Wednesday, June 14, 2017
The two Mainstreams diverge (again...)
I've written quite a few essays this past year or more on this topic. The "two Mainstreams" I refer to in my title are the broader Western Mainstream, which persists in its neurotic myopia concerning the problem of Islam, and the Counter-Jihad Mainstream, which persists in its incoherent tension between cultivating a tough, no-nonsense, alarming awareness of that problem of Islam while harboring a nougaty soft underbelly about that same problem. And the "divergence" between them is, in a nutshell, located in the former Mainstream's anxiety about protecting the vast majority of Muslims from a white Western "backlash" while the latter Mainstream completely ignores the problem of Muslims altogether, concentrating only on the problem of Islam.
If my memory serves me well, my first such essay was titled, The Counter-Jihad still isn't getting the main point. Since then, my readers could consult this Google page (likely an incomplete list) of similar essays since then, as I have refined my point.
Of course, no one "in" "the Counter-Jihad" has shown any signs of rectifying this problem (much less of having noticed my essays analyzing it).
The other day, I noticed, on that bastion of the Counter-Jihad Mainstream, Jihad Watch, yet another sign of the symptom:
Philippines: Catholic bishop worries that jihad massacres will stir up “anti-Muslim sentiment”
Naturally, Robert Spencer and all his loyal supporters concentrate only on the "jihadists" who are in the Philippines (as in dozens of other locations around the globe) spearheading the Jihad of the Sword and ignore the related problem of all the Muslims who are ostensibly not doing any violence at all. And because they do this, it's open season for them to mock and verbally attack this Catholic bishop for his stupidity and naivety -- thus conflating the "jihadists" with all the ordinary Muslims who are ostensibly not doing or supporting the violence, without ever explaining why they conflate the two (much less attempt a cogent argument making the case for being generally anti-Muslim). It has become clear to me that the various people in the Counter-Jihad Mainstream -- whether of the leadership or the rank-and-file civilians of the movement -- are either afraid of painting all Muslims with a broad brush or actually recoil from that because of latent PC MC reflexes they harbor in their hearts and minds.
Now, I wouldn't mind it if the Counter-Jihad Mainstream ignored this related problem as often as it does if it also at other times made clear its position on the dreaded "A" word -- namely, all Muslims. Rather than make its position clear on this, the Counter-Jihad Mainstream routinely avoids adverting to it at all, and offers in its place only random statements here and there reflecting an incoherent mish-mash of sentiments. If that's not bad enough, I have had the unpleasant experience of being verbally attacked, mocked, and ostracized in various zones of the Counter-Jihad Mainstream (most notably, the Jihad Watch community of Spencer and his loyal supporters) whenever I have assertively pushed this topic into logical clarity, either by asking them, in various ways, what the difference is between a putatively harmless Muslim and a "jihadist", or by affirming that we, the West, need to deport all Muslims from the West (not merely the wild-eyed "jihadis" among them).
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