This archaic mythology is not only Breivik’s; the Marxists and the radical Islamists embrace it just as avidly. The Marxists embrace the myth of class struggle in a Western world that is no longer capitalist and where there is no working class. The jihadis embrace the cause of holy war (no accident, the Marxists might say, that jihadis raced to take “credit” for the mayhem in the first hours) against a Western world described as Christian and Islamophobic. That, too, is an archaic remnant from a past long dead and buried, especially in Europe. The Old World is secular, and, certainly among its elites, more anti-Semitic and anti-Christian than anti-Muslim. Just look at the thoroughly disgusting remarks by the Norwegian ambassador to Israel AFTER the massacre, in which he showed greater “understanding” of Palestinians killing Jews than of a Norwegian massacring fellow countrymen.
It is thoroughly understandable, then, that some have responded to the Norwegian mass murder with myths of their own, beginning with the fable that Breivik is the tip of a very large iceberg, that includes not only deranged would-be killers but also writers and politicians. Thus they conjure up yet another phantasmagorical mass movement — a vast conspiracy with countless followers, some hidden, others public. There is no such movement. Yes, there are crazy people who think they are fighters in the great cataclysmic struggle of the days of the Last Judgment (and if you want a fine survey and analysis of the enormous variety of such beliefs, and their dreadful effects over the centuries, get yourself a copy of Richard Landes’ timely study “Heaven on Earth”). But I doubt there are enough of them to feed more than a handful of Knights Templar, let alone a full-fledged political movement.
We’re living through a revolutionary moment, all over the world. The world we knew and believed we understood is gone, and we don’t know where we’re headed. No wonder chaos disrupts orderly thought, and mythology replaces common sense.
UPDATE: Thanks to Instapundit for the generous quote and link. What would we do without him?
Breivik got much of his “inspiration” and hatred from the likes of prominent Islamophobes Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz, and the political philosophy of the neoconservative cartel which stacked the 2001 Bush Administration, whose members admittedly “craved an event like 9/11″ to get their otherwise unsellable “endless war” agenda up and running.
Whether there is a “mass movement” as described by Ledeen in the above article is immaterial: many innocent people were murdered in cold blood for doing nothing worse than becoming politically aware of a terminally unjust and perpetually horrific situation in Gaza, and showing moral support for this unfortunate population under heavy manners.
nik, seems you’re the speechwriter for the Norwegian Ambassador to Israel…
As a point of correction – Behring Breivik’s use of Marxism presupposed the word ‘cultural’. He refers to the Hegelian dialectic of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, and that the meeting of cultures creates a cultural Marxism, where their synthesis is alien to both original cultures, and that this is a self-defeating process.
Can’t believe I’m bothering, as I find his philosophy and particularly his actions abhorrent – but this is how he uses that term, related to the far-right campaign against political correctness, as the latter serves to obscure the dialectic, as people are robbed of the proper words with which to describe what is happening as cultures are forced to merge.
Great comment, SteinL.
So, nik, what do you call those of us bothered by this:
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/05/norway-all-rapes-in-past-5-years-committed-by-muslimsnon-western-immigrants.html
Isn’t it fair to say that those who are so bothered by what is happening in Gaza don’t give a lick about what happened to this girl?
Oh my. Pam Geller has about as much credibility in the real world as the Tooth Fairy and Bigfoot. The latter two, however, are unencumbered with the excess baggage of unconditional hatred.
Are you implying that the Video from the Norwegian TV network was actually fabricated by Pam Geller and is therefore false? The video footage looked very legitimate to me and the message presented was very factual and easy to understand. Can you provide substantial evidence that this video is false and the facts presented a merely fabricated lies. I look forward to your reply.
So what specifically are you saying? That the girl is lying? That this was a mistranslation of a Norwegian newscast? Be specific, please. Just saying that Pamela Geller has no credibility isn’t enough.
And tell me about Hege Storhaug, while you’re at it.
What about Norwegian State Telivision?
Norsk rikskringkasting Channel 1;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_rHFKRwv5Y&feature=player_embedded
Rather than debate, your tendency is to name-call wihout facts. You talk about the horrific, “unjust” conditions of Gaza, with no evidence to show they are either. And your childish slam of Gellar shows the same kind of derangement that causes leftiststo call every woman with conservative ideas unqualified, again, with no evidence. Do you think someone is not credible just because she disagrees with you?
As someone who has followed her for years, I’ll call your bluff. To be non-credible, she’d have to be oh, 30% uncorrect in her facts. Show us some, because she is known for breaking stories that others only latr catch up to. But of course, if you think the scholar Daniel pipes is a “homophobe,” them YOU are not credible.
P.S. Is the Left so utterly without reason that they think calling anyone they don’t agree with names is an effective tactic? And are they so utter without morals that they think defending a people who stone homosexuals and adulterers is a worthwhile cause?
Nik? Not.
A) The islamic talking heads copied their agenda by the commando gays – they said so. Be that as it may, I would point out that being concerned (or afraid) of a bunch of troglodytes who tell you to your face that they hate you and will kill you in the most horrific manner possible isn’t an irrational fear, it’s ingrained self-preservation.
B) I don’t give a fig for a made up people living off the worlds welfare program that open luxury hotels and walk around fatter than my Aunt Cathy! Oppression my tookus!
“…many innocent people were murdered in cold blood…”
Every word out of nik’s mouth is bloviating nonsense, except the above passage, which accurately states what happened.
The only way to deal with the situation is to kill the guy (or guys) who did it.
Too bad that will never happen in a place like Norway, which is ruled by leftist halfwits who prefer to pamper murderers, rather than remove them from society forever.
To those who like to misuse the language by calling others “homophobes”:
A phobia is an irrational fear. There is nothing irrational about the feat of a violent and totalitarian ideology.
Dr. Ledeen, you say “The world we knew and believed we understood is gone, and we don’t know where we’re headed.” How much of it is our fault? I mean, what forces are behind these rapid change? Did we really undo ourselves? OR shall we say past generations worried about the same things too. Given our limited scope and perspective as human beings, how can we say the world has changed when past generations had probably wondered and said the same thing in their time as well?
Honestly, I think “The world we knew and believed we understood is gone, and we don’t know where we’re headed.” is an eternal truth.
Michael,maybe Stieg Larsson in Milennium trilogy.And the other side,bizarre,and the myth.
LOL. About 5,000,000 French Muslims have confiscated vast swaths of territory in France’s cites where Sharia presides. There’s actually an official French term : “zones urbaines sensibiles” or “sensitive urban zones” a.k.a. “no-go zones, where infidels dare not tread. Ambulances don’t go there, fire departments and police stay away. These too are “failed” in the same way that other barbaric Muslim enclaves and nations are “failed”. That is to say they are strictly Islamic. Odd thing is, to Muslims this isn’t “failed” at all – it’s the entire point of the exercise.
Islam isn’t moribund – after the influx of trillions in Western wealth due to the accident of oil, Islam is resurrected like a Frankenstein monster that won’t die. It is on full display in Islamic sewers like Saudi Arabia and Iran, and now its on the march in Egypt, Turkey, and everywhere the seething Muslim hordes perpetuate it.
Just because cowards, fools, and dinosaurs in the West can’t or won’t admit the fact doesn’t make the fact go away — Islam is at war with us on an ever broadening front. We pretend that’s not true at our extreme peril…
As for the Marxist march through our Western Institutions – the man currently occupying the White House proves that they have not been idle. Seems to me like the Muslims and their Marxist buddies are doing fairly well these days.
yes the muslim issue is hardly done. it is just beginning.
“The second, “Islam,” has been moribund for centuries.” I find that remark to be very naive as well when you consider this article and all the comments on this forum can be directly attributed to the problems Islam is inflicting on the world. So were are to believe that Islam is not a problem?
Tomko: I’m saying that both “Marxism” and “Islam” are largely spent forces. The Communist bloc, depending on your point of view, either fell of its own overweight or was defeated by Reagan/Thatcher/John Paul II. Islamic states are almost all “failed states.” Ergo both Marxism and Islam are spent forces, with little mass appeal (save for exceptional moments like 9/11 when fantasy overwhelms common sense). I am also saying that there are some very dangerous radicals who call themselves “Marxists” and others who embrace jihad. I reject the world views of both of them and also of the Norwegian fascist–another spent force that was destroyed in the Second World War–who claims to act in the name of another spent force, a mythological West. That’s why I started my little essay by saying I find it all very archaic.
Very few Muslims want to live in a local version of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which seemed a real threat thirty years ago. The very real radical Islamic danger we face comes from jihadis supported by states like Iran (and by Saudi Arabia, which finances the radical mosques and schools all over the world). I have said over and over again that we have to defend ourselves against such threats, in the case of Iran by supporting the opposition and bringing down the regime, in other cases bringing other forms of pressure to bear, or supporting insurrection if that is a real alternative.
Finally, a question I have addressed elsewhere and to which I must return soon: there is certainly an ideological dimension to the war we’re in. We have to assert our values and expose the hollowness and failure of theirs. But if we can support successful democratic revolution in Iran and Syria, it will, among other happy results, strike a deadly blow against the doctrines of jihad.
Does that help?
If you think the “Arab spring” is a democracy movement, please research. This is too important to trust the MSM. Islam is not only not spent; it is rising. It is the Third Jihad.
Morton, I have to agree with you. Not only are there no-go zones in France but in England (posters went up in Londonistan just recently to say so) as well. They do not want to assimilate. Europe has had its head in the sand, and I thought France and Germany had finally “seen the light.” Unfortunately, this lunatic in Norway has probably reversed any light of day which could have been shed in a civil manner. Norway is even now bending over backwards to be pc.
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
William Butler Yeats
This is the most cogent argument on this thread. We are watching that rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem. Let’s hope this non-Christian, evil bastard did not act as midwife.
The ‘sacred’ eschatology of these “non-Christian, evil bastard(s)” informs them that the “rough beast” with a “gaze blank and pitiless as the sun” will indeed come back — to fight their version of the Armageddon FOR THEM, as Commander in-Chief or Co-Mahdi of the Mahdi/ the Returning Imam. That is why an empty grave by the grave of the “Last Messenger of the Almighty” is kept reserved for the “rough beast” to be buried with honor after he accomplishes his mission of annihilating all the heathen, particularly the Jews and the Christians.
(See chapters /sections usually titled “FITNAH/”upheaval”, QIYAAMA/”resurrection” etc. in almost all Sunni as well as Shia ‘authentic’ Hadith / Hadis collections … and also see relevant portions in the traditional exegeses /tafsirs of the Quran, e.g., that of Tabari.Ask a “haaji” /pilgrim about the reserved empty grave by the grave of the Last Messenger of the Almighty … or see Sir Richard F. Burton, Personal Narrative of Pilgrimage to Al-Medinah and Mecca.)
