At this late date—three weeks after that bloated green Godzilla, Charles Johnson, lashed out against Robert Spencer after having already similarly attacked and vilified Diana West, Andrew Bostom, Gates of Vienna, Fjordman, and others—frontpage.com links a story from his site, Little Green Footballs.
The news story frontpage links is ultimately from Reuters. Frontpage should have just put the link to Reuters, and ignored Charles Johnson.
For a massive glimpse of the full ugliness of Charles Johnson’s berserk rampage, see these two articles. (The full catastrophe of this bloated green monster, this Godzilla of the Blogosphere, Charles Johnson, is more fully impressed upon the reader by wading through the hundreds of comments to the articles linked above—quite a few of the comments are by Robert Spencer himself.)
As some readers may know, I myself have criticized Spencer extensively—devoting over 130 articles on my now retired second blog, Jihad Watch Watch, to various facets of that criticism. There is a difference, obviously, between Charles Johnson’s bridge-burning blitzkrieg denunciations, on the one hand, and on the other hand, criticism that is for the most part (with minor exceptions of understandable lapses in patience) maturely expressed, intelligently attempted, and guided by the spirit of constructive criticism.
Which brings to mind one particular, important feature of the Anti-Islam Movement once it has become an organization: it should have a mechanism for ostracization. Why should it have this mechanism? Simply because there are times within any sociopolitical movement when individuals, or groups of individuals, go against the ideals and/or the policies of the overall movement to a degree that becomes injurious to the movement as a whole.
Such a mechanism, of course, should try to balance the baseline ability to ostracize when it has to, with the virtue of inhibiting the tendency to ostracize too easily.
We can see signs of a failure to exercise this balance in, on the side, Charles Johnson’s berserk ostracization of Spencer, et al., and, on the other side, frontpage.com continuing to link Charles Johnson at this late date. In the context of a sound mechanism in place, frontpage.com would have gotten the memo, and would have agreed to its principle—or, at least, the principle of agreeing to certain guiding rules of the organization as a whole—and would as a matter of course have withheld the hat-tipping link to Charles Johnson’s site.
As to whether a putative, future organization of the Anti-Islam Movement should ostracize someone like Lawrence Auster, that is questionable. My view on this is that Auster has not behaved sufficiently egregiously to warrant being ostracized. The aforementioned balance should try to err on the side of embracing within the fold individuals and groups who represent a healthy internal criticism of the movement, since this is conducive to the classical Western virtue by which self-criticism promotes strength, while the injudicious avoidance of self-criticism, while seeming to strengthen on the surface, actually tends to undermine cohesion and growth. Simply put, Auster has not crossed the line as has Charles Johnson. At the very least, the Anti-Islam Movement should suffer Auster’s presence as a cantankerous, prickly, curmudgeonly eccentric sitting over at the end of the table or off in the corner as the rest of the members get on with the business at hand; but we should not expel him from the room. Somewhat similarly, I would not wish to ostracize Spencer for the degree of harm he continues to exert against Vlaams Belang, et al.—in effect, ostracizing them by keeping them in an indefinite state of suspended virtual ostracism with regard to whether, or not, they are guilty of “fascism” and “racism”—because this conduct, as objectionable as I find it, is nevertheless well within that same line that Charles Johnson, with his gargantuan, pimpled green feet of a Godzilla, has trampled over.
I would even forgive Spencer’s intemperate ostracization of me, magnanimously chalking it up to a momentary lapse in elementary intelligence in the heat of the moment. Rather than lashing back in kind with a Counter-Anathema, I would agree to overlook it, in the spirit of the virtue mentioned above, and, by extension, in the spirit of the good of the movement as a whole.
30 comments:
Looks like Auster appreciates your allowance ;-)
You're pretty big to be featuring on lead articles on his blog. Conversely, he's pretty small fry.
As for LGF on FrontPage, I wonder whether the fall-out between JW and LGF has spread to other places. My suspicion is that FrontPage Magazine, HotAir, Pajamas Media are way bigger than LGF, so that he can ill afford to do to them what he did to GoV and JW.
Nobody,
I haven't been to Auster's blog in a while. I'll check that out.
The point about FrontPage (I can never figure out exactly how they spell themselves) is that they should take it upon themselves to cut off CJ out of solidarity to the people CJ has cut off, even if he hasn't cut FrontPage off.
They don't feel the need to do it, or haven't even thought about it, because there is no organizational coherency to the movement.
Nobody,
Well, I took a look at the Auster entry. It's amazing how many things he and his followers can get wrong in just a small amount of space.
The following are just my immediate thoughts, which I might forge into an actual essay:
From Auster's and his reader's comments:
"Erich/Hesperado--still smarting from his failed attempt at Dennis Mangan's blog the other week to portray me as a gnostic who think that I alone possess the secret truth..."
I never attempted that, and I provided detailed refutation of that charge, which Auster has never bothered to counter-argue.
"...or, at best, as a strangely convoluted, queerly paradoxical thinker..."
Not "at best"; simply as one facet of his thought about one key problem: that of conservatives becoming to a discomfittingly great extent PC MC (or "liberal" in Auster's terminology).
"--now asks whether certain individuals should be kicked out of the "anti-jihad" movement."
