Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Just Like the Nazis

Last weekend I discussed the idea of Islam, particularly radical Islam, as a virus within our cultural information systems. It provoked this response from a commenter:

You got it! If you replace “radical Islam” with “Jews” — you’ll find, that it’s literal the same comment, that was held in the NAZI propaganda film “Die Juden sind unser Unglueck”- where the Jews were compared with rats and needed to be completely erradicated. REALPUNDIT understood it well: He demanded a stronger chemo or even nuclear medicine.

I am an average german citizen and I understand it well either: This BLOG is intellectual propaganda for MASS MURDER.

Ooookay… so we’re propagandizing mass murder here. I’m glad to find that out. Gates of Vienna = Nazis; it’s not the first time we’ve encountered this particular equivalence.

The Nazi comparison is used to foreclose any further argument, to shut down any additional discussion. Tar your opponent with the Hitler brush so that his rhetorical feet will be stuck to the sidewalk, and he’ll be unable to defend his position effectively. Or so you hope.

The Nazis pioneered the Autobahn, so the Interstate highway system should never have been built, right?

The Nazis were big on hygiene, so I guess we should go back to outhouses and chamber pots.

I refuse to cave to this species of argument. If radical Islam does not resemble a particularly virulent virus, tell me where the analogy breaks down. If combating the Islamofascists in the world of ideas with informational antibodies is not a good idea, then tell me why. But don’t call me a Nazi.

First of all, any argument the Nazis used was about race, but I am arguing about culture and ideas; race has nothing to do with it.

And notice that my argument, which held that an immunological response within our communication systems was in order, is made equivalent to mass murder. That is:

Proposing a war of ideas = Killing millions of people

Now that’s the same argument that the Islamists use. They say that publishing a cartoon in a newspaper is equivalent to murdering Muslims. They maintain that insulting the Prophet is equivalent to terrorism. That cutting off someone’s head is equivalent to saying something bad about Islam.

Perhaps without realizing it, our commenter has accepted the idea that an expression of opinion is the same as an act of violence. That’s why the Left habitually segues so readily from arguing with its opponents to torching cars, looting Starbucks, and punching people with whom they disagree. Those people are Nazis, after all, so it’s all right to hurt them.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Human cultures are living information systems, and the ideas which spring up and spread are like DNA mutating and replicating within the cultural templates we all carry in our heads. Nothing I say here is new; it’s all made up of nucleotide fragments I’ve picked up here and there in my reading. They may mutate a little bit before they replicate, but they’re not new.

A healthy and well-functioning system of ideas is like a complex organism that is well adapted to its environment. It has lots of chromosomes, complex and highly-evolved interdependent systems, and a stable relationship with its surroundings.

But dangerous and destructive ideas — like Fascism, Communism, and Islamism — are like virulent pathogens. They may not last long, but before they are wiped out by their hosts’ immune systems they can wreak immense havoc and suffering.

I guess that makes me a Nazi.

And now, after reading this, you want to go out and kill millions of people, don’t you?

20 comments:

X said...

I found out a long tima ago that we're all nazis to someone.

Incidentally, hi from Paraguay. I found a net connection so I thought I'd pop in and bug you again. :)

Anyway, you've made a lot of cogent points, expecially about the difference between race and culture. The left often blurs the distinction between the two so it can shout "racism" when people criticise ideas that are currently favoured by the left. I imagine it won't be long before criticism of any leftist idea will be rebutted with "that's racist, you pigdog type person you!" or something similar.

You also forgot to mention that Hitler was merely taking socialist dogma to onbe of its ultimate conclusions, though filtered through a nationalist rather than universalist lense. The only reason leftists of today try to distance themselves from the man, who would otherwise be counted as one of the stars of the left, is because he was ultimately a nationalist. Nationalism is anathaema to the socialist movement as much as it is to islam.

FluffResponse said...

Fjordman has noted that the European reticence to confront Islam is an overreaction to the Nazi years.

Islam leads to violence. Even if you say that Koran 9:5 is specific to a historical period, the model of Muhammed holds sway. He who is the model of human behavior for all time is quite a piece of work, as Robert Spencer's October new book will detail.