Referring to the extraordinary powers of “the rough beast” mentioned in these sources, e.g. “gazing” power — similar to those in ‘the sources’ of William Butler Yeats — , some Jihadis confident of winning the ‘final war’ are already telling the believers that using these extraordinary powers, the “rough beast” will turn the scientific fictions into ‘scientific’ facts winning the real Star War, of course for the “non-Christian, evil bastards” our dear “Filthy Screw” is so scared of. Sorry for the bad news! Malek Towghi (Baluch), MI, USA
Ideological superorganisms like Marxism and militant Islam do not simply die. Their death spasms have spawned destructive bastard children whose nihilism is cloaked under the false banner of Social Justice. Conspiracy and revenge are the coin of the left’s realm so they naturally dread the payback.
Breivik is no madman. He is an isomer, a mirror image of the left’s suicidal destruction of european culture. He is the abyss peering back into the face of nihilism. They should fear him and live in dread of what he represents. For he is them. But they won’t. Instead they will use him to strengthen their stranglehold on Europe.
“and we don’t know where we’re headed.”
but I suspect it is a place we’ve been before.
It’s not really a convincing argument that since Islamic nations are basket cases, therefore Islam is dead. What some people call “Islamism”, i.e. the revival of interest in scriptural literalism that comes with the decline of folk Islam and the rise of literacy under modern conditions, is clearly a growing phenomenon, not least among young people in the West. What’s to say this movement can’t have a signifcant future yet as a reactive force within the global economy which it can’t hope to lead or control (which is why the jihadists want to destroy it; and who’s to say they can’t and after much bloodshed return the world to their medieval ideal) but which it may well prove itself adept at opposing, guilting, terrorizing, etc., in ways that win for it material and cultural rewards. Modern civil society is in part made up of groups that succeed precisely because they oppose themselves to the ethics of the market and revive a primitive ritualism that serves variously to protect members against the anomie of the marketplace.
p.s. it’s also not the case that just because the classical Marxist revolutionary idea is moribund that there aren’t still a lot of intellectual strands from the Marxist tradition still in play though tied now to much more vaguely Utopian ideals or to an incoherent but still needed denial of certain existential realities the “Marxist” just can’t face. I’m not going to read Breivik’s insane manifesto but I gather he didn’t fear a 1917-style revolution as much as a corrosive “Marxist” destruction of his society from resentment of the traditional Norway. He thinks he will win because he has the fantastic idea that since the “Marxists” no longer stand for anything sustainably real, notwithstanding their present cultural and political (negative) power, his mad “vision” is sure to win the day.
In any case, I could make the same suggestion I did with Islam above. It might be possible that modern market society will continue to sustain for some time yet those Gnostic (e.g. “Marxist”) ideologies that oppose it. Symbiosis or parasitism can sustain “conflicting” parties in ways that are not immediately obvious.
The traitorous white Norwegian ruling elites (Quislings) thought that they could force PC diversity, multiculturism and mass immigration (from the third world) down the throats of the working and middle class Norwegians — while they themselves lived in their gated communities (with security), and in their college towns, and sent their kids to private schools (where the ethnic makeup of the students closely resembles that of the KKK). In other words they were going to undemocratically attack the average Norwegian citizen with horrendous policies, while they themselves and their children were immune to it all.
The elites in politics, the media and academia marginalized, ostracized and called names those who disagreed with all the PC diversity, multiculti, mass immigration from Islamic countries. They called them “Islamophobes”, “racists”, “xenophobes” etc… When you don’t let people who you disagree with participate in the public debate — some of them will eventually explode and say to themselves this is the only way that they can influence public policy.
The traitorous leftist elites, the sellouts, the Quislings thought that they would jam these insane policies down the throats of the Norwegian people, and that they (and their children) would remain untouched. They thought that the “right-wing extremists” would attack the Muslim immigrants thus ensuring the ruling class’ survival. They thought they could play Divide and Conquer. They thought that they could sellout their own countries and profit from it, with no risk. Well the traitorous elites may think twice now. Parents may think twice before encouraging their kids to be leftists, and may not be so quick to send their kids to these “camps”, that are modeled on the Soviet state-run Young Pioneers, where youth were turned into Communist Party activists. If the traitorous leftist elites see that the “right-wing extremists” are going to target the white traitorous elites and their children, and are not going to attack the Muslim immigrants, then they will realize that their treasonous activities are not without risk, and they may think twice, or not…
Please tell me you are not endorsing or defending Breivik’s actions in Norway last week, including the bombing and the massacre at the youth camp….
can you read? furthermore, i don’t beat my wife, children, or airedale.
Oh, so you admit to keeping an airedale? I wonder what your children would say if they knew about this little habit of yours…
heh, Bugs, the kids were raised by airedales…with some kibbitzing from the old white parents.
I was directing my remarks to “Enemy of the State”, not you, Dr. Ledeen. Sorry if that wasn’t clear. I thought it would be given that I clicked the “Reply” button for “Enemy of the State”s remarks and that my remarks were indented below his. I have no doubt that you are kind to your wife, children and dog.
careful Sparky (thanks for the clarification)…airedales don’t like to be referred to as “the dog…”
He’s not supporting it, he is asking a very serious question to those of the European leftist elites. When those who disagree with your agenda are marginalized, ostracized and called names, to the point where they can no longer participate in the public debate, who is truly to blame when some eventually explode believing it is the only way that they can influence public policy.
He is clearly not endorsing, but explaining. and brilliantly.
Asked if the rampage was aimed at the Labor Party, or at Muslim immigrants, Mr. Lippestad said: “This was an attack on the Labor Party.” a quote from the Anders Behring Breivik‘s defense attorney, in NY Times, on 07/26/2011.
Again, he said, “This was an attack on the Labor Party.”
While our domestic right-wing pundits and bloggers are focused on issues related to Muslim immigration into Europe and the US, the motivation here appears to be blind, insane hatred of Norway’s ruling social-democratic Labor Party and the Social Democratic model of development. The youth group, Arbeidernes ungdomsfylking (Workers’ Youth League), which owns camp Utoya, is a member of the International Union of Socialist Youth (“IUSY”). The killer murdered the flower of the next generation of democratic socialists. My conclusion is the killer is an anti-social democrat, driven to ideological mass murderer.
Of course, leave it to Glenn Beck to make a defining comment. He says, discussing the massacre in Norway,
“As the thing started to unfold, and then there was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler Youth or whatever — I mean, who does a camp for kids that’s all about politics? Disturbing. But anyway, so there’s this political camp, and some crazy man goes and starts shooting kids.”
Deflecting shame, by describing the victims as if “Hitler Youth, or whatever”
goes a long way toward understanding the Right’s meme of “blaming the victims,” No, the Labor Party’s youth group is not the “Hitler Youth or whatever.” Multiculturalism is not a totalitarian ideology nor is the Labor Party’s youth group like the “Hitler Youth, or whatever.”
Right-wing pundits will suffer public shame while they distance themselves. The killer was such a willing fan, an enthusiast, of many spokespersons of the far-right fringe of American politics, their ideologies and religious beliefs. It appears that the killer is a distant ideological and spiritual cousin of the extremist Right-wing philosophy.
The rise of the Right-wing tendency in the Scandinavian countries has been significant in the past twenty years. The Scandinavian model has crumbled in Sweden, Finland, Holland and Denmark. After September 11, 2001, principally in these countries, there appears an “anti-Islamicism” and a backlash against the multicultural model. The term, according to Yascha Mounk, writing in Dissent on July 26, 2011 , “has become a useful shorthand for everything the populists don’t like: Islam and any kind of extra-European immigration, of course; but also the loss of cultural traditions, the EU’s encroachment on national sovereignty, and even certain forms of cultural relativism,” see http://www.dissentmagazine.org/atw.php?id=514. In Holland, the film maker Theo Van Gogh directed the film “Submission” for which he was murdered by a Dutchman of Moroccan origins; in Denmark in 2005 the newspaper “Jyllands-Posten” published 12 cartoons (or vignettes) that infuriated the Islamic world.
The rise of anti-immigrant and right-wing parties has been impressive, since the beginning of the millennium. In 2001 in Denmark, the Dansk Folkepartie obtained 12% of the vote and 22 seats in parliament; in 2007 it improved its electoral results with 13.8% of the votes and 25 seats (of a total of 179). The same results in Holland where a center-right coalition rules, with external support from Gert Wilders’ Partij voor Vrijeid which received 15.5% of the votes and 24 seats in Parliament (of a total of 150). In Sweden a center-right coalition attained an absolute majority in Parliament in 2006; in 2010 it lost its majority, but continues to rule with the external support of the extreme right-wing party Sverigedemokrateerna which received its own 5.7% of the votes, clearing an electoral hurdle and entering Parliament with 20 seats (of a total of 349). In Finland’s April 2011 elections, the xenophobic and anti-Europe (EU) party, Perussuomalaiset (True Fins), went from 4% to 19.1% of the votes and from 5 seats to 39 seats (of a total of 190). In Norway, acting in its own “counter-tendency” fashion, because the Labor Party continues to govern; in reality, in the 2009 elections, the center-right and its allies obtained an absolute majority of the votes and the most extreme of the right-wing parties Hoyre and Framstegspartiet (Party of Progress) gained in seats and votes. It is noteworthy that Anders Behring Breivik, (from 1999 to 2004) was a member of the Youth section of the Party of Progress. He abandoned the party, denouncing its “embrace of multi-culturalism.”
We should be aware that relations between the Nordic countries and the Third Reich were not as innocent as some would have us understand. The sympathetic current of opinion towards support for purity of the Nordic Arian race was never marginalized.
The name of Quisling has become synominus with collaborating with the enemy invader, since Vidkum Quisling ruled Norway, from 1942 to 1945, in the name of the Fuhrer.
Analysts and pundits should have taken more notice of political trends after the assassination of Sweden’s social democratic Prime Minister Olaf Palme (1986), and the end of a “stereotypic innocence” in the so-called “Paradise of Social Democracy.” Another indicator of turmoil under the surface is modern Nordic literature. The writings of the Swedish Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson, from the Norweign Jo Nesbo, from the Islandic Arnaldur Indrioason, all demonstrating an unstable society, in respect to our stereotypes. Think of this detail: Sweden is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, yet for the last 20-years, more and more Swedes have gone to work in Norway. Naturally, as soon as they are declared “immigrant workers,” they are perceived in negative terms.
It requires some time-out to develop an understanding of these events. What new dialectic has brought a Nordic democracy to look dumbfounded in shock on the bodies of their adolescents lying inanimate, on a once happy little island?
Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said, “You will not destroy us. You will not destroy our democracy or our ideals for a better world.” Will the Left head Stoltenberg’s call to defend our ideals or will it remain quite in the face of terrorism, xenophobia and racism?
Nobody is praising this guy and Beck wasn’t blaming the victim. He was doing what you liberals always do (why does islam hate us – whiiiinnnnnneeee): trying to find a motive behind it. And he was right. It was a Nazi camp to indoctrinate the youth (see the Enemy of the State, above). There is going to be more of this as the elite continue to silence the voices of their people (criminalize speech) and leave them with nowhere to turn.
Lolly:
“The rise of anti-immigrant and right-wing parties has been impressive, since the beginning of the millennium.”
