks against him, he's bent on reading into my words the opposite of what I say and taking it as hostile attacks. This also makes him over-mangnify the significance of my initial Powerline comparison, which was nothing but a very first association I got, and something that I have already straightened out.

Regarding Geza's "Night and Day" analysis, Auster replies "that Charlton G.'s acquaintance's statement and Kalb's statement, far from being identical, are strikingly different." The difference being in living under Islam as a Muslim or as a Christian. But as already pointed out by Geza, this clarification by Kalb had not been presented to Auster when he first reacted to Kalb's statement. That is, the difference that Auster is referring to, in his defense, does not apply at the point of time of the two exchanges by Auster quoted and compared by Geza. Furthermore, Auster didn't criticize Charlton G.'s acquaintance for his willingness to convert to Islam, but for his willingness to let the West lose to Islam rather than letting the West be lost to ultra-liberalism.

Auster writes:

Let me add that if Jim Kalb had said that he'd rather be an Allah-fearing Muslim than live under modern liberalism I would have called that a horrific statement. But Kalb did not say that.

No, but Kalb compared favourably the idea of a West lost to Islam compared to a West lost to ultra-liberalism. And you didn't call that a horrific statement. That's the point. You even injected that you find Kalb's position theoretically interesting: "an interesting question and one worth thinking about".

Comparing the two propositions "living in a West lost to Islam as a dhimmi" or "living in a West lost to Islam as a Muslim", the striking and significant similarity lies in the West being lost to Islam! As David G pointed out: wouldn't the children of Kalb live as Muslims? And as blogger Dean McConnell wrote in my comments section:

As a believer in Biblical orthodox protestant Christianity I would actually prefer a secular Europe to a Muslim Europe.

The issue is still truth. I maintain the truth of Biblical Christianity. Secular Europeans will eventually recognize the moral bankruptcy and lack of virtue in their nihilist lifestyles. When that occurs they may be open to a reconversion to real Christianity instead of the liberal pseudo-Christianity or secularism they are familiar with now. But a decadent liberal Europe will likely still have the right to discuss and convert. An Islamic Europe may have better outward moral tone but will repress truth and discussion and conversion just as Islam does everywhere.

But I also reject the notion that Islamic societies are actually especially moral. they reject some of the favorite sins of the West, but they have their own sins and blindness-es that are just as bad.

The success of the West is due to the legacy of living Christianity. Now that Europe has dead Christianity it is slowly dying. If it becomes Islamic it will not revive - it will become like other Islamic societies to the degree it really accepts Islam.

To this I answered:

Thank you for your sensible words, Mr. McConnell. With your tempered disposition you here express important features, the essence, of the Christian West. The Christian West as we once knew it, as it should be, and as we would hope for it to be in the future. Your words mean a ray of hope, in a time of darkness and dissonance.

We are back to seeing things as something. Mr. McConnell sees the full view of the West with its many facets. He sees that--no matter how bad--modern liberlism is, after all, an expression of Christian Western culture. This is contrasted by Jim Kalb's ideological, reductionist, outlook; where the interest of the West gets reduced to the issue of Christianity; where the current state of the West gets reduced to Christianity-hostile "advanced liberalism". Adding to this the idea of Islam as providing a theoretical place for Christian communities, and we've got Kalb's horrific conclusion. This is the kind of place where reductionist ideologizing takes people. Ideology is a way of blinding people. In contrast, McConnell here provides a non-ideological balanced perspective. Read further...

Geza responds to Auster's post

Yesterday Lawrence Auster posted a reply to my previous post with Geza's "Night and Day" analysis. I've been too busy with other things to respond to Lawrence Auster today, but instead I can share with you what Geza has written to me since. Yesterday, immediately after Auster's post he wrote this in defense of his analysis:

I just saw Auster's reply to my Night and Day analysis.

This happened before Kalb expanded on his Islam/Ultra-liberalism theory. In that excerpt wasn't he essentially saying that given a choice between Islam and Ultra-liberalism, he'd choose Islam, much like he'd prefer American Protestantism over Islam, and Catholicism over American Protestantism. He didn't indicate that as a Catholic, he'd rather live in an Islamic society over an ultra-liberal one, but that he considers Islam to be better. Of course we know now that he'd rather live as a Catholic under Islam and not as a Muslim but from that initial post that was not clear. I was comparing Auster's initial shock to the correspondent to his rather sober response to Kalb's Islam/Ultra-liberalism statement which lacked the caveat that of course Kalb meant "as a Catholic". I read Kalb's follow-up on your blog and may have missed an earlier one but, this only mitigates the damage of Kalb's statement, it is still awful in its own right. I think the minimum that you expected from Auster was shock and some concrete criticisms, not him writing out Kalb from Western Civilization, declaring him a traitor and cutting off all correspondence with him.

