Surviving Islamism ... And Right/Left Politics: Churchill's Principle - Part III: Breivik v. Hitler

Churchill's Principle by Peter Carl

In this, the third in his series of six essays, Peter Carl peers into the troubling mind and beliefs of the Oslo terrorist, Anders Behring Breivik, both from the point of view of religion and politics. Breivik’s disturbing ideas are held up for comparison against the likes of those of Friedrich Nietzsche, Alexander Tille, Adolf Hitler, and Hanns Kerrl. The author asserts that if the Counter-Jihad Movement can pro-actively begin to take steps to modify and control its message and perception internationally and to genuinely seek insight from these and other past events in history, further long-term damage posed to the Counter-Jihad Movement by Anders Breivik’s ideas and horrendous murders may be preventable.

 

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Oslo, Norway, July 22, 2011

In the essay that follows, we will wander through the intersection of religion and ideological politics, as it had come to be in the dark thoughts and mind of Anders Breivik and long before him Friedrich Nietzsche, Alexander Tille, Adolf Hitler, and a member of Hitler’s Nazi government, Hanns Kerrl. It was precisely there, both literally and figuratively speaking, within this very old, treacherous intersection that Anders Behring Breivik pulled his rental car up before the prime minister’s office in Oslo this past summer, closed the door, and walked away minutes before his bomb ripped through numerous office buildings housing what he saw as a “Leftist” government in central Oslo. At that point, to anyone who values and takes the democratic, non-violent Counter-Jihad Movement seriously and would like to see it succeed, it should have been sufficiently apparent already that Breivik’s actions and the fallout that would come of such a terrorist act was indicative of a number of severe problems that exist and have existed for and within both the Counter-Jihad Movement as well as the various well-meaning political parties of which it is made up all across the West. Anders Behring Breivik, as his bombs and bullets then declared, is and desired to be in all ways, shapes, and forms a problem for the peaceful, democratic, human rights committed Counter-Jihad Movement and our own parties with which he, by his own very deliberate choice, wanted nothing to do.

 

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No votes - No success

The problem, however, for the Counter-Jihad political parties, before we come to Breivik, Nietzsche, Tille, Hitler, and Kerrl below, can be summed up in the following manner. In order to affect the changes Counter-Jihad political parties desire to see, which include a prevention of a loss of Western freedoms by recognizing and avoiding the dangers of Islamization and Sharia and, relatedly, the implementation of responsible immigration policies, these fledgling parties must gain very broad support among the voting public. This they must do by presenting a genuine and human rights promoting platform that is equally attractive to voters from the “Center”, “Left”, and “Right”. The Counter-Jihad Movement, however, up through the present, by not seeking out and not arguing commonalities with their intellectual and political challengers has largely served as its own worst enemy. Because, generally speaking, criticism or questioning of another person or group’s religion is seen as fully off limits and a “violation of human rights” in today’s Western society, the Counter-Jihad parties and their proponents are immediately and unjustly seen and labeled both by the general public and often by the media as being xenophobic, neo-Nazi, or at minimum, “right-wing”. To make matters worse, as the writings of both Breivik and unfortunately many Counter-Jihad bloggers and authors provide evidence, the message most often transmitted by the Counter-Jihad Movement is one that largely and broadly underscores and overemphasizes ideological differences with and is highly critical of something as vague and indefinable as the “Left”.

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Time wasted on ideological
polemics = Islamization

As one very prominent Counter-Jihad opinion-leader wrote to me in the weeks just before the Breivik attacks, “The left is a huge problem. They are Islamic apologists and fiercely defend and advance Islamic supremacism under the guise of multi-culti and diversity. I wish it were not so, but it is.” In another setting, during approximately the same time frame, the same individual wrote resignedly, “I don't think we will ever win over the left. They are in bed with the Islamic jihad.” These views, of course, realistically or not, place one hundred percent of the blame for Islamization on the “Left” and frame the argument, contrary to the damaging myths laid out in Part I, as a need to ideologically “beat down” or “win over” the “Left” to conversion to the “Right”. As was discussed in Part II of these essays, significant research suggests that such an outcome is, socially and politically speaking, highly unlikely. Views that suggest a need to defeat the “Left” in time to defeat Islamism and Islamization also ignore our valuable Common Freedoms (as defined in Part I and briefly restated below) found among all Westerners – “Center”, “Left”, and “Right” – that can and must be used as the common rallying point in the struggle against the advance of Islamism. In the absolute worst cases, as above, attacks on an indefinable “Left” delusionally impute collective evil motives to the actions and behavior of even average apolitical citizens and mainstream politicians on the “Left” equally as being part of some deliberate “Marxist”, “Socialist”, or “Elitist” conspiracy between the “Left” and Islamists.

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What? O yeah, Marx he's great!

As if “PC”, “multi-culti”, and “diversity” were themselves an evil conspiratorial global goal and not, instead, simple by-products of a very valuable and well-meaning set of beliefs in the West based in a respect for others that arises in the Christian-Western “Golden Rule”, the picture and scope of blame is expanded far past what can responsibly or reasonably be asserted. Breivik’s words, as we will see below, provide ample evidence of this. Personally, in my own experience, I have yet to meet one “Liberal” let alone a “Leftist” or “Socialist” who wants to see “Jihadists” or the limitations of freedoms and human rights espoused by Islamists succeed; I have, however, met many who genuinely but very mistakenly believe that “all religions are equally peaceful and to be respected” (or, alternatively, that “all religions are equally violent and to be equated”) and who genuinely see no danger in Islamism because they do not know where it exists or that it exists. These same people, moreover, generally feel very sorry for people around the world who they well-meaningly see as less fortunate or oppressed and in need of, at minimum, the West’s verbal support. Nothing necessarily evil or conspiratorial about it – merely some less than developed ideas and a severe lack of facts all wrapped up in a very well-meaning love of the same Common Freedoms and rights we all – “Center”, “Left”, and “Right” – value and share across the West.

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Hopefully we wake up before they do...

When confronted by these opposing individuals who themselves are also very genuinely concerned with the protection of human rights and Western Common Freedoms, those affiliated with the Counter-Jihad Movement and its parties often take the opportunity to point out or argue that “Political Correctness” and appeasement of Islamism is a phenomena of the “Left” or a bi-product of “Marxism”. The flirtations with promoting Islamism and Islamists among top conservatives in the United States, as I have pointed out previously, including current Republican presidential candidates Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and Ron Paul, Republican Governors Chris Christie (R-NJ) and Rick Scott (R-FL), and others like Grover Norquist and the Conservative Political Action Conference​ (CPAC), again, offer a quite different picture. Using partisan rhetoric in defense of the Counter-Jihad positions as held by Counter-Jihad activist and politicians, each of whom themselves are also very genuinely concerned with protecting human rights and Western freedoms, however, does very little to help persuade the general public that Counter-Jihad parties are at all anything but “right-wing” or “neo-Nazi”. The fact then that many of these parties and their supporters themselves irresponsibly and with little hindsight (or foresight) go on to place the blame and responsibility for the expansion of Islam, Islamism, and Sharia across the West solely and squarely with the “Left” is of no assistance whatsoever. As opposed to understanding the effects of World War II and the Holocaust on the Western psyche while placing and accepting blame equally, as Churchill did in World War II, across all parties today that have had input in immigration, social, and employment policies over the past fifty years, focusing on the “Left” merely reinforces the idea with the general public and the media that the Counter-Jihad parties are, in fact, only and nothing more than groups made up of “hatemongers”, the “right-wing”, or neo-Nazis. That this is the case, of course, should inform and redirect the approach and the message presented by leaders within the Counter-Jihad Movement.

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Common freedoms
require common sense

The way around this, as originally laid out in Part I, is what I argue is the winning argument. I will repeat it here briefly one more time for ease of reference. The winning argument is the Counter-Jihad Movement’s pitch for credibility among the politically correct, the fanatically opposed, the disbelieving, the skeptical, or quite simply the unconvinced individuals from the political “Center”, “Left”, and “Right”. I argue that the Counter-Jihad Movement together, in unity, including Counter-Jihad bloggers, authors, political parties, and politicians – in order to successfully stem the tide of the growth of Islamism and Sharia in the West – must immediately, consciously, and fully put aside “Left”/”Right” rhetoric and, finding actual unity in focusing only on the Common Freedoms outlined and defined below, speedily convince the broadest spectrum of these voters as soon possible that Islamism: 1) poses an ideological, social, political, cultural, judicial, financial, and demographic threat; 2) that Islamism is based in promoting discrimination and violence against and subjugation of non-believers, lapsed believers, and even believers; 3) that human rights, women’s rights, the rule of law, equality under the law, freedom of expression, freedom of inquiry, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, etc. (collectively our “Common Freedoms”) are all threatened as a result; and 4) that Counter-Jihad proponents – whether from the “Center”, “Left”, or “Right” – are, contrary to general perception, the most broadly protective of these rights for all people, including even for the oppressed among Muslims and former Muslims themselves (hereinafter all referred to as the “Counter-Jihad Argument” or “Argument”).

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Watch y(our) step

Regardless of one’s own political views, putting them aside for a moment (and they must in neutrally considering these topics be put aside), one must accept as true and gain the insight that trying to escape this destructive cycle of other-inflicted labeling and self-inflicted obsessions with differences in an adversary’s political ideology, therefore, is and will be key to the future success or failure of the Counter-Jihad political parties and the Movement itself. In the case these parties can make the Counter-Jihad Argument in the way that best appeals to and unites those from the broader “Center”, “Left”, and “Right” under what we all view and value in the West as our Common Freedoms, the Movement may succeed. In the case it does not and its leadership and opinion-makers believe that the political “Left” must somehow be converted to the politics of the “Right”, it will fail. At the same time, to the extent Counter-Jihad parties and opinion-makers work to actively and thoroughly rephrase and reframe the Counter-Jihad Argument in a way that sees blame for the present situation as being equally spread across party lines and, therefore, simply a problem of inadequately examined ideas of human rights instead, Counter-Jihad parties and their supporters will – then and only then – begin to be seen as far more credible, honest, realistic, and humane and, therefore, become far better able to attract the consistent support of the broader ideological spectrum of the general voting public.

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Altruism is Economics? If so, why 
does it differ across religions?

The problematic situation that exists right now with respect to Counter-Jihad parties and supporters themselves who continually create and recreate the above described cycle of other-inflicted labeling and self-inflicted “Left”-obsession, with apparently no understanding that they are doing so, is reflected very well in the situation surrounding Anders Behring Breivik. The Western mind has been trained to believe – meaning the entire ideological spectrum from “Right” to “Left” and everyone in between – that economic explanations are central to understanding everything and everyone all around us. This has caused most of us to forget – if not to outright disbelieve – that other deeper underlying ideas are actually responsible for informing and driving a person’s motives and behavior (including very much so their economic motives and behavior), chief among these being, whether latent or active, religion and religious culture (or, as we shall see below, in Nietzsche, Tille, and Hitler’s cases the demand for the annihilation thereof or in Breivik and Kerrl’s cases the religious gutting thereof). Max Weber (1864-1920) made this point rather convincingly in his writings on the sociology and economics of religion as did John Milton Yinger (1916-2011) and so many others. Even so, for years, economic explanations have dominated and ironically, very much due to our own Western religio-cultural heritage of Christianity which places the examination of the connection between peoples’ behavior and their religion or religio-cultural heritage (or lack thereof) far off-limits in public discourse, the general public as well as even Counter-Jihad bloggers and writers, parties and politicians (“Right”, “Left”, and “Center”) continue to tend to see the world as acting only in accordance with economic motives. That leaves the world, in the highly simplified view of Breivik, for example, consisting of nothing more than those who push (as the argument goes, knowingly or unknowingly) Marx’s agenda and those who stand firmly against that agenda. Nothing in between. This view of the world, however, is far too simplistic. And aside from being so, it gets in the way enormously for those who, in order to succeed in changing our present situation with respect to the West and expansionist Islamism, are required to work with, understand, and recruit others who do not share our same ideological points of view.

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Breivik's Manifesto: the work
of a dangerous mind

Anders Behring Breivik, like a few (but certainly not all) who identify with aspects of the Counter-Jihad Movement, specifically picked out and targeted the “Left” in his rambling manifesto – “2083 - A European Declaration of Independence” – for very precise reasons. Of course, Breivik’s violent actions against his perceived “Leftist” enemy can not and should not ever be said to be on the same level as argumentative targeting of the “Left” by Counter-Jihad bloggers and writers, regardless of the latter’s terribly damaging effect on the public perception of Counter-Jihad political parties and the Movement itself. However, Breivik’s violence aside, his choice to focus arguments on the “Left” does connect a debate that has, in fact, very much the same roots. For Breivik, a church lady or a college student who voted Labour was nothing more than a naïve Marxist. And the “Left” for Breivik, as for many within certain aspects of the Counter-Jihad Movement, is insidious and everywhere to be found – and solely responsible for the present situation of Islam within the West. As Breivik put it, pulling media, government, and Islam together into the same conspiratorial critique of the “Left”, “The almighty Norwegian/Swedish cultural Marxist media corps significantly manipulated the Norwegian election and the cultural Marxist/multiculturalist government (consisting of the Labour Party, Socialist Left Party and Center Party) were allowed to continue their old path of mass-Muslim immigration (colonisation) and Islamisation of Norway.” (Page 797).