I do not call it the "anti-jihad movement" but rather the "Anti-Islam Movement". Indeed, I went into a parenthetical discussion on how "Anti-Islam Movement" is problematic, insofar as a few of the "leaders" of the movement seem not to be, in fact, "anti-Islam", and so they probably would opt for being "anti-jihad", though that remains an important problem. But Auster doesn't care about carefully reading the people he is criticizing, apparently; and so such fine, but important distinctions don't even get picked up by his clunky, eccentric metal-detector, so to speak.
Charles Johnson, he says, should be kicked out. Then he asks whether I also should be ostracized (or perhaps Austerized?). He ponders deeply, then judiciously concludes that while I am "a cantankerous, prickly, curmudgeonly eccentric," I have "not behaved sufficiently egregiously to warrant being ostracized."
I'm amazed -- Auster got that one more or less right!
"Whew. I guess this means I'll be allowed to sit at the same table with ... Hesperado and his friends Tanstaafl, Awake, and Conservative Swede. Thank God!"
His comportment in discussions, not his ideas, have earned this wariness others have about him.
"Gintas writes:
The anti-jihad movement?"
Apparently, Gintas only reads Auster's take on things, and never bothers to look into the material to see for himself (cf. supra re: "anti-jihad movement").
"There's a movement?"
I went into a detailed analysis about the nature of a "movement" in general, and to what extent there is an "Anti-Islam Movement" and what its nature is in the essay previous to the one Auster is referring to, which was linked there.
"With only about 11 men in this movement..."
There are far more than this. If not, then Auster's contribution (who is, apparently, the sole source for Gintas, et al. for anything even inchoately resembling concerted concern about the problem of Islam) is so minuscule as to be pointless.
"...now is probably a good time to start thinking about who needs to be purged."
A sarcastic comment that reveals ignorance of my discussion in the essay of the balance between ostracism and being too eager to ostracize.
"Kidist writes:
...Spencer even seems to be going backwards by adding "radical" to Islam in the title of his newest book."
If only "Kidist" knew of the dozens of essays I have written analyzing in meticulous detail this particular problem with Spencer, among many others, on my other blog "Jihad Watch Watch". But why bother to actually read the person you are casually denigrating via the third-person medium of your unbiased source, Auster?
"I think the only comprehensive writing both explaining Islam and underscoring what to do about it is yours [i.e., Auster's]."
"Kidist" plainly thinks with a limited palette; and certainly provides not a scrap of evidence to substantiate this sweeping claim.
Auster then replies, showing a rudimentary sense of the proper definition of a "movement":
"A movement is a view of a problem and a call to action to solve it, supported by some kind of group."
This definition, however, doesn't quite capture the inchoate and amorphous -- and often sociologically widespread -- nature of most "movements".
Auster then cites his proposal for "Separationism" which was poorly received by other "leaders" of the still inchoate Anti-Islam Movement (such as Spencer and Fitzgerald) as though that has been the only proposal for action out there, when others have also proposed various measures to deal with the problem of Islam (including Spencer, Horowitz and Bill Warner), which is not the same thing as saying their proposals are good or bad.
"When I wrote my article, "Separationism," in which I showed the elements of a "separationist" view that various well-known Islam critics had in common, I was trying to move things in the direction of some kind of shared consensus on this issue, i.e., in the direction of a movement."
As I argued in detail in my essay previous to the one Auster is commenting on (linked there), a movement will tend to fail to develop a consensus unless it becomes organized. And part of the organization process is precisely to crystallize a consensus. Auster's proposal about Separationism was a proposal about how to concretely respond to the problem of Islam, but that by itself cannot forge a consensus, since many other issues need to be agreed upon in tandem, including what it is exactly we are opposing ("Islam" or just "Jihad" or "Sharia", etc.), as well as alternative policies. Auster's proposal would be one idea among many to be hashed out and hammered out in a conference context lasting at least two or three days, as I detailed in my essay.
In sum, however, I think at this stage of the game, actual solutions to the problem of Islam should not be the vanguard of the Movement-cum-Organization, since a crystallization of our actual ideology is still suffering from incoherence and confusion; and since our surrounding culture is still suffused with an inhibiting mainstream dominance of PC MC. Our primary efforts should be to forge consensus on our ideological message, and then work toward ways of making that message a kind of aggressive, relentless solvent slowly, by stillicide, to insinuate cracks in the dominant PC MC Paradigm and work toward undermining it.
This doesn't mean the Movement-cum-Organization shouldn't develop ideas for solutions to the problem of Islam at all, of course. It just means that we should work more on the massive impediments to realizing any such solutions that will be sufficiently effective as to be received as way too politically INcorrect for our surrounding Western societies, and thus will be unrealistic to pursue at this stage of the game.
Gintas writes: The anti-jihad movement? There's a movement? With only about 11 men in this movement, now is probably a good time to start thinking about who needs to be purged.
Had VFR been an open forum, I'd have asked Gitnas whether he thinks that Charles Johnson is worth purging, since he'd presumably be one of the 11. Unless of course Gitnas thinks that the 11 people who correspond to LA are all that constitute it.
