Wednesday, February 24, 2016

The "Gates of Vienna Circle"

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41TVa%2B5LGBL._SX313_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

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:

The Czech context of the Counter-Jihad would not be complete without a prominent mention of the Benes Decree(s). I’m surprised that Takuan Seiyo didn’t mention them, even in passing. Back in the Golden Age of Jihad Watch, when Hugh Fitzgerald was floridly weighing in with his sometimes startling erudition, he used to bring up those Decrees often in the context of a perfectly reasonable (but, alas, still rare) recommendation to deport Muslims from the West. A little background:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/02/czech-muslims-call-for-ban-on-book-by-ex-muslim/comment-page-1#comment-1013363

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.

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"


16 comments:

Egghead said...

I rarely read Gates of Vienna anymore since I was banned from commenting with the reason given that Dymphna was worried that I might have hurt her Jewish friends feelings (note that Dymphna and Baron have a Jewish relative as well).

Note that no one nowadays is ever concerned about hurting Christian's feelings - or literally hurting Christians - or pursuing truth - no matter where it leads - about who is hurting Christians.

To casually label someone as anti-Semitic who dares to notice and describe that Jewish ruling philosophy is - historically and currently - demonstrably and increasingly - genocidal to Christians is the height of PC MC - a very effective thought weapon invented and exploited by Communists who were Jews!

If you trust his own self-description, Takuan Seiyo is Jewish and has been also (within limits) willing to criticize Jewish actions as being destructive to the West. Jews like Takuan Seiyo and Diana West are given a 'magic pass' to notice destructive Jewish ruling behavior, although I think that West did not identity religion with ideology and yet she was still attacked by fellow Jews who worried for the destructive role of Jews to be revealed.

Takuan Seiyo attempted to get me banned from commenting at Gates of Vienna before I was banned some months later. He wrote that it was him or me, then very strangely, he later claimed to have forgetten to have written that strong statement.

As I understand it, Seiyo also claims the impact of Jesus as a historical Jewish accomplishment while explicitly disavowing Jesus as God incarnate. As I understand it, Takuan Seiyo claims Jesus as an influential Jewish leader.

The real question about controlled opposition is:

Is Takuan Seiyo brainwashed by PC MC?

Or

Is Takuan Seiyo just another brainwasher of PC MC - washing our brains that the Christian West is powerless to deport metasticizing Islam being used as a weapon against the Christian West?

Anonymous said...

@Egghead

As long as you're thinking hard, think again. Is there anything soft-boiled about your dozen or so thoughts?

Yorick of Snarkinore

Egghead said...

Interestingly, today CFR alum Frank Gaffney was on Christian radio talking about how the Western media is completely ignoring the 'wholesale genocide of Christians in the Middle East.'

This particular Christian radio station is absolutely obsequious in its allegiance to Israel to the point of one representative saying, 'We (Christians) owe our allegiance to Israel.'

False idol, anyone?! We Christians owe our allegiance to Christ. We Americans owe our allegiance to the USA.

Who is asking on behalf of persecuted and genocided Christians if - and how - Israel reciprocates to help Christians here or there?

Who is asking on behalf of persecuted and genocided Christians if - and how - Western Jews reciprocate to help Christians here or there?

Why is Western Jewish-owned and Jewish-controlled media highlighting fake Islamic 'refugee' sob stories while studiously ignoring Islamic persecution and genocide of Middle Eastern Christians and Islamic violence and abuse of native Europeans.

Egghead said...

Well, the fact that thoughtful comments about Jews disappear after being published seems to indicate something....

Egghead said...

Yep, disappearing....

Read Jewish writings if you want to understand Jewish intent and goals.

Anonymous said...

Which Jewish writings do you mean? The Old Testament perhaps?

YrkSnrk

Anonymous said...

Or did you mean: http://www.taubephilanthropies.org/jhip-mission-goals

Or: http://ojcf.org/create-a-jewish-legacy/sign-a-declaration-of-intent/nav

I'm sorry sir, I just can't take the idea of Jewish world domination very seriously - particularly when so many Muslims talk openly of genocide against the Christians and the Jews and against any others who happen to be in the way of making "all the world for Allah" under Shariah.

YrkSnrk

Anonymous said...

Here is a link where you will find a poster of three corrupt Italian Jews disgracefully enjoying the aroma of Christian cheese.

http://www.internationalposter.com/poster-details.aspx?id=ITL02739

Heavens, oh those descendants of Shylock! Shylock has pricked us!

Yorick of Snarkinore

Egghead said...

It's rather difficult to have a cogent discussion when my comments are highly censored (One - probably rightly - presumes the censorship is conducted by people other than Hesperado.).

Please note that if I substituted the word Christian for the word Jew in most cases, my comments would be allowed to appear - and remain.

Just that alone tells you who is doing the censoring.

And yet, I will try to address your question as best I can.

Egghead said...

Read Jewish writings:

1. Read the Talmud. When people speculate that Mohammed made Islam from a mishmash of Judaism and Christianity, the Talmud shows where Mohammed got the idea of how to treat 'the other.' See how the Talmud refers to non-Jews.

Egghead said...

2. Read about marriage laws in Israel. Google is your friend.

3. Read modern Jewish writers - mainline and obscure.

4. Read comments by Jews about the current European invasion. Many comments border on cheerleading for Muslims against Christians.

Egghead said...

I am asking you to turn your investigative lens to the historical and modern writings of Jews for the consumption of other Jews and see what bitter pill you find after you strip off the candy coating of propaganda.

Modern Christians have been negligent to study both Islam and Judaism, and thus have trusted the wrong people to make the wrong policies.

Egghead said...

See here:

http://legalinsurrection.com/2015/12/frances-jewish-problems-are-not-new/#comments

Note: Jews - who FULLY understand Islam - have been the loudest proponents of unlimited Muslim immigration to the West, while tightly restricting all immigration to Israel. Now that Muslims are in Europe, Jews are fleeing - leaving white Western Christians to a gruesome - and entirely predictable - fate.

Egghead said...

Note that your first instinct is to protect Jews.

Do you think that Jews first instinct is to protect Christians? Or to accuse Christians? Or to subdue Christians?

Look up how Jews treat Christians in Israel.

See if you can visit the spot where Christ was crucified and died for all men's sins.

gravenimage said...

It pains me to see this kind of antisemitic ranting on Hesperado's site.

Anonymous said...

chabad-mafia.com

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:uSxA3U9iJMUJ:www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-1.763923+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=za