Europe’s Moral Decadence Fuels Spread of Islamic Fundamentalism
On September 15, PJMedia ran a piece by me about the famous Muhammed cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who a couple of days earlier was scheduled to have taken part in a press conference in Oslo, Norway, to celebrate the publication of a new children’s book for which he had drawn the illustrations. Instead of attending the conference, however, Westergaard rushed back to his native Denmark the day before. The reason originally given for his cancellation was that he had taken ill; but it then emerged that there had been concerns about his safety, and that the report of illness was a cover story. Reports were inconsistent: while the Norwegian security police, the PST, claimed that Westergaard himself had made the decision to return to Denmark, Geirr Lystrup, author of the book for which he had done the illustrations, said that the PST had made the call. Meanwhile the nature of the threat that had led to Westergaard’s departure remained murky.
Since then there’s been a bit more news, though contradictions, and questions, remain. Two days after my article appeared, the Norwegian daily Dagbladet reported that the reason why Westergaard was hustled out of the country was that “a known Norwegian criminal had acquired automatic weapons and explosives” with which he intended to kill the cartoonist in a devastating act of Islamic terrorism. This criminal was arrested on the morning of September 13 — the day on which the press conference was to take place — for a traffic violation. But despite the arrest, Westergaard was asked to return home, apparently because the PST still feared that associates of the “known criminal” — who has not been named — would carry out the planned attack. Why those associates, too, were not placed under arrest remained unclear. So did the reason why the “known criminal” was arrested for a traffic violation and not for planning an act of terrorism. Indeed, there was a great deal that remained unclear.
The September 17 article in Dagbladet contended that the decision to leave Norway was Westergaard’s own. Yet on the same day the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten reported that Westergaard had told a TV interviewer that the PST had “urged” him to go, and in an article posted at the website of Norwegian state television, NRK, on the evening of September 16, Lystrup appeared to indicate that the PST did indeed tell Westergaard to leave.
Both Westergaard and Lystrup confirmed that the cover story about Westergaard being sick had been the PST’s idea. Lystrup called this stratagem “pathetic” and argued that, rather than asking him and Westergaard to lie, the PST should have admitted publicly that it was faced with a terrorist threat from which it did not have the resources to protect them. For his part, Westergaard lamented in his TV interview that the whole episode represented a step backwards for freedom of expression.
Then, on September 18, Dagbladet reported that it had been in contact with the “known criminal” and that he had denied any involvement in a planned terrorist attack against Westergaard. He had also denied that he was a criminal, describing himself instead as a “former criminal.” Dagbladet said that the “known criminal” was “well known by both the regular police and the security police,” had been convicted of crimes several times, and had ties, according to PST, to “an extreme Islamist milieu.” There was no mention of whether the “known criminal” was still in police custody when he spoke to Dagbladet, or of what legal measures, if any, were being taken against him. Nor was it clear why the PST was consistently refusing to answer reporters’ questions. Why hadn’t the police held a single press conference about this sensational near-calamity? Indeed, the whole situation seemed surpassingly odd.
It does not matter how the morally decadent Europe twists it, they shall never be able to remove the Lord from His Throne.
Best they smarten up and return before they spend their time wishing they had.
That reader comment perfectly encapsulates a female/feminist perspective on men. Violent, dangerous men are attractive, cooperative, “beta male” men are not. Anyone familiar with Dalrymple’s writings on how even his educated, professional nurses spurned nice, stable men in favor of violent thugs, and made excuse after excuse for them, will recognize the phenomena.
What the reader is saying, really, (and it could well be a man expressing female-driven sentiment) is that Westergaard is not a “Big Man” driving “Big Man” stuff. You won’t see such sentiments that they “deserve it” said about Bill Clinton, or Roman Polanski, or Charlie Sheen, or Dominique Strauss-Kahn, or Silvio Berlusconi, men who span all sorts of ideological dimensions but retain “Big Man” like behavior.