Since we know that Auster reads this blog and thinks enough about it to put it in his front page (no pun intended), maybe he'll either ask Gitnas this question or more helpfully try and answer this one for him.
...Spencer even seems to be going backwards by adding "radical" to Islam in the title of his newest book."
If only "Kidist" knew of the dozens of essays I have written analyzing in meticulous detail this particular problem with Spencer, among many others, on my other blog "Jihad Watch Watch". But why bother to actually read the person you are casually denigrating via the third-person medium of your unbiased source, Auster?
But that JWW criticism was different (criticizing Spencer for attacking parts of Islam instead of the whole Islam. But Spencer never used terms like radical Islam or Fundamentalist Islam, and nor did we criticize him for that, since that was never what he was doing). Here, what's being discussed is Spencer's usage of the word 'radical' for the first time in any of his books: his first book on the subject, for instance, was simply 'Islam Unveiled'.
As Awake pointed out in a previous post, Spencer was asked that question by Anonymous, and answered that while his views on that hasn't changed, his inclusion of that adjective 'radical' was more in order to make that book more acceptable to the unwashed, rather than simply preach to the converted. One can argue about whether it makes sense for Spencer to or not to do it, but to just claim that he's changed his views on Islam when he hasn't is intellectual dishonesty on Kidist's part. (For the record, I personally think Spencer would have done better by including 'radical' in quotes before Islam, so as to intrigue the unwashed, without causing the people who recognize vanilla Islam as the problem to wonder why he did that.)
Nobody,
On Spencer's use of "radical Islam", I would have to disagree with you, in the sense that all the analytical critiques about Spencer's disinclination to be anti-Islam which I uncovered (from those previous comment discussions which you helped me locate) and which I engaged in on JWW -- in addition to other wrinkles of this general problem -- have as their unavoidable implication the same asymptotic tendency that results in the counter-productive use (whether witting or unwitting) of terms like "radical Islam" or "radical Muslims". It's all interlocking and inter-related.
Nobody wrote:
"As Awake pointed out in a previous post, Spencer was asked that question by Anonymous, and answered that while his views on that hasn't changed, his inclusion of that adjective 'radical' was more in order to make that book more acceptable to the unwashed, rather than simply preach to the converted."
Thank you Nobody. At least someone is actually reading what people write and say before criticizing.
I see that Erich has agreed that you can criticize Spencer for agreeing to do this (and he get right to it) and glossed over Kidist's intellectual laziness in portraying Spencer as taking a step back in his comments at VFR.
awake wrote:
"I see that Erich has ... glossed over Kidist's intellectual laziness in portraying Spencer as taking a step back..."
My statement "If only "Kidist" knew of the dozens of essays I have written analyzing in meticulous detail this particular problem..." implies precisely that "Kidist" got it wrong when he said that Spencer had taken a step back -- though not in the way awake might like it: i.e., the place Spencer remains at is one of persisting incoherence which can appear to be a "step back" and which has never been clarified or untangled -- as exhaustively documented and analyzed by myself and by others (readers in comments sections of JW) in numerous essays on my blog JWW.
Erich: Nobody, On Spencer's use of "radical Islam", I would have to disagree with you.... It's all interlocking and inter-related.
Yeah, this is one of those ones where we are going to disagree, and leave it at that. While I have been critical of Spencer for not being holistic in his approach, that's different from saying that he has drifted from a stance where he thinks Islam (or parts of it) are the problem, to one where he thinks radical Islam is the problem - something he's never said. OTOH, he's explained that that's not what he thinks, but it is language he used to avoid repelling those who might be on the fence on this.
As I remarked above, he may have done it better, but I'm not going to needlessly quibble about some punctuation marks, even though that may have arguably done a considerable job in sharpening the message.
"My statement "If only "Kidist" knew of the dozens of essays I have written analyzing in meticulous detail this particular problem..." implies precisely that "Kidist" got it wrong when he said that Spencer had taken a step back..."
Like I said, your words were one of agreement with Kidist's sentiment, based on intellectual laziness on his part, and a desire to express Kididt's intellectual laziness in failing to research your critical analysis of Spencer.
That ius not the same as chastizing Kidist for what Nobody has agreed, his intellectual dishonesty.
As a matter of fact, criticizing Kidist for not referencing your work when not actually commenting on you is a bit odd, don't you think?
Nobody,
"While I have been critical of Spencer for not being holistic in his approach, that's different from saying that he has drifted from a stance where he thinks Islam (or parts of it) are the problem, to one where he thinks radical Islam is the problem"
As per my previous comment above, I'm not saying Spencer has moved in his position; I'm saying his position all along is one that remains sufficiently incoherent vis-a-vis all of Islam or "elements of Islam" that it bears structural resemblance to the "radical Islam" formula. Spencer is thus in a curious position of using "radical Islam" now in his new book but not -- he insists (does he insist it in the book itself, or did he only insist this parenthetically in some comments field of some JW article now long buried under a mountain of sordid stories about "radical Islam"?) -- in the sense that it means that Islam itself is not the problem, even though he is on record as saying repeatedly that he is not anti-Islam and that only "elements of Islam" are the problem. Spencer manages to hold this paradox together mostly only through his persistent incoherence.
