Monday, January 29, 2007

The Rise of Glossocracy

The Fjordman Report

The noted blogger Fjordman is filing this report via Gates of Vienna.
For a complete Fjordman blogography, see The Fjordman Files. There is also a multi-index listing here.



How the West Was LostAlexander Boot, a Russian by birth, left for the West in the 1970s, only to discover that the West he was seeking was no longer there. This led him to write the book How the West Was Lost. I disagree with his criticism of post-Enlightenment civilization in general. Still, he is articulate and original, which makes him worth reading.

Boot believes that democracy, or in the words of Abraham Lincoln, the government of the people, by the people and for the people, has been replaced by glossocracy, the government of the word, by the word and for the word.

Modern glossocracy can be traced back at least to the slogan of the French Revolution, “Freedom, equality, brotherhood.” As it later turned out, this meant mass terror, martial law and authoritarian rule. According to Boot, the more meaningless the word, the more useful it is for glossocrats. The impulse behind Political Correctness consists of twisting the language we use, enforcing new words or changing the meaning of old ones, turning them into “weapons of crowd control” by demonizing those who fail to comply with the new definitions:

“Like the Russian intelligentsia of yesteryear, the glossocratic intelligentsia of today’s West is busily uprooting the last remaining vestiges of Westernness. The press is one gardening implement they use; education is another.”

One example of how language is power is given in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll:

Humpty Dumpty“‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’ ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean different things.’ ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that’s all.’”

According to Boot, glossocracy depends upon a long-term investment in ignorance: “A semi-literate population is a soft touch for glossocratic Humpty Dumpties insisting that words mean whatever they want them to mean.”

As I’ve said before, Political Correctness was pioneered by feminists, including the totalitarian changing of the language to make it more gender-neutral and less “oppressive.” Those who successfully manage to enforce their definition of words win the ideological contest.

The New TotalitariansThere was an interesting book called The New Totalitarians written by British historian Roland Huntford about Sweden in the early 1970s. It is especially noteworthy how the Socialist government deliberately broke down the nuclear family. This was presented as liberation from the oppression of women, but was in reality about tearing down the religious fabric of society and eliminating the Church and Judeo-Christian thinking as ideological competitors.

It was also about increasing state control over all citizens by breaking down a rival institution that obstructed the uninhibited state indoctrination of children. Besides, the state could foment animosity between men and women and step in as an arbitrator, thus further enhancing its powers. During the past few elections in Sweden, there has been virtually no debate about mass immigration, but a passionate debate about “gender equality” in which almost all contestants call themselves feminists, and only debate which ways to implement absolute equality between the sexes.
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Mr. Huntford demonstrated how, when it was decided that a woman’s place was not at home but out at work, there was a rapid change in the language. Page 301:

“The customary Swedish for housewife is husmor, which is honourable; it was replaced by the neologism hemmafru, literally ‘the-wife-who-stays-at-home’, which is derogatory. Within a few months, the mass media were able to kill the old and substitute the new term. By the end of 1969, it was almost impossible in everyday conversation to mention the state of housewife without appearing to condemn or to sneer. Swedish had been changed under the eyes and ears of the Swedes. Husmor had been discredited; the only way out was to use hemmafru ironically. Connected with this semantic shift, there was a change in feeling. Women who, a year or so before, had been satisfied, and possibly proud, to stay at home, began to feel the pressure to go out to work. The substitution of one word for the other had been accompanied by insistent propaganda in the mass media, so that it was as if a resolute conditioning campaign had been carried out. Very few were able to recognize the indoctrination in the linguistic manipulation; in the real sense of the word, the population had been brain-washed.”

For my own part, I find it interesting that the same people who, in the 60s and 70s, broke up the traditional family structure in Western countries and warned people against the dangers of overpopulation, telling people to lower their birth rates, come back a few years later and say that we have to import millions of immigrants because we have such low birth rates.

Betty FriedanAuthor Daniel Horowitz has written about the highly influential American feminist Betty Friedan, whose 1963 book “The Feminine Mystique” is widely seen as marking the beginning of the Second Wave of feminism. Horowitz documents how Friedan had for decades before this been a hardened Marxist. It is revealing that she tried to hide her background, presenting herself only as an average suburban housewife. In the early drafts, Friedan quoted Friedrich Engels, but these quotations were cut out before the book was published. In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had called for the abolition of family. Friedan denounced the American suburban family household as “a comfortable concentration camp.”

Roland Huntford noticed that the teaching of history was severely curtailed in Swedish schools because it was “impractical.” Religion, and Christianity in particular, was presented as superstition designed to fool the masses, which had been liberated from this ancient oppression by the Labor movement.

As he noted, “Scrapping historical knowledge deprives pupils of the instrument for criticizing society here and now. And perhaps that is the intended effect.” Journalist Christopher Hitchens later wrote that “For true blissed-out and vacant servitude, though, you need an otherwise sophisticated society where no serious history is taught.”