Islam is childish, with continuous grievances and an unwillingness to see the "other" as anything but a mere infidel, fit for humiliation, conversion, or death. That's what is taught and that's what Islam is, though we all wish otherwise.

Outside of its channeling of human aggressive urges, Islam tends to be non-productive, with an insh'allah fatalism and a tendency of its European adherents to accept the Western dole as a right comparable to jizyah.

But mostly, Islam is a religion of resentment; quite unlike Christianity, which emphasizes gratitude.

Germany is unwilling to confront the horrible implications of Koran 9:29. As Andrew Bostom teaches, there has never been a sharia state that did not oppress people of minority cultures; and the oppression was and is often violent.

As the Islamic contingent in Europe grows, and the Islamic elbows jab at the mainstream culture with this or that demand or grievance, more Europeans will suspect that the crime of Auschwitz does not require them to give up Enlightenment traditions of open inquiry, skepticism, and free expression; or to give up the Judeo-Christian tradition of a father God who inspires and loves His children.

Muslim immigration is ahistorical and foolish. The assumptions that Muslims bring with them (and which their children or grandchildren will harken to in times of personal trouble) are dangerous to any society.

Islam has not changed and cannot change; the word of mad Allah was dictated. And Western nations have the right to refuse accommodation.

We are experiencing a major European jihad. For God's sake, stop the immigration, stop the deference, and stop the respect for a social order that can bring only sadness.

Chad Chandler said...

You wrote, "If radical Islam does not resemble a particularly virulent virus, tell me where the analogy breaks down."

I too recently compared radical Islam with a virus when defending my position to a commenter on my blog in response to this post.

Here's what I wrote:The days of lynch mobs in America are long gone, and idiot vigilante-wannabes are punished to the full extent of the law. Average people can understand that one case of rabies does not mean that we have to go out and shoot all dogs. Still, pretending that rabies is just a stereotype and not a disease is simply naive.

Anonymous said...

If you replace “radical Islam” with “Jews”

The only thing is that "radical Islam" describes an ideology/a religion, whereas "Jews" describes... people. So replacing "radical Islam" with "Jews" doesn't really make sense at all to begin with.

Of course, it doesn't make sense to differentiate between "radical Islam" and "Islam" either - it is de facto Islam apologism (yet, surprisingly, it is done on this blog anyway!), but that's another discussion, I guess...

shoprat said...

In another century or so someone will say something that one political position feels threatened by and do you know what they will say?

They will say "You sound just like an Islamic Jihaidst".

Jason Pappas said...

The odd thing is that Islamism, with its virulent anti-Semitism and a terrorism that makes Kristalnacht look benign, is the closest thing to Nazism today. If we define Nazi as a fascist that wants to kill Jews ... Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Wahabbi movement fit that bill.

It’s absurd that the fear of being like a Nazi keeps one from fighting them. But it was the unwillingness of good Germans (and most other good Europeans) to oppose the Nazis before that allowed it to fester and grow until it was too late. And it is happening again.

I can’t see how anyone can compare the European Jews on the 1930s to the Islamists of today. The Jews didn’t fly planes into the Reichstag, or bomb trains, or blow themselves up in crowds, or kill over a cartoon. European Jews were civilized and contributed to the arts and sciences far greater than their numbers.

If Europe sees the Islamists as Jews, they’ll mistake the next Churchill for Hitler! And ironically wind up following the wrong guys again.

Profitsbeard said...

If Muslims are "the new Jews", in this absurdist analogy, will they thereby simply implode from the preposterous irrationality of their arrogance and leave the rest of us in peace?

They hate the Jews, but they also want to co-opt their post-Holocaust moral stature (the wholsale theft of the Hebrew religion obviously not being enough to satisfy the Muslims' shameless urge to cosmic plunder) so Islamicists will invert the meaning of words and common sense by pretending to be the modern "oppressed" ...like the WW II Jews.

Even though Muslims are a comfortable, many-nationed majority when compared to the single state Jews, they have incredibly managed to find a host of willing suckers in the media and a mass of gullible, unhistorically-minded dupes in the infidel world, to swallow this New Big Lie.