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An idea so sound you'll find it
on a gas station sign...

As opposed to understanding that a Christian-Western view of universalist human relationships and universalist human responsibility toward one’s fellow man – especially in light of World War II and the Holocaust – is innocently responsible for the West’s Political Correctness, mass immigration, and multiculturalism today, whether in the Norwegian elections, press, or otherwise, Breivik and those who share his conspiratorial view of the “Left” find the cause and impute evil roots instead to some deliberate conspiracy arising out of “Marxism” and the political “Left”. “Political Correctness,” proclaims Breivik, forgetting the West’s (otherwise highly valuable) internalization of the Golden Rule, “is in fact cultural Marxism (Cultural Communism) – Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms.” (Page 13). “The ideology that has taken over Western Europe…,” writes Breivik of “Political Correctness,” using terms that he fails to understand equally as well describe how Christianity itself reforms the mental, spiritual, and social software of individuals and societies to be ordered, innovative, caring, and productive, “…seeks to alter virtually all the rules, formal and informal, that govern relations among people and institutions. It wants to change behaviour, thought, even the words we use.” (Page 12). In the case of Christianity, those changes in behaviors, thoughts, and words happen to require at all times a reflection of love and respect for others and oneself, including one’s enemy; it’s what provides the West both stability and rule of law, for example.

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The prophetic words of a man later
psychologically ill. Was he "inferior"?

One only needs to look back to the late 1800s to the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and his publisher and greatest promoter, Alexander Tille (1866-1912), to see how Christian values have long been perceived throughout history and why Nazism actually sought to put an end to both Christianity and Socialism. As Nietzsche put it, “The ‘first Christian’ — …also the last Christian, whom I shall perhaps yet live to see — is, by fundamental instinct, a rebel against everything privileged — he lives for, he struggles always for ‘equal rights!’ . . . Examined more exactly, he has no choice. If one wants personally to be one of the, ‘chosen of God’ or a ‘temple of God,’ or a ‘judge of angels’ — every other principle of [natural] selection, for example according to uprightness, according to intellect, according to manliness and pride, according to beauty and freedom of heart, is simply ‘world,’ — the evil in itself . . . Moral: every expression in the mouth of a ‘first Christian’ is a lie. . . .” i (Emphasis supplied.) For Nietzsche, Christianity and its “love for one’s neighbor” and its offspring, Western democracy and human rights, were the anti-thesis to all he saw as being “good” in this world. “Christianity springing out of a Jewish root, and only comprehensible as a growth of this soil,” Nietzsche argues, “represents the movement counter to every morality of breeding, of race, and of privilege: it is anti-Aryan religion par excellence: Christianity, the transvaluation of all Aryan values, the triumph of Chandala [e.g. mongrel] values, the gospel preached to the poor and lowly, the collective insurrection against ‘race’ of all the down-trodden, the wretched, the ill-constituted, the misfortunate, — undying Chandala [mongrel] revenge as a religion of love….” ii (Emphasis supplied). In words that again point to the two-thousand year-old Christian roots of Karl Marx’s (1818-1883) theories and Socialism, Nietzsche exclaims: “In Christianity the instincts of the subjugated and suppressed come into the foreground: it is the lowest classes who here seek their goal. Here the casuistry of sin, self-criticism and inquisition of conscience are practised as occupations….” iii (Emphasis supplied.) Self-criticism and an active conscience are, of course, key aspects of Political Correctness; they are key aspects, in fact, of being self-aware, respectful, and intellectually open as well, something mass-murderers generally are not.

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Wisdom: To avoid danger, preserve love,
and be able to hold to peace.

The point here, of course, is not to condemn Christianity for our present situation; the values given to the West directly from Christianity, contrary to the desires of Nietzsche, Tille, Hitler, and Breivik, have made the West the most stable, peaceful, prosperous, equal, transparent, open, tolerant, and productive place the world has yet ever known. To maintain such a society, however, takes something else that is far more important: wisdom to avoid creating a situation within that society wherein these extremely important values could, by its citizens’ own unconsidered kindness, be done away with. In fact, since violence, deceit, and lies are forbidden, Christianity also teaches in Matthew 10:16 how to maintain a love-based society when love is threatened. “Behold,” it reads, “I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” It requires us to be peaceful, but it requires us to guard our freedoms, institutions, and beliefs by thinking far ahead to anticipate and prevent their loss. Few today, however, know of this teaching and even fewer have acted wisely in any way that would have prevented the dangers we now face. Put in that light, we should understand that Political Correctness – absent wisdom and the standards of the “Golden Rule” being properly and equally applied – is little more than being blindly and unthinkingly considerate. It means being “harmless” but not “wise”. Political Correctness – where no wisdom or one standard is applied equally to all – is fully unsustainable and no more and no less than the full demise of Western equality and freedoms.

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Social Darwinism and its focus on
the evil of the "Christian-human-
democratic ethic"

For Alexander Tille, this key but yet very much unknown German philosopher and promoter of Nietzsche and Social Darwinism of the 1890s, he understood that Christianity and its “Christian-human-democratic ethic”, as he called it in his book From Darwin to Nietzsche (1895), had to be destroyed. “Most meaningful for Tille,” writes author Steven E. Aschheim, “was the fact that, unlike Darwin, Nietzsche held that the new teaching [of Natural Selection and Social Darwinism were] incompatible with the ‘Christian-human-democratic ethic,’”iv of which Tille writes much. Key to this new way of thinking, for Nietzsche and for those who would follow him, including Alexander Tille, was that Christianity, for the good of the species and race, had to be eradicated: Tille’s “…new morality had to distance itself from the traditional ethics of neighborly love.” v (Emphasis supplied). “Nietzsche’s fundamental lesson for the species,” Tille understood and agreed wholeheartedly, “…was that people did not possess equal worth; while the strong represented upward development, the weak represented decay.” vi Tille’s Nietzschean beliefs, planting the words and thoughts soon to come from the mouth and mind of Adolf Hitler, were unambiguous. As he wrote in his book, “For one thousand eight hundred years…Christianity has preached that all people are equal…that all humans love one another and should potentially offer themselves for one another. This became the teaching and has remained the teaching. […] This teaching is in no way a summary of the facts of life, but is instead an assertion and a rebuke that flies in the face of these facts.” vii

Recognizing how these Christian values had, across the West, come to be taken as the only valid set of values worth embracing, Tille opined with disgust: “Few educated persons today, when asked how they percieve the moral development of the present would provide an answer that does not rest on [the] fantasy [of Christian morals]. In addition to Happiness and ’Humanity’, the growth of which will be praised, Peace also always acompanies [these] as the third in the bouquet of the ideal state of being.“viii Tille, tracing the steps that have brought us to the stable democratic societies we now possess across the West – and which we retained by defeating Hitler, addressed how various thinkers throughout the ages accepted as valid and furthered these Christian principles in their own writings and thought. “And still via Hegel,“ wrote Tille, “this picture of the happy, peaceful, loving humanity was given yet another column – All conflicting interests were equalized, everyone works for the others. Mutual love and sacrifice of oneself rules.“ix

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Dunant and Wilson: The social
Darwinists' vision of evil.

Tille’s words evoke instant thoughts of the explicitly Christian principles referred to by Henri Dunant (1828-1910) in the founding of the International Red Cross, nearly thirty years before Tille, and Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) in the founding of the League of Nations (later the United Nations), nearly twenty years later. From Dunant’s efforts came the Geneva Conventions and Western laws governing armed conflict; from Wilson’s efforts came the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Tille, however, as Nietzsche, Hilter and Breivik did, derides the high levels of peace, equality, compassion, mutual love, tolerance, and self-sacrifice that resulted across the West from Christianity and asks his reader whether, if these values are in fact logically true, they will be able to survive in harmony with that which he sees must be the direct results of the new truths of science, Social Darwinism, and Darwin’s theory of Evolution. “The general sense of fairness,“ as Tille summarizes the Christian-based principle, “tolerates no inequality; distress, misery, hunger, war have ceased to exist. Peace and harmony became the lasting principles for universal happiness. This ideal stands unshakebly firm. It is the one true human ideal – and if the theory of Evolution is [also] the truth – it must then offer it the strongest possible support. Will it do this? Will this be possible?“ x Sadly and ironically, sixty-six years after the end of World War II and its approximately 20,000,000 lives lost, we can now see where the brave new world that Nietzsche, Tille, Hitler, and Stalin as well foresaw – absent the peace, harmony, and democracy of Christianity – could actually take us.

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Is it Marxism? I'm guessing not...

Yet, according to Breivik, forget a Westerner’s – whether of the “Center”, “Left”, or “Right” – sincere and wholly apolitical desires to help and care for or about others – especially those not like or those less fortunate than us; no, Marxism somehow is the source of "Political Correctness" in Breivik’s very incomplete world of historical and religious knowledge. Not only for Breivik, but also for some in our democratic and non-violent Counter-Jihad Movement, there appear to be only two polar and competing factions in the world: “cultural conservatives” and “cultural Marxists”. “We cannot defeat multiculturalism,” writes Breivik, insisting that those on the “Left” must convert to an ideologically “Conservative” political position before anything can be done about Islamization, “until we defeat Marxism….” (Page 1227). This appears to be the same view held by some opinion-makers among today’s democratic and non-violent Counter-Jihad Movement who, instead of focusing on convincing those on the “Left” of where all of our commonalities lie and helping those on the “Left” to understand that we are all genuinely concerned about preserving human rights and the same Common Freedoms, they insist on “putting pressure” on the indefinable “Left” by hopelessly attempting to accomplish one of the most difficult things ever – to change the political ideology of others en masse by, in this case, convincing the “Left” of its errors. “If this mass murder destroys our work,” wrote one of the Counter-Jihad Movement’s leading bloggers to me on the actual day of Breivik’s attack, quite contrary to the conclusions of researchers presented in Part II of these essays, “…it would call for more, not less, pressure on the Left for its collusion with the jihad.”

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Beware! The "organized Leftist
collusion with Jihad"

Unfortunately for the above-mentioned Counter-Jihad blogger and for all of us, there is absolutely no organized deliberate “Leftist” “collusion with jihad” that can be specifically targeted. If there were one specific group or a number of specific international groups of “Leftists” under which all “Leftist” people across all countries fell who were deliberately promoting Islam for the sake of their own actual belief in Islam, the approach could focus on them and their teachings and be effective. The very few such groups, however, that do exist (self-declared Marxists) are so extremely rare and small across the West and, to a certain extent, already monitored by the authorities. The vast majority of the so-called “Left”, on the contrary, is as average and politically unaffiliated or mainstream as the vast numbers of average and generally apolitical or mainstream “Conservatives” living next to them in the suburbs. Thus, the truth is that we are not fighting against some international “Leftist” global conspiracy to favor the “Jihadists”. The vast majority of individuals on the “Left” – including the vast majority of all elected politicians of all stripes – do not and, if they understood it, would not support Islamism and Sharia; they simply apply the Western hesitation against challenging the religion of others and they see questioning Islamism and Sharia, therefore, as “bigotry”. Protecting someone from perceived harassment, it should be clear, does not mean the protector shares the views of the person or group perceived to have been harassed. That should be rather obvious; yet apparently it is not. If the Counter-Jihad Movement does not internalize these truths in its arguments and within its view of this struggle, the Movement will not in any way succeed and, as a result, the door will be opened for continued Islamization as well as to more anti-democratic violent fascists like Anders Behring Breivik.

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A conspiracy of Kindness 
and Common Freedoms

Instead of a “global conspiracy” of the “Left” then, we are being asked to deal with a very well-meaning hyper-application of Christianity’s ancient “Golden Rule” – absent the equal standards of Christianity – by the “Center”, “Left”, and “Right”. That “Golden Rule”, most do not realize, is and has been the key to the success, stability, equality, transparency, innovation, and prosperity of our Western societies and, therefore, can and should never simply be gotten rid of or rejected out of hand. It bears repeating: the “Golden Rule” and Christian universalism (and therefore “Political Correctness”) applies not merely to “Leftists”, it applies to all of Western society – “Center”, “Left”, and “Right”. Ergo, we are left with the very extreme difficulty right now in getting the entirety of Western society to see efforts to warn about the dangers of Islamism as being anything but “racist”, “hateful”, and “fascist”. For exactly these reasons, the proper Argument must focus not merely on addressing symptoms by supposedly “putting pressure” on a “Left” that spans the globe in many different forms and generally remains rather indefinable. Instead, it must get at and answer the concerns and resistance programmed into the otherwise highly valuable religio-cultural source code of all Westerners found in the “Political Correctness” that sees challenges of religion and challenges to the religious ideas of people not like us as being “racist” or “bigoted”.

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The global "conspiracy"? Be nice, now... 
and have a cookie.