Ingvar Carlsson“The State,” in the words of Mr Ingvar Carlsson, then Minister of Education, “is concerned with morality from a desire to change society.” Mr. Carlsson, who was later Swedish prime minister until 1996, also stated on one occasion that “School is the spearhead of Socialism.”

According to Huntford, the word “freedom” was almost entirely confined to the sexual field in Sweden:

“The Swedish government has taken what it is pleased to call ‘the sexual revolution’ under its wing. Children are impressed at school that sexual emancipation is their birthright, and this is done in such a way as to suggest that the State is offering them their liberty from old-fashioned restrictions.”

He describes a meeting with Dr Gösta Rodhe, the head of the department of sexual education in the Directorate of Schools. She stated: “You see, since there’s a lack of tension in Swedish politics, younger people have got to find release and excitement in sexual tension instead.”

Herbert MarcuseHerbert Marcuse, one of the major theorists of the Frankfurt School of cultural Marxism, identified faith-based morality as the chief obstacle to a Socialist society. In his 1955 book Eros and Civilization, he argued for freeing sex from any restraints. He made a huge impact in the 1960s. Although he may not have coined the term “Make love, not war,” he undoubtedly endorsed it.

Mr. Huntford ended his book with a warning that this system of soft-totalitarianism could be exported to other countries. This was in the early 1970s, and he has been proven right since:

“The Swedes have demonstrated how present techniques can be applied in ideal conditions. Sweden is a control experiment on an isolated and sterilized subject. Pioneers in the new totalitarianism, the Swedes are a warning of what probably lies in store for the rest of us, unless we take care to resist control and centralization, and unless we remember that politics are not to be delegated, but are the concern of the individual. The new totalitarians, dealing in persuasion and manipulation, must be more efficient than the old, who depended upon force.”

“As political and economic freedom diminishes” said Aldous Huxley’s in Brave New World, “sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase.” This fits perfectly with Huntford’s description. The state strips away your personal, economic and political freedom, yet grants you sexual freedom in return, boldly hailing itself as your liberator.

Language is underestimated as a source of power. Those who control the language and the school curriculum control society.

1984George Orwell said: “If freedom of speech means anything at all, it is the freedom to say things that people do not want to hear.” In his book 1984, a totalitarian Party rules much of Europe. Their three slogans, on display everywhere, are: War is peace, Freedom is slavery and Ignorance is strength. It’s the ultimate glossocracy, even creating an entirely new language called Newspeak:

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.”

I love Orwell’s book, but frankly, it fits an openly totalitarian society more than it does Western nations. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, with its hedonistic society where people derive pleasure from promiscuous sex and drugs, is closer to the mark. Scholar Neil Postman contrasted the worlds of 1984 and Brave New World in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death:

“Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny ‘failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.’ In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.”

Postman warned against the pitfalls of our mass media society:

“What started out as a liberating stream has turned into a deluge of chaos. Everything from telegraphy and photography in the 19th century to the silicon chip in the twentieth has amplified the din of information, until matters have reached such proportions today that for the average person, information no longer has any relation to the solution of problems. It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don’t know what to do with it.”

This can potentially be exploited by those in power. In an openly totalitarian society such as the Communist state of East Germany, authorities can enforce censorship at gunpoint. The German Democratic Republic, as it called itself, claimed that the Berlin Wall was an “anti-fascist protection barrier,” while it was really designed to make the country into a prison.

Angela MerkelIn 2007, former German president Roman Herzog warned that parliamentary democracy was under threat from the European Union. Between 1999 and 2004, 84 percent of the legal acts in Germany stemmed from Brussels. According to him, “EU policies suffer to an alarming degree from a lack of democracy and a de facto suspension of the separation of powers.”

At the same time, German chancellor Angela Merkel told the public that she did not intend to re-launch a broad debate on the revised EU Constitution but would rather focus on confidential talks with governments. This is especially sad because Merkel grew up in East Germany and should know better than to back an intrusive anti-democratic system. Maybe she’s a glossocrat and simply went from one glossocracy to the next.

Undercover MosquesAt the Gates of Vienna blog in January 2007, Englishman Paul Weston vented his frustration over the situation in the UK. The big story that week in British TV had been the supposed racist remarks by an English girl to Indian actress, which attracted over 9 million viewers. They were participants in “Big Brother”, a trashy reality television show that has become massively popular in many countries. At the same time, “Undercover Mosques” had an intrepid journalist with a hidden camera put his life on the line to record what was being said in leading mosques in Britain. He found they preached Islamic supremacism and hatred of non-Muslims, with statements such as: “You have to live like a state within a state until you take over.” The viewing figures for this highly important program were between 1 to 1.5 million people. British media were interested in one thing and one thing only, Big Brother.

There were two other stories in the papers that week. The British Parliament would nod through a watered down version of the EU Constitution without, as previously stated, a referendum, and the German Chancellor was intending to re-introduce said Constitution. Both stories, according to Mr. Weston, went nearly unmentioned by the TV media.