I continue to believe that it's time we in the anti-Islam movement (woops, can Spencer even be in that movement?) stop qualifying "Islam" with adjectives, prefixes and suffixes. Language matters. It has real effects on the public discussion and on the dynamic of ongoing persuasion in the public arena. When is Spencer going to stop using these qualifiers? At what point will he deem it's time? What kinds of indications in the culture around us is he waiting for? We should be mavericks, like the Abolitionists were, not timidly worried about the PC MC crowd.
awake,
"Like I said, your words were one of agreement with Kidist's sentiment..."
That may be "like you said", but it's not what I said. I did not and do not agree with Kidist's implication that Spencer is regressing, and my statement to Kidist expressed not simple agreement but subtle correction.
"As a matter of fact, criticizing Kidist for not referencing your work when not actually commenting on you is a bit odd, don't you think?"
Well, if you go back and read the Auster context, you'll see that Kidist is directly agreeing with, and adding to, the comment by Gintas, who was mocking my idea that there exists an anti-Islam "movement", so I took Kidist's sentences preceding the one I happened to quote above here -- "I agree with Gintas! More like the anti-Jihad rant, or the anti-Jihad rhetoric." -- as at the least including me with Spencer in his derision. My main point about Kidist (and Gintas -- and Auster, for that matter) not reading me is that they hang around the Auster forum and pick at people Auster is picking at, without bothering apparently to even go to the links Auster provides, let alone to do a little deeper digging about the people they are joining in with Auster to pick at. (Of course, there are parrotheads like that on every forum I've seen, including JW; but it doesn't make it right.)
I disagree Erich, but that is minor in contention, but in the same vein of criticism of Kidist.
Spencer EXPLICITLY states his use of the term "radical" in the title, in the book itself.
I suggest any and all critics read it before they criticize it, and ultimately, Spencer in this regrad.
Kididt obviously did not bother to do so.
awake,
"Spencer EXPLICITLY states his use of the term "radical" in the title, in the book itself."
That still doesn't get him off the hook for repeatedly stating many times overtly, as well as many times implicitly, that he is not against Islam, and that only "elements of Islam" are a problem.
In fact, his statement on his use of the term "radical" in the title only exacerbates the paradox of his non-position vis-a-vis Islam.
Erich,
How ironic for the Austerites to criticize you for discussing ostracism and then wander off into their own discussion of the meta-ostracism they call "Separationism".
Separationism, as Auster envisions it, is a tough sell. The main reason being that the concept is as applicable to jews as it is to muslims, though Auster's thick skull keeps him from acknowledging this.
Auster knows this, but he apparently can't get past the more terrible threat to his ideas posed pseudononymous nobodies "Hesperado and his friends Tanstaafl, Awake, and Conservative Swede".
For the record I don't consider any of these other fellows friends (or enemies). What we have most in common is that we're seen as enemies by Comrade Auster.
Also for the record I find the urge to purge - the type of social and political shunning Auster regularly indulges in and encourages - to be distinctly alien and neo-liberal. I much prefer the opposite attitude, as found in classic Anglo-Saxon liberalism. See for example J.S. Mill's On Liberty.
OK, E, you say "anti-Islam movement", Auster's characterisation was wrong and stayed in my mind when I responded to your blog. I would say the same for "anti-Islam" as I said for "anti-Jihad", however.
I agree wholeheartedly with P.B.M. The main problem of course is that the positive pro-European position has been thoroughly pathologized, largely by self-interested jews. To them pro-European is one step away from nazism. We are taught to demonize Whites for trying to do what we are told we must celebrate in non-Whites. It is patently absurd.
Auster doesn't want to talk about this. That would be "getting it backward". He prefers we keep ourselves focused on symptoms. He is only concerned for the European portion of the West to the extent it serves the interests of the jewish portion. And it wouldn't suit the interests of the jewish portion at all to discuss the roots of political correctness, cultural marxism, or the how and why of the deconstruction of the White Christian West. Thus according to Auster it's all just some vague "liberalism" that's to blame, and of course "the majority" are responsible for "suiciding" ourselves.
P.B.M.,
I sort of did something like you suggest in my previous essay on this blog --
"Left / Right / East / West / South / North"
http://hesperado.blogspot.com/2008/09/left-right-east-west-south-north_28.html
-- where I said that the terms "Left" and "Right" are no longer meaningful, and we should instead be talking about "pro-Western" or "anti-Western" (which is more inclusive than your "pro-European").
However, the enemy has to be named, and therefore I think for the purposes of an organization, it would be better to have the name of the enemy, Islam, at the forefront.
As for Auster, I must reiterate yet again that it's not so much his ideas that I find problematic and which would make his participation in the movement-cum-organization problematic: it's his comportment with people who disagree with him. He becomes so crankishly out of line and bizarrely eccentric that it impedes productive dialogue. He has a personality problem; possibly a neurosis of some kind that crosses the line from being a mere quirk to a positive impediment to many (not all) lively and important discussions.
Erich, even in that blog I think your emphasis is misplaced. Immediately after proposing the new divisions: "pro-Western" and "anti-Western", you define them solely in terms of their approach to Islam.