Breivik’s reasoning underlying his perceived need to defeat multiculturalism and Political Correctness by defeating the “Marxist” “Left” is not really different than believing that the Counter-Jihad Argument must be advanced by defeating the “Left” on politically ideological arguments. Both insist on changing “Leftist” views, whatever those in their breadth may be. Both also contradict research presented in Part II as well as Winston Churchill’s own approach taken during World War II, as will be discussed in Part V of this series of essays. In his myopic view, which ignores the roots of multiculturalism and Political Correctness in Christian universalism and the “Golden Rule”, both of which, in turn, affect all Westerners whether “Center”, “Left”, or “Right”, Breivik sees multiculturalism and Marxism simplistically as “…two sides of the same coin.” (Page 1227). “Multiculturalism,” according to Breivik and, it appears, others who hold this position, “is Marxism, Marxism is multiculturalism.” (Page 1227). “Do not have any doubt about this,” he reminds us. “A liberal right winger [e.g. in the European sense, that is, a free-market conservative] might claim that he is not a cultural Marxist but a globalist. He should however know that a globalist is the exact same thing as a cultural Marxist. Because there are only two cultural poles; if you are not cultural conservative then you are a cultural Marxist.” (Page 1227). Thus, in Breivik’s view, as with some individuals in the Counter-Jihad Movement, everybody in the West today who identifies with a “Labour” or “Democratic” party affiliation, from the plumber who fixed your toilet, to the lady serving coffee at the church, to the guy in the office next to the water cooler – whether avowedly political or apolitical – is either a “cultural conservative” or an unwitting tool of a pro-Islamist Marxist global conspiracy.

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Marx: Merely an Afterthought

Breivik’s discussion and treatment of religion is also dictated by his inability to put both Christianity and the politics of the “Left” – and their effects on each other – into a true and realistic context. As will be explained in more detail below, contrary to some reports in the press, Breivik is not by any definition of the word a Christian. His understanding of Christian theology seems as flawed as a good deal of his understanding of history. Breivik’s view of history appears to be so short-sighted that he seems to believe that one-hundred and fifty years of Marxism and “Leftist” politics somehow were determinative of today’s Christianity as opposed to two-thousand years worth of Christian thought, instead, being the actual source for and fully determinative of both today’s Christianity and the roots of Marxism itself (and, for that matter, directly or indirectly, every other political or philosophical view in the Western world, including “Conservatism”). In fact, as I have asserted in Part I and Part II of these essays, though PC is not “cultural Marxism” as Breivik argues (such would assume that even average apolitical people of all ideologies across the entire West have been more influenced by 150 years of Marxism than by 2,000 years of Christianity, which is not at all the case), the truth is that both PC and Marxism do arise from vastly differing attempts to enforce Christian principles absent Christian standards.

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The myth of cultural marxism: the
disconnect between cause and effect

PC is simply the standard-less or imperfect application of Christianity’s “Golden Rule” in day-to-day public or private relationships. It would exist fully independently of whether Marxism had ever come into being, thus it can not in any way be said to have its source in Marxism. Marxism, on the other hand, is a complicated economic and social explanation of human interaction and behavior that does not naturally come into existence by the unthinking or imperfect application of Christianity. In fact, Christianity provides its own economic and social explanation of human interaction and behavior. Marxism, on the other hand, requires both a lot of thought and an extensive deconstruction of Christianity in order to arrive at Marx’s recommendations – which, ironically, are based in Ludwig Feuerbach’s de-Christianization of Christianity. PC arises naturally within an imperfect practice of Christianity; Marxism does not – it arises from its negation.

021_Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx.jpg
Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx

So, whereas PC is the attempt to apply the “Golden Rule” absent the equal application of simple necessary standards, Marx’s ideas arose, in fact, from Hegelian “dialectical” materialists’ obsession with “…the task of disentangling the essential content of Christianity from its religious form.”xi As John Milton Yinger quoted the Scottish philosopher, John MacMurray (1891-1976), “In particular, [this obsession] led [Ludwig] Feuerbach to call his chief philosophical work The Essence of Christianity. Its aim was to restate the content of Christianity in purely humanistic terms. This work was a turning point in the development of Karl Marx, who went so far as to say that no one could reach the true Communist position without being baptized in the Fire-brook [e.g. the ideas and writings of Feuerbach].”xii That is to say, Marxism was created out of a very conscious and laborious effort to attempt to separate away and retain the entirety of so-called “Christian” core values of Christianity while fully disposing of the religion. PC, of course, requires no such thing. As Kerr and Breivik desired to gut Christianity from the right, while Nietzsche, Tille, Hitler, and Stalin wished to eliminate it altogether, on the left, Feuerbach and Marx desired to gut Christianity there as well. As a result of all of this, committed secularists and humanists from all directions today strive to achieve these three outcomes without ever understanding why or from which direction their desire to do so has ever arisen or, most dangerously of all, what horrific results have come in world history as a result of those who have made the same efforts previously.

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Hitler: Christianity - an impediment
to the will to kill "inferiors"

That said, when Breivik’s ideas are compared with those of Adolf Hitler, Hitler seemed to have a longer perspective of history. As such, Hitler also hated Christianity due to its Marxist-Bolshevist progeny, that is, compassion expressed in the form of concern for the average poor, unsuccessful, uneducated, disadvantaged worker as it had developed both outside of and inside of “Leftist” politics in Western societies. Such compassion, Hitler saw, had effects fully contrary to Social Darwinism’s natural selection. “Christianity…leads to the annihilation of manhood, it is naked Bolshevism under the guise of metaphysics,”xiii said Hitler. For Hitler, this connection between the compassion and equality of Christianity and Socialism’s originally intended purpose of bringing compassion and equality to those outside of the corridors of means and power was obvious. “The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was Christianity. Bolshevism is the illegitimate son of Christianity,” Hitler accused, extending blame also to the Jews. “Both are the offspring of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity; in the same way Bolshevism lies when it claims to bring liberty, whereas it seeks only to see slaves.” xiv

Despite a lack of depth in Breivik’s view of history, Christianity itself – especially Protestant Christianity – he ties very much to the “Left”. This explains his reasons for rejecting Christianity generally and Protestantism specifically. “Christian leftism,” writes Breivik, “is ultimately based on a mistaken theological premise: that God has a ‘preferential love for the poor.’ Scripture, however, informs us that God is no respecter of persons.” (Page 1134). Though his knowledge of scripture clearly shows much to be remedied, echoing Nietzsche, Tille, and Hitler, Breivik does show some contradictory signs of seeing the Christian roots of Marxism here. “A cultural Marxist society defies and rejects supernaturalism and tradition,” Breivik says, complaining of Norway’s open and tolerant Lutheran tradition, “and thus does what they can to gradually deconstruct the Church and the role of the Church. For modernist Protestants (or also referred to as the Labour Party Church) religion is a matter of fighting for equal rights, making the world a better place, being kind to everyone and ‘spirituality’.” (Page 1131).

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Lessing's Nathan der Weise -
pre-Marx universalist PC

The “spirituality” of religion, Breivik appears not to be aware, is very central to the Lutheran tradition, advanced by Gotthold Lessing (1729-1781), the German Enlightenment writer and a committed Lutheran, who, relying on Luther, argued for a “Christianity of Reason”, which oriented itself by the “spirit of religion”. Lessing pre-dated Marx by one hundred years. Long before Marx, Lessing’s Nathan der Weise (Nathan the Wise) (1779), most certainly objectionable to both Hitler and Breivik, could be described as a “PC” ode to humanity’s brotherly love and a petition against religious bigotry towards Jews and Muslims in the spirit of Christian universalism. Moreover, Breivik’s assumption that the traditions of “fighting for equal rights, making the world a better place, being kind to everyone and ‘spirituality’” in the Protestant church is a result of Marxism or that a Marxist society “defies and rejects supernaturalism and tradition” are quite ill-placed as well; for anyone who reads the New Testament, it becomes immediately apparent that those who defied “supernaturalism” or these “traditions” taught by Jesus in his days, were simply those who rejected Christian ideas or, in the alternative, a belief in a God altogether. As Christianity as a religion assumes, such people have existed and will exist forever; Christians are simply to challenge those who hold such ideas with the idea of love. In other words, “defiers” long pre-date the existence of Marxism and, therefore, those who “defy” and “reject” the supernatural or the Church today do not necessarily do so because they have been drowned in Marxism. Defying God has a very long history. To Breivik Catholicism is also lost in “Leftism”. To Breivik, it too, though less so, is a part of the problem of the “Left”. “Catholics themselves,” he writes, “often buy into the non-Christian aspects of political leftism. Their leftism, to be quite blunt, is often born of an unparalleled theological naivete.” (Page 1134).

024_Hitler.jpg
Hitler: "Law of existence
requires uninterrupted killing"

Breivik’s views of Christianity have other points in common with as well as points that are fully opposed to the views on Christianity of Adolf Hitler. In common with Hitler, Breivik sees Christianity as a whole – with Breivik’s exception for medieval Roman Catholicism’s embrace of “Holy War” – as being wired for destruction and defeat due to its teachings on pacifism and care for the weak and less fortunate. Breivik cites an essay from the blogger “Reconquista” which explains very much his own and Hitler’s view, “The Judeo-Christian religions played an important and influential role in building the once mighty West but we also discovered that these religions contained a serious flaw that has sewed the seeds of the suicidal demise of the indigenous peoples of Western Europe and our cultures. This flaw was identified by the brilliant German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who described it as ‘an inversion of morality’ whereby the weak, the poor, the meek, the oppressed and the wretched are virtuous and blessed by God whereas the strong, the wealthy, the noble and the powerful are the immoral and damned….” (Emphasis original) (Page 391). Hitler put it in Socially Darwinist but yet very similar terms that pointed toward the perversion of nature he saw arising in Christianity. “This corresponds with the law of nature, always bringing forth never ending selection through struggle: the law of existence requires uninterrupted killing, so that the superior [being] lives on. Christianity is a rebellion against this fundamental law, a protest against Creation. Taken to its logical conclusion, [Christianity] would mean the systematic cultivation of the inferior.”xv

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Kerrl and Breivik: gutting
Christianity to infuse violence.

Unlike Hitler, who desired ultimately to see a full eradication of and end to Christianity, Breivik hearkens back to Hanns Kerrl (1887-1941), the Nazi Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs (Reichsminister für die kirchlichen Angelegenheiten). Kerrl attempted to gut Christianity by creating a so-called “Positive Christianity” in Nazi Germany, “…an ersatz faith and liturgy, substituting for belief in Christ a pagan cosmology and secular values centered on the nation and race.” xvi Breivik dreams of something quite similar. For Breivik, Christianity is not a religion, but a way of maintaining “culture”. Under a heading entitled, “Distinguishing between cultural Christendom and religious Christendom – reforming our suicidal Church,” Breivik concedes that he is not a believing or religious Christian. “If you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God,” he acknowledges, “then you are a religious Christian. Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God.” (Page 1307). Though he does not believe in Christ – or Christianity as a religion for that matter – making him, de facto and by his own admission, not a Christian, he does see Christianity, stripped of its core Christian teachings of love and compassion for all, as a platform for protecting his vision of Europe. “We do however believe in Christianity as a cultural, social, identity and moral platform.” (Page 1307). Though clearly not “Christianity” in the eyes of any version of Christianity now or previously existing, according to Breivik himself, “This makes us [e.g. he and any of his non-believing followers, if any] Christian.” (Page 1307).

026_Weber_Max.jpg
Weber: religion determines
culture and economics

Though much else of what Breivik writes may be far beyond comprehension, the idea that religion has a formative and determinative effect on cultures and societies is not at all a radical or crazy idea. In fact it is commonly understood as being quite true. The idea is the basis for, among many other works, as stated above, Max Weber’s ground-breaking theories in “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” (1930). That book of Weber now forms what is considered to be the founding text in economic sociology – and sociology in general. In Weber’s footsteps, Clifford Geertz, “…for three decades...the single most influential cultural anthropologist in the United States…” and famed Princeton University anthropologist recognized “…the cultural dimension of the influence of religion…. [….] religion’s ability to transmit ‘patterns of meanings embodied in symbols… (by which humans) communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life.’”xvii The idea is also reflected in the French author and commentator on religion, Frédéric Lenoir, and his attempt to explain Christianity for an often secular audience. In his book, “Le Christ philosophe” (2007), he explains how even when viewed for its philosophical value, as opposed to its purely religious meaning, Christianity has spurred and continues to spur on so much of all that is good and beautiful that surrounds us within Western culture and throughout the world. In more everyday genres, the same idea is posited in a recent National Geographic issue which wonders whether, at the 11,600 year old temple being excavated in what is now Southern Turkey, “…the human sense of the sacred – and the human love of a good spectacle – may have given rise to civilization itself.” As the archeologist, Klaus Schmitt, summarizes: “Twenty years ago everyone believed civilization was driven by ecological forces. I think what we are learning is that civilization is a product of the human mind.” Both Breivik’s (and Hitler’s) complete lack of civilization due to their animosity towards actual Christianity and their many unambiguous complaints against Christianity’s teachings including especially pacifism and equality, it appears on all counts, judging from the otherwise highly peaceful and egalitarian society found in Norway, prove Weber, Geertz, Lenoire, and Schmitt all quite right.

