The Government is Not Your Friend

I promised myself that I wasn’t going to post anymore about the necessity of working with “moderate” Muslims. With the amount of heat I’ve been taking, who needs the grief? After all, it’s not like I’m going to change anybody’s mind.

But I must have a masochistic streak. At the risk of starting another knock-down drag-out fight, here goes.

After my “Changing the Venue” post a reader sent me the following email:

Dear Baron,

If we are the leaders of this movement — the anti-Jihad movement — the first thing we must realize is that NOBODY follows a leader who’s pessimistic about his mission. At least not willingly. It’s more accurate to say that there isn’t any obvious sign that the anti-Jihad message is catching on, not that there’s no prospect for a decade or more. Soon after the election you began to display the most desultory attitude on your site — I sympathize with your frustration — but truth be told — the message will NEVER go out to a broader audience if the messengers succumb to despair. We can’t afford to despair — no matter how insurmountable the odds may seem. To do so is GUARANTEED catastrophe for all.

Buck up. Don’t give in to despair. That’s not gossamer castles in the sky. It’s strategy for war.

Sincerely,
A Fellow Anti Jihadist.

Unfortunately, my fellow anti-jihadist has confused my jaundiced view of the federal government with pessimism. Just because I think government is less helpful than a pitcherful of warm phlegm doesn’t mean that I’m not optimistic.

Last month’s election freed me up from any attachment whatsoever to the government as an active force against the Great Jihad. Here’s the way I see it:

• The legacy media control the view that most of the public has of what happens in the “War on Terror”.
  
• They want us to lose because Republicans are in charge.
  
• Therefore they threw the election to the Democrats.
  
• Thus we will get what we voted for from our elected officials: retreat, denial, passivity, appeasement, and dhimmitude.

But that’s just the government that I’m talking about, and the government is not where the action is now. The synchronicity of the election and my involvement with the 910 Group has opened a view into a whole new way of doing things. If we wait for the government to do things, we are doomed. If we expect the government to follow the prudent course and prosecute the Counterjihad with the appropriate zeal, we are living in a fantasy world.

The government is constrained by political reality, and political reality is conditioned (if not generated) by the MSM, so we are stuck with a useless government. Eventually the new media will supplant the old, and our viewpoints will become more like the norm. At that point elections might start to reflect what the majority of people really feel about Islam, multiculturalism, and illegal immigrants (a.k.a. “undocumented Democrats”). But we’ve got at least another ten years before that happens.

In the meantime, our Western governments — with the possible exception of Denmark and Australia — are going to be more of a hindrance than a help in fighting the information war against the Jihad. As I’ve said on numerous occasions, we’re on our own.
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But that’s our big advantage. Getting the government to react to an info-attack from the terrorists (via their media or CAIR surrogates) is like trying to turn a battleship to avoid a torpedo. As we form our networks we create new response mechanisms which can assess and counter the enemy’s offensives at the same speed at which the enemy operates.

Watching the U.S. government’s response (or non-response) to all the fake stories and doctored photos coming out of the different theaters of this battle shows how useless the government is in the information war. A top-down command structure. Time-servers and CYA experts making the decisions. The utter intimidation of our leaders by Big Media. Entrenched and antiquated ways of thinking about the war… How can we expect bureaucrats and members of Congress to tackle this struggle effectively?

The best and the brightest don’t wind up in the civil service, nor are they elected to office, nor are they found in academia or the media. Those places are reserved for brown-nosers, organization men, sinecure-seekers, and leftist ideologues. To get into politics it helps to be greedy and ambitious, but brains are not required.

The most intelligent people are in business and the military. Not surprisingly, these two groups are over-represented within the new networks that comprise the Citizens’ Counterjihad.

I’ve had a lot of trouble making my point heard. This idea — using privately-based fourth-generation warfare to fight this war, in lieu of the government — seems to be so far out of the box that many people have trouble keeping it in mind.

Consider this comment from PD111 on the “Uncle Joe Redux“ thread:

Any alliance with Muslims, will of necessity require us to make some political concessions to moderate Muslims. What are these likely to be? Any concessions that further Islam will just be another success for the overall Jihad.

[…]

Placing the future of Western civilisation in the hands of Muslims by making alliances with Muslims, moderate or otherwise, will be a great mistake, as future peace will be dependent on the good will of the moderate Muslims. In other words, we would have taken the first steps to dhimmification by making such an alliance.

We have to do this on our own, otherwise we will lose.

Your idea of an alliance would be fine if the enemy was outside the city walls, as Stalin was, and not within the Gates as it is now.

We have to do this on our own.

That’s what I’ve been saying. But when I say we, I mean “We, the People”. When I say “on our own”, I mean “without the help of the government.”

The government will not do it for us. We have to do it ourselves; the problem is to figure out how.

Now back to the “moderate” Muslims.

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Up until a couple of months ago I was just another blogger shouting from the sidelines. My job was to bring information and opinion to this forum, package it for distribution, and hope that it might do some good. Cast your bread upon the waters…

I’m still doing the same job here, but I’ve got another one as well. Ordinary people are now networking their resources in order to pursue a common goal: fighting an information war against the Jihad at the grassroots level. I’m part of that effort now — not just talking, but doing.

Being involved with the 910 Group has given me a crash course in what it takes to actually get something done. A “pure” blogger has the luxury of sticking by his principles no matter what, never compromising on an issue, and always taking the moral high road. But when you work with a large number of people to try to reach a common objective, you don’t always have those options.

If your thinking leads you to the point where you say, “All Muslim immigration should be stopped,” then you’ve run up against that wall. What you say is true — it should be — but it ain’t gonna happen. That’s a government function, and we have no control over immigration policy. We will have to fight without that weapon in our armory.