Today, after more comments had been added to Auster's post, Geza sent me the following, where he adds to the VFR commenter David G, and clarifies why this discussion is of importance. Bolding of David's text is by Geza, and he intersperses his own comments in brackets:

Your tiff with Auster has gotten the tradcons thinking, check out David G's comment!

Reprinting it here cause it's so good:

David G. writes:

In an earlier entry to you I asked if Jim Kalb had defined himself as a fifth-columnist. You replied that this was somewhat unfair to Kalb and asked me to consider his position in greater depth. Your most recent post clarifies the issue for me and I understand clearly the distinction that you are drawing between Kalb and Conservative Swede.

While it's a good rendering on your part I have to opt for the view of CS. Implicit in Kalb's defense of Islam over advanced liberalism is the likelihood of Kalb ultimately embracing Islam. And, if not Kalb himself, I would conjecture that a good number of his adherents would. [Geza1 comments: Which is what you have been saying ALL ALONG and you at least have some proof in the case of Desmond Jones]

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Another way to view the dilemma might be: In the extreme, would Kalb (and his adherents) be willing to die a martyr or would he opt for Islam and its transcendent civilizing function that he deems to superior to advanced liberalism? In short, convert or die. Maybe he would be willing to die as such--but where would that get him except maybe a place in heaven? What about his children? How would they live? As Muslims probably. Checkmate. [Geza1: Kalb likes to say that Christianity has a place in Islam but he doesn't realize the precarious position Christian communities find themselves under Islam, chances are, his descendant will eventually become Muslim even though he may live his life out as a Christian]

In the hypothetical question that you posed--how would you or I respond to a siege by Muslims in a secular city where Christianity is banned?--I felt that I had answered the question in my initial post. I would tumble the dice in favor of Western, secular man any day. At least with that group we share a varied common history--Plato, Aristotle, the Greek city states, the Bible, the Magna Carta, Shakespeare, the Enlightenment, the Founding of the American nation, art, literature, rule of law, chivalry, romantic love, humor, ribaldry, satire, Mozart, Beethoven, the scientific method, etc. There is more fertile ground there for a Western revival than in any of the so-called transcendent impulses of Islam. [Geza1: For Kalb, it's Christianity or nothing. It appears that no matter what survives of the West, if Christianity is not part of that "package", then he could care less. Conversely, if only Christianity survived and not Aristotle, Mozart, Magna Carta, etc I doubt that he'd be too upset.]

As I understand the CS, he has it right, that, at least for Kalb, the key question of existence has been reduced to "is this good for Christianity."

[Geza1: Christianity on its own cannot insure the survival of the West because it is concerned with its own survival that exists outside of the Western template. This is evident in the missionary activity in the Third World done by all denominations and the Christian open-border fanatics who want us to import more "authentic" Christians from the Third World who will teach us (godless materialists) how to be Christian again. Billy Graham doesn't care if the white race exists 5000 years from now, Pope Benedict XVI thinks it is our highest calling to give the refugee shelter, and the Russian Orthodox Church is more concerned with ethnic Russians converting to Hinduism than Muslims moving into Russia. The racial cohesion Christianity possessed at one point seems to be spent and with a diminishing sense of peoplehood, how can it be expected to defend Western civilization if it is only interested in one aspect of that civilization? If the unrestrained universalism of Christianity is either not corrected or at the very least restrained, it will lead the West into oblivion.]

A reasonable question perhaps but one that is a failure of imagination when played out an apocalyptic level such as the one we are discussing here. I think that Jim Kalb's view of advanced liberalism is fevered and it reveals him to be, if not a potential Islamic fifth columnist (opting for martyrdom instead), then surely a fellow-traveler with Islam until the day of reckoning arrives. Not good.

To further along, and ultimately embrace Islam or martyrdom, is the end of everything notwithstanding the adaptability of some mutated form of underground Christian worship. I [see] that CS, despite his own knee-jerk categorization of your own views, has struck on a key point--namely, that a significant expression of traditional conservatism (Kalb's) ultimately lacks an instinct for survival and proves to be to be just another dead-end when pushed to its logical conclusions.