027_Oslo-bomb-blast-memorial.jpg
A memorial service in central Oslo

The key to Europe’s survival according to Breivik, much like Kerrl, in thoughts quite contrary to the pacifist roots of Christianity, is to strip Christianity of unconditional love and insert into Christianity a desire and the permission to fight and kill. “As this is a cultural war,” he explains, “our definition of being a Christian does not necessarily constitute that you are required to have a personal relationship with God or Jesus. Being a Christian can mean many things; That you believe in and want to protect Europe’s Christian cultural heritage.” (Page 1361). Reiterating that no relationship with the Christian Trinity is required in his mind, those also included in Breivik’s definition of “Christians” include those, like himself, who according to his own explicit words do not believe. “So no, you don’t need to have a personal relationship with God or Jesus to fight for our Christian cultural heritage,” he repeats. “It is enough that you are a Christian-agnostic or a Christian-atheist (an atheist who wants to preserve at least the basics of the European Christian cultural legacy (Christian holidays, Christmas and Easter)). The PCCTS, Knights Templar is therefore not a religious organisation but rather a Christian “culturalist” military order.” (pp. 1361-1362). A “Christian-agnostic”, a “Christian-atheist”, and a “Christian ‘culturalist’ military order,” all of which, one hopefully need not point out to the reader, by their very definition defy all definitions of every form of actual Christianity that has ever existed.

028_Nazi_poster.jpg
WWII poster highlighting
Nazism's attack on Christianity

In yet other places, Breivik repeats again that, contrary to any standard of Christianity, a “Christian” need not have any relationship with God or Jesus. Breivik also, in the same place, distinguishes between true Christianity as understood today, which teaches pacifism and equality and is called in his terms “fundamentalist”, and his view of his culturally “Christian” and “secular” society. “It is not required,” he writes, “that you have a personal relationship with God or Jesus in order to fight for our Christian cultural heritage and the European way. [….] It is therefore essential to understand the difference between a ‘Christian fundamentalist theocracy’ (everything we do not want) and a secular European society based on our Christian cultural heritage (what we do want).” (Emphasis original) (Page 1361). As part of that “secular European society” he does want is a so-called “church” in which all “Christians” reject pacifism and equality and within Christianity all Protestants are to convert “back” to Catholicism. “Efforts should be made,” Breivik makes clear, “to facilitate the de-construction of the Protestant Church whose members should convert back to Catholicism. The Protestant Church had an important role once but its original goals have been accomplished and have contributed to reform the Catholic Church as well.” (Page 1403).

029_PopeLeoX.jpg
Pope Leo X: so wasteful
he inspired Luther

Here Breivik’s thoughts are again slightly, yet not, completely similar to those of Hitler. According to Breivik, “[six] decades of the Marxist doctrines of cultural relativism/pluralism and egalitarian thinking has severely infected especially the Protestant church in Europe.” (Page 1130). The Protestant church, therefore, is now according to Breivik committed to “extreme equality.” (Page 1135). For Hitler, like Breivik, Christianity as practiced in modern times and as taught in the New Testament, was too much the antithesis of Hitler’s Social Darwinist beliefs based in “survival of the fittest.” For that reason, Hitler also, though not changing his mind as to Christianity as a religion, did on some occasions offer an admiring word for some popes of the Middle Ages – due to those popes own un-Christian displays of power, wealth, and extravagance. “I think I could have come to an understanding with the Popes of the Renaissance,” said Hitler. “Obviously, their Christianity was a danger on the practical level – and, on the propaganda level, it continued to be a lie. But a Pope, even a criminal one, who protects great artists and spreads beauty around him, is nevertheless more sympathetic to me than the Protestant minister who drinks from the poisoned spring [of Christianity].” xviii For Breivik too these medieval popes who lived by their own self-determined doctrines – not necessarily any Christian doctrines of theology – are admirable to Breivik as well.

030_invasion_of_balkans.jpg
Breivik: wanted wars to return lands taken by Islam

Roman Catholicism then, according to Breivik, in order to shatter Christianity’s historical and present-day pacifism needs to again imitate Islam’s “Jihad” as Roman Catholicism and its popes once did in the Middle Ages and reinstitute what, in fact, was an Islam-inspired doctrine of “Holy War” for pursuing new Crusades. “We must have a Church leadership who supports a future Crusade with the intention of liberating the Balkans, Anatolia and creating three Christian states in the Middle East,” writes Breivik. (Page 1403). To accomplish this, a united “church” would be required, he argues. “Europe should have a united Church lead by a just and non suicidal [e.g. war-like] Pope who is willing to fight for the security of his subjects, especially in regards to Islamic atrocities.” (Page 1403). To form a united and so-called “church” for all of Europe, Breivik proposes that: “A Christian Congress will be held with military leaders, political leaders and Church leaders. The intention of the congress will be to create the foundation for a future cultural and spiritual platform for Christendom in Europe. The Church will have to give many concessions but will gain many privileges in return.” (Page 1137).

031_hitler_and_himmler.jpg
Himmler and Hitler

Where Breivik sees a revised version of “Christianity” as being recommendable, for the above-named specific purposes, Hitler believed that there was no fixing something irreparably flawed. Hitler did not care to see any “synthesis” of Darwinian Aryan racial theory and “Christianity” as a system of belief complementary to the religion-free Social Darwinist National Socialism he saw as best. In a meeting with Alfred Rosenberg, Philipp Bouhler, and Heinrich Himmler, referring to Hanns Kerrl, Hitler said, “Kerrl, with the noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I don’t believe the thing’s possible; I see the obstacle in Christianity itself.” xix As Hitler saw it: “We can not avoid coming to a fundamental solution. If anyone thinks it’s necessary to build the life of human society on a foundation one recognizes to be [Christian] untruths, such a society is not worthy of being preserved. If, on the other hand, one believes that [National Socialist] truth can be a sufficient foundation, then conscience requires of one that the truth [be compelled to] go in and root out the lie. Every century that continues to burden itself with this cultural degradation [from the churches] will, with respect to the future [generations], not be understood in the least. Just as the witch[craft]-craze had to be eradicated, so too must all of this [Christian] residue be eradicated. One needs, however, a certain amount of foundation first.”xx

Again, as is clear from his writings, Breivik’s so-called “church” would not be a church by any definition of Christianity now or ever existing. Precisely as with Kerrl’s failed attempt to create a so-called “Positive Christianity” in Nazi Germany, for Breivik he believes it necessary that “[t]he contemporary definition of the Christian world view will be reformed to correlate with nationalistic doctrines” (Page 1134). Leaving behind Jesus’ core teaching to love one’s neighbor (meaning all people) as oneself, Breivik states that “…our future European Church will reflect our political doctrines. They should be compassionate but first and foremost towards other Christians.” (Page 1134). To prevent future contamination of his new so-called “church”, “[n]o multiculturalist/suicidal humanist church leaders,” Breivik proclaims, “will be allowed to spread their ideological poison in the future as they will be replaced by conservatives.” (Page 1134).

032_Oslo_memorial.jpeg
Breivik like Hitler: cold "logic"
and deeply anti-Christian

To be sure, these thoughts and ideas do not comport with any conception of Christian religion or Christian behavior. This should not surprise us at all. Aside from the above explanations, Breivik later – as on numerous other occasions – directly addresses his own lack of belief in other more specific terms. For him his use of religious terms and his plans for a future European so-called “church” have solely and simply to do with maintaining “culture” and with reformulating the “church” in the West to make it as war-like as Islamism and to prevent any future spread of Christianity’s pacifistic equality-driven “ideological poison.” “Regarding my personal relationship with God,” says Breivik, giving us an insight into why the mass killing of seventy-seven (77) people in cold blood would not seem to him to be fully inconceivable, “I guess I’m not an excessively religious man. I am first and foremost a man of logic. However, I am a supporter of a monocultural Christian Europe.” (Page 1404).

033_koeln_im_krieg1.jpg
Spared by Allies: Cologne cathedral
stands among the ruins of WWII

For Breivik, we now know, he foresaw himself as initiating the battle to come. “We sincerely hope,” he writes, “that the multiculturalist regimes of Western Europe will capitulate to conservative forces, in a relatively peaceful manner, before the capitals of Europe once again lie[] in complete ruin. Unfortunately, our hope is overshadowed by an instinct telling us that they will be unwilling to surrender, as we are unwilling to surrender. Europe will burn once more and rivers from the blood of patriots, tyrants and traitors will flow through the streets. However, a new European cultural renaissance will be born from the ashes. Islam and Marxism will not prevail.” (Page 1138).

Though no blame can or should be placed on the Counter-Jihad Movement for Breivik or his heinous actions, had the Counter-Jihad parties long ago taken upon themselves a policy of challenging those who incorrectly tie support or opposition to Islamization to any one political party or political ideology, thereby snubbing so many present and potential supporters from the “Center”, “Left”, and “Right”, the view of Counter-Jihad political parties across Europe both in the press and in the minds of voting public today would have been incapable of being smeared by Breivik’s actions let alone by his citation of the numerous Counter-Jihad bloggers’ own attacks on the “Left”. Pursuing a different approach, as will be discussed in the final sections of these essays to follow, can ensure that the Counter-Jihad Movement begins to find broad-based support among voters “Center”, “Left”, and “Right” and can start to make steps towards putting to an end the present tendency to dismiss the Movement as a meaningless “Right-wing” or “populist” phenomena.

In the next installment of these essays, Part IV, Peter Carl will examine the urgency of the situation of the West and the reasons why Churchill’s Principle laid out in Churchill’s quotes that preface Part I says indisputably that there is no longer time for “Left”/”Right” polemics. The future is now, says Peter Carl, and it’s not pretty. He will peer into both this past fall’s post-Breivik electoral politics and the realities of the “Left”/”Right” situation in Northern and Central Europe while he offers a glimpse into some of the changes that have occurred there politically due to Breivik’s massacres. He will also consider how a poorly crafted message on the part of the Counter-Jihad Movement has, for many outside of it, made the use of the “Nazi” label now seem quite justified. Looking back to World War II and the collaboration between Nazi Germany and the Muslim world, the author will consider the polemics and realities of that “Nazi” label, which both history and present politics show, has left the general public, the media, and governmental authorities terribly misguided – and the Movement itself sorely damaged

 

 

The author, writing under the pseudonym Peter Carl, is an independent non-partisan advisor to a sitting American congressperson and a strategic political researcher and consultant on international and comparative political and public policy issues. He is also a member of the American Committees on Foreign Relations. The author maintains contacts with numerous present and former ambassadors from both the U.S. and European countries, a number of whom are serving or have served in the Middle East. Similarly, he also maintains contacts with present and formerly elected representatives from parties across the political spectrum who have been elected to the U.S. Congress, the EU Parliament, and various national parliaments within Europe. Fluent in five languages and possessing elementary abilities in others, the author was trained and works as an international attorney and possesses a Masters Degree in Public Policy from the top-ranked public affairs program in the United States.

 

The terms “Islamist” and “Islamism” are used in this piece in recognition of relevant and applicable European Union directives or national laws, while duly noting valid and correct concerns over these terms and any uses of such terms.

 

Other parts of this series:

 

Part I: The Conversation

Part II: Right v. Left

Part IV: On Politics and Nazis

Part V: Winston's Wars

Part VI: Back From The Brink

 

____________________

NOTES

 

i Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist: An Essay Towards a Criticism of Christianity, Vol. XI of The Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. Alexander Tille (London: MacMillan & Co., 1896), 312.

ii Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols; or How to Philosophize with a Hammer, Vol. XI of The Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. Alexander Tille (London: MacMillan & Co., 1896), 149.

iii Nietzsche, The Antichrist, 262.

iv Steven E. Aschheim, The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1880-1990 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), 124.

v Aschheim, Nietzsche Legacy, 124.

vi Ibid.

vii Alexander Tille, Von Darwin bis Nietzsche: Ein Buch Entwicklungsethik (Leipzig: Verlag C.G. Naumann, 1895), 4.

viii Tille, Darwin bis Nietzsche, 209.

ix Ibid. at 5.

x Ibid.

xi John Milton Yinger, Religion in the Struggle for Power: A Study in the Sociology of Religion, (Durham: Duke University Press, 1946), 9.

xii Yinger, Religion in the Struggle for Power, 9.

xiii Adolf Hitler, Monologe im Führer-Hauptquartier 1941-1944, ed. Werner Jochmann (München: Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, 1982), 152; (See 14 December, 1941, Midday).

xiv Hitler, Monologe, 41; (See 11/12 July, 1941).

xv Ibid. at 76; (See 10 October, 1941, Midday).

xvi Cyprian Blamires, World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia, Vol. 1 (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2006), 10.

xvii Gregory L. Cascione, Philanthropists in Higher Education: Institutional, Biographical, and Religious Motivations (New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2003), 22.

xviii Hitler, Monologe, 152; (See 14 December, 1941, Midday).

xix Ibid.

xx Ibid. at 272; (See 8 February, 1942, Midday).

@Memetic Warrior - Glad to Have You Back

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Dear Memetic Warrior,

Glad to have you back with us again!

Your assertion that “Political Correctness is about obtaining power in a pacific society by means of gaining moral superiority trough exploiting  pacific christian precepts.”  You assert that, “[t]herefore political correctness is not an inocent derivation from christian golden rule - as Peter suggest - but is a deliberate depart from it with the purpose of obtaining social (and therefore political) power breaking the rules and imposing cost in society.

So, if we were to accept your assertion, we would need to accept that somehow in someway all across the Western world among peoples and cultures that can differ rather greatly, e.g. Spain to Sweden, Ireland to Italy, Canada to Corsica, that – though we know no name or time period for such a movement to grab power as you propose – somehow “people” hungry for power simply played games with “PC” (not the Golden Rule or Christianity) and took power and somehow also imposed their will upon the Western world and our minds via this nameless movement that brought PC into power all across the West. Amazing.