The irony of this is that the name Big Brother comes from George Orwell’s novel 1984, where Big Brother is the all-seeing leader of the totalitarian state. In 2007, Big Brother is real, but a sensual distraction, not an oppressive tyrant.

In the 19th century, Britain was threatened with subjugation by Napoleon. The British people rose to the occasion and defeated the threat. In the 20th century, Britain was threatened with subjugation by Adolf Hitler. The British people rose to the occasion and defeated the threat. In the 21st century, Britain was threatened with subjugation by the combined forces of Islamic Jihad and a pan-European superstate. The British people didn’t notice the threat, as they were too busy watching semi-naked people do obscene things on TV. I bet even George Orwell didn’t see that one coming, but maybe Huxley did.

I quoted The Road to Serfdom recently, and was told that it was “irrelevant” since it was written in the 1940s. I disagree. Here’s a passage from it where Friedrich Hayek accurately describes Political Correctness. Page 117:

“The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those which they, or at least the best among them, have always held, but which were not properly understood or recognised before. (…) The most efficient technique to this end is to use the old words but change their meaning. Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as the complete perversion of language, the change of the meaning of words by which he ideals of the new regimes are expressed. (…) Gradually, as this process continues, the whole language becomes despoiled, words become empty shells deprived of any definite meaning, as capable of denoting one thing as its opposite and used solely for the emotional associations which still adhere to them.”

Hayek was particularly concerned with words such as “equality” and “justice,” especially in combination:

“From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict which each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time.”

There is reason to fear that words such as tolerance, diversity and dialogue have become just as perverted, twisted and meaningless in the West under Multiculturalism as words such as freedom and democracy were in the East under Communism.

Every time something bad involving Muslims in Europe happens, the solution is supposed to be “dialogue.” But what created the problem in the first place was the Euro-Arab Dialogue. Dialogue is thus the cause of Europe’s Islamic problems, not the solution to them.

The peculiar thing about “diversity” is that the more ethnic diversity you have, the less diversity of opinion you have, since everybody is scared to death of saying something that might “insult” somebody. Moreover, people cry for more surveillance to counter the turbulence caused by all this diversity. A survey showed that a full 80 percent of Swedes favor increased surveillance to tackle terrorism and serious crime. 87 percent think that the police should be able to secretly bug telephones and access computers of ordinary citizens. Diversity, thus, leads to internal and external censorship and a more totalitarian society.

Besides, those who praise diversity the most are frequently those who are the least tolerant of diverging opinions. As British newspaper columnist Richard Littlejohn puts it: “The Fascist Left have turned the Nanny State into the Bully State. There is no limit to their intolerance in the name of tolerance.”

“Tolerance” has been defined as support for Multiculturalism and continued mass immigration. Tolerance thus means that Western populations should eradicate themselves and their own culture. It means a slow-motion surrender to Islamic culture and Islamic rule. Yet if you are against tolerance you must be some kind of evil racist or something. Who doesn’t like tolerance and diversity?

When Americans try to explain the extraordinary passivity displayed by Europeans in reaction to the massive onslaught against their countries, they tend to focus on restrictive gun laws. Our problems cannot be reduced simply to a matter of guns. After all, Americans face many of the same challenges even though they are armed.

The real reason behind this passivity is not just that Westerners have been disarmed physically, but more importantly that we have been disarmed culturally, verbally and morally. Cornered linguistically, deprived of words to formulate what we fight for and against and cut off from our historical roots, Westerners have become easy prey for our enemies.

I have heard individuals state point blank that even if Muslims become the majority in our countries in the future, this doesn’t matter because all people are equal and all cultures are just a mix of everything else, anyway. And since religions are just fairy-tales, replacing one fairy-tale, Christianity, with another fairy-tale, Islam, won’t make a big difference.

Don QuixoteModern Westerners tend to have a poor knowledge of our own history, and what little we do know we are taught to hate. We are taught, simultaneously, that our culture doesn’t exist and that it is evil, which seems like a contradiction in terms, but both claims serve to undermine traditional loyalties, which no doubt was the intended purpose. Since our Multicultural Humpty Dumpties have already decided that there is no such thing as Western civilization, only a random collection of cultural impulses from a variety of sources, you look silly, ignorant and uneducated if you defend it, a bit like a Don Quixote tilting at windmills.

One must give Muslims credit for inventing the term Islamophobia, thus demonstrating that they understand the workings of Western glossocracy better than many Westerners do themselves. While nobody had heard of Islamophobia a mere decade ago, it is now the subject of international conferences and is quite literally treated as a threat to world peace.

Yet even though we now have a word for an imaginary problem, Islamophobia, we still haven’t coined a term for a very real problem, the pervasive self-loathing and desire by some Westerners to eradicate their own culture. I’ve noticed that in many stories involving magic, a magician gains power over something once he gives it a name. So let’s give the anti-Western self-hatred a name. What about self-termination? This is an historical epoch where the West has gone from self-determination to self-termination.