[Geza1: Kalb's traditionalism is structured entirely around the Catholic Church and Natural Law, whereas Auster's is more nuanced. Auster's is more sustainable because you mention that he gets a lot of his ideas from elsewhere. Auster has no problem seeing Islam as an enemy but he won't go to the lengths that we would like him to. Yet, Kalb seems to be defending Islam in some instances. Kalb's flaw is that he is TOO RELIANT on the Catholic Church, the most universal Church with the most adherents from the Third World. Is it any surprise that the Catholic Church is the most chummy with Islam? You don't see universalist Evangelicals treating Islam with the same respect. They even called Muhammad a pedophile and terrorist! The Orthodox Church is cold towards Islam and they even honour nationalistic saints that were martyred by Muslims. Moreover, David G. and Auster cannot take offense when you describe Kalb's position on Islam as indicative of Traditionalism and its flaws. Kalb is pretty much the founder of this new movement and Auster has not broken ranks with Kalb (not that he needs to) nor has he articulated how his Traditionalism differs from that of Kalb's (other than the difference of denomination). So what are we to assume? That what Kalb says about Islam is authoritative as far as Traditionalism is concerned.]


This discussion has been fascinating so far. I just hope that in the future that Auster sees the value of this discussion instead of getting offended. You might want to tone down on the snark so Auster doesn't have anything to complain about. He's been guilty of it before for sure, but it's important to keep this discussion going even if you respond indirectly to each other.

Thank you, Geza! Your contributions to this discussion have been invaluable. I will have to add my own comments tomorrow. For now I would just like to say, that Lawrence Auster is indeed a good man who always sees the value of discussion. He's in fact simultaneously getting offended and seeing the value of this discussion here, both at the same time. Lawrence could easily have buried this whole thing, but instead he continued the debate all the time, and included a comment from this David G. already a week ago. It's from there I borrowed the description of Jim Kalb as a "fifth columnist waiting to happen".

And its this side of him that made me write "Auster is not a constant". Quite as Auster describe me as an "intellectual seeker", I see the same side in him. With saying "Auster is not a constant" I meant to say, that if there indeed is something of substance in what I sniffed up here, and that there is an aspect in which Auster is taking a wrongful stance, that presently could be projected into him becoming too weak in future situations regarding Islam, that I do not necessarily expect him to remain in this position. Just because he's always in an ongoing intellectual process. He's not a constant.

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Like Night and Day

Geza1 sent me this very interesting analysis on the Auster/Kalb issue:

Conservative Swede, look at what I dug up at VFR:

Bolds and Italics are mine.

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/006465.html

Charlton G. writes:

An acquaintance of mine recently confided to me, "Frankly, I'd rather live as a God fearing Muslim than end up in the loony, secularist, multicultural hell-hole the liberals are preparing for me and my children."

I thought about what he said and rejected it. Better to die, I thought. Although both visions of the future seem bleak, I could not see throwing over my civilization (and race) to avoid the ghastly twilight of liberal utopia. But the fact that others are considering Islam to be a better alternative to what is happening to us here in the West is disturbing. Naturally, I have no idea how many like this fellow there are. But there may be more than are willing to come forth and admit it, both here and in Europe. (Can you imagine how difficult it must be in Europe for a Christian traditionalist?) I'm just wondering out loud here, but it may very well have occurred to the Muslims that there are others in our midst who will not fight.

To paraphrase the old commercial: they would rather switch than fight.

Lawrence Auster replies:

That's horrific that anyone would say that. Yet the same thing has happened over and over. Whenever the West lost to Islam, it was because of dissatisfaction and divisions within the West.

----

And now let us compare it to Auster's "critique" of Jim Kalb.

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http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/008076.html

Lawrence Auster replies:

Well, here's the entire quote:

Naturally, like other people I have views about which understandings are best. For example, I consider Islam better than contemporary advanced liberalism, the individualistic, nondoctrinal and moralistic Protestantism traditional in America better than Islam, and Catholicism better than Protestantism.

On one hand, I can see this statement as coming from a consciousness that modern liberalism is so evil that anything, including Islam, would be better than it. Islam is not evil exactly; Islam is like a predator that you know will kill you and you have to protect yourself from it, but you don't hate it because it's simply its nature to be a predator, whereas modern liberalism is truly evil.

On the other hand, I think it's a mistake for a Westerner ever to compare Islam favorably to any aspect of the West, though various Western thinkers and writers have done since the 16th century, usually based on some disenchantment with the West. Patrick Buchanan made a similar mistake when he sided against the European newspapers that published the Muhammad cartoons. Buchanan hates the secular left so much he sides with Islam against it. The secular left may be bad, but it is still our bad; Islam is simply our enemy, which, wherever it gains power and to the extent it gains power, will ruin us.

