Thursday, January 24, 2013

The "Esdrujula Explanation"



For the ongoing myopia that numbs the West in the face of the threat of Islam we must have recourse to an explanation subtler, more complex, more sociological and more systemic than the merely psychological and logical explanation put forth repeatedly by the remarkably erudite Vice-President and frequent essayist at Jihad Watch, Hugh Fitzgerald, during his long tenure there that ended a while back—what I have referred to as his precious “Esdrujula Elves”.

What I'm talking about is the handy trope Fitzgerald employed now and then by which to explain why it is that the majority in the West continue to be blind to the full magnitude of the problem of Islam: the “Esdrujula Explanation” of Cupidity, Stupidity and Timidity (alluding to a term in Spanish grammar—actually it should be esdrújulo—for accenting words on the third syllable from the end). Some time later, Fitzgerald tacked on a fourth peccadillo, Rigidity; one wonders why he restrained himself from going on a roll with Lividity, Aridity and Morbidity...

This, alas, is an explanation too handy and facile, in my estimation, functioning sort of like the crude Modalist analogies certain Christian theologians would superimpose upon the Trinity by which to finesse its scandalously wondrous paradox—as though the entire stupendously sprawling problem of the Western inability to recognize the problem of Islam were reducible to mere character flaws.

With astonishingly uncharacteristic simple-mindedness, thus, Mr. Fitzgerald writes:

“The three words that compose the Esdrujula Explanation—timidity, stupidity, cupidity—explain the folly. When it comes to the widespread inability to grasp the the promptings, the instruments, the full menace of Jihad—those three words usually do.”

It may well be, ultimately, that the “folly” is rooted in such mundane character flaws; but between the mess of history and the psychological roots of the personality of actors lies the rich and complicating pageant of society. This deserves a more suitable explanation, attentive to the sociopolitico-cultural complexities that paradoxically transcend, envelop and impinge upon individual morals, even as they ultimately arise from them.  That more suitable explanation, I think, must account for the mainstream dominance of PC Multiculturalism, a dominance by which millions of ordinary Westerners are sincerely convinced of its truth, not merely lazy and stupid and greedy, nor merely sheepishly hoodwinked by some sinister cabal of “elites” who somehow have already managed to transform the free West into a tyranny.

While our ears may be charmed by the rhyming, rhythmic alliteration of Hugh’s Three or Four Hobbyhorses of the Apocalypse, our minds come away dissatisfied: for, it reduces the immense and complex problem of PC Multiculturalism to personality flaws, which might suffice to explain the folly of individuals here and there, but fails, by a long shot, the mark of addressing the sociological dimension.

And the point I will keep hammering home until someone gets the nail on the head: Various individuals—no matter how influential and “elite” they may be—variously vulnerable to such personality flaws and character weaknesses would enjoy little or no traction for their agendas and enterprises, were there no dominant and mainstream atmosphere of PC Multiculturalism surrounding them that nourishes and enables their various idiotic “Idities”.

The "Esdrujula Explanation" seems to be the only alternative to that other explanation bandied about on the bandwidth of the Internet -- namely, the Evil Elites Explanation.  Apparently, most in the Counter-Jihad can't think outside their binary box:  the Problem of the Problem (i.e., the Western myopia to the problem of Islam) must in their limited minds either be caused by an extraordinary evil wielded by a tiny cabal of Elites -- or it must be caused by an extraordinary stupidity by a perhaps slightly less tiny cabal of Elites.  Apparently, for these people, there cannot be a third explanation.  Both explanations share an Elitistics.  They only differ in the imputation of evil as the motivator -- and, by extension, in the dismal loss of faith in the West logically implied in the former, who deem the entire West to be already a mega-crypto-tyranny.  While the Evil Elites Explanation throws the baby out with the bathwater in a grandly sweeping and outrageously reckless (not to mention remarkably illiterate) manner, the Esdrujula Explanation commits the error of underestimating the depth and breadth of the problem.  

I.e., the former exaggerates the problem to a ridiculously lurid proportion; the latter trivializes the problem.