If language is used to assault Western culture, regaining control over it should constitute our first line of defense. We have a right to resist those who advocate our nation’s self-termination. A policy which deprives us of self-determination and maybe our children of self-preservation is evil, and we have not just a right, but a duty to oppose it, even if it is championed by our own government; in fact, especially then. It is unacceptable that those who put the survival of our countries at risk are allowed to claim a monopoly on goodness.

I’ve been pondering how it was possible to pull off a stunt as large as the creation of Eurabia. There are many reasons for this, not the least the emotional scars in Europe following two world wars and the passivity bred by generations of intrusive bureaucracy. But one major factor has undoubtedly been the skillful manipulation of language employed by its creators. The key to hiding something in an information society such as ours is not to ban mentioning of it. Prohibitions only trigger human curiosity. It is rather to make it sound innocent, vaguely benevolent and above all exceedingly boring, and then drown it in the cacophony of noise and impressions we get bombarded with every single day. Since most people have short attention spans, they will soon move on to something else even if they have a vague idea of what’s going on. If you implement your agenda gradually over many years and refrain from openly stating your end goals, you can get away with quite a lot.

Tariq RamadanHere’s a quote from the Algiers Declaration for a Shared Vision of the Future from 2006. It states that: “It is essential to create a Euro-Mediterranean entity founded on Universal Values.” “Universal Values” sounds ok, doesn’t it? Well, the problem is, for Muslims the only universal values are Islamic values. As Tariq Ramadan says, “Muslim identity is the only true source of universality.” In other words: Arabs will see this as an admission that Europe should in the future be based on Islamic values. So a betrayal of breathtaking proportions is made to sound entirely innocent, and is tucked away in boring-looking documents that 99.99% of EU citizens have never heard of. In the odd chance that an outsider might read one or two of them, he would still have to penetrate layers of incomprehensible Eurabian Newspeak to decipher their true significance. It’s clever and it works, especially if the most plainspoken agreements are not made public or put in print. It then takes a person of Bat Ye’or’s intellectual stature and trained eye to see through the glossocratic fog and connect the dots.

Through such methods, the EU has managed to do what nobody has been able to do since the Roman Empire, and hardly even then: To unite most of the European continent, from Spain to Romania and from Finland to Italy, in one political entity. Whereas the Soviet Union was, in the words of Ronald Reagan, the Evil Empire, perhaps the European Union will be remembered as the Glossocratic Empire, probably the first empire in human history built primarily through the ability to manipulate words. This was achieved by downplaying crucial information and drowning the public in irrelevant information, and by boring people into bureaucratic submission.

However, just as Neil Postman warned against the pitfalls of the information society, he also said that “Technology always has unforeseen consequences, and it is not always clear, at the beginning, who or what will win, and who or what will lose.”

It is no coincidence that the newest and most decentralized medium, the Internet, has become the preferred medium for opposition to the ruling glossocracy. As author Bruce Bawer has noticed: “Thank God for the [Inter]Net. I tremble at the thought of all the things that have happened during the past years that I would never have known about without it. (...) If Europe is saved, it will be because of the Internet.”

One comment, later censored at a BBC online discussion forum, said:

“That the BBC does not allow a link to LGF [Little Green Footballs, major anti-Jihad blog] will come as little surprise to those of us familiar with the BBC’s output and editorial tone. What has come as a surprise to me, a relative newcomer to the ‘blogosphere’, is the degree to which the news the BBC chooses to present to us is filtered and censored. Whole stories that cause a sensation on the blogosphere and are of undoubted public interest are either mentioned in passing or not mentioned at all by the BBC.”

Nicholas CopernicusJust as Nicolaus Copernicus in the 16th century demonstrated that the sun does not revolve around the earth, so too the traditional media outlets are slowly discovering that the information society no longer revolves around their editorial policies. It’s the Second Copernican Revolution. We have yet to determine just how significant it is, but it is already creating visible cracks in the edifice of the Glossocratic Empire.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Political correctness is a mixture of camouflage, concealment and deception; political correctness is the murk in the water, the enveloping darkness, the encroaching ignorance that insidiously changes the way we think about everything, depriving us first of our freedom of thought, then of our ability to think freely, until freedom itself becomes unthinkable."

Vol-in-Law said...

A tour de force, Fjordman.

"I’ve noticed that in many stories involving magic, a magician gains power over something once he gives it a name. So let’s give the anti-Western self-hatred a name. What about self-termination? This is an historical epoch where the West has gone from self-determination to self-termination."

I believe Marcuse himself called this state of self-loathing, which he desired to inculcate, 'cultural pessimism'.

Brent Steeno said...

I just came across your blog yesterday. Thank you for writing this. It is very informative and scary. I see the ignorance of my fellow Americans in a new light right now. Thank you.

Anonymous said...

