Why I Write About History

I get a few comments from people who wonder why I write about subjects such as astrophysics, Indo-European languages or wine when there are so many problems in the Western world. It is a fair question. I have published perhaps a million words on the Internet, yet the only book to appear in print so far based on my material is Defeating Eurabia, part of which is available online in German. For Scandinavian readers, I have contributed a long chapter in Norwegian to the book Selvmordsparadigmet (“The Suicide Paradigm”), published in May 2010 by the writer Ole Jørgen Anfindsen who runs the website Honest Thinking.

Anfindsen believes that the Western world is in the process of committing suicide and that the ruling ideology after the Second World War, especially from the 1960s on, has been suicidal. I agree with him. The main emphasis of his book is not on Islam, but on Politically Correct censorship and the Multiculturalism of the Western oligarchs. The same goes for my contribution to it. No, I haven’t lost my focus, but I admit that I have changed it somewhat.

As I wrote for my five-year anniversary as Fjordman over at the Gates of Vienna, when looking back I notice that I currently write about many more topics than I did when I started out in 2005. Back then I concentrated mainly on Islam and Islamic Jihad. This still constitutes a significant part of my writings and will continue to do so as long as I publish essays online. The reason why I write about more subjects today is that I have come to realize that Islam is a secondary infection. Are Islamic teachings inherently violent? Yes. Can Islam be reformed? No. Can Islam be reconciled with our way of life? No. Is there such as thing as a moderate Islam? No. Can we continue to allow Muslims to settle in our countries? No. These few sentences contain all the information about Islam that you will ever need to know. It is still useful to know more about the way your enemy thinks and how to exploit his weaknesses, yet there is no point in spending too much time on studying the failed Islamic culture. Whatever you need to know can be found daily on websites such as Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch.

Our culture did many things right, but has gone horribly wrong along the way. The interesting question here is not what is wrong with Islam since Islam has always been wrong. The interesting question is what is wrong with us. Consequently, I devote more time to explore this subject. This is why I write essays about historical topics, even beer. First of all I want to celebrate what our civilization has achieved and reclaim our history. Second, I want to take a closer look at our history to analyze exactly where and when things went wrong. I hope to publish two different books, one each on these two subjects, within the next couple of years. These will contain a little bit about Islam, but it will constitute a secondary subject in them.

I am currently working on a major book about European cultural achievements, from the Stone Age to the nuclear age and from chocolate to quantum mechanics. I believe there is a big potential market for such a title today, if done properly. When reading extensively about various historical subjects, I am struck by how little I truly know about my continent’s history, and how distorted much of my previous knowledge was. I have at least average education and intelligence. If I don’t know these things, there are probably tens of millions of other Westerners out there who don’t know them, either. A big part of the job for European traditionalists will be to re-conquer our historical heritage, which has been robbed from us in recent decades by Leftists and Multiculturalists of all stripes. History isn’t bunk.

You can find a few titles overlapping with this subject matter, for instance Charles Murray’s Human Accomplishment, which I respect and quote extensively. However, to my knowledge no recent, updated book of precisely the kind I am thinking of is currently available on the market. Although I will cover subjects also mentioned by Murray, I will extend them both forward and backward in time and will include much material barely covered by him at all, for instance food and drink, with a special emphasis on alcoholic beverages like mead, wine and beer, the Indo-European language expansion as well as genetic history.

The upcoming book is intended to cover almost everything from interbreeding with Neanderthals and the creation of early cave art 40,000 years ago to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in 2010. Although some of my essays may appear random, they are not; there is a plan behind them. I haven’t decided on a title yet, but I am considering calling it European Achievements – the First 40,000 Years. The full work will probably be between 700 and 1,000 pages long, depending on how much material I include and whether I can find a publisher for it. I hope to have a full manuscript for it ready later this summer. When this is completed, I intend to proceed directly to a shorter book about What Went Wrong With the West?, thereby attempting to link what we did right in the past to what we are doing wrong today.

 

Very Serious!

Nataraja,

 

The problem is, we simply don't know whether Islam can reform itself peacefully or must be defeated first.  If war is inevitable, then hesitation and restraint on our part only weakens our position, as it did in the 1930s.  If war is not inevitable, then ask yourself who is making the real effort here.  Is it the West, in which a mosque is being built adjacent to the site of an Islamic act of terror?  Or is it in the Muslim world, in which Islamic supremacists are developing an atomic bomb?  Ask yourself if a fringe sect of radical Evangelical Christians bombed the Kaaba during the Hajj, would the Saudis permit a Catholic church to be built nearby in order to prove that Christo-Islamic bonds are unshakeable?

intellectual seriousness

" Can Islam be reformed? No. Can Islam be reconciled with our way of life? No. Is there such as thing as a moderate Islam? No. Can we continue to allow Muslims to settle in our countries? No. These few sentences contain all the information about Islam that you will ever need to know."

Who sets the standards for that last assertion then? What is actually wrong with learning about moderate and reformist trends in Islam, be it historical or contemporary examples? It is worth a debate in itself if they have any chance of being a viable alternative for the growing radicalization, but simply dismissing the relevance of knowledge about such trends, available for critical scrutinizing just as any other phenomenon, is of such an appaling simplicity that it is unworthy the intellectual standards of your other articles. I just cannot take this seriously.

 

murray

I enjoyed Mr. Murray's book, as I enjoy almsot everything he writes.  However, he specifically refrained from studying Western commercial innovations - not technology, but things like the joint-stock company, bonds (public and private), and (I think) double-entry accounting.  Perhaps you could look into that too.

@ Fjordman

Your attempt is very logical and I for one applaud it wholeheartedly.