Women made mostly equal if not superior in social status (actual power and earnings remain another matter) do not seek to optimize economic stability because they already have it: they crave excitement, dominance and will make any excuse for men who exhibit it (regardless of ideology) and show neither pity nor mercy for men without excitement and dominance.
The sort of endorsement of Islamic thuggery and condemnation of Westergaard will go away in a heartbeat if Western Men just embrace their inner jerk and become the sexy, cocky, dominant, Alpha jerks (Don Draper, Edward Cullen) that women crave. If every guy resembled The Situation, PC/Multiculti appeasement of Islamism would disappear in a heartbeat. To the Tanning Booth!
Because I am convinced that the fate of France is sealed, because “My house is their house” (Mitterand), inside “Europe whose roots are as much Muslim as Christian” (Chirac), because the situation is moving irreversibly towards the final tumble in 2050 which will see French stock amounting to only half the population of the country (the oldest members), the remainder composed of black Africans, North Africans and Asians of all sorts from the inexhaustible reserve of the Third World, predominantly Islamic, understood to be fundamentalist jihadists, this dance is only the beginning.
All of Europe marches to its death.
“No amount of atomic bombs will be able to dam up the tidal wave of millions of human beings that will one day leave the southernmost and poorest parts of the world, to invade the relatively open spaces of the wealthy northern hemisphere, in search of survival.” (President Boumediene, March 1974.)
“The thousand years are accomplished. And the nations at the four corners of the earth, that are equal in number to the sands of the sea, are going out. They will march to battle on the surface of the earth, they will invest the camp of the saints and the beloved city.”
Remember Muslims only reach around five percent of France’s population. It seems much more because like the small weevil in a barrel of apples or a pustule on an otherwise perfect face they are the destructive anomaly and as such our attention is drawn.
Public opinion right across France, and for that matter Europe, is wising up to the expansive attitudes of Islam and they don’t like it. Politicians, including Sarkozy, watching the withering of their political bases are now forced to act or lose power to the new right which is rapidly gaining ascendency and in essence filling a truth gap which up to now both mainstream politicians and their henchmen MSM have colluded in creating.
The big clashes are on the horizon as our so called leaders are forced into the rock and hard place of either decimation at the polls or actually having the balls to confront the marauding hordes of Islamists intent on their caliphate dreams.
This is the first stage of the opening of this war and whilst obfuscation, imperialist guilt,anti-racist ideology and capitalist greed for cheap labour encouraged the importation of these Muslim masses these false Emperors clothes are now dropping like a cheap harlot’s drawers.
Enough is enough is the wildfire refrain as indigenous citizens watch with dismay the ripping up of European norms and culture in favour of a barbaric creed which, whilst loving the welfare cheques, refuses to integrate with the host.
Our generosity has worn so thin and for no avail or reciprocity that it is becoming impossible to ignore.
Muslims and their fellow supportive dhimmis may have once called the shots but citizenry has the numbers and in a democracy, that in the final analysis is what counts.
It will be interesting to see how Sarkozy intends to implement the new ban on Muslim street prayer. He goes easy and where is the laicite built into the republican foundation? He clamps down and where is the multiculturalism so beloved of the liberal left?
One is the fabled rock, the other the hard place. He can’t have both and thus make your mind up time advances inexhorably with a relentless push which will be impossible to ignore.
At the risk of seeming frivolously Francophobic, boiling the frog has never held such meaning or great import.
Actually, the Muslims comprise roughly 10% of the French population. (The Jews comprise roughly 1%.)
Oversimplify much?
Actually, I see it as passivity of the most craven variety. The cartoonist displayed bravery and islam said they will kill him. The response from citizens is, “well if he’d just kept his big mouth shut none of this would have happened.” Incidents of rape, “well, if she hadn’t been out on the streets it would never have happened.” Incidents on public transportation where a islamic thug beats up an old man – in a bus full of people who could have easily overpowered this YOOT, one man steps up to assist the elderly man and is stabbed to death. The publics response is, “well, he shouldn’t have gotten involved.”