If the Right-wing parties have been on the rise in the region, please explain how they could participate in local and national elections without free speech, right of assembly, freedom of the press, and so forth and still get so many votes? All the humbug about political correctness and the suppression of free speech is clearly nonsense. It is made up by the Right-wing extremists. There is free speech in Norway and you better know it.
The youth section of the Labor Party was organized in 1905. Social democracy predates fascism and Nazism. You weren’t paying attention during social studies class.
Both of the two major parties in the US have youth movements. I’m sure you have never heard of the Young Democrats, Young Republicans, Young Americans for Freedom? The political obscurantism of the Right never ceases to amaze me. “Don’t know much about history” is your tune.
Lawrence, it sounds to me as if you are saying that anyone against multiculturalism or immigration is a racist/Nazi who is is going to be in at least quiet sympathy with Breivik and his aims and goals.
Personally, I think it is the right of any citizen of any democracy to question what foreigners are welcomed into their country. I don’t think it is the moral obligation of every citizen to welcome everyone that may want to come to their country. If the country belongs to its citizens in any real way, those citizens should be able to decide what level of immigration they want to have. I would hope that no irrational prejudices form any part of these calculations. I do not subscribe to the notion that any foreigner should be free to come to my country and that I must welcome him regardless of how or why he comes. And I most emphatically do not support violence being used against immigrants and/or refugee claimants.
I don’t know about your country but we have our share of dodgy characters trying to come to ours (Canada), frequently by trying to take advantage of our liberal policies with regards to refugee claimants. For example, I saw a documentary that followed three separate refugee claimants as they went through our long and tangled process for determining the legitimacy of refugee claims. In each case, their first hearing denied them refugee status. In each case, the “refugee” admitted to the documentary maker – but not the refugee board of course! – that he wasn’t really in danger if he went back to his home country and that he was getting disillusioned with Canada because his refugee claim hadn’t yet been settled in his favour. But in each case, the refugee claim process – which had 19 (!!) levels of appeal in those days – found in favour of the “refugee” and each of these three claimants was eventually allowed to stay in Canada legally. I particularly remember the words of the Russian woman from Kazakhstan who thought we Canadians were naive suckers for taking in people like her.
I think we have every right to reject would-be immigrants and refugee claimants if they are not likely to be of net benefit to our country. This contrasts with certain advocacy groups in this country that seem to want to go out of their way to facilitate the entry into this country of people who will cost this country a great deal of money. For instance, I read recently of a group that wants to bring a large number of AIDS sufferers to this country because of our tolerance for gays. The fact that these already-sick people will be an immense drain on our already overburdened health care system seems to be a matter of complete indifference to these activists. Other groups have advocated on behalf of Chinese women who are victims of the Chinese One Child Policy. They won a court case that established that it was a legitimate cause for a refugee claim if a woman was denied the right to have a second or subsequent child by their own government. This opened the door to any Chinese woman who wanted to have an additional child to come to Canada as a refugee claimant. I’m not sure how many Chinese women there are who want additional children but I’m inclined to suspect that it is a very substantial number.
Now, I don’t care that these new refugee candidates are Chinese. I have no problems with people from foreign countries and have known and liked many Chinese people. I would have the same concerns if “white” Europeans were being granted refugee claims on dubious grounds.
I simply feel that all citizens of a country should have some say in what foreigners are welcomed to that country. Such policies should not be dictated by self-styled elites without consultation with ordinary people. If that makes me a racist in your book, Lawrence, then I strongly suggest you re-examine your definition of racism.
Tarring someone like me with the Nazi/racist brush is a very tedious but widely-used practice of the Left. Frankly, I’m sick of it.
Henry Reardon:
I don’t think you are a racist/Nazi. In a democracy, you correctly point out, the people have (or should) have great weight on immigration decisions. What makes you think that the Labor Party, a mass party, doesn’t consult with, collaborate with and advised by the people? The Labor Party must compete for votes just like the parties you may identify with in Norway. In case you suddenly forgot, Norway is a constitutional monarchy, based upon democratic procedures and rights. Since when has Norway achieved such a bad rap with Americans? You may not agree with the Labor Party policies on immigration but that doesn’t mean those policies were rammed down the throat of the people of Norway.
Throwing around the term “ruling elite” makes me laugh. Norway is more equal than the United States in terms of income distribution, and access to the benefits of healthcare and old age pensions, and good quality public services. It also has a multi-party political system and freedom of religion.
Scholarly estimates regarding the number of people of Islamic background in Norway vary between 120,000 (2005) and 163,000 (2009).[3] The vast majority have an immigrant background, with Norwegians of Pakistani descent being the most visible and well-known group.
Before 1970 there were fewer than ten mosques in New York City—now there are well over a hundred, indicating the rapid growth of New York City’s Muslim population. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/01/05/muslim.html “Numbering an estimated 600,000, Muslims now represent one of the fastest growing religious communities in New York City,” said Peter Awn, co-principal investigator and Columbia University dean of the School of General Studies. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/04/09/muslims.html
As a life long New Yorker of European extraction, I can’t say that multiculturalism in my city of birth has been such a bad thing leading, as some maintain, to totalitarianism. The idea that multi-culturalism leads to a bad result is akin to “nativism” and xenophobia.
You keep saying “right wing”. You may want to define that a little better. At least in this country, “right wing” = (more or less) conservative; has nothing to do with fascism (which is a branch of socialism); and opposes Islam and unchecked immigration for reasons which have nothing to do with racism.
(See, BTW, http://www.baen.com/chapters/axes.htm, noting that Mr. Pournelle has reversed the traditional orientation of the “left”-”right” axis. )
Paul of Alexandria:
“You keep saying “right wing”. You may want to define that a little better.” At least in this country, “right wing” = (more or less) conservative; has nothing to do with fascism (which is a branch of socialism); and opposes Islam and unchecked immigration for reasons which have nothing to do with racism.”
I don’t think right-wing and left-wing are static concepts of ideological divergence. I don’t believe that all conservatives are racist. There would be no modern Civil Rights Laws in the US without the support of the Conservatives and Republicans in Congress. I think practical conservatism makes numerous contributions to American’s well being, willy-nilly.
In the great struggle to defeat Communist totalitarianism, Social Democrats and the “right wing” made tactical and strategic alliances. Remember the Social Democrat Willy Brandt stood right next to Pres. John F. Kennedy when our President made his “I am a Berliner” speech at the height of the Cold War. The attempt to turn Norway’s Labor Party into some form of North Korea Communist Party lite is risible.
Wanting to save your culture and the land your ancestors built for you is not xenophobia or racism. (More name-calling. More mud-slinging). Europeans are extremely disturbed about having to remove their crosses and their St. John’s flags,having their women raped if they are unveiled,having their schools taken over by those who complain about teaching the Holocaust, about seeing signs in London declaring “Sharia Zones” (with symbols for no alcohol, no drugs, no unveiled women, no dogs, no churchess, no pigs, and no homosexuals.)
Did you know that they are demanding the United Emirates of Britain — several cities with large numbers of muslims that they want to be seceeded from Britain and part of a “muslum world”? Did you know that when the Brit soldiers returned from Afghanistan, they were met with thousands of muslim protestors carrying signs saying “Soldiers burn in hell.” Have you seen the signs there demanding “Behead those who insult islam”?
Ethnic Europeans are fighting for their land…and for their lives. The people hate the elites for giving their country away. And some prosephy civil war, as in other muslim-populated countries, such as Bosnia or Sudan.
This is a great write up of what has been happening – not just in Norway, but in every single western country (Europe, US, Canada and Australia). Mass immigration encouraged by the politicians against the expressed will of the native populations. All with horrible results that include death and destruction to those native populations at the hands of the barbarians while the elite sip wine, fiddle and sneer at the unwashed masses. Quite infuriating.
…the ruling political classes have never had to account for their damage.
they carry on with their personal agendas with impunity.
Yes, his thinking is very muddled. For instance, he seems to have selected the Knights Templar as his imaginary ideal not because he’s a devout Christian (or really any kind of Christian at all as far as I can tell) but simply because after their long and loyal service they were betrayed and destroyed by the king of France and the Pope. And he, of course, feels that true Europeans such as himself have been betrayed and made irrelevant by a European Marxist cabal. The fact that they were actual for-real Crusaders and he saw himself as such was icing on the cake. It’s a perfect fit, in his confused mind. I’ve often heard Europeans ridicule the Americans because our country is so young and they feel like we haven’t paid our dues, as if we just got lucky. But at least our young age and the fact we’ve been a nation of immigrants right from the start means that we don’t have people looking back 1000 years and longing for those “good old days”, right? Even our Tea Party only reaches back ~225 years for that! I’m a little confused about how even Europeans could think Medieval Europe was something that should be restored, though! Don’t they realize most people use “medieval” as a pejorative!?
Craig: well said. there has never been a serious Marxist movement in the United States, and it’s hard to imagine a successful American fascism (although there have been American fascists).
You might be interested to study the (once) popular use of Knights Templar symbols in American York Rite Freemasonry. Millions of men have probably gone through those rituals and yet America is not a bunch of Breiviks.
p.s. Scottish Rite Freemasonry as well is full of templar symbols and myths.
“Their contemporary warriors are intellectuals, not workers, and they are more often masked as liberals or moderates than openly leftist revolutionaries.”
This glib description does not do justice to how dangerous these “intellectuals” are.
Lenin was once an “intellectual” and given the space, opportunity, and power to follow his ideology killed and oppressed millions. Ditto Pol Pot, Mao, and countless others.
Guns don’t kill people, utopias do. Fukuyama was wrong (as events have shown) to believe that history was over. If you doubt what these “intellectuals” want look no further than their current efforts to create a kinder, gentler atheist collectivist world out of the U.S., without the gulags, but also without any devout Christians or Jewish folks, and with institutional and official attacks against entrepreneurs and free enterprise.
Do not believe for a minute that the Gramscian wind-up robots in government, education, and industry – or the ticking meme bombs planted by Soviet intelligence towards the end of the cold war – simply evaporated, or that they are harmless. Our economic collapse, for example, is in no small part due to the outcome egalitarianism which came from these “intellectuals” and their ideology, and decades of teaching it and giving it priority in various bully pulpits. There are other areas where ideology continues to have an effect as well. I’m happy the Soviet Union itself has gone, and that Red China has embraced some market reforms, but marxism and its derivative ideologies are like an infection that never goes away completely without amputation.
i certainly don’t think “they are harmless.” i said they are not what Breinik believes they are.
“The second, “Islam,” has been moribund for centuries.”
Tell that to the women living in Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood.
…not to mention the Coptic Christians that live in constant fear of their Muslim PROTECTORS in that Islamic utopia.
Don’t immanentize the eschaton. Good book covering this in a larger scope: Science, Politics, and Gnosticism by Eric Vogelin.
Hey, Marxism and Islam are dead, kiddies, what me worry? Of course what Ledeen can’t see or won’t see is that Cultural Marxism and Jihadism are very much alive and delivering a one-two punch to Bourgeois/Christian decencies, what’s left of them.
Well said, ricpic. I agree.
Breivik is a perfect example of the modern terrorist, of whatever stripe. All of whom define the enemy as “anybody who is not exactly like me”. Up to and including relatives.