Excellent as always. One problem that springs to mind immediately, though, is how people who don't read blogs can be awoken to the threat that we on the Blogosphere can see so very clearly. How to span the hardcopy - cybercopy divide?

Answers on a postcard, please.

kepiblanc said...

Where self-termination is the 'politics' of Europe, its 'culture' could be called seppukultur from the Japanese word 'seppuku' (= harakiri or suicide)....

Fjordman's enthusiasm for the Internet may vanish when he realizes that the EU is about to take over control of the DNS (Domain Name System) from USA-based ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). A few years from now no European citizen will be able to read blogs like this one.

Anonymous said...

Excellent question, Mr. Smith.

We have to tell them.

The techniques are different with different people. To some, you tell them a little, get their interest, and e-mail them a link. Others will have more confidence in the information if they find it themselves, so you tell them a little, and suggest keywords they can google on. The good news is, a lot of people already kind of have an idea that there's a story.

We have to get the debate on Islam out of the closet. We need to modify the meaning of the word "dialogue". ;)

By the way; God knows what's going on. That's why He has sent us people like Fjordman.

Jen said...

Superb (per usual). Thank you.

Fellow Peacekeeper said...

This essay is genuinely excellent work Fjordman.

How can a Steyn get syndicated but Fjordman remain an internet secret? This article needs linking and exposure to make sure the most people see it. Hit the BBS, the forums, the blog comments.

Speaking of links, Lawrence Auster has made yet another couple of good posts at exposing the inherant problems of PC anti-discrimination. If Fjordman eloquently paints the big picture, Auster does sterling detail work.

chuck said...

The state strips away your personal, economic and political freedom, yet grants you sexual freedom in return, boldly hailing itself as your liberator.

In short, folks are attracted to socialism by the promise of free nooky; that has long been one of my own contentions. Freud also played a role in this particular fraud. So too some of his latter day believers such as Margaret Mead. I keep hoping for a reaction to this nonsense, just as the Victorian age seems to me to have been a reaction to the Regency.

Anonymous said...

'seppukultur', what an excellent word! Think I'll keep that if you don't mind, kepiblanc. Works in a lot of ways, especially the highlighting of the fact that this idea of willingly disembowelling oneself to keep someone else happy is so foreign to the European mind that we have to borrow a Japanese word to accurately describe a current European trend.

Nevsky, Phanarath,

Great ideas both, but what I'm really wondering about is how to awaken/enlighten people who don't tend to read anything online other than their emails. I don't know, perhaps some kinds of flyers left lying around pointing people to a good site would do the trick? Question then becomes, though, which site. All sites that I've seen dealing with this, even the good Baron's here, start from the assumption that the premise of ongoing jihad has been accepted. Perhaps there needs to be a new site, or alliance of bloggers (best would probably be a site with an alliance of European bloggers and American allies, I imagine. Europe needs to save itself for a change), or something, particularly addressing those who haven't yet seen anything about this that would convince? An Intro to Seeing Jihad site, or something. Wiser heads than mine are needed on this, I fear. I wonder if the Baron or Fjordman are reading this, if they have any ideas.

Ironmistress said...

The bad thing with Sweden is that the Swedes actually like it.

The welfare state is not an unique idea nor it is a Socialist idea. It springs out from the Lutheran ethics and the Lutheran concept of responsibilities of the society towards its members. The Swedish Church and later the State have both shorn their sheep well but also taken care of them from craddle to grave. The roots of the welfare state in the Swedish society are far older than thirties. They extend even beyond the Reformation and to Catholic era.

I, as a Finn, must admit Sweden is one of the nicest places to live - when things are good and go well. But when things screw, it isn't that nice anymore.

Okay. Vad gick fel med Sverige?

The decay of the welfare state in Sweden began in the seventies and with the first secular generation. The builders of the welfare state were staunch Lutherans, they had deep sense of both responsibility and religion and extremely high work ethics. Lutheranism and Protestant ethics was one of the pillars on which the welfare state stood.

The seventies' generation (those who entered in work force in 1970s) were better educated, wealthier, more intelligent and more international than any of their predecessors. Sadly, it was also the time when Leftism became widespread in the universities.

The traditional Scandinavian Leftism, Social Democracy, is a working class movement. It stresses on ethics, responsibility, tradition and fair deals between workers and employers. Nothing wrong with it. The form of Leftism found in the Universities was far more virulent and destructive - it was heavily influenced by Communism, and it poisoned the minds of the young Swedes. Unfortunately that wave of Leftism permeated the whole society save only a few institutions - the result was the rise of political correctness.

Another reason why multiculturalism struck Sweden so hard was the triumph it had experienced in 60s and 70s. Some 500,000 Finns had immigrated in Sweden, and while there had been certain friction (En finne igen!), the Finns integrated in the Swedish society extremely well. The Swedes thought that if we succeeded with Finns, we will succeed with others as well.