Both explanations, thus, suffer from a myopia of their own -- a myopia to the radical changes in sociopolitical and sociocultural mores all around them, and an illiteracy to the long history of these changes in the West as this paradigm shift has transmogrified from an amorphous constellation of opinions on the part of an intellectual minority, to a less amorphous (though still incoherent) worldview affecting the hearts and minds of millions of people ranging from Elites down to Ordinary People, among all political and cultural persuasions, and among all economic and class distinctions.  

It's tempting to reach for the more simplistic explanation -- particularly when the problem is so dire and so aggravating.  But sometimes we must try to resist the temptation to be simple.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's also what one may call the "Soviet subversion theory," according to which it was Soviet propaganda and the influence of Soviet agents that got the West to adopt suicidal beliefs. For my part not very convincing, but quite a few people believe it.

Hesperado said...

Well, the Soviet subversion theory doesn't explain PC MC before the 20th century.

Anonymous said...

Ah, as you know, I believe in the simple - but complicated to me - 'Evil Elites Explanation.'

Additionally, regarding the 'Soviet Subversion Theory,' I would first ask, 'Who subverted the Russians?' and then ask, 'Who did the subverted Russians then subvert?'

Back at GoV, let's look at the Baron's thought pattern:

Baron Bodissey on January 23, 2013 at 10:48 pm said:

Hesperado (and anyone else who is interested) –

Both Egghead and Takuan asked that their exchange be removed, and I complied with their wishes.

[Really, I asked that either I be allowed to respond to TS's libel of me OR that it be removed. The Baron chose to remove the libel.]

Furthermore, the argument about Jews on this thread is over. Probably on the other threads, too — I’m sick of it.

People had a nice chat on the topic, and pretty much said everything that can be said without repeating oneself. So we’re done.

Back to me now: What is STUNNING about the Baron's proclamation is that, if you subbed out the word Muslims for Jews, the Baron has expressed the EXACT ideas that I hear from my friends and family about Muslims. A summary would be: STOP TALKING TO ME ABOUT MUSLIMS - and, in the Baron's case here: STOP TALKING TO ME ABOUT JEWS.

Now, GoV repeats items and ideas about Muslims constantly. Why is it ok to repeat items and ideas regarding Muslims but not Jews? By the way, if the Baron refuses to allow discussion of Jews, how would the Baron even know whether items and ideas are repeated or not? Here, the Baron is logically inconsistent.

One might also claim that the very topic of Jews is off-topic from the GoV topic of saving Western civilization. Yet, ideas that flatter Jews (i.e., Western civilization is Judeo-Christian versus Christian; Jews are the smartest people on the planet; Jews have won most Nobel prizes for their populations share; Jews deserve a Jewish homeland; Jews were more victimized by Hitler than non-Jews; Jews or Israel are more victimized by Muslims than non-Jews - thus hate crimes that Jews may claim where non-Jews may not.) - yes, ideas that flatter Jews are often discussed on GoV whereas ideas that equate past, present, and future negative Jewish behavior to past, present, and future negative Christian or Muslim or even African American behavior are evidently strictly verbotten.

But, at least the Baron has an 'excuse' to stop any discussion about Jews because Jewish readers presumably contribute to his main livelihood - despite disclaimers that he does NOT allow that factor to affect his essay content and/or comment moderation. Likewise, now that the displaced Fjordman writes for FrontPage, he would presumably temper any criticism of Jews.

All this explanation to point out that the Baron is as PC MC about Jews as my friends and family are PC MC about Muslims.

But, in my opinion and experience, it is best to seek the truth about Muslims or Jews even if it leads to uncomfortable places. Better to be uncomfortable than dead in a new Islamo-Marxist variant of the old Bolshevik Revolution that is being planned and implemented in Europe and the United States of America - by the 'Evil Elites' - otherwise known as those humans who must not be named or discussed or criticized. Blech!

Egghead

Hesperado said...