----

Some thoughts:

1. In the first excerpt Auster is visibly disgusted that anyone could say such a thing, yet in the second excerpt he tries to understand Kalb's reasoning.

2. Charlton G's acquaintance and Kalb's position are identical. Both would rather live in a society that is structured around a monotheistic god (any god at all, no matter how foreign or immoral) instead of an ultra-liberal society yet Auster reacts differently towards both.

3. In the first excerpt Charlton G. says he would not give up his civilization or race for Islam, he even says he'd rather die. Auster does not object. In the second excerpt, Auster makes a point to say that Islam is not evil exactly to make Kalb's position sound a little more moderate. The evil of Islam is important, but not at this stage of the discussion. I think it was an inappropriate time to bring it up because the main issue for Europe is not the morality of Islam but rather its foreignness and how it has the power to change Europe indefinitely.

4. In the first excerpt, Auster states that division is the reason why the West lost to Islam. In the second excerpt, instead of criticizing Kalb's identical position, he criticizes Patrick Buchanan! Buchanan and Kalb both hate secularism/liberalism equally and would take the side of Islam over either yet Auster cannot say that Kalb is being divisive.

5. The second excerpt seems a little muddled. In the first part, Auster says Islam is not exactly evil but liberalism is. Then he goes on to say in the second part that secular leftism (a more advanced form of liberalism) is "our bad" and that Islam will "ruin us" and is "our enemy". If something is evil, it cannot be permitted to exist. If it is possible to eliminated, then it should be. That is how Auster and Kalb view liberalism, they want it gone. Islam is not exactly evil, so it can continue to exist but we obviously know from Auster's other writings that he does not want it to exist in the West. We do not know what Kalb's position is though. In the second part, he is surprisingly more soft on secular leftism which is a more advanced case of liberalism, his language suggests that it isn't imperative for it to be destroyed but should be remedied. He mentions the European connection for secular liberalism and even though it is bad, it is still an expression of us. He does not do the same for liberalism, it's just evil whereas Islam is not exactly evil and is not an expression of us. Islam will ruin us, it is a predator and our enemy, but since it is in its nature, we cannot hate it much like we cannot hate a murderer for murdering because it's in his nature!

6. This was Auster's first response to Kalb's position vis-a-vis Islam and advanced liberalism. He does not mention Kalb by name when discussing his words but Buchanan and the "consciousness that modern liberalism is so evil" make special guest appearances.

Auster was not just being cordial, he simply cannot criticize Kalb at all.

This is very interesting, Geza1. There is an unresolved contradiction within Lawrence Auster. When he independently consults his own brain he gets it right and has his heart in the right place, but when Jim Kalb is around Auster decides instead to comply with his group affiliation to Christianity, which weakens him and hampers his judgment. The interesting thing following this--since the issue has been brought up to the surface, and he opted for moving his position in the direction of Kalb's--is how Auster will act from now on. Will we see him coming to a point where he is more and more protesting against people that he'd see as going too far with regards to Islam? For example in supporting burning of effigies of Muhammad, as Gates of Vienna does? Or against people who goes further than his Separationism, e.g. by advocating the dismantling of the Islamic empire? It wouldn't happen tomorrow, but maybe already next year. It's an open question. Auster is not a constant.

Regarding his description of Islam as a predator that is "not exactly evil", it reminds me so much of discussions I had decades ago with animal rights activists who advocated vegetarianism. They describe the animals as our innocent friends, and therefore we shouldn't eat them. I pointed out, of course, that predators where not so innocent since they broke the "animalistic" command and ate other animals, and suggested to the animal rights activists that this would justify us in killing and eating predators. But no no no, just as Auster says about Islam above, for the animal rights activists the predators only do what is in their nature to do, so they are "not exactly evil", and therefore we should not hate them. We just make sure that they are not so close to us that they could hurt us.

This didn't make sense to me then, and it doesn't make sense to me now.

Update:
Lawerence Auster has posted about this at his site. He makes one good point, but misses another more important one. I'll have to get back to it tomorrow. It's way beyond bedtime here now. Lawrence also speaks as if the text was written by me, when it was (mainly) written by Geza1. And the "not a constant" phrase was meant the other way around, than how he took it. That part was unclear by me. I'll have to get back tomorrow in a new post to clarify my position. And it's not about Auster, it's a more general phenomenon that I think that I'm on to. It just became clear to me how general it is, when I saw it in Auster; Lawrence Auster being one of the very best. Recent posts that I made already clarifies some of the things, but anyway I'll get to it back tomorrow too.
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