Let me explain to you how PC came into being. In the West, there is and has been – as Hitler, Nietzsche, and Tille were quite clear on – ONE form of MORAL SUPERIORITY. That moral superiority has generally come from a voluntary acceptance of the loving, democratic, and peaceful principles of Christianity (which Hitler, Nietzsche, and Tille hated). It was generally not imposed by anyone nor by any organization. Accepting Christian principles is and has been very largely in the West, even in ancient times, a voluntary matter. That is, of course, not to say that, at times, certain individuals and organizations did attempt to impose or enforce their own self-made version of this. That was generally so in Catholic countries, for example, where popes and the Catholic hierarchy always worked to impose the Catholic view of its “Christianity” on people who, theologically speaking, did not have a choice as to whether to accept it nor did they have the intellectual or religious freedom as individuals or members of the Catholic Church to interpret Christian doctrine. They still do not, if they are believing Catholics.

As I understand, you come from Spain or a Spanish speaking (Catholic) country. That you view PC as something imposed by a hierarchy or something you and other laypeople like yourselves do not and did not have control over, does not surprise me in the least. It’s normal there. It’s normal for people in Roman Catholic countries to believe they can take what they like and need not answer to anyone for doing so; it’s normal there to believe in the righteousness of hierarchy; and its normal to impose ones power and beliefs on others. In Catholic countries, those who come into power are often attempting to ensure those who were formerly within the hierarchy in power (dictators, royalty, or communists) are now going to be nice to everyone else in that society. In other words, a counter-reaction to the lack of the Golden Rule in a Catholic heirarchy takes place. That's normal in Roman Catholic countries. That has been the history of every Roman Catholic country that exists. Even more so the case in the ones that never had to deal with the Protestant Reformation in any meaningful way. It’s merely a reflection of the Catholic tradition of belief and hierarchy. Even so, it still does not mean that PC came into being across the West because of the reason that you state. If anything, what you are describing is something more akin to attempts in Catholic countries to enforce a status quo "Golden Rule" (as opposed to the Golden Rule actually (latently or actively) coming from the heart of a large portion of the population).

PC, as I have said and as Peter Carl seems to assert in his essays, exists originally within Christianity. It began, however, to take on a new life with the advent of the Protestant Reformation. The Reformation’s goal was to take Christianity back to the text of the New Testament. The New Testament is clear on its new commandment: “To love one another.” How’s this for 2,000 year old PC? “Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.” (Romans 12:10). Did you get that??? “Above yourselves”…. Here, take a look at the following links and references to loving one another in the New Testament – and then tell me that PC comes from some evil modern-day conspiracy to grab for social and political power by “elites”. If you believe such ideas, it only means that you may very well be religiously/theologically illiterate and/or that you have not widely read history. That is not meant as a put down. Today in our generally secular world few individuals have taken part in any church-related educational courses and equally as few have even a basic understanding of general Christian or Protestant, Roman Catholic, or Orthodox theology. To expect these to then have any understanding of, for example, Islamic theology or the Christian roots of PC or Marxism is even far less likely. These forms of lack of knowledge lie very much at the heart of the problems we now face.

Contrary to your proposed theory of PC as a power grab to enforce “moral superiority” (for exactly what benefit, I am not sure), the only conspiracy there has been in the West is a conspiracy of Westerners as Christians to ensure that all people in the West feel the pressure to live up to the high standards of Christianity. There are and have been good reason for that. Contrary to Islam, living up to the high standards of Christianity makes people love one another, do good things for one another, care about one another, act peacefully, not be overly hungry for money or power (the opposite of what you assert) with one another, share with one another, etc. In Islam, living up to the standards of Islam demands (not causes) a person to do the exact opposite – especially to non-Muslims.

Some assert that, somehow, though we have never accepted Marxism or Soviet dogma in the West, that PC magically comes to us from “Marxism” or the “Soviet Union”. Others like yourself, say that it comes from some play for power. That’s right. You want us to believe that the demand that we be nice to (and favor) others over ourselves comes from some grab for power by “elites”. No one ever seems to notice, however, that the actual and original demand that we be nice to other people (over ourselves) comes from the heart of Christianity and the church. Few also notice, as Peter Carl points out, that the average person telling us to “be nice’ are simply average people who like people in society to “be nice”. They’re not power hungry people. And the people “in power”, as you suggest, are simply mimicking the average person demands that people “be nice,” they are not dictating it to all of the world, as you suggest. “Being nice” to others, in any case, is fully OK. When, however, we apply that kindness without applying Christian standards equally to all people, we generally do not realize that these will bring an end to both Christianity and the stable, peaceful, prosperous, equal societies that it has brought to us in the West.

Note also that, if what you claim is true, that PC is merely a “power grab”, PC would exist equally in every place across the earth based upon the assumption that all people across the world would be equally PC based upon the assumption that all people should be equally excessive in their desire for power, covetousness/greed, arrogance, etc. Fact is, however, PC does not exist equally across the globe. Nor, in fact, does excessive desire, covetousness/greed, stupidity, arrogance, hatefulness/nihilism. There are enormous differences (measureable and have been measured) between all of these things across cultures. Those are steered by religious rules and reactions to religious rules, whether in their actual or latent application.

Here’s what Luther wrote about love and laws in light of Christian love in the 1520s:

“…we must say a little about human laws and ordinances and how far they are to be observed. The proverb says: "Everything depends upon having a good interpreter." That is particularly true here where human ordinances are concerned. Where there is no one to interpret and explain the law rightly it is difficult and dangerous to have anything to do with it. Take, for example, a ruler who acts like a tyrant and abuses his authority. If he makes a law and urgently insists on the law being executed, he treats conscience as if he had a sword in his hand and were intent on killing. We have experienced this in the tyrannical laws of popery, how consciences were tormented and hurled into hell and damnation. Yea, there is great danger where one does not know how to temper and apply the laws.

8. Therefore we conclude that all law, divine and human, treating of outward conduct, should not bind any further than love goes. Love is to be the interpreter of law. Where there is no love, these things are meaningless, and law begins to do harm; as is also written in the Pope's book: "If a law or ordinance runs counter to love, it will soon come to an end." This is in brief spoken of divine and human laws. The reason for enacting all laws and ordinances is only to establish love, as Paul says, Rom. 13, 10: "Love therefore is the fulfilment of the law." Likewise verse 8: "Owe no man anything, save to love one another." For if I love my neighbor, I help him, protect him, hold him in honor, and do what I would have done to me.

9. Since then all law exists to promote love, law must soon cease where it is in conflict with love. Therefore, everything depends upon a good leader or ruler to direct and interpret the law in accordance with love.

In other words, the father of the Reformation, Luther, writes, laws can and should be changed to reflect love. That is basically a history of the West since the Reformation. Our laws have been made constantly more and more humane. Laws in the West, especially in the Lutheran countries, are the most humane in the world - and have been for centuries. In fact, we change laws to show love to our Muslim neighbors by recognizing the needs in society that they wish to claim. In Luther’s case, however, he knew how to apply the indispensible standards that go along with these values – something we as a society do not know how to do today. In other words, he and others in the past, knew better these very fine and blurry boundaries between showing love and actually subverting or destroying Christian love by a seemingly otherwise "loving" act. All this, centuries before “Marxism” or the “Soviet Union” or your unidentified movements of “elites” who were “grabbing for power”.

What’s PC, then? Changing laws and rules to reflect a love for others. The application of PC across cultures, can actually be broken down by religions. The most PC places in the world are the Nordic countries. Notice too, that these are also the least excessive in desire, greed (conspicuous consumption), illiteracy, arrogance, hate countries in the world. Protestant/Lutheran theology has made that the case. PC exists only in the Christian West. It is strongest in Protestant Western countries and less strong in Roman Catholic countries. It is non-existent in Orthodox countries. The relationship between PC and hunger for power is inverse. The more PC the less hunger for power. The Nordic countries are known to be the most transparent, least corrupt, and evenly distributed as far as wealth and power.

Here’s Lessing’s book, which is cited by Peter Carl in his essay. As it says on Page 1 of an 1805 translation (still nearly 50 years before Marx) of Nathan the Wise by Lessing (1795), it describes the piece as “…an argumentative drama, written to inculcate mutual indulgence between religious sects.” It also says, “This translation is from the entire work: it was undertaken in March 1790, when questions of toleration were much afloat….” To "inculcate" that means to teach or impress on people's minds. Yes, they were interested in "inculcating" tolerance, even back then. Yes, even in 1795 – and well before that in the West – we were concerned about tolerance of others not like us. No, it wasn’t about a “power grab” then. It was about our concern as Western Christians for the Golden Rule; that is, treating others how we ourselves would like to be treated.

The problem we have today, however, is that in order to disarm PC, we must face PC – and understand it. Your explanation, Memetic Warrior, offers no way to approach or grasp or combat or understand PC. How are we to make an argument against people’s greed for power? Especially when we today – in the secular world we live in – can not fall back to Christian rules that argue against greed and greed for power? Another problem we have, however, is that because of the fact that our secular world around us tells us to never consider the power of the religions that formed our countries and our nations over countless centuries, we fail to see the actual answer that lies right before our noses. PC comes from our Western Christianity or, better said, an incomplete application of its Golden Rule. Which differs, again, across the Christian world generally based upon how much a country/culture was forced to deal with the changes brought on by the Protestant Reformation.

Nicolai Sennels, a Danish psychologist who has worked closely with criminal Muslim immigrants, has pointed out on many occasions, he can tie exactly group and individual Muslim behavior to exact Muslim teachings in theology. A person with a good knowledge of Christianity and Christian theologies can do the exact same thing for Protestants, Catholics, the Orthodox, etc. It can also be done for Buddhists, Hindus, and so on. Max Weber did this, as Peter Carl points out, in explaining economic sociology. He explained how religion causes us to act or not act with respect to economic behavior. These things apply whether we believe in a God or not. These religions formed the rules that have run our countries, cultures, and minds for centuries and we are not at all free of them (nor should we necessarily mindlessly desire to be free of them for the mere sake of being free of them) as much as we would like to lead ourselves to believe.

To address PC, we need to recognize that it does not exist in other places in this world. It is a phenomena of the Christian West. (Yet another piece of evidence that your theory, Memetic Warrior, is without basis.) We also must realize that within PC lie the best values of Christianity and the West, but, when we apply those best values without also applying the standards equally to all people that come along with those values, our blind application of these puts these values themselves in danger of disappearance. In other words, PC is both the "baby" and the "bathwater" of our Western society. We must be careful in how we approach and attack this problem. We don't need to become less kind, less open, less forgiving, less friendly, etc. But we need to become smart in the way we are kind, open, forgiving, friendly so that we do not lose these values due to our own unconsidered kindness, openness, forgivingness, and friendliness or an all out rejection of Christianity or PC.

Learning that challenging ideas (and religions, for example) is not "hate" or "bigotry" or "racism" is what needs to be learned. In the Christian West all ideas (including religion) have been able to be criticized in the past. From our thoughts about and even criticism of religion we gained the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the reform of the Catholic Church, the Enlightenment, and the reform of Judaism. All of these things actually also brought Western society closer to core Christian teachings and, in the process, they have also brought us all of the stability, innovation, tolerance, openness, and everything else we have in the West. They also brought us PC. Why? Because we quit applying the standards equally that go along with the Golden Rule. What caused that? Actually also criticism and even discarding of religion in the West.

So the goal is to help people to realize that the freedoms we now have today come from the Christian religion while at the same time, the freedoms we have today also come from our thinking about and criticism of the Christian religion. (An individual’s ability to think about and criticize are key parts of Christianity and Protestant Christianity itself). Today we need merely to help people to realize that if we fail to think and criticize ALL religions equally, we will also lose our Western society and freedoms. On the other hand if we fail to understand that within PC also lies all that is good, stable, and productive within our Western societies and simply choose to destroy PC without any understanding of what that means and entails, we will also destroy and lose all that is good, stable, and productive within our societies. We're dealing here with a very delicate matter.

There, Memetic Warrior, I hope that was succinct enough for you…. ;-) Now what’s your response?

Unreal succinct comment

"There, Memetic Warrior, I hope that was succinct enough for you…. ;-) Now what’s your response?"

 

Is there a Peter Carl essay in here somwhere? Here's a tale...

Numb Beyond Cares

If Peter Carl has read any part of this exchange here, I'm certain it has sent him scurrying for a bottle whiskey...if not perhaps, more likely, a case.... ;-)

 

Dear Unrealpolitic Thnaks

Dear Unrealpolitic

Thanks for your answer. I will answer your long (again) post when I have some time. But looking from above I don´t see any phylosophical argument, but repetitions and arguments ad authoritas (Peter Carl) that I do not accept by its very nature.  So I don´t know what to answer without lowering the level of my argumentation.

The anti-catholic argumentation has nothing to do with this case. This is gratuitous and introduces confussion,  I am not in agreement, of course, but you have some point right. However I may be wrong here since i did not read you in detail.

See you soon here. I I have no time before, I wish you a Merry christmas for all (fortunatelly it is not forbidden by PC. Yet)

Merry Christmas Memetic Warrior, Capodistrias, et al....