Similarly, if you say, “We need to deal forcefully with Iran,” you’re right; we certainly do. But “we” — i.e. our elected representatives — are not going to deal forcefully with Iran. They’re not going to deal with it at all, if they can avoid it. Our leaders are going to waffle and procrastinate and prevaricate and pretend their way down the road to Armageddon. We have to deal with that fact.

So what can we do?

Obviously, I’m not advocating revolution. The 910 Group is predicated upon non-violence and lawful behavior in the pursuit of worldwide liberty.

What we’re doing is forming conduits of information and methods of organizing to combat the propaganda initiatives that the enemy is mounting among us every day. As I’ve often said, “the enemy within” is our biggest problem.

Intelligent and skilled people are even now building the infrastructure to respond to CAIR and similar organizations, to fight for our First Amendment rights under the coming onslaught against them, and to monitor and report on the activities of the mujahideen in our midst whilst the media ignore them. The tactics we use can be as simple as a targeted mass letter-writing campaign to a newspaper or a congressman, or they can be immensely complex.

The point isn’t any particular action, but the structure of the network. The network needs to circulate information smoothly and quickly, and react like lightning when a crisis hits. It needs to be robust and effective, able to withstand the inevitable lawsuits and threats that will come from the Jihad groups.

It will be some months before we reach this ability, but it is definitely coming.

Part of this network formation involves reaching out to Muslims who show by their words and actions that they share the same objectives. Take, for example, the case of Bassam Tibi, a German Muslim who was brought to our attention by a reader, who says this:

This is the man who challenged me to understand what was going on with Islam when I met him in June and July 2001. We were staying in the same hotel. He is shifting shortly to the States. As is Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

I note, too, in their latest newsletter, that the NZ Director of the Barnabas Fund is moving to Washington in January. Given that Patrick Sookhdeo (Director of the Fund) was dropping broad hints earlier this year about shifting to the States, it could be things are even worse in Europe than we realize.

The effect of existing and pending EU and national laws limiting free and frank expression on political and religious issues must surely be a factor here. Not to mention actual threats and physical danger to those who speak out.

So it seems that the opposition to Eurabia is gradually draining into this country. That’s good; we will need those people here.

Our reader pointed us to a Jihad Watch article about Bassam Tibi, which in turn points to a Globe and Mail article. The latter requires not just a subscription, but actual payment to be able to view the article. I’m a cheapskate, so you’ll have to make do with some of the Jihad Watch excerpts:

Dr. Tibi, a Muslim born in Syria, is persona non grata there.

He’s not too popular in Germany either, where he has been accused of inciting Islamophobia. “It is most disturbing to see how writers who try to warn about the totalitarian character of Islamism are defamed as racists,” he says. “This wrong-headed political correctness prevents any honest discussion about the subject.”

This is not the message you will hear from any Muslim leader. The standard line is that extremism has been exaggerated, the media are to blame, and that the real problem is that Muslims have been unfairly targeted. But long before 9/11, Dr. Tibi began warning Europe had become dangerously vulnerable to radical Islamists. Today, many of these movements have their logistics, as well as their support systems, in Western Europe. In the name of multiculturalism, Muslims were encouraged to build parallel societies. Now, many have no intention of integrating into the mainstream.

[…]

Dr. Tibi is impatient with the endlessly repeated nostrum that Islam is “a religion of peace.” “When you study religion, you do not study texts, you study social facts. A Muslim boy is torching cars and he is thinking he is waging jihad. Religion has nothing to do with terrorism. But you can use it to legitimate terrorism. There is a conflict — it is social and economic, but it is articulated in religious language.” And the quest of converting the entire world to Islam, he insists, is an immutable fixture of the Muslim worldview.

[…]

I asked Dr. Tibi how many of Germany’s 3.2 million Muslims share his progressive, secular views. “Maybe a few thousand,” he said.

A few thousand. You know, it would be good to have a few thousand Muslims on the ground in Germany, or any other Western country, networked into the Citizens’ Counterjihad and ready to contribute to it.

Recapitulating what PD111 said: Your idea of an alliance would be fine if the enemy was outside the city walls, as Stalin was, and not within the Gates as it is now.

But the gates open both ways. They are inside ours; why can’t we be inside theirs?

Yes, we have watch out for practitioners of taqiyyah, to beware of the double agent and the provocateur. But that’s already part of the job we’re doing.

And it’s a good thing that the government isn’t doing this job, because the first thing it would do in the face of provocation would be to compromise, appease, and submit. That’s the way to creeping shari’ah.

But we don’t have to do that. A citizens’ network can insist that its affiliates and individual members adhere to its principles. If they don’t, they’re removed from the network.

The core principles include:

• A commitment to representative government.
  
• Non-violence except in immediate self-defense.
  
• Freedom of speech.
  
• Freedom of religion.

None of these is negotiable. None can be compromised for the sake of “respect for Islam” or to avoid “hate speech”.

If you demonstrably adhere to these principles, the network invites you in.

If you abandon any of them, you’re out in a flash.

The uncomfortable fact is that we are unlikely to find a huge number of Muslims who are willing to accept these principles and aid us in what we do. There just aren’t that many of them; the vast majority seem to be passive, or in tacit support of the Jihad.

But we need all the help we can get. It doesn’t matter whether any Muslim is sincere or is practicing taqiyyah, any more than it matters whether a murder is also a “hate” crime.

By their fruits ye shall know them. If their fruits are good, they belong with us.

This doesn’t mean that taqiyyah isn’t an issue; internal security is always going to be an issue in a network like this. It’s fortunate that we have people on board who are experts in the field. They’ll make sure the job gets done right.

After all, the government is incapable of doing it.