On the contrary, and never honestly reported:

Islam is Nazi-ism with a "God".

And Mohammedan apologists lie as cunningly as the national socialists/fascists did during their ascent to Continental domination in the early 1940's.

More teaching of classical Logic (thesis/antithesis/synthesis, etc.) and more hard History are the antidote to this wasting disease of the weak-minded and will-less in the West.

We may otherwise die of bad analogies.

Anonymous said...

I've reached the conclusion that the left/Islamic sole basis of argument is psychological projection.

I'm ignoring their arguments and focussing on valid discussion of the facts. Once we enter into discussion with projectionists, you just go round and round. They win, because they keep you justifying what you're not, rather than them having to face what they are.

Baron Bodissey said...

Anonymous --

Of course, it doesn't make sense to differentiate between "radical Islam" and "Islam" either - it is de facto Islam apologism (yet, surprisingly, it is done on this blog anyway!), but that's another discussion, I guess...

I think maybe you haven't been reading Gates of Vienna for very long. If you had been, you would have seen many discussions about "moderate" Muslims, and would know our position.

The moderate Muslim is a very elusive creature, and reluctant to show his face in public. He may well not really exist -- the choice being between secular Muslims, i.e. apostates, and the Islamists and their sympathizers.

But I am reluctant to close the books on him, since the alternative is to say that we are at war with 1.4 billion people, and must either convert or exterminate them. That is a very sobering proposition, and not one that I will casually espouse.

There is one moderate Muslim, Eteraz, who comments here. One down, 1,399,999,999 to go...

unaha-closp said...

2 points:
- Substituting the term Fluffy Bunnies for time in the General Theory of Relativity makes Einstein look like a deranged fool.
- Making an assumption of equivalence between our response to Islam and Nazi German response to the Jews requires the commentator thinks the Nazi response was the only reasonable response and is inevitably going to happen again. As opposed to the more common view that Nazi Germans were actual deranged fools.

Reliapundit said...

REALITY:

FACT #1 - Nuking Hiroshima was necessary to prevent a land invasion of Japan by the USA; a demonstration would not have worked. Proof is the fact that Japan refujsed to surrender until a week after THE SECOND NUKE was dropped, also on a populated city.

FACT #2 - Nuking Hiroshioma and Nagasaki saved 500,000 USA miltiary lives and more than a millon Japanses lives - because a land invasion would have been wrse for the Japanese.

FACT #3 - The fire-bombing of Tokyo killed more civilians than the nukes we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And MANY other counter-measures the US and our allies took in WW2 were worse than nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

SO GET OVER THAT, WILLYA! Dropping one or two nukes is not the end of the world. Maybe if we had dropped one on Tora Bora we'd have gotten Binladen and stopped the GWOT in its tracks. Instead we have fought the enemy with one hand behind our backs.

FDR - a great NAZI KILLER - did not fight WW2 with one hand behind his back. That's why we won. We won because we got the enemy to die for his cause, as Patton said (more colorfully!). The more of the enemy we kill the better our chances at winning.

Israel was forced by the USA and the UN and the EU not only to fight with one hand behind its back, but to stop just as they were destroying the enemy. This was NUTS.

If ypou want peace then you gotta be willing to defeat the enemy because that's the only way to achieve peace; peace is won on the battlefield when the enemy is defeated and agrees to surrender unconditionally. Victory makes peace, not negotiating.

Half-assed "treaties and armistices" like those that ended the Korean War and the Vietnam War and the Gulf War in 1991 ALWAYS come back to haunt you.

Many of the problems we face in the woprld today are traceable to half-assed "peace treaties."

The enemy we face now can NEVER be trusted to fulfil any treaty with us; their "religion" explicitly allows lying to the enemy and hudnas. (LOOKITUP!)

I think we will not win this GWOT until we vanquish the enemy: IRAN, SYRIA, and all the countries which harbor, support and condone jihadism - which means we need to keep the bpressure on Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, too.

But we will never get to that endgame if we allow Iran to go "nukular."