Egghead,

Yeah, I suspected that Baron wasn't being quite forthcoming in that little (dis)missive he posted in that comments section. I've had a couple of run-ins with him before, and he can be rather mule-headed and cranky about his decisions, and occasionally about his interpretations.

I had posted a comment which also never saw the light of day, because it was directly referring to the back-and-forth exchange between you and Takuan -- and somehow I had the good sense to save it as a Word doc after I posted it. I'll reproduce it here:

Interesting exchange between Egghead and Takuan Seiyo. I have not read it through thoroughly yet, but if I may, one portion of a train of thought in one of Egghead's comments spurred me to make an observation:

"It is irrelevant to me whether the Jewish money was capitalist or Marxist when the result was Marxist rule. Again, Jews must rejoin the human race to publicly refute violence. You sound as though the Jewish funded murder and mayhem was acceptable. What makes it acceptable – that its funders were revengers or that its victims were Christians? If mass torture and murder is acceptable – or even understandable – then we are all just choosing sides in religious, racial, and tribal warfare."

There were at least two (if not more) aspects to the issue Egghead raised -- Jewish support of the Russian Revolution -- and it seems the one that is most pertinent was rather sidestepped by Egghead in her response to Takuan's response to her. Namely, Egghead had implied that the Jewish support of the Russian Revolution was a Macchiavelian plot calculated to attack Christians and the Christian sociopolitical order in a major country, Russia, with further designs likely to eventuate as the revolutionary Russia could be used as a platform for additional infiltrations/invasions along these lines of other countries. However, Takuan's response provided another scenario: that while there was Jewish support of the Russian Revolution, it was not part of a dastardly grand design, but rather reflected a specific antipathy to the Czarist regime. Many non-Jewish Westerners during those early decades of the 20th century were swept up into a romantic support of Communism; so a suppport of the Russian Revolution for non-dastardly purposes is entirely plausible. I think it's not too much to expect solid proof if one is going to accuse Jews (or any other group) of a dastardly plot of this magnitude.

Additionally, another statement of Egghead's caught my eye as a potential red herring:

"3. If Christians (especially those like my grandfathers who fought against Nazis) must apologize for the Nazis, then Jews must apologize for the Marxists. Fair is fair. "

But as I'm sure Egghead will agree, this expectation of Christians to apologize for the Nazis is wrongheaded and untenable, fairly easily refutable. Therefore, there is no equation here to even propose rhetorically. Christians need not apologize for Nazism, and perhaps for similar reasons (again, unless solid proof is adduced to substantiate the dastardly machination theory), Jews need not apologize for Marxism.

Anonymous said...

Hi Hesp, Thank you for being quite reasonable to have a dispassionate discussion about a controversial subject. :)

To address your specific points:

1. Foreign Jews who supported Russian Marxism did NOT simply depose the Czar and let history unfold with a new organic Russian government that would be or might be compatible with Christianity.

2. Foreign Jews who supported Russian Marxism funded a specific foreign form of government based on Jewish inspiration and Jewish leadership that formally diminished Christianity by barring its practice and informally diminished Christianity by violently murdering vast numbers of Russian Christians in their own homeland in a Christian holocaust.

3. To the point that foreign Jews were actually atheists: First of all, maybe - maybe not. According to TS, the foreign Jews wanted to depose the Czar due to bad Russian treatment of Jews. If the foreign Jews considered themselves to be atheists, why would these atheists care what happened to Jews? On the other hand, Judaism clearly supports the concept of 'an eye for an eye' or direct reciprocal justice.

Secondly, Jews self-identify in two unique ways by religion or race. In the case that foreign Jews were actually atheists, the foreign Jews seem to have banded around their own sense of racial identity, superiority, and high intelligence.

4. In a comment dated 1/18/2013 4:38PM on the original blog, TS himself stated, "One correction: the German anti-commie struggle predates Hitler and exceeds him – that’s what the Freikorps were doing in 1919. Moreover, the astonishingly high percentage of Jews among the top leaders of German communism at that time is no secret either, though perhaps not many are aware of this. A famous, respected biographer of Hitler (I forgot which one, but Brit) wrote that it was that fact that brought on the acute phase of Hiter’s (sic) Jew hatred. We shouldn’t care whether it’s politically correct to state this, nor are people justified who make unwarranted inferences that writing such things somehow expresses a justification for Hitler’s exterminationist machine."