In every case these people blame the victim for doing the right thing. Their attitude is something akin to, “How can you blame the wolf for following its nature when ite eats the sheep?”
To that I would answer, since when does a sheep hearder not go out and hunt down the wolf?
This comment about educated, powerful women wanting thugs is interesting, because I read elsewhere that the more powerful the woman, the more she craves a beta boy-man. I think it was in relation to the East Asian phenomenon called “Flower Men” that I heard that. I think there’s some truth to that idea, so the educated women in your example might have some other reason they’re going for thugs. Maybe it’s more the American 50s/50s glamorization of bad boys?
On a related front (pop culture, especially pop literature) you see a trend somewhat similar. In “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” the mystery surrounds neo-Nazis in Sweden, while in “The Redbreast” which I’m reading currently, and which has a button on the front cover telling you that if you liked “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” you’ll want to read this, the neo-Nazis are the center of the plot, them and old school Nazis who are running around killing people, even though they’re in their ’70s (the book takes place in the year 2000). The way the author works the characters and plot, there are Pakistani bad guys in the book, but also people who are positively portrayed. Some of the old school Nazis have redeemed themselves, but of course all the current neo-Nazis are evil (as they should be). The difficulty is that none of the righteous characters in the book opposes Islam or Muslims in any fashion, because the author depicts the situation totally in racist terms.
I’m not saying that all opposition to Islam is either evil or good: clearly it’s neither. The idiot who shot all those people appears to be an anti-Islamist, but that doesn’t mean that he speaks for all conservatives, any more than the Unabomber speaks for all liberal environmentalists, McVeigh for all isolationists, or Mohammed Atta for all devout Muslims. While extremism in support of virtue is no vice, extreme violence in support of anything almost always is. Perhaps in defense of something (when they’re invading with artillery and bombs and so forth, whoever “they” are) but nothing else justifies blowing up a building full of people. The difficulty that I have is when someone portrays his own side as reasonable and well-adjusted, and then singles out extremists to characterize the other side. It’s easy to win the argument if you compare Billy Graham to Osama bin Laden.
You may want to consider Stieg Larsson’s political views if you seek to understand the presence of Nazis in his books. Here’s the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stieg_Larsson. Pay special attention to the “Activist and Journalist” section.
Larrson’s second rate thrillers come to you via one of two German publishers who entirely dominate American book publishing. It is alien trash imported by alien trash.
The American literary community–if such exists–is beneath contempt for allowing the former publishers of Mein Kampf, who openly supported Nazi book burning, to gain control of American book publishing. This development is a grotesque insult to American letters.
Of the biggest four publishers, Random House is owned by the Germans. HarperCollins, Simon and Schuster and Penguin are not.
And “America’s literary community” didn’t let “the former publishers of Mein Kampf” get control of American book publishing. When Bertelsman grabbed Random House, that was a result of a corporate takeover. I doubt writers in their garrets had much control.
In fact, if you want to blame someone or something, point the finger at American decline, which has indeed, appallingly, let so much of America’s cultural heritage fall into the hands of foreigners, not to mention fantastical and unsustainable levels of debt.
PS: You would need to borrow $20 million, roughly, each day since the birth of Christ to get to $14 trillion. Enough said.
With respect, Lefroy. You need to do a closer examination. When I say Nazi I mean card carrying German National Socialist. Do a more complete tally of “American” book publishers and look into backgrounds. The hardline lefty editors who bring you the hardline lefty authors you would like to choke used to Sieg Heil for Der Fuhrer.
As for “writers in their garrets,” spare me. If cultural colonialism was a lefty establishment hotbutton issue, the writers in their garrets and their lefty colleagues in the media would be up in arms. Fact is, they couldn’t care less. American letters? What me worry?
If you doubt me, ask Roger Simon who was long active in lefty writers’ organizations like PEN.