Dear Memetic Warrior,

I wish you (and all TBJ readers) a very Merry Christmas as well. Hope that your holidays are lively and filled with good food, family, and cheer!

I'll send you some questions at some point that might help us focus our discussion a bit. That might be seen as a true Christmas bonus for all.... ;-)

Succinctly yours,

Unrealpolitik

Merry Christmas Memetic Warrior, Capodistrias, et al....

Dear Memetic Warrior,

I wish you (and all TBJ readers) a very Merry Christmas as well. Hope that your holidays are lively and filled with good food, family, and cheer!

I'll send you some questions at some point that might help us focus our discussion a bit. That might be seen as a true Christmas bonus for all.... ;-)

Succinctly yours,

Unrealpolitik

Harry Potter and ...Nursery School???

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[And we hear…crickets chirping….] Capodistrias, I have a lot of respect for you, having read your many postings for a long time. However, since this is not a nursery school, it is fairly doubtful that anyone here cares the least about Harry Potter or your allusions to Harry Potter. Not that I understood your comment. (That had far more to do with punctuation than with my familiarity or lack of familiarity with the series cited.) In any case, Harry Potter postings might best be made, not here at TBJ, but at this site instead. (I Googled it just for you). ;-)

That said, I do find a few things interesting here. I find it very interesting, for example, that allusions to Harry Potter seem to be about the only response that can really be mustered as to Unrealpolitik’s comment (or Peter Carl’s essays, for that matter). Sure Unrealpolitik was rather direct in what he wrote. So was Memetic Warrior. Seems, in my opinion, Memetic Warrior deserved it in order to help bring him back to reality. At least Unrealpolitik had a sense of humor about it. What Unrealpolitik wrote shows every one of Memetic Warriors assertions to be fully false. It doesn’t apply to the “European Left”? Statistics and reality show that’s not the case. And if you want to pretend it to be the case, you can be satisfied to sit by and watch Europe sink ever further into Islamization. Every point that Unrealpolitik made is fully correct. Sometimes people do over-think things. Memetic Warrior definitely did that.

Perhaps your comment about a “citadel” and "enemies" is really what lies at the heart of the problem here. Peter Carl, like Winston Churchill himself once did, is going to a great extent against the current of thought among conservative colleagues. Some do not want to hear his words because he’s saying that there is a problem on the right that is causing the counterjihad movement to destroy and delegitimize itself. Mr. Millar’s fine article here at TBJ about the British Freedom Party is perfect evidence of the truth of Unrealpolitik and Peter Carl’s assertions.

Peter Carl is saying what many sense, but what few in conservative and counterjihad circles dare to say: we are without doubt our own worst enemy and our very unhealthy obsession with the left and ideological politics is what is causing the world to see the counterjihad as a meaningless club of “right-wing extremists” and not worthy of a vote let alone ever listening to or considering its message. Meanwhile people like Mr. Spencer and Ms. Geller eternally complain this is the case while, as Peter Carl rightly points out, they continue to obsessively attack the left – instead of considering that their (and many others') attacks and their failure to see that there are other ways to make the argument is the sole reason for the sad reality of this situation.

Meanwhile counterjihad parties are being damaged from Sweden to Italy, Portugal to Germany. While Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller's books, in the meantime, seem more pertinent as a result. Not that I at all think that is why they do this. They continue to attack the left because they fail to see that there are other far less damaging, more effective ways to win the match - and the argument. Which, of course, would result in their creating an even broader audience and more legitimacy for their books; but they seem not to have figured that out. In any case, seeing that Islam and Islamists are progressing wonderfully all across Europe to everyone’s detriment, well, uhhhh, we might actually want to consider the unpleasant and uncomfortable realities these voices are laying out for us to consider.

On that note, if anyone here thinks that the “citadel” of TBJ has been invaded by the likes of either Peter Carl or Unrealpolitik (or anyone else, for that matter), I’d say that such thoughts are precisely evidence of the problem. While Europe and the West continue to slide deeper into Islamization, for exactly the reasons sketched out by Peter Carl in his essays, many fellow conservatives, when confronted with ideas that say and give hard evidence that attacking the left is not working and won’t work (and is actually the source of all the damage), would rather engage in writing about Harry Potter (Capodistrias) or reality-avoiding intellectual masturbation (satisfying themselves with their own brands of thought) (Memetic Warrior) than to face the realities that the only approach that can and will work in this situation means taking a new and non-ideological approach to the counterjihad argument, the left, and the counterjihad movement. If not, well, each day is and will only continue to be more and more hopeless all across Europe. The Rensselaer study discussed by Carl in Part V is very good but very sad evidence of that.

Regardless, TBJ is not a citadel and in no case is it your citadel. Who do you think invited Peter Carl to write here? He hasn’t invaded anything. Without doubt, he has been invited. Most likely, I'd say, because he appears to have the right background, quality information, and some insights that no one else is providing. TBJ is not required to publish everything it receives. TBJ is one of the more high-quality political blogs on European issues that exists. That is so because it cares about quality, not about self-censoring away thoughts or voices that may go against the current stream of present-day conservative thought. That is why I like it. I wouldn't be reading it if I close-mindedly required every article to agree with my present way of thinking. What appears at TBJ today will be reality in 3-5 years. Just as people and politicians did not want to hear Churchill’s voice when and where it contradicted his own party, the same is true (for those whose brains have become a citadel) with the information and arguments Peter Carl has presented here.

There may be “many memes to choose from,” but I’d say each of us should be paying far more attention to history, reality, and ideas than to the banality of “memes”. My take on it all: The reason the comments section is so quiet here is because everyone knows that Peter Carl is fully correct in what he has written. In the shadow of that large and sickeningly correct perception of reality he has lain out - and Anders Breivik's heinous violence, everyone is struck motionless contemplating the enormity and the immense difficulty (if not impossibility) of the task that lies ahead of us. A task that, contrary to our own inner political instincts, can not and will not be able to be completed by savaging the left with ideological attacks in making any of our arguments against Islam. Churchill knew and Peter Carl knows the way.

So, aside from Harry Potter, reality-avoiding intellectual masturbation, and the unpleasantness of having unfamiliar and uncomfortable ideas in "your" play-time “citadel", we should be talking about how TBJ reader’s see the counterjihad movement succeeding if Peter Carl is all so wrong, which he clearly is not? Step up and speak up.

 

In Defence of Harry Potter,

myself and other memebers of the TBJ peanut gallery.

As much as I enjoyed and agreed with Unrealpolitik's response to Memetic Warrior's comments, I do not dismiss Memetic Warrior’s commentary so derisively as to label his citadel nothing more than an outhouse with some soiled, old magazines. To do so risk the same ostracizing of a potential ally that Peter Carl is arguing against.

I confess I have never been able to read thru a Harry Potter adventure, even when requested as bedtime reading. I lasted several hundred pages once, but we ended up in Plato’s Apology by some convoluted reasoning which no doubt Socrates would have found very suspect and self-serving on my part.

Nevertheless, I openly admit to sitting thru all the movies, and even attending the midnight preview of the Harry Potter grand finale, and so I find myself in an odd post on the ramparts of Potterdom fending off the equally lazy and dismissive browsers of Rowling’s creation with the quibble: at least Lady Rowling is willing to suit up and muck it up in the culture wars.

(Libratarian, and any other dismissive Potterites, if you really want to explore and weigh our cultural decline and the twilight of Western Civilization, try sitting thru these movies, I won’t even bring up the books, since there is nothing novel about them whatsoever.)

p.s

I apologize for all punctuation errors, but at least I know that one 15 year old briefly read TBJ, and that was what I was searching to do. I shamelessly look forward to the search results of our further weighing the merits of Harry Potter. 

Potter and Memetic Warrior Redeemed

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Capodistrias,

I understood that one...and it was funny (and the punctuation was outstanding). ;-) No doubt, you do have a good sense of humor. (I too have to admit having sat through most of these movies...and I have to agree with your analysis. But, there are other websites for that conversation....)

On to my Memetic Warrior comments. What I wrote should definitely not be read to be characterize anyone's "citadel [as] nothing more than an outhouse with some soiled, old magazines." That was never my intention. (I know what an outhouse is, but, hey, what's a magazine anyway?) ;-) Personally, the way I think about it is that we all inhabit the same citadel (or no citadel at all); it's merely a question of what are and will be the best tools to use to make sure that all of our stories in Pottersville continue. Which I understand as Memetic Warrior's goal as well.

I agree with you also, about how being overly harsh (and I hope I wasn't) could risk ostracizing the allies we have as well as potential allies. I definitely see fellow conservatives and Memetic Warrior as my allies. And I think Peter Carl makes the need to see allies as a top priority. My intention was not to argue against anyone that way. I don't think Peter Carl is arguing against any one either. His writing in not in any way an attack on his fellow conservatives. In fact, the way I read him, he is a conservative and he's trying to get everyone across the political spectrum to step back and take a look at this enormous mess, from what I see, in any case, as a few very important and new angles. And to quit making it worse.

For example, take what Memetic Warrior recently wrote about "multi-culturalism". Yes; multi-culturalism is garbage. But railing against multi-culturalism in and of itself without understanding how to make the argument and where it actually comes from will take an argument and its owner nowhere. Arguing against multi-culturalism will merely be seen as "bigotry" or a "hatred" of others not like us, when it's nothing of the sort. Multi-culturalism must be criticized via a discussion about ideas. People have to first understand the intuitive idea that not all ideas are equal. (Which we all believe and understand, but we resist the truth of this when it is brought up related to other cultures or religions). Addressing multi-culturalism in any other way than this will lead people to start accusations of "bigotry". Here are two great examples of arguing against multi-culturalism without risking being called a "bigot" or raving madly about the "Left": First Example and Second Example.

Nor will anyone succed if they're trying to argue that somehow multi-culturalism and PC come from Marxism - as opposed to coming innocently from our Western Christian heritage and, seen through that heritage, our experiences with our wars, slavery, the Holocaust, etc. These things are the reasons we are so senstitive to others not like us - they went against our deepest Western Christian principles and we abhorr that; not because of some idiotic assertion (such as Breivik's) that "Marxism" short life has somehow effected our world more than 2,000 years of Christianity. As Carl points out, Hitler, Tille, and Nietzsche saw very clearly the source of Marxism and our modern democracies in Christianity. And that is why they hated Christianity so much.

Carl's point is also excellent about Lessing. Anyone who thinks PC and multi-culturalism comes from "Marxism" or the "Soviet Union" should spend some time reading Lessing's "Nathan the Wise". It was written 60 or 70 years before Marx ever wrote his first word. And countless examples of this exist long before Lessing. It's good Protestant Christian Universalism and thinking the best of one's neighbors, which in today's standardless society (as Memetic Warrior correctly points out) has become multi-culturalism and PC. Anyone who thinks these ideas come from "Marxism" or the "Soviet Union" needs to begin to read a lot more history and theology. It's a problem we have today. Because people are so religiously illiterate they have no idea where so many of our Western ideas, concepts, and beliefs come from. And, as a direct result, they are far more likely to swallow PC arguments that "all religions are equally good" (or equally bad).

And anyone who does not understand that the ideas that underlie PC and Multi-culturalism are both "the baby and the bathwater" of our societies today, needs to think carefully about what thinking the best of other people has brought to us in the West. The Golden Rule and these Christian values, as Peter Carl rightly says, have given us everything that is good, productive, stable, inquisitive, democratic, and innovative in our societies. As the standards have been withheld or purposely stripped from Christian values and the Golden Rule in modern times, however, we have ended up with PC and Multiculturalism. Anyone who uninformedly thinks PC and multi-culturalism magically appeared in the West as some evil plot of "Marxism" or the "Soviet Union", well...really needs to get a library card.

In any case, without doing what Peter Carl is suggesting here, at this late date, I'd say our magical stories from all political points of view, having read Part V today, are heading towards Churchill's worst nightmare and a very ugly close. If we continue to shoot ourselves in the feet all the time, about the only thing we will be able to wish for to stop it will be some of that Potter magic to make it all as if it never had happened. Personally, Being a Muggle, I guess, I've never put much faith in magic. So to the extent any one of us fails to see the truth and accuracy in the need to reform our arguments according to what Peter Carl has written in these essays, I'd say it's looking pretty ugly for all of us.

An here Memetic Warrior comes again

 

Well, I only care about arguments,  I don´t care about neither enjoyments neither niceness neither humor neither the number of fans in each side. I´m not here to have a good time and make friends. Being at least as socially inept as unrealpolitik, I appreciate his rudeness. I think that being straight is the correct way, although with other arguments.  I will briefly clarify my point in other words:

I think that I have contested the philosophical  argument of Peter Carl. In the first article Peter briefly talk about the difference between what he calls the Golden Rule and Political Correctness. He tells us that the second is an unsatisfactory and incomplete version of the first, but  -he argue- both are from the same christian root. Therefore -he argue- since we share the same underlying intentions, we can collaborate against common threats that challenge our common values.

But my arguments below detail in which important and precise ways political correctness is different from the golden rule of Christianity.   I made clear that Political Correctness is about  obtaining power in a pacific society by means of gaining moral superiority trough exploiting  pacific christian precepts. The exploitation is sucessful because PC eliminate certain of these precepts (and I said which ones). Therefore political correctness is not an inocent derivation from christian golden rule -as Peter suggest- but is a deliberate depart from it with the purpose of obtaining social  (and therefore political) power breaking the rules and imposing cost in society, being division one of the first damaging effects.

