The War Against… What?

When I posted “The Emperor is Naked” last week, I really started something — much more than I could ever have hoped for.

A group of commenters, more or less led by Vicktorya and Beach Girl, became energized by the idea of taking a proactive stance against the Great Jihad and its enablers on the Left. Vicktorya opened a discussion group on Yahoo (so far known only by its number, “910”, although its members like to refer to it as “VRWC”), invited all interested parties to join, and a new and vigorous initiative has started rolling. If you’re curious, revisit the comments on the post and get involved in the group.

But “910” is only part of a larger synchronicity that has recently appeared in our corner of the blogosphere.
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Almost simultaneously with my post, Pim’s Ghost arrived at a similar point in “The Time Has Come“. She has also signed onto the 910 project, and made the snowball that much larger.

Yesterday a reader wrote to me, wanting to get a message to Fjordman to ask him some questions. After an exchange of several emails, the result was Fjordman’s most recent post, in which he lays out ideas and suggestions about what the West can do against the Islamist tide, and especially against the enemy within. I notified the 910 people, and a vigorous discussion ensued in the comments.

Dymphna didn’t dub Fjordman “The Dark Prophet of Norway” without good reason; here is an excerpt from some one of his comments in response to readers:

My personal view is that the Jihad riots in France in 2005 could be interpreted as the early stages of a civil war, one of several Eurabian civil wars to come. What will happen to the hundreds of French nuclear warheads? Will they be used to intimidate the rest of the West?

Maybe future historians will dub this the Multicultural World War. I find this to be a more accurate term than “The Islamic World War” because what is causing this world war is Western cultural weakness more than Islamic strength. The wars in the Balkans in the 1990s will in hindsight be seen as a prelude to the Multicultural World War.

[…]

Regaining our cultural confidence is a more complicated and longer term goal. It probably cannot be achieved until today’s version of Western Europe has collapsed. Western Europe is now a collection of several layers of different Utopias, Multiculturalism, welfarism and transnationalism, that will soon come crashing down.

But, strangely enough, Fjordman is actually optimistic about the West’s chances in the long run; that’s why he’s offering suggestions. In the short run, however, he sees rough times ahead, especially for Europe. He’s all but certain that Western Europe, in its present form, will cease to exist in the near future.

Commenter “s” had an interesting point to make:

Many of the suggestions are what I’d term governmental issues: immigration, foreign policy, enacting anti-sharia laws, controlling foreign aid and use of foreign oil. These are areas that an individual can only really control through their vote. For the ambitious, they can actually contact their relevant legislators. The latter might prove to be frustrating, especially in the U.S., since our elected officials seem to have no clue about the nature of Islam and have their own Muslim constituents to please. Or appease, as the case may be.

“S” is highlighting a perennial phenomenon in the blogosphere: the Armchair General. “We need to do such-in-such about immigration.” “The best policy towards Iran would be thus-and-so.”

Yet even the most prominent bloggers are powerless to affect any of these issues. These policies can only be brought about by our elected leaders and the permanent bureaucracy; the most we can do is stand on the sidelines and yell real loud.

On the other hand, the mandarins of mainstream media, as a collective enterprise, do have the ability to influence such policies. One of the reasons our response to Iran has been so hobbled is that the politicians always have to keep one eye on the New York Times and CNN when they chart their courses of action. Things have gotten so bad that it is virtually impossible for a Republican to take effective action in the interests of our national security — the leakers in the permanent bureaucracy at State and in the CIA are willing to do anything to stymie such efforts.

Someday the MSM will wither away and be supplanted by the new media, including blogs, and the power of the legacy media will gradually disappear. But that day is at least a decade away, and I’m not sure we have a decade’s worth of breathing space in this war. It’s all but a certainty that Europe doesn’t.

So we can’t wait around for the old man to die and leave us his inheritance; we need to give him a gentle push towards his final reward.

That’s why I’m pushing for proactive behavior among our blogs. We do very well reacting to events, such as Rathergate and Reutergate, but such efforts absorb an enormous amount of blog energy with only incremental results. Look at the Foley Affair — it’s sucking up all the energy on the internet, and for what good reason? Yes, I know the Republicans may lose control of Congress as a result of it, but, given the behavior of many Republicans these days, that’s not as big a tragedy as some people may think.

Believe it or not, there are much more important issues, really crucial issues, life-and-death issues, which begin slowly, run for a long time under the radar, and then cause great harm when they finally reach their maturity. By the time they appear on the TV news, and the NYT and Richard Cohen stake out a position on them, it’s too late. The damage is done.