As for comparing himself and his putative “movement” to the Knights Templar, I’d say the Teutonic Order of the Knights of the Holy Vehm would be a closer comparison. They, too, were perfectly willing to kill anybody in their own country who they defined as “not us”, let alone how they felt about “Slavs”. (See “Alexander Nevsky”, directed by Sergei Eisenstein.)
The Templars, by comparison, were brutally suppressed by the Catholic Church in the early 1300s for, among other things, refusing to lend troops to the Albigensian “Crusade”, aka the suppression of the “heretical” Cathars in western France. Their “heresy” was saying that every person could appeal to G-d directly, rather than needing a Prince of the Church to intercede for them. (The very idea!)
I’m sure Breivik would have had no problem with such a genocide. After all, they were… different.
Someone like him can always find a reason to kill. Or just make it up. Ultimately, like “Scorpio” in the movie “Dirty Harry” (1971), or the real-life “Zodiac” serial killer he was based on, the real reason they kill is that they like it.
You cannot reason with a nut, or expect them to obey laws. All you can do is lock them up when they finally go off the deep end. Unfortunately, by then it’s generally too late- for somebody else.
clear ether
eon
Nutjob he is, however there is a method to his madness. He didn’t go after the “different” people (i.e. the muzlims)he went after his own kind – specifically, the children of those he felt betrayed him in order to wound them deeply. This was personal to him and he wanted to inflict a personal wound upon his enemies.
“Thus they conjure up yet another phantasmagorical mass movement — a vast conspiracy with countless followers, some hidden, others public. There is no such movement. Yes, there are crazy people who think they are fighters in the great cataclysmic struggle of the days of the Last Judgment (and if you want a fine survey and analysis of the enormous variety of such beliefs, and their dreadful effects over the centuries, get yourself a copy of Richard Landes’ timely study “Heaven on Earth”). But I doubt there are enough of them to feed more than a handful of Knights Templar, let alone a full-fledged political movement.”
Well, yes and no. Don’t blow off the far right in Europe just yet. Anders Breivik was clearly an insane man who did an insane thing. But the far-right has been making a big comeback in Europe, especially in places like France (La Penn) and in Germany. European anger over “multiculturalism” and Muslims refusing to assimilate into local cultures is a very real problem in Europe today, one that was even recognized by Angela Merkel in a speech recently. So the hostility towards Muslims (and by extension, Islam) in Europe is very real and should not be ignored. I just wonder what will happen there if the Europeans suffer an attack on the scale of 9/11. The Madrid, London, and now Oslo attacks were bad, but nothing on the scale of 9/11. How will the Europeans react to something like that and how will the far right lash out? Europeans are capable of all sorts of things, such as Nazi concentration camps and, more recently, pogroms against Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. It can happen again and the Europeans ignore this warning at their own risk.
start doing some research into the pogroms against the muslims of bosnia and kosovo.
don’t forget to search for organ matching serb hosts and barbecued serbs. the western media has done quite a number on the rewritting of history. …and yes shillary clinton is up to her neck in blood on this one too.
Maybe it means and signifies nothing? Just one man with a desire to kill and the means at his disposal.If the geography was slightly different or the traffic conditions the outcome could have been much less tragic. Or if there was a bit more agression in the teenagers. I can’t imagine a group of military cadets or even sportsmen/women being slaughtered in such high numbers without more effective resistance.There may well have been heroic resistance to him so I will not criticise the victims but something about their response seems too passive.
Davidstanley:
I agree that we oughtn’t criticize the victims; we’ve no idea whether any of them were Todd Beamer “Let’s roll” types who attempted to take out the bad guy, and may merely have failed. That information is unavailable to us.
But you’re right to suggest that “Maybe it means and signifies nothing? Just one man with a desire to kill and the means at his disposal.”
One of the most important lessons a person can learn is: It’s an imperfect (my Sunday School teacher always said “fallen”) world. Stuff goes wrong. People are flawed, and some of them are crazy. In any large enough population, some of the crazy people want and are able to do a lot of damage. There are, likely enough, about a dozen or so Breiviks (or reasonable facsimiles thereof) in the United States right now.
But this does not mean that we need to drastically change some government policy. The fact that some folk are murderously insane is not the fault of our laws. It would be that way even if our policies were the best they can possibly be. In fact, they might be the best they can possibly be; but that won’t prevent this kind of horror-show from happening anyway.
That’s life. If you react to the murders by changing your policies, all that happens is you move away from policies which may already be as good as they can be, towards inferior ones…and you’ll STILL periodically suffer the ravages of crazy men with guns.
I don’t mean to say that our current laws actually are ideal, or that those of Norway are. I don’t think they are. But my point is that even if they were, this kind of thing would still happen.
A lot of people aren’t mature enough to cope with that reality. The temptation, whenever a tragic evil thing happens, is to say, “We have to DO SOMETHING!” So then they gyrate and flagellate and whip themselves into a furor of social revolution only to find, in the end, that their society is no better off, their populace is whiplashed and exhausted from unnecessary changes, and despite it all, tragic and evil things still happen.
Yes. Given the number of people killed and more probably wounded, the first thing that popped into my mind is: Why didn’t someone at least try to do something? It takes time to kill more that 60 people, not to mention reloading, moving from place to place, having to cover a 360 degree span, etc. Mind you, shock is likely a strong factor; but so to is the rush of adrenalin that gears people for action. It will be interesting to read anything else that emerges from this island spree.
It looks as though one thing that needs to change in Norway is disaster response.
And, yes, I hope it will become clear, eventually, what kind of response those poor young people being targeted by this evil killer gave. We have heard about those who were able to swim away, and those brave vacationers nearby who came in small boats to their rescue.
One does wonder what might have been done with rocks, or other things that might be thrown, or charging the guy … and no, I haven’t been shot at in my life, and I hope I don’t sound like I’m blaming the victims (may God comfort their families).
I also hope that one can deplore the actions of this murderer, and yet also allow and understand that members of a population might react negatively (but legally) to massive immigration by another population who plan to make use of a social welfare system they certainly never paid into, in a country whose dominant culture they have no interest in joining.
I second your comment. I think you said it well and hit the right balance. Which is not easy.
Well said.
I understand what you mean when you say that Marxism and Islam are dead, but I wonder if that is not a bit of an overstatement. While there is no longer much of the original brand of Marxism, neo-Marxism and other permutations are still around doing their mischief, in unions for example, but in other places, too.
Islam seems to be using a conquer-emigration tactic. While we worry about jihadists and terrorists, as we must, they have filled whole cities with Muslims, both in Europe and in this country (Detroit and Minneapolis, for example).
We do, indeed, live in a new world.
The second, “Islam,” has been moribund for centuries. Virtually all the countries calling themselves “Islamic” are failed states whose citizens are starving, whose industries are generations behind those of the contemporary West, and whose most talented young people are mostly eager, even desperate, to live and work in infidel countries.
The world’s fastest growing religion is moribund? In a dhimmi-minded world perhaps but not otherwise. It hasn’t taken long to demonstrate that Breivnik’s insane killing of innocents will be a great asset to the cause of Islamism even causing people like Ledeen to deny that Islam is a threat. But perhaps Michael Ledeen’s fantasy that Islam is moribund can be explained by his closing statement.
The world we knew and believed we understood is gone, and we don’t know where we’re headed. No wonder chaos disrupts orderly thought, and mythology replaces common sense.
Brilliant commentary Mr. Ledeen. Like generals who usually fight the last war, ideological combatants battle over yesterday’s failed dogmas. The most recent good new political idea is the concept of republican government by consent of the governed. No one has come up with a better one, since. The most recent good new economic idea is classically liberal free market capitalism tempered by reasonable “rules of the road” so the game can be played on a level playing field. The most recent good new idea for social organization is the nuclear family.
None of the best ideas is without serious flaws, except when compared to every other idea for political, economic and social organization. People are flawed, so any system devised for people will reflect the flaws of the participants, but the utopian ideologues cannot live with that reality. For most sane people, the religious and ideological utopias so many are forced to live in turn out to be living hell.
I’ll take the US of A, with all its faults.
me too, Laddie. Bigtime.
Well said!
One man’s mythology is another man’s history and or religion. And every great endeavor or cause leans on all three for reason and inspiration. In ‘The Iliad’, did not the heroes look back to patriarchs such as Jason and Heracles and the great battles of their fathers and grandfathers to lift their spirits and to give them the volition to make war? I believe they did. And what you’ve written here about Breivik and his cause is just as applicable to Trojan War and the hundreds of wars that have been waged since.
patrick: quite right. man is a myth-making animal. i think joseph campbell said that. and freud, too.
Good analysis regarding “civilization and it’s discontents.” Besides being a myth making animal, regarding humans I’m reminded of Conrad Lorenz and his observations on human violence, defensive and aggressive, as being most comparable to the rat.
Don- really- this was not about animal behavior.
It was premeditated (in a weird way)-maybe it can be
whittled down to -frustration against women as someone said…
but -not about aggression as an animal killing to eat,
or, a trapped animal lashing out in defense…
I have been trying to post 3 times.
I firmly disagree with your last statement.
This fellow compares in no way to Trojan war or any other war in history.
Well we know where we’re going
But we don’t know where we’ve been
And we know what we’re knowing
But we can’t say what we’ve seen
And we’re not little children
And we know what we want
And the future is certain
Give us time to work it out
We’re on a road to nowhere
Come on inside
Taking that ride to nowhere
We’ll take that ride….
Talking Heads, Road to Nowhere
Tolbert: man, i wish i could sing well…
Why does nobody point out that the leftist agitprop smear campaign is a self-defeating argument? If “words have consequences” like the smear mearchants like to “observe” do words in the Quran, in a fatwa, or in leftist anti-American “kill-bush” publications then have consequences? Where is the leftist outcry when communists, labor guys, democrats, etc. indoctrinate kids and students with “get in your face”-tactics? Where are they when democrats claim that republicans seek to MURDER granny and disabled children etc.?
They are not their. It’s another smear campaign.
Words don’t have consequences, actions have consequences. Guns don’t kill, humans do. Books don’t kill, humans do. This guy was a lunatic who fanatsized about being an important part of a fascist movement. As it turns out, no real right-winger would ever support him. He wasn’t on our side. We are not dancing in the streets like supporters of babaric jihadis do.
Meanwhile, nobody holds to account the vile smear merchants or the jihadis who proudly take responsibility for the murder of innocent.
But if there is an opportunity to smear political rivals, the leftists will gladly engage in lies and deceptions. If their propaganda words would have consequences, their would be mass lynchings. Nobody talks as aggressive and hateful as the leftists. But there are no consequences. It takes a deranged freak who misstates critics of islam and CLAIMS to be part of them. The fact that so many muslims live freely in our “xenophobic” societies, even many of the vile, aggressive enemies of our very own societies, without having to fear for their lives, reveals the propaganda.
It’s like Hillary faking a hard case to “show” how evil the American health care system is, or the idiot who robbed a bank for $1 to get “free health care in prison”. Or the made-up hate speech smears against the tea party. That’s the best example you can come up with? Ridiculous. You need to fake it, because there are no real cases to be found.