It must be remembered that certain branches in the academia in Sweden were never affected by Leftism. They were natural sciences, technology and commerce - the "hard" sciences. Engineers have always considered Marxism as bullshit, since engineers have strict naturalist and scientific education where ideologies won't fit. That is one of the reasons why Sweden could spring up corporations like Ericsson.

Why did Sweden manage to integrate half a million Finns without problems? Why does Sweden fail with others?

The multiculturalism succeeds the better the cultures are near to each other. Finnish and Swedish cultures are extremely close. Finland and Sweden were one state from 1249 to 1809 - there was 650 years common history. Many Finns spoke Swedish already before immigration. Finns, like Swedes, are Lutherans - and Finns have reputation of workaholics. Finns themselves showed will to integrate and international marriages were common. The result is that Finns integrated really well. The same can be said with Estonians, Norwegians and Danes.

Now compare someone who comes from a culture which is a) not Lutheran b) not workaholic c) not egalitarian d) does not posess Suecophone basis e) has no common history with Sweden f) put here your favourite difference - how do you expect them to integrate? Not too well. The bigger the cultural differences, the more likely the multiculture is to fail.

There is a proverb in Swedish: "lika barn leker bäst" - similar children play best [together]". As much as we would like it not to be true, it still is. Swedes play best with Finns, Balts, Danes and Norwegians. They don't play well with immigrants from Muslim countries.

Why do the Swedes stick to a system which has failed? Because it has worked so well in past. Sweden is no Oceania and the story is not 1984. The story is Brave New World. Free sex and free internet is the soma. Swedes have submitted themselves to a system hijacked by Leftists. The result is living in an illusion of the past while unwellness spreads, rapes and felonies are common, taxation has become skyhigh and many consider immigration.

The only clever people - engineers, businessmen, military etc - are too busy on making money and minding their business to stain their hands on politics. If you find a Conservative Swede, he most likely is an engineer or other person to deal with technology or natural sciences, or a businessperson. They are not interested in politics.

The problem with Sweden is that it is (or at least has been) so awfully safe place. Sweden resembles a lot the society in Sylvester Stallone's "Demolition Man". Such safeness - continuum of seven decades - has lulled also the Swedes on certain state of pacifism. Compared to Finns, who are paranoid and maintain an oversized army and airforce and universal conscription (we were attacked in WWII and fought both Soviets and Germans), Swedes are far too Pacifist to really react. Besides that, the Leftists demolished two of the staunchest pillars of the welfare state by abolishing the Lutheran Church and demolishing the sacredness of family. Instead of safety net, the welfare state has become a hammock.

The Swedish welfare state could be saved if the imminent dangers are detected - and remedied. The big question is that will it be too late?

Ironmistress said...

Kepiblanc, don't forget Linux is a Finnish invention and Finns in general are the ultimate gadget freaks. If there is a way to hack it, some Finn will discover it sooner or later. It is no coincidence Nokia started in Finland. So if there is will, there is a way. The reality of Orwell is not 1984, it is Paranoia.

kepiblanc said...

Mellivora, yes Linus Thorvalds is a Fin, albeit he speaks Swedish. He invented the kernel, but in cooperation with the rest of the free world. On top of that we now have the entire GNU/Linux operating system as an example of the excellence of freedom. And I like your pride of being Finnish....

pela68 said...

I remember the time of my childhhood, when traveling to Finland meant sulphurus odores, the sound of two- stroke engines of Trabants and the fatty and salty (but albeit very tasty) food.

It's not that long ago- the seventies!

When we wisited my relatives we were considered "finer people- the Swedes with the fine clothes and money."

The strong work ethics of the finns who immigrated into Sweden payed off. They were making a bundel of money, and generally assimilated and fitted in to the Swedish society far better than the immigrants of today.

Around that time, a lot of Yougoslaves, Greeks and Turks also came to Sweden. They all was assimilated and intergrated to the Swedish society without problem and was hardworking and generally decent people.

What has changed scince then? The socialist political ideology of multiculturalism started by the socialdemocratic party under the Palmeera and continued by the socialdemocrates ever since then.

Sweden is by and large to be considered as a one party state! I know! We have a different government right now. Or do we? The Renfeldt administration won the election on the same premesis as the socialdemocrates did under allmost 67 years of continious reing. Namely, a stronger state with more public funding.

Finland has overcome Sweden ecnomically as well as in socialpolitics. A part of Finlands success is the unvillingness- or should I say fortune- of never accepting multiculturalism as a political agenda.

In my opinion, multiculturalism is nothing more than a political and ideological tool for racism. It's like welcoming refugees from nazism- only to incourage them to be better nazis!

That is why we have this monocultural enclaves of muslims infesting (yes infesting) large and isolated parts of the major citys in Sweden.

There is nothing wrong with muslim people- at all! They are the victims of an inhumane and racistic political agenda who makes distinct difference of different people, and in fact incourages this people to move onwards extremism by never really letting them in to the society. No wonder they turn at the wery societys that once welcommed them!