Preventing Iran from getting nukes by preemptively attacking them and eradicating their entire military and nuclear infrastructure with necessary force would also sav millions of lives becasue prfevenmting Iran from getting nukes will prevenmt nuclear war with jihadoterrorism.

If we need to use nukeS to do this then I say USE'EM.

If we don;t need to then I say don't.

But the aversion to them is idiotic.

NOW... as for my comment in the other thread: it was a joke. There is no such thing as u235 enema. and mecca has no "rectum."

What I meant is that we will not talk the enemy into surrendering. We must defeat him. Utterly. In a real shoot'em up war. And then change their societies so that they are not dominatable by jiahdism - that means making thempluralistic democracies. And thsat will take time. In fact, Iraq is on record pace WHILE STILL FIGHTING AMOINGST THEMSLEVES (with the help of Syria and Iran).

SURE: to keep up domestic morale and the resolve needed to fight a LONG WAR we need take the MSM away from the traitorous Leftist scum who dominate it.

But that will only allow us to do what we must on the battlefield.

If 9/11 and 7/7 and the Atocha bombs and the recent SKYBOMB foiled plot and the beheadings don't convince the Left that we are truly in an existential war, then nothing will.

And only those of us who believe that the enemy wants to convert us, enslave us or destroy us (in that order) feel that we are fighting them in an entirely half-assed way.

They do not need retro-virals: they need to be killed.

PATTON:

"Now there's another thing I want you to remember. I don't want to get any messages saying that we are holding our position. We're not holding anything. Let the Hun do that. We are advancing constantly and we're not interested in holding onto anything -- except the enemy. We're going to hold onto him by the nose, and we're gonna kick him in the ass. We're gonna kick the hell out of him all the time, and we're gonna go through him like crap through a goose!

Now, I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."

mp3

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/mp3clips/newmoviespeeches/moviespeechpatton.mp3

In Russet Shadows said...

Funny, I didn't know that the Jews were busy coming up with suicide squads to invade Berlin for not respecting their religion enough!

Papa Ray said...

I'm willing to say that ther are moderate Muslims, but I also say that we can not count on them when the rubber meets the road.

There are a few in the American Military, those are proving they can be depended on. But still, they must follow the Qur'an if they are to be true believers. How they handle that, I don't know.

Meanwhile, we didn't get our expected result from Mad Jad today.

But we found out why:

The Hidden Iman Chickens Out

I really think we should help them out.

How about you?

Papa Ray
West Texas
USA

ziontruth said...

Baron, welcome to the club of anti-Islam writers having had turnspeak used on them.

Terry Crane said...

It is funny you mentioned [political] Islam and Communism in the same sentense. Because the moment US (or Europe) starts to treat Islam as Communism, they win.

The key point:
- migrants from Commie countries were welcomed, even former Communist activists, however they had to denounce Communism;
- Citisens by birth were allowed to presch Communism, however that was treated as unfortunate rather then morally equivalent right;
- Nobody dared to address "sensitivity" of communists in relation to school curriculum, dress code etc.
- An alleagiance to Communist countries would prevent one from gaining any security clearance;
- Soviet system was studied and tought by sovietologysts rather then endocrinated Communists receiving their instructions from Suslov (Politburo member responsible for propaganda); the objective of study was how to deal with Communism, not how to appreciate them;
- Communists' promise to build the world of Communism was seen as a declaration of war, and the GGovernment and all loyal citisentsw were expected to fear that, and act against it

unaha-closp said...

Terry add
- The Communists did not hire K Street representation and the Sauds do.

Beach Girl said...

Baron, since we always seem to chat back and forth with each other at the Gates of Vienna, today was no exception. Always a pleasure to read your site and the remarks. Always encourage to speak more eloguently than in normal conversation. I am put to shame by some of your commentators. I enjoy them.

To fluffresponse, a thought. Islam is an amalgamation of political ideology laced with religious overtones and trappings which may account for part of the West's inability to adjust its worldview and tackle the treat to its cultural survival head-on. Alas, hands tied behind our backs by our own intellectual elite on all continents.