And, of course, you appear not to have followed through on that idea, your recent blogs describe your movement not as the "Pro-Western Movement", but as the "Anti-Islam Movement".
Is it OK if the English in England are displaced by Indians, Chinese, and Nigerians? And Christianity in Europe displaced by Hinduism, Buddhism, and African aminism, just so long as we keep Muslim peoples out? Surely not.
And surely you cannot accept Auster's double standard? If racism against Europe's peoples does not disqualify someone from being accepted into a movement dedicated to defending the West, what will?
Mr Tanstaafl seems a much more reasonable fellow than you paint him as. Perhaps he can state his own views on the Jewish relationship to the West's existential threat?
P.B.M. --
Erich, I begin to think you are more "Anti-Islamic" than "Pro-Western".
I don't think the two can be separated. One may be accentuated more for pragmatic temporary purposes, like when your house is actually on fire, you don't sit around and have discussions about strengthening your marriage or devise ways to discipline your kids so they will be better people -- your attention will at that time appear to be skewed toward spending more time and energy on actually dealing with the fire.
"Why do you not begin your defence of the West by defending its nation states and native peoples? The march of Islam (and the Indianisation of Leicester and Birmingham) would both then be reversible."
In fact, I spend more of my time on this blog focusing my attention on the Western pathology of PC MC, than I do on the pathology of Islam. And the first step toward sociopolitical health in the West must be to begin to dismantle PC MC. I don't know how else to do it but by the slow and growing and increasingly broad-based stillicide of criticism of PC MC by more and more people. Of course, part and parcel of critiquing PC MC is the other side of the coin -- the sense of superiority of the West, which has been in complex and subtle ways sufficiently subverted by PC MC.
That said, I do believe in the usefulness of a "division of labor" within the Movement, and my forte is the analysis and critique of PC MC. Others may wish to focus on other aspects of the overall agenda.
One essay I wrote here a few months ago focused on what is good about the West:
http://hesperado.blogspot.com/2008/05/seven-new-wonders-of-modern-world.html
"The English should discriminate against Pakistanis and Arabs, Jews and Indians, not according to the merits or demerits of those peoples and their religions, but because they are not English."
I would disagree about the non-Muslims in your list in this respect: if they pursue their lives and livelihoods in England with respect and deference to English ways, then I would not discriminate against them. That said, I do not mind if Hindus or Jews wish to retain certain flavors of their culture, so long as that retention does not subvert the first rule noted above. The mere retention of cultural flavors, of course, can be seen as such a subversion; but I don't see it that way -- for any culture other than Islam, that is. When it comes to Muslims, everything changes.
"Mr Tanstaafl seems a much more reasonable fellow than you paint him as. Perhaps he can state his own views on the Jewish relationship to the West's existential threat?"
He already has to my satisfaction in at least two comments (one of them may be on another thread here).
Perhaps he can state his own views on the Jewish relationship to the West's existential threat?
In comments to Thick Skull and Thin Skin I argued that PC MC's double standards themselves discriminate jews from Whites, and also that jews have harmed the West.
The West was undermined, in large part by jews, long before muslims immigrated in large numbers. It traces back at least to the pathologization of "anti-semitism" and later generalized to "racism". This "anything is better than White" line of reasoning flowered into the PC MC that is today exploited by muslims and other aliens - they did not originate it. If there were no islam the West would today still be invaded by non-White aliens.
I don't see why if Europeans developed a system of discriminating against non-Europeans, they would be obliged to include Jews in that discrimination. Again, Jews qua Jews are not doing anything bad to the West, and are not trying to conquer it to replace it with an evil system, as Muslims are.
Hesperado, the West has already been conquered by the evil system you call "PC MC". As mentioned above this conquest predates the arrival of muslims and other aliens, and in fact has enabled them to immigrate and enjoy privileged status.
I don't subscribe to Tanstaafl's depiction of Jews as constituting an international cabal of Macchiavellian people undermining the West. No one who claims this conspiracy theory (such as certain Russian anti-Semites who produced the "Protocols", or Hitler, or various white power individuals and groups since WW2, or the Muslims for 1400 years) has been able to provide sufficient proof of it. Merely asserting it repetitively does not substitute for actual proof; nor do ominous and amorphous allegations ungrounded in evidence.
I don't subscribe to your premise that "support for Judaism and the Jews is a non-negotiable virtue". Nor your suggestion that jewish influence is wholly good or "teeny tiny" and thus not important. Nor your characterization of my arguments as ungrounded or merely repeating assertions.
I've addressed our differences in a variety of ways. Forgive me for saying so, but the repetition would seem to be in your assertion that you see no reason to discriminate jews from Whites even as you afford jews a privileged status.
P.B.M. says
"Is it OK if the English in England are displaced by Indians, Chinese, and Nigerians? And Christianity in Europe displaced by Hinduism, Buddhism, and African aminism, just so long as we keep Muslim peoples out?"