These are the things we need to be proactive about. These are the issues that we can quietly organize around, laying the groundwork for events that won’t mature for years or decades. From a personal standpoint, that’s why this is so gratifying to me: the young energetic folks who are organizing the 910 group and similar initiatives are going to be around long after I’m pushing up daisies, when the West will need them the most.

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The most important part of this war is the civil conflict within the West, a war of ideas and information. It is a war that pits an ad-hoc alliance of aggressive Islam and its useful idiots in the West — old-school Socialists, the UN and NGO internationalists, the academic deconstructionists, and the let’s-bring-down-Bush media — against the traditional culture and values of our civilization.

If our cultural weaknesses were not exacerbated by the saboteurs with our system, Islam would not be a threat to us.

Nothing I do directly is going to have an effect on this. But the advantage of the new media is their distributed nature — we can have an effect, when we act collectively. So far our effects have been reactive.

But, once again, I propose a proactive initiative: the acquisition of a controlling interest in an organ of the major media. It would be a reprise of the “Buy Up CBS” movement of the 1980s, only this time accomplished by a lot of little guys acting together instead of a few Big Daddy Warbucks types.

An acceleration of the necessary changes — the changes that are required to avoid the worst case scenarios in the future that Fjordman outlines — is only possible if the stranglehold of the anti-American left on the major media is broken. Fox News isn’t good enough; after all, Saudi Prince al-Walid bin Talal bought 5.5% of Fox News for the avowed purpose of inhibiting any negative coverage of Islam.

But if 5.5% of Fox News is effective, why not 10% of the Washington Post or some other MSM organ, in the hands of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy? A small individual investment by lots and lots of little people could pull it off.

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None of this will happen if the meme is restricted to little blogs like Gates of Vienna. If it doesn’t spread beyond our neighborhood, it will die a well-deserved death.

By all means blog on it yourself. But if the meme has merit, spread it up the chain. If not to the really big blogs like Instapundit and LGF, then to blogs like Dr. Sanity or Gateway Pundit, just to name two. They bring in lots of traffic, they read most of their email, and they’re open to suggestions.

The project will need to be couched in easily understandable terms. It must have a positive and uplifting mission statement. Above all, it requires a catchy title.

And that’s where we come back to the 910 Group. Vicktorya and Beach Girl and all the others have been working hard, creating an organization and dividing up their projected efforts into sub-headings for more effective implementation — Politics, Education, Business, Media, Technical, Spiritual, Feedback, Military, and Arts, the last I heard.

So what should it be called?

My suggestion, as always, is: Take Back the Culture. But they think that it has negative and reactive connotations, and that it will put some people off.

All right. Next I suggested The Restoration Project. Nope; can’t do it. It’s got the same problem.

So I said that we’re bound to offend somebody unless we call it The Rainbows, Unicorns, and Fluffy Bunnies Society. And maybe even then…

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We’re in a war. We’re fighting somebody.

Most of the people here in the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy know that the “War on Terror” is a dumb name. We’re not fighting an emotion. We’re not battling a tactic.

And we’re not even fighting Islam or the Islamists: we’re waging an information war against those who would, with far greater firepower than our own, destroy the great traditions and values of Western Civilization.

Our strategies should be proactive, but we are fighting to recover something that has been taken from us. We are waging a war of words in order to overthrow the usurpers of our culture, in the name of those values which are great and true and good.

So it has to be a fight against something, but that’s OK — people will be inspired by our effort if we state our aims clearly. If we use a Christian metaphor, we may offend Jews or Hindus or atheists. If we use a martial metaphor, we may offend pacifists and people who avert their thoughts from blood and slaughter.

But we’re going to put some people off, one way or another. A lot of those people cannot be won over, and will eventually be co-opted by the enemy, willing to surrender their ancient liberties and pay the jizyah in order to save their sorry skins.

But so be it. The rest of the people — which group includes the vast majority of Americans — will be inspired and energized if they hear the truth of their cause spoken clearly and unashamedly.

Think of Jan III Sobieski. When he led the victory against Islam in 1683, he fought for a number of things:

• He fought for Vienna.
  
• He fought for Poland.
  
• He fought for the Bishop of Rome.
  
• He fought for Christendom.
  
• He fought for God.

We are his heirs, even if our war is only one of words, and God is dead, and even if our cause is merely that grubby bastard child of Christendom called Secular Modernity.

We’re already backed up into the citadel, and the enemy is within the gates. If there’s nothing here worth saving, let’s just turn over the keys to the imams and be done with it.

Otherwise, let’s pick out a name and get on with the job. The Latter-Day Crusaders sounds great; nothing you choose will offend me.

A rose by any other name will smell as sweet.