In October of 2014, the Gates of Vienna blog featured one of their favorite essayists who goes by the nom de blog "Takuan Seiyo", concerning the Counter-Jihad in the context of the Czech Republic today. While the focus of his essay was the current context, he appropriately delved into some relevant themes from Czech history. That's why I found one omission of his rather remarkable. As I put it:
Takuan's reply was disappointing -- raising two objections to my recommendation: one a trivial quibble, the other rather hypersensitively squeamish about the dreaded D word (Deportation).
When another commenter took him gently to task, it elicited the following revealing glimpse into this prominent member of the Gates of Vienna Circle:
Islam is already represented as the
politically subversive force it is. That’s what GoV does 24/7, and so do
other Web platforms, activists, and, in the political realm, Geert
Wilders above all. Wilders already advocates in formal speeches shutting
down Muslim immigration and expelling any Dutch Muslims with any
connection to any terrorist activity. But a jump from that to expelling
ALL Muslims is a huge jump. After all, weren’t they invited to come? Can
you blame them for having chosen what’s good for them?
Instead, blame our own Fools, Crooks and Traitors who invited them to come in the first place, and who continue inviting them even now, and subsidizing their parasitic existence once they are inside. Those — our own destroyers, white ones — and they come from ranks of politicians, high government bureacrats, religious leaders, religious organizations etc. — I’d gladly try on charges of treason and expel.
As to the Muslims we have invited, as long as they are peaceful and self-supporting, other solutions have to be found, more in tune with our concepts of justice. Just, for goodness sake, don’t do what all those European fools are doing, encourage them to “assimilate,” adopt our culture etc.
Instead, blame our own Fools, Crooks and Traitors who invited them to come in the first place, and who continue inviting them even now, and subsidizing their parasitic existence once they are inside. Those — our own destroyers, white ones — and they come from ranks of politicians, high government bureacrats, religious leaders, religious organizations etc. — I’d gladly try on charges of treason and expel.
As to the Muslims we have invited, as long as they are peaceful and self-supporting, other solutions have to be found, more in tune with our concepts of justice. Just, for goodness sake, don’t do what all those European fools are doing, encourage them to “assimilate,” adopt our culture etc.
Notice the typical combination of a posture of no-nonsense anti-Islam in a carefully controlled context which the reader can recognize as, essentially, no different (except in quantitative degree) from the TMOE meme (the Tiny Minority of Extremists) that is the centerpiece of PC MC, which then lurches into the "real problem" (the Dastardly Western Elites), and winds down with a tepid prescription for the apparently minor problem of Muslims in our societies.
When his critics objected, Takuan's follow-up response revealed even more:
Muslims belong among us no more than we belong in Saudi Arabia or Somalia. They are a foreign implant put in among us by our own lunatics who run this asylum — but that makes them no more assimilable or even desired to be so than a date palm is in the middle of a rye field in Siberia.
[The same pattern: he began with a posture of no-nonsense anti-Islam]
But they are here and we have no choice. They should live in their own communities under a reasonable degree of self-determination but under a strict web of our laws and our morality — except not our liberal laws and our prog-loopy morality.
Thus a fatalism about the problem of Muslims with a swipe at our "liberal" West, then more posturing against the Sharia of those millions of Muslims who must remain among us, since apparently we are powerless to do anything substantive about them:
For instance, if Muslim women don’t have equality with men, or they want to have polygamy, or girls are not free to date whom they want, it’s none of our business. But if Muslim women are beaten, raped, or murdered, it is our business. ANY seditious preaching or activity is our business. Inhibiting and capping the growth of this community via immigration, importation of brides, welfare etc. is our business. Halal butchering is our business, as we consider animals sentient creatures worthy of love and compassion. And so on.
And finally the apodictic resignation:
Muslims who prefer to practice their religion unencumbered are always free to go back to what they should have never left in the first place: their Muslim homelands.
Like many in the Counter-Jihad, Takuan seems to have in mind a Mohammedan problem different from the actual problem we face. The problem in his conception seems to be not as systemic as it really is, and, more importantly, not metastasizing with an inherent entelechy that will eventually force the issue of either our destruction or their deportation. That seems to be why he rather leans in a sanguine direction about the future of the problem of Islam, and why he therefore seems to relocate the problem onto the Dastardly Liberal Elites of the West. This is, in fact, the normative view of the “Gates of Vienna Circle”, I’ve noticed.
Where I differ from the “Gates of Vienna Circle” conspiracy-theorists is not that I disagree that socialists are enabling a perniciously gnostic political science that is trying to undermine the classical West; but only in that I don’t think socialists are effectively succeeding in this -- in steering the West now through some kind of dastardly crypto-totalitarian quasi-Macchavellianism. While they do present a problem (particularly to the extent that they have money and influence — e.g., Ted Turner, George Soros, George Clooney, Oliver Stone, Bono, Oprah Winfrey, the Clintons, Obama; et al.), I don’t agree that they are actually manipulating and moving the West. Indeed, I think the bigger problem is the millions of non-socialists and non-Leftists in the West who are pleasantly, incoherently, sincerely motivated by PC MC. At this point, some in the “Gates of Vienna Circle” may well try to say, “Oh but all those non-Leftist PC MCs have been brainwashed by the Dastardly Cabal, you see…!” -- and that’s where I check out.
Whether one then wants to granularize further socialists into those who are wittingly hateful of the West and those who are sincerely starry-eyed do-gooders (in a Hell-paving-with-good-intentions sort of way), is a separate issue; though obviously related.
Back in 2013, I penned the following essay, quite apropos of today's theme:
Suicide or Genocide -- are those our only two choices?
I see Takuan as typical of the Gates of Vienna Circle. Other examples have been other frequent essayists there, including Fjordman, El Inglés, and Conservative Swede (though the latter seems to have absconded of late).
Speaking of Fjordman, I recall an essay of his featured on Gates of Vienna in 2011: When Treason Becomes the Norm: why the Proposition Nation, not Islam, is our Primary Enemy.
The title itself reveals the problem -- namely, the shifting of the problem away from Islam onto some nefarious (usually "Leftist" if not crypto-Marxist) West. I certainly agree that there is a "Problem of the Problem" -- where the secondary problem, the West's myopia, is hindering our ability to deal rationally with the primary problem, Islam, so much that it paradoxically acquires on certain levels primacy over that primary problem.
The comments thread was insanely voluminous (including many from moi), and involved various flirtations with anti-semitic conspiracy theory which seems to naturally fill the vacuum the reasonable mind abhors. Back in February of 2014 I examined some of the logic of this:
The "Real Problemers"
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/02/czech-muslims-call-for-ban-on-book-by-ex-muslim/comment-page-1#comment-1013363