The name of the game is multiculturalism! And socialism is the problem. It must be gone before it destroyes ourselves as well as the immigrants.

Ironmistress said...

The good thing on glossocracy is that it works in both ways. And its effect also depends of the language used.

Finnish and other Fenno-Ugric languages are agglutinating, while Germanic languages are either isolating or fusional. The basic vocabulary in Finnish is quite restricted, but words are formed by variious prefixes, suffixes and derivatives. Finnish is quite close to Orwellian "newspeak" by its grammar - but we are used to it, and once internalized, the language no more restricts thought but actually gives it enormous possibilities - you might compare C versus Java.

The newspeak works both ways. What can be used against you, you can use also against them. Finnish provides good tools for this. For example, consider the blanco word "fasisti" (Fascist) which is used to stample anything as inhumane and disgusting. It is usually used by the Leftists to stample the Righties. But by adding the prefix "puna-" (red) you get a whole new word "punafasisti" (Red Fascist) which can be effectively used on encountering the rhetorics.

Likewise, "feministi" (Feminist) can easily be twisted into "feminatsi" (Femi-Nazi) to describe a Feminist gone awry. Since the Feminist rhetorics contain the phrase "sovinistisika" (Chauvinist pig), its counterpart is portmanteau "femakko" (from words "feministi" (Feminist) and "emakko" (sow)") - implying a Feminist gone pig.

The question is not whining on glossocracy but hijacking the weapons of the enemy and using them against him. That is a game two can play.

Ironmistress said...

pela68, actually they weren't Trabants but Wartburgs - Trabant simply didn't endure the Finnish winter and was never imported here. East Germany was an important purchaser of Finnish paper and machinery, but they had no money to pay, so they paid with imports. Since Finland had shortage on cars, Wartburgs were imported and they were popular amongst the working class since they were cheap and the two-stroke engine was easy to overhaul and repair at your own garage. The middle class favoured either Japanese cars or Saabs.

The greatest problem with the Swedish system is that it proved an enormous success. Until the seventies and early eighties, Sweden combined social security and safety to low unemployment, high enterpreneurship and high work ethics.

Och vad hände då?

As I mentioned, Social Democracy was a working class movement and it was headed by the blue collars - who usually had common sense and idea on how things worked in practise. The erosion of the industrial working class also meant the erosion of the practical basis of the Social Democrats.

Those who really work on the practical level and do or design actual things usually know what works and what doesn't. Social Democracy was a practical and pragmatic movement. It was designed by those who work. When the working class eroded - both by workers moving up to middle class and by deindustrialization of European countries into undeveloped countries, also the pragmatics disappeared.

The Leftism in the Academia is different from the working class. The working class Leftims is strictly practical and pragmatic, while the academic Leftism is based on ideologies, class theories and other Marxist-Leninist bullshit. It has no interface to real life, the theories do not correspond to reality and it simply doesn't work in practise. Since the academicians are no engineers nor scientists, they simply don't care.

As the Social Democrats' working class basis eroded and the percentage of true working class diminished, those of the academia hijacked the Social Democrats. They infiltrated the party and took it over. The welfare state - which was designed originally to be a safety net - instead become a hammock. The Leftist academicians extended the societal safety net to sectors where it really didn't belong and even promoted unhealthy structures - single parent families, children born out of wedlock, extended unemployment etc. At the same time they undermined the pillars of the welfare state - family, patriotism, Lutheran church, work ethics - and replaced them with Leftist ideology.

The result is a sickly, ossified, overtaxed and politically overcorrect nanny state which we all know too well. Swedish dream became Demolition Man nightmare.

What is the main difference between Finland and Sweden? In musical terms, Sweden is pop and Finland is rock. Finland endured four wars last century (Civil War, Winter War, Continuation War and Lapland War) and Finland lived four decades as neighbour of USSR. That taught Finns as extremely paranoid and cautious - it taught us to speak softly and carry a big gun. It also taught us such concepts as "kitman", "liturgy", "Finlandisation" (the art of bowing to East without mooning to West) and "doublespeak". Our politicians have been extremely cautious with the immigration. We have the quota of 1000 immigrants each year - that was stated after certain experiences with Somalis. That has worked well. The quota does not include those who come with work visa. Our southern neighbours, Estonians, are even more careful - and also braver. For good reasons: they experienced the Communism firsthand - and got immunized against it - we didn't.

pela68 said...

Mellivora:

I did'nt mean in any way to sound degoratory aganst Finland or the finnish people. I did take a little "poetic freedom" though, to bescrive the feeling I had when visiting Finland in my youth. I'm very proud of my (partly) finnish heritage. And my point was that Sweden in the seventies still was a economic "superpower" when compared with Finland- something that has changed dramatically since those days- to Finlands advatage.