5. Assuming that you are correct that there were many non-Jewish Westerners during those early decades of the 20th century who were swept up into a romantic support of Communism (and a source for your contention would be nice!), there is a VERY distinct difference between supporting a governmental concept and brutally torturing and murdering millions of people - Christians in this case - to institute that concept. The BIG stack of dead bodies IS the difference between the idea and the execution of Marxism.

More in next comment.

Egghead

Anonymous said...

Regarding the necessity of apology by Jews for Marxism and Christians for the Holocaust, it is difficult to write words about this concept without being misconstrued. But, whether right or wrong, Western Christian countries have spent a lot of years since World War II both acknowledging and apologizing for their role in the Holocaust and eliminating their own 'sinful' national existences and Christian identities as the ultimate penance for the Holocaust. Ironically, the elimination of the nation state IS the goal of Classic Marxism!

http://www.marxist.com/marxism-national-question250200.htm

I repeat: Fair is fair. Those who believe that Christians must atone for the Holocaust should require Jews to atone for the Marxism and Russian Revolution.

It is time that Western schools start teaching the history of Marxism and the Russian Revolution so that Westerners have hope to avoid a 'perfected' revolution where Muslim immigrants willingly fill the past role of Bolsheviks.

And, yes, I do believe that there IS a Marxist conspiracy afoot in Western countries where Marxists plan to use Muslims to control Christians - and then Marxists will use technology to control everyone.

Egghead

Anonymous said...

Egghead here. The following comment from 'Here We Go Again' on GoV is a start:

El Fel on January 22, 2013 at 6:08 pm said:

"You are Polish, right? Witam Ciebie serdecznie :-)

"Thank You for speaking out! These kind of people are the worst pseudo-allies one can get.

"///That quite a few key figures among them were Jews is another matter

"Yes. I happen to be a Pole but also a Reform Jew and I have NOTHING at all against stating the obvious-some of the worst stalinist criminals had indeed a Jewish background. But they were not real Jews, they were Atheists and had a specific hatred for Judaism as well. Whatever they did-they did it not because they were Jewish but in spite of it-People need to understand that.

"The after-war Progrom of Kielce f.e was orchestrated by the stalinist secret service (in which 40% had a Jewish background). Them being murderers (and shameless at that, like Helena Wolinska) had NOTHING to do with their Jewish background. It had more to do with the soviets looking for human scum, recruiting specifically among whatever minority they could lay their hands on (in the case of Poland- a religious minority-had there been other minorities they would have taken them instead).

"In short- by not talking about these people (for fear of sounding anti-Semitic because they were somewhat Jewish) I believe we are feeding anti-Jewish resentment, the myth of a “Jewish conspiracy”, of “impunity for Jews only”.
We are depriving their victims of the rememberence they deserve.
We are forgetting, what Martin Luther King was trying to teach us.

"But its really easy indeed- People of Jewish faith/background are just that-people,of whom some are criminals. As a Jewish Pole, I, on the ground of the Thora and Talmud, condem them for what they are -murderers, robbers, criminals,thugs. Some of this sorry excuses for human beings are described in a book which deals with stalinist criminals in Poland in general: Tadeusz P. “Bestie”.

"Take care!"

http://gatesofvienna.net/2013/01/here-we-go-again/#more-20

Zenster said...

Egghead: And, yes, I do believe that there IS a Marxist conspiracy afoot in Western countries where Marxists plan to use Muslims to control Christians - and then Marxists will use technology to control everyone.

Too late! Many Socialist European countries are already using their Muslim populations as an intentional underclass to enforce all sorts of restrictive legislation whose sole aim is to hogtie indigenous Europeans and any ability upon their part to assail their own governments.