From polls taken in Anglo Western countries in the late 1980s, the vast majority response to this kind of question (without specific mention of Muslims) was "No," i.e., that it is not okay for the host Western population to be replaced or supplanted by non-Westerners. If the majority of the population was against non-traditional (i.e., non-European) mass immigration as recently as the late 1980s, how ever was such a policy approved and implemented by governments? The answer would be complex, but we can at least say that the policy was not introduced by democratic means. To my knowledge, no Western country has ever held a referendum on immigration policy (e.g., on what kind of immigrants and how many). Of course, in 2008, after two more decades of mass non-western immigration, the results of polls will probably be somewhat skewed by the increased percentages of non-westerners in the samples.
Anyways, Erich replied to P.B.M's question as follows:
"I don't think this scenario is likely to happen.
That doesn't answer P.B.M.'s question as to whether or not such a scenario was "okay" with Erich. Anyways, to his "not likely to happen," Erich should have added, "...within the next decade or two."
Beyond that, perhaps 50 or a hundred years into the future in some western countries, however, it becomes increasingly likely, based on current demographic trends. Demographic considerations of this sort are long-term.
"Hindus, Buddhists, and animists are not aggressively trying to take over, as Muslims are, nor do they even have a solidly traditional blueprint for conquest, as Muslims do."
There does seem to be a major gap in Erich's critique of the Islam problem, namely, the demographic problem--which in the long term is the most serious, because it is most likely to result in Muslims attaining power. Non-Muslims would then be living in a state of constant and immediate fear for their safety, just as non-Muslim minorities in Muslim countries around the world live in fear.
Erich should realize that neither Muslims or any other immigrant group needs to have a plan for conquest. All such a group needs to have is a higher fertility rate than the host population and eventually it will dominate any democratic country. In this case, the majority of western countries have fertility rates well below the replacement level of 2.1, whereas the fertility rates of non-western immigrants are well above replacement level. European westerners are disappearing, and non-western immigrants in western countries are multiplying. Of the various immigrant groups, Muslims have higher fertility rates. Hence, eventually Muslims will form the majorities, and therefore the governments, of many western countries.
In the realm of plausible scenarios, a major change in demographic trends and/or in immigration policies will stop this. Because these plausible changes are, in my view, not likely to occur, Muslims are likely to take power in several major western countries (with the possible exception of the U.S.--it may take Muslims more than a century to take the U.S. by demographic means). I don't not believe the West will succeed in stopping Islam over the next century or two. Rather, present trends indicate that Islam will achieve dominance in the West within the next half-century to century. "The West" may exist in a modified form among a very small (and persecuted) minority. We may see something of a revival of the West in about 200 years.
Erich continues
"This doesn't mean I don't think there are problems with non-Western immigrants flooding in to the West -- but they are not anywhere near on the same level as the problems arising from Muslims. Nor are the problems surrounding non-Muslim non-Westerners equally bad. Hindus or Far Eastern Orientals are infinitely preferrable to blacks from Africa and the Caribbean, for example."
I would agree with these latter statements. Immigration of non-westerners has become a sacred cow among academics, politicians, and the media, and to some (lesser) extent among the general population, such that a grading or rating system for various immigrants on the basis of country of origin, ideology, rates of crime, etc., are not being used to filter out immigrants who have too high a probability of destroying the host society.
P.B.M then adds
"The English should discriminate against Pakistanis and Arabs, Jews and Indians, not according to the merits or demerits of those peoples and their religions, but because they are not English.
"This is what Pakistanis, Arabs, Jews, and Indians do in their homelands (even including their throwing the English out of their homelands last century), and it's perfectly reasonable that they do so, and folly that we do not."
One possible (though not probable) response for western governments would be to impose a list of restrictions on immigration, including tying immigration levels to a limit whereby the numbers and percentages of immigrants from each country are not permitted to exceed the percentage of western immigrants received by the corresponding non-western country. In addition, all immigration from countries that implement any significant aspects of sharia should be stopped--unless the immigrant has apostatized (from Islam) in his/her country of origin.
A more straightforward approach would be to turn over issues of immigration to the general population in referenda, with issues of the amounts and kinds of immigration as the primary issues on the ballot. How does one get such issues into a referendum? One avenue would be for a political party to propose the use of referenda as a general mechanism for voting on numerous policies and procedures of government. Immigration would then be dealt with as a normal part of democratic process. If we are going to do this, we are going to have to do so within the next few decades, before the West's population base declines more radically in light of mass non-Western immigration and high immigrant (especially Muslim) fertility rates.
"I don't not believe the West will succeed in stopping Islam over the next century or two."
Sorry about the typo. It should say "I do not believe the West will succeed..."
Tanstaafl --
"I argued that PC MC's double standards themselves discriminate jews from Whites, and also that jews have harmed the West."
I have already addressed the first part of this:
a) PC MC's double standards with regard to deference to Jews has been rapidly deteriorating over the past two decades, such that now all over the West, Jews have become a pariah through their linkage to Israel (if not also for other crypto-anti-Semitic feelings), not a favored class at all. This, in addition, has been accelerating post-911 because the PC MC West obviously favors Muslims over Jews -- for two reasons:
First, Muslims are browner and more non-Western (and thus are more privileged according to PC MC); and
Secondly, Muslims threaten criticism with violence everywhere, whereas Jews do not threaten with violence anywhere.
b) Even if Jews are discriminated from whites, I don't care, because Jews are not harming nor threatening the West, as Muslims are.