I would tell you to shut up. But I believe part of free speech are vile lies and smears. So be it. You will call us nazis anyways, not matter what. Repeating idiotic propaganda might convince indiots, but it won’t make it true.
I apologize for the lenghty tirade. I’m mad, but I won’t hurt anyone. I’m a right-winger, I’ll take care of my own issues and behave civilized.
Mr. Ledeen: As I read your article, I’m puzzled a bit, because I’m trying to square the circle, or circumscribe the square. Wise writers like Steyn, Fallacci, and yourself, among many others, have been ringing the bell on supremacist Islamic jihadism since 9/11. We’ve been slow to wake up to the danger of this movement’s growing influence in the West, and its unholy alliance with Progressivism in their shared attempt to tear down what remains of the Judeo-Christian West.
Truly, I don’t understand. Is this Caliphate movement a growing threat that needs to be undermined and fought, else it will dhimmitize the West and bring down or diminish our freedoms? Or is its dead corpse moldering away in the form of failed states? Or both?
Forgive me for sounding dumb and probably missing the answer hidden in plain sight in your article. Thank you, as always, for your insightful writing.
Smallish: it’s a good, wise and fair question. we have to fight jihad, which draws its strength, or most of it, from the wealthy states that support it. It’s not a mass movement growing by leaps and bounds. So we have to fight the germs pouring out of the moldering corpse i suppose.
The fall of Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia, etc. and the violence in half a dozen other islamic countries contradicts you. We are seeing the beginning of a worldwide caliphate and I don’t care how long it takes – this period of time will be looked back upon as the flashpoint.
I’ll have to agree with Lolly here on this one. There were worldwide conferences promoting caliphates:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToX_4iJCQl4
http://thewestislamandsharia.blogspot.com/2011/03/resurrecting-caliphate.html
Plenty more sites promoting a global caliphate.
We traditionally bury corpses to mitigate the pouring out of germs. Some of the rotting corpses now lie unburied.
texin i discarded your comment because it made a slanderous statement about me; we do not play Hump the Host here…
Communism, fascism, Islam are dead… and we’re fighting “the germs pouring out of the moldering corpse…”
Or maybe we’re fighting the living dead. In fact, the zombie meme is fairly widespread, maybe there’s some unconscious understanding of what you’re saying.
Apologies to Snork, I missed your comment and you got there first.
And what about this killer being spawned from being lost in the World of Warcraft? he was a Mage (?) with super mythical magical powers.
delusions within illusions? Who stands to gain fom this?
sometimes we all lose, DanS.
Mr. Ledeen,
Please explain what distinguishes the United States from the mythic West that no longer exists? How does the United States survive the death of the tradition that gave it birth?
Joseph: reread the Declaration, we’re revolutionaries. if we can keep it.
Actually, he makes it pretty clear that it’s cultural and not economic Marxism that he’s bothered by. He understands that economic Marxism is dead, but it’s the cultural Marxism, as inspired by people like Gramsci and that has emerged as political correctness, that he is obsessed with.
Michael …had this sad individual attacked muslims the narrative would be much different.
he may have accomplished bring attention to his ideas much more then other way may have. sort of like the highway shootings in california. they improved peoples driving habits.
he has applied a cost to those who make decisions that affect others. those people (the so-called leader class) act as though they have immunity and impunity.
(I do not condone his actions …they are horrible).
….I don’t blame you Michael, it is a topic that is forbidden in our PC culture. ..that way it gets to happen again and will will be shocked then too.
accountability for conservatives but not socialists.
What a ridiculousness article. Did author bother to read his manifesto? Obviously not. Then why to write?
Most blatant error: Marxism is dead.
Yes, of course. But LOL, he he was talking about Cultural Marxism, which is translation of Marxism from economic terms to cultural terms. Cultural Marxism is very much alive in US academia and dominates all our policies: Guy liberation, feminism, identity politics etc. Google Frankfurt school. See “History of Political Correctness” by Lind.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8630135369495797236
The manifesto borrows some of Lind’s ideas.
Not exactly. Communism and Islam(ism) aren’t dead, they’re undead. And they’re going to keep rising from their graves and causing trouble for the foreseeable future, and I’m sure long after you and I are dead. As long as there are vainglorious narcissistic people, there will be ideologues trying to create utopia, and there will other ideologues like Breivik with their own brand of utopia.
bravo, snork, for the line of the day. they are not dead, they’re undead. speaking of which, have you read “The Historian”?
Mr. Leeden: while I think and I always thought this site has some very pathetic writer one of whom is Dan dawer, who continously moan and grad about the leftist in Europe and Norway were he resides, achronic complainer who instead leaving norway just moeans. and the very fact that the operators and the owners of this site have alearned a great lesson forn the dispacable Iranian government where as soon as soeone disagrees with the, he/she is censored I thought you were the voice of reason speacially when you write about Iran as you know that is the country that I am from. but this article you have written is so disturbing it reminds of all the politcally correct people out there. you are white washing this guy. period. and that is criminal to say the least. the left wing media is calling him a right wing exrtemist and you are just white washing him with political philsophy. Look call what he is a TERRORIST. he is a terrorist just like hiter, castro, ahmadinejad, bin laden, taliban and carlos. why are elevating his status? noe the MSM here and abroad blaming people like Robert Spencer and Jihad Watch.com Pamela Geller and Geert wilder for fanning the anti muslim feeling in this douchbag. no he is a terrorist. People like robert spencer are hero! instead now they are getting the shaft.
m
I agree.
too many people giving aid and comfort to the enemy. too much political correctness to address the issues. the conservatives always fall for alinsky tactics.
collectively we have learned nothing.
well nobody’s perfect, General, and some DO learn, albeit they generally have to be stunned several times. you’ve certainly learned, and the original definition of “neoconservative” referred to former lefties who had learned after being “mugged by reality…”
it’s a fight. we’re still in the early rounds. probably.
to be sure it looks very different from our house, what with our kids on the battlefield and all…
With apologies to Zombie.
Israel has chosen to respond in a much different way:
http://1389blog.com/2011/07/24/utoya-attack-shows-magnanimity-of-israel-and-vacuity-of-bds-campaign/
A poem by Kipling may well characterize the European reaction to uncontrolled immigration:
It was not part of their blood, It came to them very late,
With long arrears to make good, when the Saxon began to hate.
They were not easily moved, They were icy – willing to wait
Till every count should be proved, ere the Saxon began to hate.
Their voices were even and low. Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show when the Saxon began to hate.
It was not preached to the crowd. It was not taught by the state.
No man spoke it aloud when the Saxon began to hate.
It was not suddenly bred. It will not swiftly abate.
Through the chilled years ahead, when Time shall count from the date
That the Saxon began to hate
While I find numerous links to white supremacist sites that credit Kipling with that, it does not appear in my hardcopy collection of his collected verse, or any online collection of his verse.
Is there any actual evidence that he wrote it as opposed to someone just attaching his name to it?
That’s a cleverly written little piece but it seems entirely too crude in message to have been written by Kipling, so I tend to agree with Sam though I admit I’m not willing to spend time looking into it. On that note of Saxons and Norrwegian modern-day crusaders, though, check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3r0emrV_8E
I’d be surprised if none of those “views” were from Anders Breivik.
I’d have rather he’d given this a closer look, myself:
The Wanderer
http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=get&type=text&id=wdr
And a side note for the BBC snobs: I’d really like to see your snooty journalists read that gibberish on the left side of the screen there and tell us again how British English is the “original” :p
Because of the fickle nature of humanity, the world will always be in a turmoil. The future will always be unknown, and there will always be evil in it. The best thing to do is stay the course of what you know is right, learn from history so plan for your future wisely, have faith in your spiritual afterlife because you follow Jesus’ path to God, and just help who you can along the way.
Killing innocents is never an option. Hurting innocents is never an option. Although this man believed he was doing justice;in fact, he was acting for evil. Just like the Muslim Jihadists and every other person/philosophy/culture who rationalizes sin. Let’s all pray for this type of nonsense to stop – though history tells us it never will.
“We’re living through a revolutionary moment, all over the world. The world we knew and believed we understood is gone, and we don’t know where we’re headed. No wonder chaos disrupts orderly thought, and mythology replaces common sense.”
This reminded me of the book I’ve been wading slowly through, “The Fatal Conceit” by Hayek. It’s a look at the evolution of civilization from an economic point of view and concludes that the set of morals that allowed humans to multiply over the earth are the bedrock of prosperity. Morals include property rights, truthfulness, committment to contracts, etc. He states these were developed over time because those who respected them prospered. These morals lie between rational thought and instinct. Socialism claims to replace these traditions with rational rules; it seems to me that we in the West (Europe and the US) are descending backward into tribal culture as socialist thought has permeated our culture (socialist as in the idea that we can replace tradition with rational concepts).
I would be interested to see your analysis of Hayek’s work. Thanks for the article.
Hayek=truly great thinker
#34, Yes, this runs right up to what I feel is the essence of Western societies and governments. They are based generally on consent of all parties that the social and governmental structures and rules acknowledge and affirm in action that all have a voice in the decisions, and all have equal opportunity. The accompanying assumption is that all are intrinsically equal humans. For almost a century in the US and somewhat longer in Europe, there has been an erosion of this foundational consensus. Perhaps unintentionally, but we have somehow arrived at a point where the policies and plans which affect daily life and opportunities are set by mostly non elected bureaucracies. Most people are circumscribed in their daily activities by these agencies. There are large numbers of people who have come to accept the idea that some folks should not be making their own decisions. There has been a large increase in numbers of those who feel that having family money, an Ivy degree, a BMW, a K street corner office, a government or “advocacy” sinecure, or simply a more “proper” or “informed” moral or political outlook somehow grants greater weight to their opinions and beliefs. This has come to be felt by many as a “duty” to “help” through regulation an expanding share of other people’s lives. While I don’t subscribe to all the points, Mr. Codevilla has offered a very important look at this problem in “The Ruling Class”. The erosion of confidence in the present system, and the non assimilation of many immigrants and large numbers of the current population will IMHO mean the end of representative government, even before the situation described by Chalmers Johnson arrives. Yes huge numbers of people still think the US is the best place on earth, particularly compared to most undeveloped countries. We have seen the results of shake and bake “governments” and “countries” emplaced in the rush to decolonization No amount of _____Spring or military “liberation” can create the education, affinity, and consensus necessary for free governments of free people. All the “imposed shared misery” states have failed, and one could place Shariaic Islam in that group as presently delineated. In the end, the revolutionary concepts underpinning the US speak to the hearts and minds of most people. When folks have rising expectations that are stymied, a climate receptive to huge change can form rapidly. In most of Europe, and in the US, a century of freedom and progress has bogged down into a system of “management” rather than a “participatory” outlook shared by all. Unless a new consensus is reached, the future looks dim. BTW, Mr. Ledeen, where on the Pournelle Axes would you place Sharia/Islam? GBUSA
The biggest myth is that the world – including Europe, Marxism, Islam, and everything – is or every has been stable and comprehensible. Everybody wants to bring back the good old days. The fact is, the good old days never existed. It’s ALWAYS been CHAOS. Nobody knows what’s going on and nobody’s in charge. Not even the central planning of the enlightened Social Democrats can protect people from unintended consequences.