That Muslims are sheltered under these various PCMC umbrellas is incidental, at best, and that fact is usually pointed at whilst gloating endlessly about how "fair" such unconstitutional restrictions are.

It's comparable to the new "zero tolerance" policies at schools that prohibit any sort of weapons on campus. Just as often, this empowers bullies because weaker students have no way of augmenting their ability to fight such thugs.

In fact, much of Europe's current anti-indigenous legislation bears a striking resemblance to the American "zero tolerance" policies. As in, lots of goodie-two-shoes rule making carried out with the smarmiest of attitudes.

Zenster said...

Egghead: Violent criminals - whether Muslims or other groups - are more and more empowered to attack 'normal' people with impunity - where the government precludes 'normal' people from basic self defense. See George Zimmerman.

I'm glad to see that you've twigged to those "other groups". America's political elite and dewy-eyed universalist "Christians" simply cannot import these illiterate, non-assimilating Muslim Somalian goat herders fast enough to sufficiently damage the White Christian Middle Class. Such ostensibly legitimate groups as Catholic Charities, Lutheran Charities, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and others are enabling this onslaught while earning big bucks as de facto immigration agents. This, despite how the money these "charities" earn would do some 100 times as much good if it were spent in the actual countries of origin for these Third World scumbags.

To facilitate this process—by disarming citizens and legally empowering criminal elements—they are now accelerating the fragmentation of once cohesive White Euro-American communities from sea to shining sea. See "Scattered Site Housing" under Section Eight whereby inner city thug famblies are being resettled into lily White suburban utopias with near-simultaneous upticks in violent crime and a concomitant plummeting of property values.

For more insights, please read my latest piece: Looking Past the Second Amendment Kool-Aid. Cui Bono?

As a final aside, it is vital to regard this progression towards a "New World Order", not as some vast conspiracy but as the useful convergence of several loosely related agendas such as Globalism, Transnationalism, One World Government and anti-Christian groups.

These disparate factions have just enough in common such that they are able to function as a near-coalition. While this lends itself to sundry flavors of grand conspiracy theories, it distracts from a more useful understanding of the symbiosis these elements currently exhibit. Understanding that is the key to obstructing their progress.

Too bad that Hesperado isn't showing up for the fun. There are numerous and very instructive parallels to be drawn between his theory about how PCMC has spread by seeming to be so "reasonable" to those on the Right or Left and this creeping "New World Order".

In this case, there are many different agendas that just happen to converge in close proximity to each other despite not being the most congenial of bedfellows. It would be nice to see a specific post at this site dealing with the entire concept.

Anonymous said...

Hi Zenster, Yes. I have heard that all of those foreclosed houses are about to be used to house the ghetto in suburbia. We can't let all those good houses go to waste, can we now?

My opinion differs from yours in that I think that there is a top level conspiracy using low level groups to achieve a well-defined goal against the best interests of humanity. Where it appears that groups conflict is purposeful to mask the very smart but very evil powers that be. Kind of like how Soros funds many groups that are meant to appear disparate but all work towards his one unified and well-financed vision of how the world should be.

Egghead

Hesperado said...

A belated response to the commentary above, though my response will not be specific, but rather general. I don't really need to provide a general response here, as I have in numerous essays on this blog already stated my position -- namely, that the PC MC neurosis is not a conspiracy, nor was it manufactured by a conspiracy. This is not to say that certain Marxist elements, still trying to work their mischief in the West in our time as they have in decades past, are not trying to exploit PC MC, nor that they have not contributed to it in small ways; but it is to say that PC MC is a more organic and natural outgrowth of the West's own four pillars of civilization (Judaeo-Christian and Graeco-Roman), with some influences from the more toxic streams of gnostic and other pneumopathological heterodoxy that the West has not been able to inoculate itself from perfectly. It is a grievous error, I maintain, to infer a grand theory that requires a deeper confluence between streams of pneumopathology and the main civilizational ocean of the West -- indeed, it may, with a strange irony, merge into one of those pneumopathological streams itself.