To spydermr2, Good Lord! Well-said. So how do we move the discussion away from "defending what we are not" to what they are? This might work with the American Left which seems hell-bent on killing us all. Tell us how to do it and let's get on with it.

To reliapundit, about their "religion" explicitly allowing lying to the enemy and hudnas - are we globally in a Big Brother All Stars reality game? Sounds like it. And we, the West, is on the block. Do we have enough alliances to keep us from getting evicted. Where are our General "poop through a goose" Pattons?

Baron - absolutely great. Thanks for effectively letting us have a "chat room" on your blog.

Frank said...

Long ago, based on my experience as a Caucasian growing up in New Delhi, I saw the trouble we are creating in the west through multiracial immigration.

Multiracial immigration can and has worked in small doses; Chinese and a number of other visible minorities HAVE integrated to some extent, while others have developed "Chinatowns" and small quaint ghettos more notable for differences in flavour and scent than anything remotely political.

Multiracial immigration does not work when the floodgates are open. Once critical masses build up sufficient to insulate and nurture a culture apart from the mainstream, there is no need to integrate, and in fact it becomes a bad thing within the immigrant "community" to integrate; those who try are denigrated by everyone else in the group. We can see it across North America, with Blacks, Chinese, and of course Arabs.

My point, however, is that I've been preaching against this for years and have been called a "racist" and "Nazi" countless times. There is a large group of neo-liberals out there, supplimented by a small group of immigrant "advocates" who use the terms "racist" and "Nazi" as a shield against dissenting opinion. The mantras of "diversity" and "tolerance" and "colourful street festivals" have worn thin over time and they were for all intents and purposes the only real benefits the multicult crowd had in their arsenal, so now they are left only with what they imagine to be a rhetorical nuclear deterrence: threatening to toss a variation of the term "xenophobe" at the opponent.

I have to laugh at the lengths to which people will go to protest and explain and counterexplain why they are NOT a Nazi or a racist or whatever. I long ago realized that the power of such an accusation resides entirely in my reaction to it. I simply don't care if someone calls me a Nazi.

If they are so ill-informed that they believe that libertarianism is fascism, then that's their problem, not mine. If they think that it is wrong to point out that every case of mass immigration of different racial groups in the history of the universe has resulted in social fragmentation, bloodshed and/or the downfall of empires, then again, that's their issue, not mine.

Some here share my views and some confine their concern to Islam, but either way they have opened themselves to accusations of xenophobia, and I can only say get used to it.

But more than that, ignore it. So what if some self-loathing worm thinks that social atomization and Balkanization is somehow a virtue in and of itself and that anyone who doesn't buy it primae fascia is a racist or Nazi? I make a habit of calling anyone who calls me a "racist", a "poopoohead", just to demonstrate the rhetorical significance of the former. Its meaningless and silly.

Anonymous said...

I think maybe you haven't been reading Gates of Vienna for very long.

I only visit sporadically, and mostly to read the Fjordman Report.

The moderate Muslim is a very elusive creature, and reluctant to show his face in public. He may well not really exist -- the choice being between secular Muslims, i.e. apostates, and the Islamists and their sympathizers.

But I am reluctant to close the books on him, since the alternative is to say that we are at war with 1.4 billion people, and must either convert or exterminate them. That is a very sobering proposition, and not one that I will casually espouse.


First, one should reject a conclusion because it is wrong, not because one doesn't like it. Don't you agree?

Second, there are more alternatives than the ones you list. Instead of converting or exterminating Muslims, one can throw them out of dar al-Harb and (back) to dar al-Islam, and contain and isolate Islam in the Islamic world.

There is one moderate Muslim, Eteraz, who comments here.

Yes, I know of Eteraz, but what's so moderate about him? To me he sounds like a typical Muslim, albeit more eloquent.

Anonymous said...

Fjordman: Why do you submit your work to a blog which seemingly argues that it is "radical Islam" that is the problem, and, by implication, not Islam per se? Furthermore, this "radical Islam" is repeatedly compared to and understood through European ideologies such as Nazism and Fascism, instead of being analysed in isolation as a separate and unique ideology.

Hopefully, Gates of Vienna is not representative for the intellectual defense of Western Civilization.