Bugs: Yeah, lots of myths out there. We got spoiled in the half-century after WWII. Remember when the smarties all told us, after the Wall came down, that all future conflicts would be economic? And Osama was plotting away. And the mullahs were killing Americans. And…
Yep. The Cold War gave the appearance of stability. We “knew” who the good guys and the bad guys were, who was on whose side. (Of course, that was an illusion, too.) Now, as your article says, it’s difficult to tell what’s what. Nobody knows whether the revolts in Libya and Egypt are a good thing or a bad thing, in the short run or the long. Nobody knows whether this Norwegian guy is a lone crank or the vanguard of a revolution. That’s chaos coming back. You can’t predict chaos. These days you have to wait and see, and be ready for whatever happens.
things are never as good as they once were and they never really were
You cannot reason with a nut, or expect them to obey laws. All you can do is lock them up when they finally go off the deep end.
But is Breivik a nut? Or just a deeply evil man?
We can raise the same question about other mass murderers, whether they operated on a relatively small scale like the Virginia Tech shooter or on the grand scale like Hitler or Stalin.
Were those men crazy or just plain evil?
I’ve often heard people refer to Hitler as crazy but did any psychiatrist or judge anywhere ever render a widely-accepted opinion on that?
As I understand it, mental illness can be diagnosed by a qualified professional and must meet certain reasonably clear standards; you aren’t insane simply because you have unusual ideas or are angry or aggressive.
The reason I raise this is that most legal systems make allowances for those suffering from mental illness and don’t hold them responsible for their actions. Such systems hospitalize the mentally ill and treat them. Some advocates claim that such people have sometimes been cured. Legal systems sometimes release such people only to find that they “re-offend”.
If Breivik is indeed insane by whatever definition Norway uses, he may find himself in a mental institution for a few years, then released. If he is found to have his full faculties, he will be imprisoned for the maximum 21 years but possibly with extensions on that sentence until such time as the authorities are satisfied that he is no longer a danger to society. Clearly, his future is going to be very different depending on what judgement is made about his sanity.
Norway’s dirty little secret: It is the most Jew-hating country in Europe. Kosher slaughter of animals is outlawed, while the nearly identical Muslim halal method is legal. Eleced government officials openly support Islamic terrorists. Clearly, they are a people who must have felt right at home in Hitler’s greater Reich, after the initial insult of a German invasion had worn off.
I would wager the German occupation troops committed less crime than the hordes of Muslim immigrants that now occupy parts of Norway.
“And what you’ve written here about Breivik and his cause is just as applicable to Trojan War and the hundreds of wars that have been waged since.”
Wrong,wrong, wrong.P of Atlantis.(-THe first part of what you said I agree with-about myth-making…)There is no, will never be a comparison of what
Breivik did to the *(&(*Trojan War and hundreds of wars waged since.
Do you believe you actually said that? I know I heard a who?
The events that take place in ‘The Iliad’ and the subsequent sacking of Troy were every bit a bloody and horrific as what happened in Norway, more so. But that wasn’t the point I was making. I was commenting on the use of romantic and heroic myth as a lodestar of sorts for why people believe and act.
One of the best things I’ve read on the Norseman and his act is:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/07/mark_twain_on_the_oslo_tragedy.html
With all due respect, there’s some B******T being said here about the Iliad.
There is actually a heroic code of conduct assumed in Homer, and certain excessive types of slaughter are condemned. For example, the gods don’t like the excessively cruel treatment Achilles meets out to Hector’s corpse, and they keep it from rotting (and see it restored to his family). Yes, warriors commit atrocious acts; but the gods may hold it against them and give them a tough time returning home…
For the Trojan Horse, you’re talking about Vergil’s Aeneid, reflecting a sensibility from a later millennium; but yes, stabbing Priam’s young son Polites in the back (i.e., as he’s trying to run away)and before his parents’ eyes, or slaughtering old Priam himself on the altar he’s taken refuge at, are definitely ‘crimes against humanity’ that we are encouraged to judge the Greek Pyrrhus harshly for–maybe these are reminiscent of a man with automatic weapons mowing down unsuspecting young teens.
But please don’t tell me that Homer glorifies inhumanity.
VIRGIL. As in Virgil’s Golden Egg and Other Neapolitan Miracles, hot off the press…
I write VERGIL because his gentile name was Vergilius (Publius Vergilius Maro).
The middle ages liked the spelling Virgilius (hence Virgil) because of the conflation of his name with the word virga, which meant (among other things) magician’s wand.
The classical poet Vergil seemed to the middle ages to have been a sorcerer (thus, a wielder of the virga) because of what they took to be “prophetic” poems, like the 4th Eclogue (predicting the birth of a wondrous child who would usher in a Golden Age), and because he described the Underworld in the 6th book of the Aeneid. That’s why he seemed an appropriate guide to Inferno and Purgatorio, to Dante.
But my classical leanings make me want to stick to the classical spelling, Vergil.
Suzanne, Suzanne, how can you be so accurate when I wrote a book starring “Virgil”? Have a look.
@ Mr. Ledeen
“This archaic mythology is not only Breivik’s; the Marxists and the radical Islamists embrace it just as avidly.”
Indeed. Some of the Marxists get nice comfy jobs in the unversity or get even called on by the media for insightful comments.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9547000/9547585.stm
“Norwegian philosopher Lars Gule believes he argued with Anders Breivik on an online forum, … When it comes to opinions and statements, he was not alone… it shows some of the warped sense of reality that is operating” in certain Norwegian communities, he said.
Who the hell is Lars Gule and why should you care? Well, Lars has a terrorist past himself, whose associates have blood on their hands, and the media turns to him for his views as a noted “philosopher.”
http://www.religiousfreedomwatch.org/anti-religious-extremists/andreas-heldal-lund/heldal-lund-terrorist-lars-gule/
I don’t know anything about Scandanavian politics or their groups, but isn’t a bit odd to be quoting a guy caught with explosives on his way to murder Jews?
Norway is becoming more enigmatic by the day.
How about simply limiting non-European immigration into Europe and America and Australia? Just do it. And if the birthrates still don’t go up, legalize polygamy for a generation or two.
Assuming we simultaneously leave the rest of the world alone, and don’t start fighting amongst ourselves again, the result will be peace, prosperity and the salvation of the West.
“Virtually all the countries calling themselves “Islamic” are failed states whose citizens are starving, whose industries are generations behind those of the contemporary West, and whose most talented young people are mostly eager, even desperate, to live and work in infidel countries.”
Islam is not the host. It’s the virus, a mind virus to be exact, also known as a meme (Chapter 11, “the Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins). It infects well functioning countries and turns them into half dead zombie states.
A single man murders hundreds and we are driven to analysis.
Islamic maniacs are murdering MILLIONS in Sudan by starving them to death.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxZQITUkX2U&feature=player_embedded#at=60
I understand the obsession over the single murderer. I don’t understand why folks beat themselves up over thinking the perpetrator was a muslim.
BREIVIK’S MESSIAH COMPLEX
Breivik is a lunatic with a messiah complex. He believes that he’s the heaven sent savior of Norway and European civilization from Islamic subversion, which is very real and growing. After many years of trying to awaken Norway to no avail Breivik completely lost his mind and humanity and came to insanely resent and hate his country and people. In a fit of psychotic rage he decided that Norway would ignore his message and mission no more. So on July 22nd he struck slaughtering 76 Norwegians as a blood sacrifice to his cause. As much as he hated Moslems he hated his people more. Breivik has made his mark on history and has entered the annals of infamy. In the end this mass murdering terrorist thug has more in common with the murdering prophet Mohammed than with the non-violent, world renouncing, ascetic Jesus Christ; more in common with Islamic jihadists like bin Laden than with peaceful, civilized, virtuous Americans like Robert Spencer and Pam Geller.
Click my name ApolloSpeaks and read my widely linked Townhall piece, “Apollo Takes On LoonWatch Over Norway Massacre And The Bashing Of Spencer And Geller.”
I rarely have time to go back and analyze the arguments which may be posted in response to my statements—because there are so many far-right-wing-ultra-conservative Internet sites to be read. In positing the following comment, the only thing I ask is that whether the assertions be mine or others,
divest yourselves of all pejorative thinking and investigate for yourself to find the truth:
“You forgot the Christian myth where the Christian Fundamentalist extremists dream of a government that revels in the glory of god.
If you want to be entertained, watch FOX, MSNBC, or CNN. If you want to be informed, watch LinkTV or FreeSpeechTV for real news, analysis, and documentaries.
“Marxism” and “Islam.” He needn’t have bothered; they both died a long time ago.
The first was effectively demolished in the Cold War with the defeat of the Soviet Empire.
Looks like Breivik is not the only one who lives in a fantasy world. Cultural Marxism (CM) has been internalised by a significant proportion of the West’s people, especially the elites. (BTW the Soviets only paid lip service to Marxism for the last couple of decades of the USSR at a time when serious Marxism was flourishing in just about every university in the West. When it comes to CM the USA has been the vanguard state and society from the “re-education” of post-war Germany to Hollywood to Corporate America’s export of moralistic shaming tactics in the form of diversity workshops encouraged and backed by US power).
Their contemporary warriors are intellectuals, not workers
If they were only workers they’d be irrelevant. It is because they are intellectuals, along with government officials, artists, etc, that they are relevant.
The second, “Islam,” has been moribund for centuries. Virtually all the countries calling themselves “Islamic” are failed states
I agree with the above. As long as the numbers of Muslims living in the West is a small percentage of the overall population Islam is nothing to worry about. Too many conservatives are piddling their pants worrying about Islam. A lot of them are using the old Cold War template but with Islam instead of communism as the all encompassing threat.
Just look at the thoroughly disgusting remarks by the Norwegian ambassador to Israel AFTER the massacre, in which he showed greater “understanding” of Palestinians killing Jews than of a Norwegian massacring fellow countrymen.
I recall a British expat telling me Scandinavians (well, Norwegians and Swedes) are nice, dependable people but they do have this annoying habit of telling us what is wrong with our country. Just think of Norwegian-American Rick Steves of PBS. It’s as if he’s an actor being told to ham it up as Mr Smug, yet there’s no acting involved, that’s just the way he is.
There must be somewhere out of here, said the joker to the thief
There’s too much confusion and I can’t get no relief
– Bob Dylan
Assuming my last post is eventually displayed, on the subject of Rick Steves and Norwegian smugness just see his Iran documentary for PBS. In it he defends Islamic treatment of girls saying parents just don’t want their daughters to grow up like Britney Spears therefore we should show some understanding regarding how they have to dress. Yet during one of his travel shows he unleashed on religious conservatives in the US saying he could not show some of the art of Florence (I think) because religious conservatives prevent PBS from showing any nudity. (I’m doubtful of that) To him US religious conservatives are contemptible backward barbarians but in Iran they aren’t so bad. A perfect example of the Norwegian worldview.