But the sulphurus smell was and still are lingering/permeating the air of Torneå. Also there were Trabants being used in that timeperiod- even in the north (together with a lot of Vaz/Ladas). I know this as a mather of fact because my aunt living in Oulu owned one. Maby only used during summertimes. Maby privately imported- but still (c:

But otherwise- Very wise words!

Ironmistress said...

Pela68, there is one of the largest steel mills in Finland in Torneå, and there is large cellulose and paper mill in Kemi (20 km from Torneå). It is just money which reeks there :-)

The wheel has turned again - the relation with Finland and Estonia are the same today as with sweden and Finland back then.

The Frumious Falafel said...

Quoting a snippet from Mellivora:
Why did Sweden manage to integrate half a million Finns without problems? Why does Sweden fail with others?

The multiculturalism succeeds the better the cultures are near to each other. Finnish and Swedish cultures are extremely close.


While I think you answered for the most part the question you posed, I would add one element which I think has been overlooked here and bears some consideration.

Indeed, Pela68 makes the important point that not only have Finns integrated extremely well into modern Sweden, but he also points to a relatively-successful integration of -- well, let me quote him directly:

a lot of Yugoslavs, Greeks and Turks also came to Sweden. They all was [were] assimilated and integrated [in]to the Swedish society without problem and was [were] hardworking and generally decent people.

So, the point being here from different authors, that various European -- even Southern-European peoples have "integrated well" into Swedish society.

This then, it seems to me, begs the question as to why (seemingly) most Muslims -- from a variety of different countries, most notably not all Arab countries -- have apparently failed so miserably at integrating into Swedish society(?)

Indeed, I must only point out the marked increase in Muslim men raping "white" Swedish Women (among many other horrific crimes). Irrespective of the extent to which the Swedish government seems to desire to sweep statistics like this under the rug (meaning: downplay them), I am sure there are many innocent Swedish women whose anger must boil-over at this attempt by their own government to "hide" these crimes in the (apparent) interests of "multiculturalism".

Now it is known that the perception of these Muslim perpetrators is that their non-Muslim victims were either "asking for it" in the way they dressed, or simply "common whores" due to the fact that they chose not to (gasp) walk unescorted at night. I find this particularly repugnant given the almost idyllic view of Sweden’s remarkable low crime rate as described here in other comments.

In addition, when I personally think about the incredible shame these rape-victims must endure -- not just from their rape alone, but from the pathetic response (or lack thereof) by the very Swedish authorities in whom the Swedish people have historically placed so much trust, even I as a far-removed American male become quite angered. I cannot for the life of me understand how modern Swedes – fathers especially – have not coalesced into an "American-style" "pressure-group" to somehow bring the perpetrators to justice as well as effecting other measures to clamp down on his ruffian behavior.

But now to return to the original question I rhetorically posed -- which I must add seems to me the question in the two commentators/posters to this blog that I posted above. One must ask (it seems to me), why is it that the Muslim immigrants to Sweden have appeared to fail so miserably at assimilation into this almost utopian country (certainly from the point of view of a destitute immigrant) that welcomed them with such open arms and kindness in the first place?

One commentator defends the "individual Muslim" as being at heart a "good" person -- tainted as it were only due to his political/social leaders. While I may give that some credence, and consequently am by no means ready to condemn all Muslims, the fact remains (and the answer to my rhetorical question is) that good or bad at heart, most Muslims -- by their own definition of what it means to be a Muslim in the first place -- subscribe to a creed which quite clearly excudes "non-believers" -- which, in and of itself may not be so bad. But the fact is that the more, shall we say "active" among them continue to subscribe to the Koranic "admonition" to give all non-believers a chance to convert, and if they decline, to kill them by any one of an array of gruesome means.

Look, even if you disagree with my above characterization as being too "all-encompassing" or that it paints Islam with too broad a brush stroke, the fact remains that Muslims in Sweden and indeed in every country they have immigrated into staunchly refuse to even attempt to integrate into what we would call "mainstream society".

Now in no way am I saying that "integration" requires Muslims in Europe to intermarry. Far from it. They have every right as do many other religious/ethnic groups in other countries and attempt to retain their heritage and even bloodline if they so choose. I do not think any reasonable person is seriously arguing against their right to do this.

Rather, it appears that especially in countries like Sweden which have clearly gone out of their way to open their societies, their social support systems, not to mention their wallets to immigrant Muslims -- that the more kindness shown, the more contemptuous Muslims appear to behave towards their host (often European) country.

So, to finally wrap up my answer, I think that as many problems as Sweden might have -- and have been so eloquently spelled out in the above comments in this blog -- the Swedes in no way deserve to have their daughters raped at an alarmingly high rate in "thanks" to the unprecedented kindness bestowed on their Muslim immigrants.

My only question to Sweden is, when will you realize that perhaps sooner that you think, the relative paradise you've so painstakingly built up in the last half century is in real danger of being destroyed?

To have a house-guest attempt to rape your daughter strikes me as the ultimate in effrontery. Does Sweden have a Masochistic wish?