Therefore, whoever try to convince politically correct people in the left of right  to step down from his self-appointed moral superiority to join forces in the combat with islamism would have a hard time, No matter if it is in the right or  in the left. The task becomes impossible when the PC individual has real political power. Simply, because he used consciously PC to reach power in the first place, and this was his goal, beyond the good or evil that his actions produced in the society. They will not collaborate with you because they need to be morally superior to you, because this is all that sustains it in power. No amount of niceness will liberate you from the epithets of hate-monger, extreme right, bigot and so on. Unless you join PC, praise islam and insult me as hard as possible. That is the nature of the dictatorship of Political Correctness.

I hope to have made my point clear this time.

So I wish you, the representants of Winston Churchill  a good luck. You will need it.   However I´m in your side, fellows.  But  I  personally think that it is more fruitful  to fight against the true cancer of our society: Political Correctness itself. 

 

So...

 

So ,you mean that, not the left, not you, the only alive representants of Churchill on Earth, but us, whose arguments are not for rational discussion of the same points the author mentioned but just for pure masturbation. We who  live in our own citadel. We who our existence make the left angry and this is the cause of all evils. We are the people responsible for the advance of Islam in Europe. Thanks for your opinion. I Added a response, as a response, below.

Next...

 

@Memetic Warrior: Putting Words in Others' Mouths

Memetic Warrior,

Read what Libratarian has actually written and try not to put your words and ideas into his mouth.

He says:

"Some do not want to hear his [Peter Carl's] words because he’s saying that there is a problem on the right that is causing the counterjihad movement to destroy and delegitimize itself."

(Memetic Warrior: Where does it say here that he's saying the Right is causing Islamization? Nowhere. It says nothing of the sort.)

"...we are without doubt our own worst enemy and our very unhealthy obsession with the left and ideological politics is what is causing the world to see the counterjihad as a meaningless club of “right-wing extremists” and not worthy of a vote let alone ever listening to or considering its message."

(Again Memetic Warrior: Where does it say here that he's saying the Right is causing Islamization? Nowhere. It says nothing of the sort.)

I haven't seen anyone here suggest that the "Right" has itself been the cause of Islamization, least of all the author, Peter Carl. He's simply pointing out the obvious fact that the counterjihad movement and our politicians on the right continue to shoot all of us and the entire West in the foot - and paint the entire movement as being "right-wing" by obseessively attacking the left and by denying reality. Peter Carl says simply in Part I that the path to a successful argument is to recognize both our own self-defeating argument (obsessively blaming the left) and the reality (the fact that all parties of all ideologies have created this problem together through parliamentary coalition governments during the last 50 years and for their own reasons). He says that the reality is that all parties across the political spectrum, for their own reasons and sometimes merely for reasons of being nice, have been and continue to be a part of increasing Islamization. He writes in Part I:

 

First, such arguments often delusionally assume that normal average people – including the vastly differing politicians that represent them – are part of some global “Leftist” conspiracy aimed at supporting the Islamization of the world. Top conservatives, including U.S. Republican presidential candidates Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and Ron Paul, Republican Governors Chris Christie (R-NJ) and Rick Scott (R-FL), and others such as Grover Norquist and the Conservative Political Action Conference​ (CPAC), each of whom have fallen in with a blindly Politically Correct message about Islamism, suggest quite otherwise. Fact is, with the exception of a handful of actual self-avowed Marxists and a few neo-Nazis (National Socialists), all of whom are very small in number in every Western developed country, the vast majority of Westerners from the “Center”, “Left”, or “Right” who promote Muslims and Islam do so out of Western misguided (but well-meaning) Christian-based modernist universalism which, diffracted by “Political Correctness”, sees all religions as equally good or equally evil. They believe they are doing what we all like to do – protecting human rights and working to advance those seemingly in need of inclusion or protection.

AND...

Eighth, this assumes that for the last fifty years (and even today) that “Right”, “conservative”, and “Center” politicians have not also been a part of the Islamization process that has gone on and that “conservatives” have not had their own reasons for allowing immigration to constantly increase (e.g. for the “Right”: increase labor pool, decrease wages, add to housing market, more new customers for small and big businesses; for the “Left”: feeling sorry for and wishing to assist those less fortunate, wishing to bring “diversity” and “multiculturalism” to Western societies; and, for both “Left” and “Right: innocently like everyone else, a well-meaning Western universalist belief that “They’ll all quickly become just like us; we can change ‘hearts and minds’ – after all, all people are really the same deep down…”). Just as the “Left” has, the “Right” has also promoted mass immigration to the West, which everywhere has included large numbers arriving from Muslim countries.

Both at present and long into the past, the parties of the “Right” of all Western nations have and continue to work to increase immigration to the West for their own specific reasons. Ronald Reagan himself in 1984 as candidate for president proudly offered his support for amnesty (at 1:20) for illegal immigrants, which, in 1986 became reality as the Simpson-Mazzoli Act. The Act gave 3,000,000 illegals the right to remain in the United States. This we see still continuing even today, for example, among business leaders, the conservative FDP, and the conservative CDU in Germany; among the conservative Moderaterna in Sweden; among conservative business leaders, business owners, and Republicans in many places across the US; among business leaders and the Conservative Party in England; among business leaders and the Conservative Party in Canada; and even as to the conservative so-called “anti-immigration” UMP Party of France and its key leaders such as Nicolas Sarkozy, Brice Hortefeux, and Jacques Barrot. To argue that mass immigration or Islamization is or has somehow been the sole fault of the “Left” – and not also caused by and in coalitions with the “Center” and the “Right” – is neither reflected in history nor reality. Regardless, we can be certain that continually blaming the “Left” for these policies only counterproductively alienates large numbers of potential voters for Counter-Jihad parties from the “Center”, “Left”, and “PC Right” and, most dangerously, further confirms and serves as repetitive reminders in the minds of the greater general public and the mass media that all Counter-Jihad political parties – though traditionally made up of dissatisfied voters from the “Center”, “Left”, and “Right” – must somehow always be described as “Right-wing”. That is a price the Counter-Jihad political parties and the West can no longer in any way afford to pay.

 

And I myself will add, why not add Ron Paul to that mix now, since he too seems to be promoting the idea that challenging the IDEAS of Islam publicly, as Michelle Bachmann has done, is somehow a "hatred" of Muslims. Ron Paul, yet another conservative, exactly as Peter Carl points out, is as much likely to apply the Golden Rule absent its required standards as all of the rest of us.

Peter Carl's assertion is 100% correct; every political party is equally responsible for the Islamization that has and is taking place. (And, even ignoring reality, arguing that it's the fault of the left is not going to move the counterjihad forward in any way.) Every bit of this has taken place under the watch of both conservatives and liberals. So Peter Carl's point seems very much to be that, if you want to make the successful Counter-Jihad Argument, you first have to realize that all of us in the West are responsible for this situation due to our very valuable belief in the Golden Rule. Once you realize that, if you've read Part II of Carl's essays, you'll also realize that there's little chance that, as you say, because we "make the left angry" that we are going to create any success for the counterjihad movement as a result of that. (Have you read Part II?) Generally, making people angry does not cause them to listen to you. Peter Carl is making it pretty obvious that there is a path of least resistance in front of us that we are ABSOLUTELY FAILING to pursue. And the result of that is: 1) making NO ONE open to our message - whether from Carl's "Left", "Right", or "Center"; 2) it's making the movement appear to be extremely "right-wing"; 3) it's leaving us and our argument open to extreme damage when an idiot like a Breivik runs amok; and 4) all of these things are merely giving Islam and Islamists and open road to the West.

Do you like that for your future? Is that what you want???? If not, face up to the realities presented, quit being obsessive compulsive about the left - and learn to make Carl's Argument that will actually be capable of getting people to listen and can begin to reverse the process of Islamization. I'm a conservative, but I can tell you that this continued and obsessive attack on the left that Libratarian writes about, is only bringing on the end of the West that much more quickly. Peter Carl's insights regarding Churchill's approach and a "Counter-Jihad Argument" based in one common "ideology" (our "Common Freedoms") is fully on the mark. Choose the future you want.

 

Sorry, but you think too much....

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Dear Mr. Memetic Warrior,

To use words similar to those you appear to have directed at the author of the essays:

Your considerations about the European left are too coarsely grained.

First of all, you make the mistake to think and assume that that one-third or so of the population that makes up the “Left” – right down to normal, average, everyday, workaday people most of whom care little for ideology or the intellectual points you and many of the rest of us spend time thinking about – is something that can be defined and is uniform. Then you make the mistake to think that the “Left” is uniform across the “Left”. And then you make the mistake of thinking that the “Left” is uniform across Europe. And then you make the mistake of thinking that all of these uniformities that you impose on the “Left” would be so impenetrable so as to get in the way of a person from the “Left” from ever being able to be convinced of a proper argument based in something all Westerners believe in: human rights and Peter Carl’s “Common Freedoms”.

You seem to simplistically picture all of the “Left” as being true and actual Marxists hidden in a back room somewhere obsessed with revolution and maliciously plotting the “deconstruction” of the West. That, I hopefully don’t need to remind you, is not reality. ACTUAL Marxists may believe some of the things you have described. But they too think too much. And many hate Islam for among many other reasons – because it is a RELIGION. They also probably make up at most (judging from election results across Europe), no more than 2-4% of the population. Those are the people you described in your commentary. Most of the rest of the “Left” (that is 98% of the "Left"), however, does not have the time, patience, or background in political theory to accept or even consider the points you attempt to impose upon them. They’re too busy working and raising kids, going to football games, and planning their next vacation. In other words, the rest of the “Left” does not care about Marxian or Feuerbachian or Hegelian or any other kind of “deconstruction” of anything.

In any case, if we assume that your points are at all correct for a moment (and they are not), what you have asserted means: 1) Europe especially (and the West in general) is finished and there is absolutely NO reason (NONE) to even make the effort of trying to make an argument to someone from anywhere on this impenetrable “Left” you propose; and 2) your conclusion means then that we must either achieve success in fighting Islamization by: a) ignoring the “Left” (not possible – they make up at least one third of the population and they’ll always be there to get in the way …especially if you ignore them and try to push things forward without their input. Which you can't anyway, since such an effort would violate basic principles of democracy); b) convert the “Left” to the "Right" (once again, not possible - Peter Carl has made that quite clear in Part II that this won't work. Unless, of course, you think you can magically achieve something no one else in the world has ever achieved; changing the political beliefs of mass numbers of people? I’m guessing that’s not going to work for anyone – not even a Memetic Warrior. ;-) In any case, the research Peter Carl has provided shows that attacking any person’s ideology, whether of some “Right” or “Left” is not going to get anyone or the movement very far); or, c) the “final” option (pun intended), kill everyone on the “Left”.

As to the last option, killing everyone on the “Left”, well, a sick Hitler tried that before. And a sick Breivik as well. In perhaps setting up a new killing machine for the “Left”, how might you suggest that we identify the “Left”? Do we make people all across Europe take a test and then grade the "sickness" of their “Leftism” on a scale from 1-10 and, say, maybe just kill the ones that hit a 6 or a 7, maybe???? Or should we simply take them beginning in the middle???? Everyone with a 5 or higher we send off to be slaughtered????? I’m guessing (and hoping) that this is not the solution you would propose. I’m also guessing that, if you’ve read the rest of these essays, you understand that options a) and b) will also not work - no day, no way. So, again, your scenario leaves the heinous “Left” as somehow impenetrable and bent on destruction leaving Europe (and the West) as now finished.

So, we come to another place where you’ve definitely thought far too much.

Your conclusion is: “So, Sorry.  The European left conception of human rigths requires the destruction of us. So there could not be an agreement on lslamization."

Too much thought, Mr. Memetic Warrior. What Peter Carl argues is that, for the 98% of the “Left” who are not actual Marxists (like the 98% of the “Right” who are not actual Nazis), these are people who are not so swayed and ideologically committed to political theory that they don’t see things much differently from the average Westerner. In fact, they are average Westerners. These people, like me and you, having their general operating software arise in 2,000 years of Christianity, therefore, are generally open to reasonable argumentation. They don’t give a crap about “destruction” or “deconstruction” or any other crazy theories you, I, or anyone else may like to throw around in our free time. They care, generally speaking, about living by the Golden Rule and so, therefore, if they can be shown how their application of the Golden Rule is actually resulting in or going to result in the loss of the Golden Rule or the violation of the "Common Freedoms" described by Carl, most will care and most will pay attention. Why? Because they most generally like and are most generally committed to treating people as they like to be treated; whether personally or by the government they have elected.

The actual proof of the full and complete incorrectness of your points and your futile deep wanderings in the no-man's land of ideological and political theory can be seen in the politicians and THE STATISTICS that Peter Carl lays out. As Peter Carl points out in Part II, in Germany:

seventeen percent (17%) of those who identified themselves as Social Democrats (SPD), six percent (6%) of Greens (Die Grüne), and an impressive twenty-five percent (25%) of those who identified themselves as actual Socialists (Die Linke) said they would vote for a new so-called “Right” or Counter-Jihad party if one were to be formed. Thus the percentage among the farthest “Left” party in Germany, Die Linke, had the highest proportion of voters who would vote for a new “Right” party – of all of the other major mainstream political parties in Germany. In Sweden, membership in the Counter-Jihad Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna) reflects this same reality; it is made up of twenty percent (20%) former voters from Swedish Social Democratic party, ten percent (10%) identifying with the “Left”, and a full thirty-three percent (33%) identified themselves as “Center”, that is, neither “Right” nor “Left”.  