As for the second point in your sentence, you never did actually "argue" that Jews harm the West; you only asserted it. To actually present an argument would require, in addition to the minimum logical rhetorical requirements for constructing arguments, adducing sufficient persuasive evidence.
The West was undermined, in large part by jews, long before muslims immigrated in large numbers. It traces back at least to the pathologization of "anti-semitism" and later generalized to "racism".
This is merely a reiteration of the assertion. The implication that the capital exploited by Jews by the term anti-Semitism is responsible for "largely undermining" the West is a charge of such magnitude, it demands sufficient evidence. In my view, this phenomenon is a relatively minor subset of the PC MC paradigm.
This "anything is better than White" line of reasoning flowered into the PC MC that is today exploited by muslims and other aliens - they did not originate it. If there were no islam the West would today still be invaded by non-White aliens.
That invasion of non-white Muslims I maintain is of an order of magnitude sufficiently less than the invasion of Muslims that it is altogether a different, and less important, discussion. The PC MC deference to non-white non-Western cultures, of course, is intimately related to our current deference to Muslims, as I have argued many times on this blog. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the two subjects of that deference are of equal concern.
the West has already been conquered by the evil system you call "PC MC". As mentioned above this conquest predates the arrival of muslims and other aliens, and in fact has enabled them to immigrate and enjoy privileged status.
I realize this, but I disagree that Jews are "largely" responsible for the mainstream dominance of PC MC. In fact, no individuals or groups can be pinpointed for predominant blame. It has been a complex and amorphous sea change in Western Weltanschauung, not some dastardly plot.
I don't subscribe to your premise that "support for Judaism and the Jews is a non-negotiable virtue". Nor your suggestion that jewish influence is wholly good or "teeny tiny" and thus not important.
I didn't say Jewish influence is "wholly" good, but it's certainly sufficiently good, and insufficiently bad, to exclude blame of Jews qua Jews such that institutional remedies are required.
Nor your characterization of my arguments as ungrounded or merely repeating assertions.
You may dipute this characterization, but that doesn't lift your assertions up from the level of mere assertions to the level of actual argument grounded by evidence.
I've addressed our differences in a variety of ways. Forgive me for saying so, but the repetition would seem to be in your assertion that you see no reason to discriminate jews from Whites even as you afford jews a privileged status.
Yes, I have been mostly couching my counter-position in terms of assertions. But that doesn't mean you have not been couching your position in terms of assertions also, nor does it absolve you of the requirement to provide evidence -- particularly because your charge is so broad and grave, and also because you presented the claim first.
Kab,
I had drafted a lengthy response to your post and was almost finished, when my computer crashed and I lost it all. I may try to re-write it in the days ahead if I have time.
Erich,
It is hardly fair to expect of me what you yourself do not provide. This is an informal internet discussion that will be read by a handful of eyes and will likely enough shortly disappear. I am not making broad and grave charges. I am sharing observations I believe are substantiated and for which I have provided a number of references. It seems you detect a threat in what I write because you are predisposed to defend jews rather than to treat them as objectively as you treat other groups.
I can't force you to follow and read the links I've already provided (Why Jews Welcome Muslims, jewish golden age, Postville, Jewish Involvement in Shaping American Immigration Policy, 1881-1965: A Historical Review, Tim "White Like Me" Wise) in support of my arguments, or to visit my blog, Age of Treason, where more examples to support my assertions.
For example, here are two links that Canadian commenter Desmond Jones posted at my blog.
The "Jewish Phase" in the movement for Racial equality in Canada:
The Jewish-led movement played a decisive role in the winning of anti-discrimination legislation in the 1950s.
The Jewish Exemption:
In the entire history of section 13, stretching back to 1977, not one single Jew, Muslim or gay has been taken before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal by the CHRC.
Not one.
Gentle reader, do you really think that not one single Jew has uttered hate speech in 31 years? I'll answer that for you: I published hate speech on my own web -- I published Rev. Boissoin's comments. I know that's hate speech, because both the Alberta HRC and the CHRC said so.
Do you really think that not a single Muslim radical, or Sikh radical, or Tamil radical, has uttered hate speech in 31 years?
Don't be ridiculous. But Lynch's McCarthyist inquisition has never gone after those. 100% of the CHRC's targets have been white, Christian or conservative.
And, of course, the conviction rate before the tribunal has been 100%.
Here's another I found in Carleton Putnam's Race and Reality:
In an article entitled "Race, Racismes, Antiracismes" in the Autumn 1965 issue of Revue de Psychologie des Peuples, [French anthropologist Georges A.] Heuse remarks ". . . we can only hope that precious time will not be lost in recognizing the fallacy of equalitarian anti-racism . . . . In our effort to respect the full complexity of bio-physical and bio-sociological human phenomena, we often meet opposition from Jewish academicians who pose as champions of egalitarianism . . . . These champions, whose power and cleverness we admire, often believe that in denying race and racial psychology, they suppress at one and the same time both racism and antisemitism. We are indeed surprised at their naive and erroneous belief."
The evidence supporting what I assert is not lacking. Considering the time and thought you dedicate to understanding PC MC this evidence would become clear to you the minute you set aside your logic-overriding belief that "support for Judaism and the Jews is a non-negotiable virtue".