I find it amusing that Mr. Bawer is upset at what he calls “moral decadence.” After all, moral decadence was just fine when it enabled his lifestyle. While I often agree with much of what Mr. Bawers says I have note that it is a bit ironic that he was ok with decadence while it was confined to western cultural in isolation. Now that he sees himself as victim decadence isn’t a good thing anymore. I welcome chickens home to Mr. Bawer’s Roost.
“Europe’s Moral Decadence Fuels Spread of Islamic Fundamentalism”
Ding. Ding! DING!
We have a winnah!!
Or, in the words of a country music song: “You’ve got to stand for something – or you’ll fall for anything.”
I think what people are loathe to really confront, when it comes to Islam and Islamism, is that “Muslim” is NOT a race. Islam is a religion, Islamism is a violent political ideology based on that religion.
I think you’d find if groups of Muslims made themselves public that truly wanted to reform the violent passages that form the roots of Islamism, and wanted to do away with the concept of Taqiyya, that most people would support that.
It’s when the left sits on its hands and thinks that Islamism and The Shari’ah deserves to take root because “It hasn’t had a fair chance to have power”, and in fact, expressly facilitates their RISE to power, that people get angry.
Norwegians reflexively deny they are violent. No need to accuse them of violence they volunteer the information that they are not violent with little or no prompting. Odd behavior. Guilt over their viking past? Their embrace of Hitler and the Nazis? My Daddy taught me that when someone insists repeatedly that he’s honest, keep an eye on your wallet. You’re surely dealing with a thief.
No so many years ago, the peace loving Norwegians were enthusiastic supporters of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Norwegians volunteered in droves, not only for the Wermacht but for the SS. Today, Norwegian pilots in the latest of fighter aircraft bomb primitive black Africans mercenaries on Gaddafi’s payroll. Oil rich Vikings come all the way from the far north to grease impoverished and desperate villagers risking their lives for pennies. Hey, the Norwegians are doing for the sake of humanity.
Depressing that such scum are our NATO allies.
“If Westergaard gets one in the face, it’s his own fault.”
This statement reminded me of the German people (and Norwegians) under Hitler and the Gestapo during WWII. Everyone kept quiet, while enemies of the state and Wehrmacht were being arrested and tortured, executed or placed in concentration camps. They all kept quiet to keep from being at “fault” and getting “one in the face”.
” . . a moral decadence, born of multiculturalism, that is utterly incapable of perceiving either the peril of Islam or the preciousness of freedom.”
Well said – much more depressing than the failure to see and confront this or that threat, such as Islamism, is the willful surrender of precious rights.
The idiot whose comment you quoted is not merely ignorant. There is willfulness, a contrariness, in attitudes like this. These people do perceive, dimly, their vandalism, and get a perverse kick out of it.
You don’t have to look at Europe for this model. It is occurring right here in the USA. Just say something, anything, that is anti-Moslem and watch the ensuing storm you just created. I used to think of myself as pretty self reliant, frankly tough. And, yes, I’m a gun toting conservative. I woke up to a fact lately that really shook me. The city’s largest Mosque is right across the street from the busiest gun store in the state. To my chagrin I also learned that they had a gun range in their Mosque’s basement and had classes in modern things such as bomb making. Up to now I had been smug, riots, civil unrest, Moslem attacks, bring it on. I could handle anything. Now I realize that I’m only one individual. In reality, I’m out gunned quantitatively and qualitatively. No man is an island. He has to be part of an archipelago or he won’t survive. My little 22 rifle alone is no match for their AK47s. On the other hand, get me 20 other people also armed with 22 rifles and we have a chance. The problem is voicing my opinion and finding the 20 others who think like me. Open your mouth and you’re branded a nut job, wacko, crazy, lunatic etc. Its a free country, but not for us.
David Levavi, at the risk of getting completely off topic, I don’t disagree with your sentiments about the supine response of the cultural left at the takeover of some american publishers (not to mention film studios) by foreigners. The irony is that the rage of the left depends on the political outlook, not nationality. Rupert Murdoch cheerfully took out US citizenship to add a US TV network to his empire, but he is still excoriated by the bien-penant left for his foreignness.