Coisty: all civil posts relevant to the topic get posted. however i also have a day job so there will be delays when i’m pretending to work…
In regard to demonsrating the “undeadness” of Islamism (which I use to refer to the political manifestation of the religion, not to the religion itself) and Marxism, approach it from the opposite angle, reverse-engineering, if you will, by looking at who these pseudo-faiths consider their enemies.
In the US, in our revolutionary moment, the bete-noir of the establishment left are the conservative counter-media, which consists of Fox News, talk radio, and the WSJ editorial page, as they repeat ad nauseum. In opposition: the entire mass entertainment industry, the entire news industry, both print and electronic, academia from K – post-grad, and the intangible, but very real societal feeling that to be a conservative is declasse and morally inferior (and it is, of course, the former that really stings).
And yet, by their own admission, this entire intellectual and social edifice is insufficient to counter one cable news network, a half-dozen AM radio hosts, and two pages of a financial newspaper.
Can a clearer admission of defeat be possible?
Multiply all this by a million when it comes to Islam. The religion is utterly terrified–an elephant sent climbing up a flagpole by a mouse–by even the slightest appearance of dissent. No more than dissent, by even the slightest appeatance of difference that is not clearly inferior to Islam.
And with good reason. Aside from the old men who run the show, who is better off being ruled by Islamism than they would be virtually any other system outside of North Korea? (For this audience, there’s no need to go into detail.)
Confident, even slightly confident, religons, philosophies, political systems, etc., don’t fear dissent; on the contrary, they welcome it as an opportunity to prosletize, or at least clarify and educate.
Islamism and Marxism/Socialism/Progrssivism are sick and dying, resorting to repression and violence because that is all they have left.
Unfortunately, while their ongoing defeat is a great victory for Good, the deeper evils of which they are manifestations eminate from the uncorrectable flaws that make us human.
The last sentence of the fifth paragraph should read, “No; more than dissent,they are terrified by even the slightest appearance of difference that is not clearly inferior to Islam.”
My apologies
“Communism and Islam(ism) aren’t dead, they’re undead.” Perfect!
By the way Tiny, It’s “some way out of here”. I’d think that you’d know that if you were really Tiny.
Oh boy. (Yoda speaking:) Puzzled I am !
So I apologize in advance for my post that will certainly be disorganized and chaotic.
My problem with your column is this: my past (in another Country) leads me to take any (political) “myth” as an actual and real threat, not lessened but increased in its lethality by its degree of irrationality.
I think you remember what happened in Europe in the Seventies when the myths of marxism-leninism started running wild: years and years of bloody terrorism followed (Red Brigades, Action Directe, the Rote Armee Fraktion). Hundreds of people killed, thousands wounded. The neo-fascists promptly came back from their limbo and answered with the same bloody language.
And to come to our time and to what you know better than us all: Iran today is a failed country and certainly on the brink of a regime change….but how long will a change will take ? The myths of the Twelfth Imam and the folly of nuclear weapons could still have the time to trigger a second Holocaust.
Myths, certainly, but myths have their own “reality” and sometimes they are able to evoke nightmares that are actual and last for long time (the Third Reich.)
Such is islam today, and the marxism of the intelligentsia (that usually doesn’t have the common sense of the proletarians, and it is therefore more dangerous, as the middle-upper class “marxists” of the european terrorism showed.)
Should we be less worried or MORE worried ?
Of the case of the psycho in Norway I will say nothing: he wanted to kill people because he is a paranoid murderer. We will always have someone like that…
I believe that you meant “Puzzled am I!”
For a second “Confused was I”
Nothing worse than a Star Wars pedant. Unless of course it’s a Star Trek pedant, or a BSG pedant, or a DS9 pedant, or a B5 pedant.
Our lengthy comment on this interesting article is to be found at The Atheist Conservative here
http://www.theatheistconservative.com/
Michael,
I am impressed. You found subject material that titilates some of America’s intellect. As you well know, it is tough to get them to crawl out of their secure burrows and castles.
‘The Second Coming’ by William Butler Yeats reference was fitting and timely (i.e. what goes around…comes around).
Wish someone would concisely explain the original reason the Templar Knights were formed. Odds are, most “intellects” are not aware of the Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Templar Knights long twisted history.
Begging the question, has anyone checked out Anders Behring Breivik’s ancestry (think aristocracy)?
Regards.
Sean
MAPORG: thanks, i love flattery. and good thought, it’s worth checking his ancestry, altho one will get you three he’s not an aristocrat. the other thing that needs checking is his love life, of which we’ve heard nothing. if that’s the full story, it’s noteworthy.
“And what you’ve written here about Breivik and his cause is just as applicable to Trojan War and the hundreds of wars that have been waged since.”
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Breivik is a beta male nutcase -his cause is an excuse
to kill- as someone said “window dressing” -could have been any thing- This is totally incomparable to Trojan War or any war in history.
Funny you should mention dialectic materialism. I was thinking of the same concept as the President addressed the nation Monday night peppering his speech with references to corporate jet owners and hedge fund managers as he was making the case for increasing taxes. It felt as if the projetion on his teleprompter was a leaf out of Rosa Luxemburg’s pamphlets. How nostalgic. On another matter, I think the premature death of Islam has been greatly exaggerated. The weapon of choice for Islamic fundamentalists, despite popular belief, is not a car bomb, a suicide bomber or a hijacked airplane. It is, in my opinion, geometric procreation in the Western world. If kept unchecked, such lagomorphic copulations will, by virue of mathematics, lead to Muslims having majorities in Europe and ultimately in the US. And they will all have a vote. Rest assured that this writer and his family, refugees from Islamic oppression, have sufficiently educated our children about the evils of Islam and the inherent good of the US so that non of our progenies will be swayed by hocus pocus. Also rest assured that the majority of the Iranian diaspora shares the same values. But I cannot vouch for other Muslim immigrants.
those birth rates are dropping as they become richer…in Israel, for example, Arab and Israeli birth rates have virtually intersected. Europe is very different, because Europeans don’t procreate much. but even in Europe the Muslims’ birth rates are dropping.
re: Iran, that poor country has undergone the greatest drop in birth rate in the history of birth rates (and certainly NOT because they are getting richer).
I am fairly sure I know why the birth rate has dropped so dramatically in Iran. One, because of the massive inflation and nearly worthless money the cost of having and rearing children is prohibitive. Two, A majority find it sinful to introduce new souls into the current hellish environment. I talk often to a dear friend of mine from my high school days who still lives in Tehran and, although married for many many years, refuses to have children. He and his wife simply do not wish the children to suffer the same fate as they have been doomed to endure. And he was a pro Khomeini, or anti Shah (take your choice), revolutionary who refused to leave the country with my wife and I.
In Israel, “Oslo” refers to the “peace process” between Israel and the PLO that was hatched in Oslo. Given the waves of terror Israel was subjected to as a result of this process, most Israelis associate “Oslo” with terrorism and death.
This makes the new world-wide association of “Oslo” and terrorism ironic.
“Europeans don’t procreate much…”
That’s evidence in favor of the existence of a merciful God.
General P.Malaise: you speak total nonsense. Norway has an active democratic polity, national and local elections and a circulation of elites. You speak from ignorance.
Lawrence,do you worry at all about what seems to be a strong streak of antisemitism in Norway? Those remarks from the Norwegian Ambassador to Israel were pretty scary at least to my eyes.
Anti semitism in liberal Europe? Really? What a novel idea you have accidentally stumbled upon my dear doctor.
Dear Mr. Leeden:
Norway Ambassador to Israel’s comments may be scary. Yes, I worry about the difficult position Israel, and Jews inm general, face in the international community. I take comfort that under the social democratic leadership of David Ben-Gurion, Israel began a nuclear weapons program and today, by some estimates, maintains from 70 to 300 nuclear devices. Given this reality, Norway’s affect on Israel’s survival seems less threatening.
W-H-A-T A-R-E you talking about?
you are projecting or what? if you have issue with what I said I would certainly like to know what it is you mean.
Dear Michael, I think the Golden Age that must be restored in the minds and eyes of these sort of sick people is “European Fascism”. I think his terrible act was outcome of a Political racist ideological motive rather than religious. No doubt such racist acts have links to European fascism. So this Psycho sees himself as a noble defender from the true Aryans race, that includes “Nordics” of Northern Europe where he wanted to bring attention to himself and his ill ideas.
Michael, in my mind “Fascism means always Anti-Semitism”. so how we can imagine American fascism as long as Americans they who were freed Europe from the Nazis. How we can imagine American fascism as long as the United States of America is the one country that is the most hospitable to Jews while the Old Europe is still awash in anti-Semitism.
Europeans in their nature and their history are “Nazis”, their grandfathers either capitulated to the Nazis or collaborated or were Nazis themselves, while Americans are A Great Nation, are the most Revolutionary Nation has known ever in history in spreading of liberty. Today you are more people than ever in the history of the world live in free and democratic societies, while European societies are still suffering from the growth of fascist extreme Parties and from a fatal disease, called “anti-Semitism”, a BIG part is based on the Church hatred, in particular in this unhappy country “Poland”.
the debate (among scholars) over whether or not antisemitism is always part of fascism is an old one, and the biggest example of a non-antisemitic fascism is Mussolini, who was, for a little while at least, pro-Zionist. Indeed, many of the officers of the Israeli Navy were trained by fascist Italy at Civitavecchia, where today Mediterranean cruise ships come and go.
On the other hand, at a certain point antisemitism became official Italian doctrine…was it because of the alliance with Hitler? Or because fascism is intrinsically anti-Jewish?
@1. nik
Dear Sir! The horrible act by this psycho neo-Nazi has nothing to do with Neo-Conservatism philosophy as you pointed out. This is a fiasco and slander in the right of Neo-Conservatives. The dumb and blind knows that thug got all his great inspiration from fascist tenet, especially the European’s socialist communities is still suffer from the Nazi ideology. Today most of the European right wing extreme Parties still correlates with fascism as ideological references. Such as parties of the hatred, which the most successful of extreme right-wing Parties on the electoral level in most European States. Some of leaders and members of these Parties are a members of the European Parliament. They are known for their dubious statements about Jews, holocaust denial and their constant praise of Nazism.
Please do not forget that ideology you despise it “Neo-Conservatism” has played an effective role during the Cold War. the Neo-Conservatives distinct mindset had played an effective role to fell the Evil Empire “the Soviet Communism” which was a real threat to the West freedoms. Eventually they brought Americans to the most perfect possible triumph in the cold war “victory without shedding bloods”.
Nonetheless, the tenets of Neo-Conservatism continue to offer the most cogent approach to the challenge that faces the United States of America. The most important of those tenets “their struggle is moral, against an evil enemy who revels in the destruction of innocents and they ALWAYS PREFER non-violent methods, while the use of hard-power will continue to be part of the struggle”.
So, dear Sir! I think, it’s best to being a sane and wise rather than throwing false accusations in the right of others, Right!? G-d Bless!