In fact, no individuals or groups can be pinpointed for predominant blame. It has been a complex and amorphous sea change in Western Weltanschauung, not some dastardly plot.
I also can't force you to trace the origins of PC MC beyond your birth, to see that a large portion lies in the Frankfurt school and the pathologization of "racism" that began before 1933, and to see that the roots of that pathologization lie in the emancipation of jews in the early 1800s.
You continue to make "ominous and amorphous allegations ungrounded in evidence" concerning "dastardly plots". My observation is that jews have long and successfully advocated in their own interests. That the empirical result of this has been their gradual rise to disproportionate power and the formation of PC MC, which serves them as a form of shield. Further, that this has diminished the power of traditional Western majority populations - so much so that most now find themselves being demographically displaced by aliens. The PC MC regime tells us we must respect and protect these aliens just as we've been told for even longer to respect and protect jews.
This seems a more sensible and specific explanation of what is happening to the West than your "amorphous sea change". I make no assumptions or insinuations concerning "dastardly plots".
PC MC's double standards with regard to deference to Jews has been rapidly deteriorating over the past two decades, such that now all over the West, Jews have become a pariah through their linkage to Israel
The PC MC regime has been much slower and less aggressive in applying to Israel the same line of reasoning and tactics it used to remove Whites from political power in Rhodesia and South Africa. Besides that, a new pariah has been selected for the White House, and his chief of staff is a proud pariah who served in the IDF. They are the most recent in a long string of powerful pariahs going back more than 20 years. The odd thing about these pariahs is that they are far more common and treated less like pariahs than critics of Israel are:
Despite the high level of critique and the reputations of its authors, there doesn’t seem to be any lessening of Jewish self-confidence or willingness to defend Israel and the lobby. Reviews of Mearsheimer and Walt in the elite mainstream media in the United States (but not Europe) have been uniformly negative. These reviews have mainly been by Jews, prompting Philip Weiss to ask “Do the Goyim Get to Register an Opinion Re Walt/Mearsheimer?” There are the obligatory dark (and intimidating) charges of anti-Semitism. Perhaps the most extreme reaction, presumably aimed at a Jewish audience and intended to keep the funds flowing, is by ADL National Director Abraham Foxman: The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control.
That invasion of non-white Muslims I maintain is of an order of magnitude sufficiently less than the invasion of Muslims that it is altogether a different, and less important, discussion.
Did you mean to write "non-white" rather than "non-white Muslims"? If so I would conclude that you speak from the point of view of Europe, not the US, and certainly not southern California, which I regret to report is overrun by latinos and lesser numbers of every other kind of alien, and only incidentally muslims. You're right, immigration and islam are not of equal concern. Immigration trumps islam. Without immigration muslims and the other aliens wouldn't be in the West, we wouldn't be wasting so much energy fighting crime or "racism" or dhimmitude, and the West would likely be thriving. Without islam there would still be immigrants, and Whites and the culture and civilization we have created would still be threatened with demographic marginalization and eventual extinction.
P.S. Kab-bin-Ashraf makes an excellent point:
If the majority of the population was against non-traditional (i.e., non-European) mass immigration as recently as the late 1980s, how ever was such a policy approved and implemented by governments? The answer would be complex, but we can at least say that the policy was not introduced by democratic means. To my knowledge, no Western country has ever held a referendum on immigration policy (e.g., on what kind of immigrants and how many).
The selection of Obama and the utter lack of Change in policy on immigration, Israel/WOT, and finance he represents is evidence enough for me to assert that our system of government is more accurately described as plutocracy, not democracy.
Erich, a reasonable and just anti-Islamism must originate in defence of some other group and culture as part only of a wider concern for those interests. Untethered from a particularist concern anti-Islamism is merely focused hostility, and Islam, which offers and rewards in-group solidarity, is therefore a much more durable – and indeed humane - political program.
If you do not have the impulse to protect and value your own people before all others, and it’s clear by now you would not positively discriminate in your own people’s favour, then it appears to me you are more the victim than the foe of PC MC. I suspect as well, that Islam will continue to make more converts than you from among the disenfranchised European population unless and until you can offer a positive definition of community.
Tanstaafl,
I haven't gone through all your links. The first link, to an Auster essay, introduces a welter of complexity and confusion that tends to obfuscate an insufficiency of precision of proof for certain specific claims you have made. Merely taking this apart using that first link would take me an enormous amount of time. I don't foresee much of a prospect of more clarity and simplicity as I would begin to read the other links.
I might consider it worthwhile in the next day or so to attempt it.
Likewise MacDonald's Jewish Involvement in Shaping American Immigration Policy, 1881-1965: A Historical Review, you really should read the whole thing. But here's a particularly relevant quote of Earl Raab:
The Census Bureau has just reported that about half of the American population will soon be non-white or non-European. And they will all be American citizens. We have tipped beyond the point where a Nazi-Aryan party will be able to prevail in this country. We [i.e., Jews] have been nourishing the American climate of opposition to bigotry for about half a century. That climate has not yet been perfected, but the heterogeneous nature of our population tends to make it irreversible— and makes our constitutional constraints against bigotry more practical than ever.
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