My point was simply that economic decline leads to takeovers of this kind. And the left could rage all it liked, but short of massive protectionism, which would swiftly be turned back on the US itself by the rest of the world, how can you stop such takeovers?
It ain’t merely the cultural left or writers in their garrets, Lefroy. Can you imagine the French Academy and the French Government and the French people sitting still for English or American or German publishers taking over book publishing in France? If American publishers took over German book publishing in the 1970s, there would have been anti-American rioting in the German streets. (Not that there wasn’t but that was over tactical nukes.)
Language and literature are the deepest expression of a nation’s culture. Our recorded myths define us. That the Germans–a brilliantly talented and technically exacting folk–have gained so large a share of the American automobile market is distressing but only fair. Detroit is slovenly and sleepy. I predicted that GM would be coming to the government hat-in-hand right here at PJM a year or more before it happened. By my lights, GM should have been allowed to go under. Books are a whole other kettle of fish.
The English and the Germans are cousins and Chaucer sounds distinctly German but British culture and literature is not German culture and literature and American culture literature is at and even further remove. And by this American Jew’s lights, the greater the distance from German culture, the healthier.
Allow me to belabor this point about cultural difference with two anecdotes: A very bright and computer savvy production manager at Random House when Bertelsmann took over that (Jewish founded) publishing house years ago, complained to me about the German enterprise software SAP which Bertelsmann installed. She found SAP counterintuitive and difficult to work with. Years later, my daughter, a mathematician was invited to study and research in Germany. Part of the attraction for the German scholars inviting her was that they were working in the same area in mathematics and, having read her papers, they were surprised and intrigued by how different her approach was from theirs.
The German mind is not the American mind. German thinking follows different intellectual (and concievably neural) pathways.
For conviction or cynicism, the German publishers of yesteryear aligned with the Hitler’s nationalist right. For conviction or cynicism, those same publishers are today aligned with the radical internationalist left.
The vast trove of letters from soldiers during the Civil War demonstrates that in the Nineteenth Century most Americans could communicate clearly in writing. Then came the telephone and letter writing fell to the wayside. Television in its turn all but killed American poetry and the American short story and the thousands of popular magazines that carried poems and short stories. The American novel and American film are the last creative literary outlets we have left.
Ceding American book publishing to German publishers is an act of cultural suicide.
There is another to dimention to this. European decadence makes Islam itself attractive to many Europeans. (I am neither Moslem nor Christian.)
Dimension – sorry.
Yes – it is true that Europe’s moral decadence is fuelling the spread of Islamic fundamentalism. But how de we grow moral strength? That has been a problem for every nation in every generation. I believe that Love is the first virtue, from which all other virtues come, and in line with the best of the Judaic and Greek tradition I believe that cultivating our virtues is the best chance we have to improve our lives. So improving my own moral strength is a big, life long task, and improving the moral strength of the Europeans is beyond me.
At least we can learn from their errors. Westergard made a cardinal error when he lied at the request of the police. Discretion is one thing – there is no one more discreet than the Creator – but dishonesty is always a weakness, never a virtue. “Never deceive yourself.” and “Never deceive another person.” are two good rules expressed in the negative to help us keep the positive rule “Be truthful.”
No one who values the virtues of Love and Truthfulness could ever be deceived by Islam. The religion advocates hatred, and Allah is both a deceiver and hater of humanity. We have to get this message out to the public if our civilisation is to survive. Even if the Europeans and the Left worlwide don’t want to hear the bad news we have to stay on message and live up to our ideals, so that eventually, after a long time, people learn.