That is, the “Left” that you say is so fully incapable of being convinced of concerns regarding Islamization actually already – in Europe – makes up a large part of the counter-jihad movement. However, they likely have not felt comfortable voting for it precisely because it is widely seen by so many as a wasted vote on a bunch of "far-right" crazies. Peter Carl has made this eminently clear.

In Denmark, as Carl points out, one of the strongest counter-jihad parties is the Socialist People Party and its leader, Villy Sovndal. (Yes, the Socialist People's Party is "Left" of the Social Democrats). Also in Denmark the Social Democrats are also counter-jihad. The Social Democratic prime minister, as Carl points out in Part IV, recently told committed Islamists if they believe they need to impose their vision of the world on Denmark, they can leave.

In Germany, as Peter Carl points out above, the most well-known leaders on the counter-jihad “Left” are Heinz Buschkowsky and Thilo Sarrazin, for example. They are Social Democrats. ACTUAL Marxists (the lonely 2-4% of the "Left") in Germany don’t like that the 98% of the rest of the “Left”, quite contrary to your assertion here, Mr. Memetic Warrior, has shown itself to be very much fully capable of realizing the dangers posed to our human rights by Islamization. In fact, due to Buschkowsky and Sarrazin's popularity, they are concerned that the Social Democratic Party nationally will soon be changing its platform to a more counter-jihad position due to Buschkowsky and Sarrazin.

I’d suggest also that you read “Libratarian’s” comment at the bottom of Part II. There he or she writes about a Communist Muslim named “Ali H.”, who is trying to recruit Communist Westerners to Islam. He wants to create an “Islamic Communism” in the West. Ali H. is frustrated, however, that the LEFT generally rejects both him and Islam. “Libratarian” discusses the reasons that Ali H. set out for his and Islam’s rejection by the “Left” in the West. They both give links to ACTUAL Marxists who also are vehemently opposed to and natural enemies to Islam. (In other words, Mr. Memetic Warrior, even Ali H. doesn’t agree with your proposed reality or your proposed picture of the “Left” as you have attempted to paint it in your commentary here. In fact, Ali H. complains that he and Islam are always being rejected by the "Left". And he's writing about ACTUAL Marxists, not the other 98% of the "Left" who generally do not care about and, as Carl's examples and statistics show, are capable of thinking beyond the rote ideological dogma of Marxist "deconstruction" you write about.)

So, no, to borrow your own words, Mr. Memetic Warrior, I’m sorry. The European left’s conception of human rights does not require the destruction of “us”. So there is actually a way to make the proper argument on lslamization to the vast majority of the “Left”. And we only need a part.

Making the proper argument is merely a question, as Peter Carl points out so well in these essays and as KO points out in his comment below here, of giving up attempting to assign blame for something that all political parties across the West have together created over the past fifty years and then to give up the futile, pointless, counterproductive battle over ideological polemics (that greatly damages the counter-jihad movement and makes it appear "extreme-right") and, instead, talk about the human rights that everybody cares about and point out all of those many instances of the violations of these human rights by Islamists that take place all across Europe and all across the world each and every day.

If you think the argument can not be made, Memetic Warrior, it is merely because YOU do not KNOW HOW to make the argument. You actually need to learn how to do that – if the West is going to survive. I make this argument with people from every political background all the time and, if you treat them and their views respectfully, they have no alternative but to agree. We all believe in human rights and Peter Carl’s “Common Freedoms”. People only need to relearn that it’s not “extreme right” or “bigoted” or "hateful" to question ideas – including even and especially religious ideas other than our own. And people need to relearn, as well, that if we don’t all begin to question and allow the questioning of ideas, we will all lose the Christian-based human rights and stable Western societies we all care about.  

Too much is never enough

 

Dear  unrealpolitik.

It is strange to hear "someone think too much" as a kind of argument here in TBJ. But You are right, 95% of the left, like the 95% of the right couldn´t care less about all these things. The problem is that this may have been the proportion of the left and right that did not care 50, 60, 70 or 100 years when Comunism and Nazism and cold war terrorism ruled Europe. And still all of these atrocities happened. 

Let´s go to the fine grain: The 5%  is the one that counts. This 5% in the radical left is not  now in marxists movements. These  are just old styled nostalgics. People with which you can sit down in a cafe and agree about how decadent is everything today.  Today, self-appointed marxists make people laugh.Of course there is a loyal left. The honorable exceptons that you mention don´t  change anything. I´m not interested in wether if this or that leftis has said if his party promotes  laws agains "hate speech" tailored for the needs of Islamist. That is what counts.

The real radicals. The ones who move Europe are in the EU Comission, in the European Parliament, in the Pedagogy departament of Universities, In mass media, in the higher ranks of national bureaucracy. In the headquarters of theoretically moderate left parties. Even in theoretically center-right parties. There are right-wing multiculturalists that couldn´t care less about our past, who believe that men are simply interchangeable  homo-aeconomicus and borders are barriers for benefits. They are in the positions where they can do most for their radical views.

Their radical agendas can not be sold to the street , but they know how to sell themselves. They invented an increased plethora of state regulated rights for the voters. The 95% of the left believe in nothing but the State. For the street left, the state has the duties and the rights are for himself.  They will believe in anything self indulging  and rights giving that the state could create for them. This is its radical uthopia. They will do nothing about the problems. It is not their duty. Their shepherds will care.

If you are after a consensus about human rights between right and left, it is already here; The name is  "multiculturalism and free borders", It is here and it rules Europe since the 70s. If the left is only a third of the population, it is obvious that the present situation is a consequence of a consensus, at least between the representatives of the population, that is this elite of 5% who counts:  politicians, mass media pundits, educators etc. The muslim riots, the occupation of public space, the progress of the Sharia in Europe is a consequence of this consensus , because Hate Speech crimes , the all-encompassing anti racism legislation that permits the progress of racial islam in Europe are developments based on such consensus about human rights.

The discrepancy about what are exactly the human righs and whether they have inherent  duties or not is at the core of the differences between the (various kinds of) rights and lefts, Therefore, unless you delimite what kind of rights are you talking about, what you propose is something not only meaningless but contributes to the continuation with the current situation.  Under this consensus, the right will say "religious freedom", they left will understand "all religions are equal" you will say "freedom of expression" they will understand "Freedom  must be regulated to protect expression of minories"  and so on.  You understand that the problem is in Islam. I believe that the problem is in Europe.

Fortunately or not, the crisis will change all. Things are going so fast that this seems to me a debate of the past. Multiculturalism is a luxury thatr Europe can not afford. the left voters will demand their leaders to focus on the real problems, not in social engineering, This will be change the view about inmigration. Who knows what will happen.

 

About what to do: I do not think  that Islam is the most important problem. Because the problem is in Europe, in its suicidal path towards inexistence. Multiculturalism is one of the many faces of a XXI century despotism that is breaking our families our nations, our history, every institution in fact, and thus the sources of our prosperity in the name of a flawed notion of Man and its freedom. You can look you for your agreement with the left on islamism. That´s fine. Neiter me neither TBJ are specifically anti islamist. I´m a liberal conservatist and I do my job. Good luck.

@Memetic Warrior: Questions...

Before I reply to what you have written, please explain what you mean by this:

"Neiter me neither TBJ are specifically anti islamist."

First, why in your writing do you assert being able to speak for TBJ? Are you in any way related to or involved in it so that I should place any value in your assertion?

Second, what do you mean by saying that you (or TBJ) are not anti-Islamist????? How can a person not be anti-Islamist? Does that mean you support Islamists? Or that you simply do not care about Islamist agendas? Or, perhaps, that you believe everyone is fine pursuing his or her own beliefs and you see no specific harm in Islamists or Islam?

I meant what neither me

I meant what neither me neither TBJ (supposedly, by what i read) are devoted to anti-islamism. That means what it means, that is that I´m conservative not obsessed with islam and islamism, but preocupied with wider problems for which Islam in Europe is a symptom and a consequence. I explained it before.

 

If you want to answer me, please be concise. 

Sorry, that can not apply to the European Left

 

Your considerations about the christian origin of the left are too coarse grained. The self-criticism in christianism is individual, personal, while the self criticism on the left is not against the  self, but against the own group to exhibit moral superiority and exonerate oneself from any critic. It is exactly the opposite. It is an exploitation of the concept of self criticism.

Moral superiority has an unprecedented role in the West. Thanks to the disqualification of violence that Christianism stablished in the first place, moral superiority became the foundation of political legitimacy. That did not happened anywhere else. Therefore the adquisition of moral superiority by devious means became a critical issue. The Christianism contains a well balanced collection of rules that have been tested for centuries. Every rule about good behaviour may have inherently some consequiences in terms of moral superiority that can be exploited (The devil lurks behind the cross).For that matter, christianism was very keen to impose additional sins to prevent exploitation of moral superiority .  That is the only way to maintain a love based society. For example, Against exploitations that try to gain moral superiority trough harsh criticism of others and against false exhibition of good behaviour, there is the "Do not judge, and you will not be judged" and the mandate to "not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing" (charity must be discrete). respectively.

 

As a set of rules for pacific convivence, it has these rights and duties of which the above are some examples. An order based of virtue is not profitable for ambitious people that want to climb to political power trough the shortest path. Violent alternatives have been used but have been defeated, How to gain the hearts of the people in a peaceful society with something better that christianism?. It may be said that the demagogues had a hard time in the West, but the solution is simple, because christianism only works as long as people accept the Christian tradition in full.

 

Fot that matter, the demagogues had an opportunity of exploit cristianism by asserting that rights come for free, while duties are just superfluous. So they start critizicing others, they exhibit his supposed "solidarity" in obscene ways. With this self exhibition runaway, the demagogues gain moral superiority, while make people think that, liberated from their duties, life is easier than it really is. If finally, the right to the heaven in the afterlife is substituted by a more inmediate heaven on heart, then the appeal of this demagogy is guaranteed. More for less. This is what we call "the Left".

 

I´m talking about the european left. This left is basically amoral. She believes that the duties are an artificial burden made by "The System" for the exploitation of the people, Since he is sincerely after the destruction of these moral duties, she is also after the destruction of the West. It can not be otherwise. So they are not, not they can be in the side of conservatives.  They freely transform themselves from socialists to ecologists, to multiculturalists to altermundists because the pivotal point  of his ideology is not a clear plan for the construction of something, but the destruction of the  Western "superstructure" in marxist terms. That is, the structure of intermpersonal dependencies ruled by traditional moral duties and historical institutions, both formal and informal.- That is no more, nor less than our identity. This is according with their faith, what keep them away from a heaven on Heart of infinite rights at the cost of no duties. Whoever read Voegelin, whould say that this is a Gnostic ideology. They consider islamism and christianism in the same way that they cosidered comunist nuclear warheads in East Europe, as basically equivalent to the american military bases in their own countries. This is not a conspiration of a group of masters of the Universe, This is the logical consequience in the strets, and in the parliaments, of a conflict of worlviews, also called ideologies, formerly called religious wars.

So, Sorry.  The European left conception of human rigths requires the destruction of us. So there could not be an agreement on lslamization.

Perhaps your considerations apply more to other kind of left that is dominant in USA, not in Continental Europe. The left and right wing descendant of the puritan founders have less ideological differences. As descendants from apocalyptic religious sectarians, americans believe in the promise of a heaven on earth under God, for which his country is the beachhead.

Therefore both american Right and  most of the american Left are moral, they believe basically in the same principles. Yet, the american left has gone in the way of relaxation and secularization. There are radicals in the universities, but the situaiton is not as critical as in Europe. Maybe the americans would reach a consensus about what to do with this secondary infection called Islamism, but no doubt, the same in Europe is  definitively beyond reach.

 

 

 

Harry Potter and the Golden Rule

To put what Unrealpolitik and Peter Carl are saying in terms to appeal to TBJ's younger readers, simply because the enemy (Voldemort) has stormed and entered the citadel i.e., the Golden Rule (Harry Potter) and claims to have captured it, the claim does not make it true, unless one surrenders to it. In short, young readers memes abound choose wisely. 

(To JKR, any royalties issues refer to KI)

Counter-jihad

Thanks to the author for these very substantial articles.  It is possible that Counter-Jihadists need to anticipate a long-term struggle, like the struggles for the abolition of slavery and for the abolition of abortion.  To some, it is obvious that Islam is inimical to Western civilization and should be excluded from it to the greatest possible extent, as soon as possible.  But it is not obvious to most.  For the feelings of the majority to change to the point where they can compel politicians and officials to follow their views, counter-jihadists must put aside their contempt for those who don't get it and humbly and tirelessly work to overcome the ignorance, ideology, interest, and indolence that prevent anti-Islamic measures from being put into effect.   In effect, to be a successful counter-jihadist, one should set aside right and left ideologies and focus on the immediate practical harm of admitting substantial numbers of Muslims into a country.

That would be more likely to get leftists to drop their pro-Islamism than attacking their leftism.