Jassem Othman – Syrian dissident – Poland
Thank you for clarification, Michael….I did not know any thing about this point that Mussolini was pro-Zionist…Most probably because of anti-Jewish? For example, Islamic fascism is also fundamentally based on anti-Jewish and Christians, as the Koran mentions!
Mussolini was not anti-Jewish; hell, he had a Jewish mistress, even!
Clara was Jewish? I didn’t know that.
margherita serfatti was Jewish.
I haven’t read all the comments, but Leeden spouting on about how Islamism is a spent force is simply laughable. That’s the kind of thing know-nothing Leftists say. There is widespread support for Muslim extremism in the Muslim communities of the world, including in the West.
Israel faces increasing threats from Islamists who outnumber and surround us, and are heavily armed. Hamas, Hezbollah, and an increasingly Islamicised Egypt continue to threaten Israeli citizens. Hezbollah alone has thousands of rockets and has just bombed European troops in South Lebanon. The drums of war are beating, Hamas continues to stockpile rockets and mortars, and Egypt could become a Sunni Iran in a few months if the Muslim Brotherhood seize power. Jews in Paris, Leeds, Rotterdam, Malmo are fleeing, tell them about Islamism being a spent force.
Let me know about Islamism being a spent force when the next big war breaks out in the Middle-East and I’m typing this from a bomb shelter.. in Tel Aviv, Leeden.
Pathetic.
larry in tel aviv: let’s make a deal. i’ll let you know about islamism being a spent force (which i do not believe and did not say) when you learn to read and spell. how’s that?
Great responses here Mr. Ledeen. I also have a great fondness for Airedales, they are magnificent animals, fearless, direct, loyal and fun loving companions. I’ve downsized to the Airedales smaller cousin, Jack Russell terriers, they are very similar to the Airedale relatives.
I heard Bat Ye’or on the radio today, and she made a claim that Europe will be majority Islam before the year 2100 (at least, that is what I thought she was saying).
Can anyone here refute this extraordinary claim?
It would not be good enough to say “it cannot happen”, something more, eg a demographic argument, is needed? (Something along the lines that migration plus converts will not eventually exceed current christians minus athiest)?
Naturally, the interviewer left this claim unchallenged, and I was wondering why?
Opponents of Bat Ye’or, Steyn, Spencer and other right-wing commentators (who base their arguments on demography) should address this claim. Refuting it would take the wind out of their sails.
Letting the demography argument stand unchallenged essentially cedes the argument to Bat Ye’or and fellow travelers. Or alternative, it leaves only two possibilities: (1) It does not matter, or (2) a majority Islamic population in Europe is a good thing.
Personally, I am quite neutral about this, as I do not even live (or plan to live) in Europe. But I do find the claim extraordinary, and central to the dispute between people such as Spencer, Ye’or, Steyn and others on the one side, and their (mostly leftwing) detractors.
i don’t have much confidence in demographic “projections” that assume current rates will continue indefinitely. the world I live in changes all the time.
that said, i think we should pay plenty of attention to Europe. If you diss Europe, what’s left on our side? Australia, Israel, Canada, maybe New Zealand, and the Iranian people (not the regime of course)…
OK, I’ll confess that my kind have already been dissed. In many ways, the frame of reference has shifted from participating to living in shadows. That is mostly why I do not care so much about the outcome in Europe. Yet the claims by Ye’or is extraordinary and on a level of civilizational turnover into a new epoch. Almost geological in scope. Very interesting and very dramatic.
The question remains: Can you show her demographic argument to be wrong (that is — conversions added to migration and population growth will not cause a turnover before 2100)? Or even ever?
Michael, you as a great expert on Italian fascism, I would like to ask you these questions,please.
Did Margherita Sarfatti supported fascism when Italians became allied with Hitler or before? if through their alliance with Hitler, Why she was supported fascism although she was Jewish?
How can to understand that Plato’s works was one of ideological sources of fascism despite that Plato was an idealist where focused on achieving justice and morality!?
on margarita: before and during the Hitler Pact. she was very much involved in the “Empire,” she loved the image of a new “Roman Empire” etc.
on Plato, two things: first, there’s a totalitarian component, after all. second, unlikely that Mussolini spent any time with Plato. Maybe Giovanni Gentile, but not il Duce.
All elitist political thought initially sets out to establish the elusive Nirvana. In their mind, if their path is correctly followed, kumbaya will be achieved. I am sure Messrs. Marx and Engels didn’t wake up one morning to search for a system of government in which they can gingerly murder tens of millions of people to satsify their blood lust. It is only during the implementation period that the reality of self interest and individualism, two human idiosyncacies, throws a monkey wrench in their intellectual plans which necessitates the creation of a Cheka to do its dirty work. That is the ultimate cruelty of well meaning theories in which the end justifies the means. We may be witness to a milder version of such tactics in our domestic politics. Scare the elderly, scare the vets, scare the sick, destroy 401(k)’s. Lies are acceptable as long as I get my wealth redistribution.
….though the masacare seems archaic ;there are some white spots of truth in it , all of us know it and are afraid to spell it out….
Michael, Thank you again for clarification. No doubt that Margherita Sarfatti was a strong supporter of Italian fascism which was not inherently Anti-Semitic.
At that time, I think it was very difficult on most of members of the Nazi’s family to knows what was cooking in the Nazi’s kitchen or what was going on behind the scenes in their chambers!? The Jews generally were always told to have hope in life, it was the Nazi’s promise to them, where the Jews were rounded up in all the ghettoes throughout Poland and the rest of Europe and told that they were being shipped out to WORK in the east, while in fact they were shipped to “the Factories of Death” that most sadly their bodies were its fuel. So she was played a significant role in the rise of fascism, though I BELIEVE that she was NOT knows anything about the Factories of Death in this country, Poland. Or maybe love is blind;)?! However the Nazi always was repeated its lies to each one of the millions of Jews who died.
We live in a secularist world. Too many do not want to live by anyone’s rules but their own. To many of them any suggestion of a solution which does not involve violence is inadequate. If, as in the case of Iran, Syria, North Korea and China, such people gain political power, they suppress dissent by violence. The immediate future is grim. This, too, will pass but at what cost?
Geez, this is very naive and dismissive article. All three movements are very much alive, though not well defined, rational, or under a central command, (what movement really ever was). And the are all irredeemably at odds with each other. Do we not know where we are going? Surely everyone with eyes can see. We are on our way to another World War. Plain and simple. Christian/Capitalistic versus those of the “Leveling Spirit” (i.e. Communists, Socialist, Leftists) versus Islamists (and yes, those millions and millions of Islamists who support Jihad are more dangerous than the Jihadi’s themselves since they can always find numb-nuts to kill…but numb-nuts cannot always find suppport, encouragement, and money). I don’t know where Mr. Ledeen is hoping to lead us other than to wring out hands about not knowing the future….to me, it is all very much alive and transparent. Choose your side from the tempestuous sea of liberty and be strong. Needlesstosay, I won’t be on the side of the Socialists nor the Islamists. I am alive and they are alive…all of us are very much alive.
To Mr. Ledeen:
Thanks for the reference to your book about Naples and creativity (starring the poet Virgil)–there’s a link back at #38, everybody.
Thanks also for patiently responding to my ruminations. I appreciate it!
Dear Suzanne: thanks for your ruminations, greatly appreciated.
I think the thesis is correct, that this Islam is moribund. The key is their lack of a magisterium, a term borrowed from the Church which means there is an unalterable tradition, presumably initially given from the Deity, as well as a continuing authority with power to interpret the tradition for the times. Shi’a have one, but they are a small minority, and they have another problem, their branch of islam permits them to practice birth control and it is bringing down their largest nation, Iran, whose birth rate rivals Europe’s in decline. Sunnis do not have an authoritative body, and are so splintered that they could not even send representatives to the table when Europe devised a power-sharing sort of parliament–this was a couple of years ago as I recall. The scheme came to nothing because of the divisions within islam. It is more difficult for us to see because we confront sharia, and it seems like an authority. But Sunnis believe that not only may they modify sharia, they can and will do so by democratic means (cf the Gallup poll of a billion muslims, about three years back). This of course is the deathknell to tradition, as the west has seen. If there’s a vote, there’s an electorate willing to be corrupted. Your religion will spin out of control, and you will be left, inexorably, with a secular state. That their women have re-donned the hijab (that’s new, not old; islam had abandoned ‘all that’ in cooperation with colonialism and imperialism)means nothing, they are not the more virtuous for it, they only did it to awaken from economic oppression under colonialism and then the remnants thereof, and are slowly erasing all the traditional associations with their roles, beginning with education. Throughout the middle east, women are in the majority in every single university, just as women now are in every single university in the world. It is no small joke that women run Iran politically. They are organized, and since they elect not to work, they’ve got the time to play. They use islam as a self-empowerment regimen, just as women do yoga here, only they, with the garnish of revolutionary, do it with so much more flair. And just as our women have here, they have elected to skip all that messy burden of motherhood.
To me, the point is, they’re like the Puritans in so many ways, they’re like us four hundred years ago but with cell phones. And they’ll end like us, at an accelerated rate of course. In stagnation and despair. Democracy is — not the total answer. One needs a magisterium, islam ain’t got it. One must agree with the premise.
tls for this thoughtful post janet.
The Puritan metaphor is borrowed, from an essay by Bjorn Utvik, in Modernizing Islam: Religion in the Public Sphere in Europe and the Middle East. I am trying to come to terms with the subject because of a science fiction novel I’m trying to write!
keep in mind that American Christianity is different. Have you read any of the literature on the Great Awakenings in American History? You’ll be fascinated by it.
American Christianity is different from what? How?
from european christianity. Tocqueville understood this very well. i wrote about it in “Tocqueville on American Character.”
By the way, to say that islam is spent is to say nothing. ‘We’ are spent, too. I must put the ‘we’ in quotes because I personally do not believe the usual breakdown is accurate, insofar as there may well be a ‘Christian/Capitalistic’ side, but if that means capitalism as we have it now, in which the term ‘free market’ means exactly what it always meant, open war on the poor, I as a fervent Catholic opt out. I believe in small c capitalism, meaning lots of them, and regulated to the degree that monopolizing is impossible. I, like the distributists, usually associated with Catholicism, do believe in a re-distribution of ownership–over time, over generations, through taxation structures, no class warfare–but not of income, nor may I believe in unfettered competition. The great popes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were explicit regarding social justice: don’t underpay the poor, don’t underfeed or underhouse the poor, don’t overwork the poor. The requirements of anything like justice demand, however, a religious state. Justice will never be achieved in secularism. That is why we are spent, and the same plague will overrun islam, even though they think they believe in a religious state. So did Norway, once. So did England. So did they all, breaking away from the great benign force of Catholicism. But the two terms, ‘religious freedom’ and ‘religious state’ are not possible together. I opt only for a Catholic state. I guess that’s why I am writing science fiction. We need the ‘dear distance’ and we’ve lost it. That’s an interesting islamic concept.
An additional issue is that video games are normally serious as the name indicated with the primary focus on understanding rather than fun. Although, there is an entertainment part to keep children engaged, each game is generally designed to work on a specific set of skills or course, such as mathmatical or scientific research. Thanks for your posting.