Scandinavia is the head of the rotten fish of Europe. I wrote a short piece on the southern part of that western extremity of Asia in a blog this morning:
http://daveinboca.blogspot.com/2011/09/bad-days-ahead-for-europe-and-its-nato.html#links
” Freedom of expression is a good cause but one should use it with common sense and not engage in unnecessary provocation. … I don’t feel sorry for Westergaard. … I’ve never seen any overview at all of what it costs to guard him at home in Denmark. … If Westergaard gets one in the face, it’s his own fault. ”
Thus Freedom of Speech becomes a ” cause ” rather than a Right. Then the cause is taken down a notch with,
” unnecessary provocation “, which grants the listener the right to define the speakers comments as the listener deems appropriate. Then we find , ” what it costs to guard him “, as id the price tag to defend freedom of speech may be a wee bit to high. Then the coup de grace , ” it his own fault “, which of course is the classic blame the victim strategy laid bare.
When the enemies of freedom knock at HIS door he will undoubtedly wonder how they got there.
Reminds one that Quisling was Norwegian.
There are 6 million to 8 million Muslims in France, their birth rate is higher, and more are on the way.
Although Muslims comprise “only” 10% (perhaps slightly higher) of France’s population, they are already over 30% of the children in France, due to their higher birthrates.
Over the next few decades millions more will pour in from the Third World — Arabs, Africans, Asians and Muslims.
France is over. They invited the Muslim invader into their country, and as a result, they have lost their countries.
Baby boomer Europe decided in the 1960s and 1970s it wanted La Dolce Vita, not the hassle of children. It had that sweet life. Now the bill comes due. And the bill is the end of their tribes and countries as we have known them.
Old Europe is dying, and the populist and nationalist parties, in the poet’s phrase, are simply raging “against the dying of the light.”
Europe does not care if it is enslaved by Islam, so long as the Islamists finish the work of Hitler and exterminate all the Jews of the world.
We must do what is feasible to gather those remnants of europe who still want to live in freedom and bring them to North America. These communities will appropriately hate and fear islam and will help to wake the rest of us up. Begin with the French and British Jews, the most immediately endangered minority. These immigrants will have professions, skills, education,capital, and will speak English or learn the language quickly. The sort of people who will vote Republican and not expect to immediately go on welfare.
NO WAY! THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN! WE WILL NEVER ALLOW YOU GRINGOS TO BRING IN YOUR BRETHREN FROM EUROPE! WE WILL RIOT AND PROTEST A DO WHATEVER IS NECESSARY TO STOP YOU FROM BRINGING IN YOUR BRETHREN FROM EUROPE!
Por La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada.
So how do you say ‘Please leave’ in Spanish?
For those interested in anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism in Norway, please check out this site:
http://www.israelwhat.com
Bruce, one of the administrators of that blog has taken time off due to political pressures put on anti-Islamists in the wake of the Breivik massacre. And this guy is not what you would call a hard rightist by any means. Maybe you can reach out to them for a little encouragement and support, as you are there?
Who invited the Muslims into Europe? It wasn’t the average European. It was imposed from above by the “elites”. Why would the “elites” want a large — and growing — population of Muslims in their country, that will takeover (demographically) within 1-2 generations (2040-2070). In some countries the process (Islamization) is more “advanced” (France, Holland, UK, Belgium, Germany), and in the rest it will take more time.
For the past few decades the decadent Europeans have let the invaders run wild. But as the economic situation get worse and worse, and the demographics continue to progress in favor of the invading barbarians … Do you honestly think the French, Dutch, British etc. are going to “go gentle into that good night”? Do you think they will just surrender and let the Muslims conquer their countries? I doubt it. There will be a civil war in Europe, between the natives and the invaders… I am not calling for violence, nor will I be the one to start it, but it will happen.
ONLY THE SOCCER THUGS CAN SAVE EUROPE
I don’t think multiculturalism is the cause of moral decadence ; I believe it’s moral decadence that makes multiculturalism dangerous. If we europeans hadn’t become so weak, spiritually speaking, a few million muslims wouldn’t be a problem, and we would absorb them like we did with so many immigrants before, like you Americans have done even better than us. Lust for money has led us to negotiate our moral standards : if we don’t react, we will deserve what will happen to us, as we can’t ask little brother America to save us thrice… or can we ?
But as it comes to America and Europe, I’m willing to say : Quid rides ? mutato nomine de te fabula narratur. God bless us all.