Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Cassandra’s Fate

Oh Cassandra, what did you know?
You who bring bad news wherever you go.


                  — Al Stewart, from “Helen and Cassandra”

According to the ancient Greeks, Cassandra’s curse was to see accurately into the future, but without the possibility that she would ever be believed:

Cassandra being murdered by ClytemnestraCassandra was the most beautiful of the daughters of Priam and Hecuba, the king and queen of Troy. She was given the gift of prophecy by Apollo, who wished to seduce her; when she accepted his gift but refused his sexual advances, he deprived her prophecies of the power to persuade.

And so Cassandra’s name has come to mean someone who utters unwelcome and unheeded predictions of disaster.

We’re not really playing the Cassandra role here. We don’t pretend to be able to see into the future. But we’re interested in sifting data, tracing possible trends, and following divergent threads of speculation to see where they may lead.

Momentous events are building up across the globe. It’s quite possible that an aggressive and barbarous Islamic revival will acquire a nuclear bomb or other weapons of mass horror in the near future. That dreadful prospect makes it imperative to at least attempt a peek into the various plausible scenarios that lie ahead of us.

But some people consider certain areas of speculation to be out of bounds.

To be specific, what got Gates of Vienna in trouble recently was an exploration of the possibility of civil disorder, mass insurrection, and the general breakdown of European governmental authority if unchecked Muslim immigration into the continent continues. If existing political authority were to erode, one of the imaginable consequences is that mob violence, the emergence of well-armed paramilitary organizations, or new authoritarian regimes supported by outside powers could initiate mass slaughter against Muslims.

The events described above might occur if existing European governments fail to change current policies. The EU and its member states are ignoring the will of their people, the example of history, and the principles of prudent governance. Any state that fails in its duty to protect its citizens will of necessity be viewed as illegitimate, and cannot continue to wield authority indefinitely.

When that authority breaks down, all bets are off. A chaotic and unpredictable situation emerges, and any number of unsavory scenarios become imaginable.

That, in a nutshell, is the thesis that got Gates of Vienna in so much hot water. We were seen as advocating genocide, or being less than adequate in our declarations against it, or opening the door to it and making it more likely by talking about the possibility that it might happen.

I don’t buy that argument.

I don’t believe that there are legions of unwashed slope-browed atavistic Europeans who will be activated by my words.

I don’t think genocidally-minded people need my permission to start thinking about doing vile deeds.

I don’t accept that my analysis will “open the door” to the idea and somehow make it acceptable.

This is balderdash. Did all those ban-the-bomb folks with their posters of mushroom clouds make it more likely that the USA and the USSR would nuke each other? Were they advocating nuclear war?

Or were they instead reacting to what they believed was a real possibility, something that they wanted with all their hearts to prevent?

With the Cold War and MAD in mind, take a look at this excellent essay that arrived in our mailbox yesterday.

Vegetius Renatus is the pseudonym of a longtime reader from the Washington D.C. area who works as a consultant on logistics, organizational planning, and the supply chain. Wargaming and prediction are his stock-in-trade, so he offered his thoughts on the recent controversy.

Rather than Cassandra, consider Paul Revere and Herman Kahn.


Wargaming the Unthinkable
by Vegetius Renatus


Catching flak for thinking about the unthinkable has a long and honorable history.

Gates of Vienna has raised concerns about internal violence — civil war, leading to genocide — as a possible outcome if Europe’s political leaders do not deal with Islamization through political means. GoV published an essay characterized as a possible future scenario, stating it was “descriptive, not normative,” which apparently was not enough of a disclaimer for Pajamas Media, which cannot support thinking about the unthinkable concerning the future of Islamization in Europe.

So be it. PJM was never intended to be a think tank nor a serious wargaming organization, but rather a commercially successful aggregation of popular bloggers. PJM is committed to journalism about the present, not speculation on the future; but in order to take action to prevent the Islamization of Europe, and to organize to prevent it politically, serious speculation and generation of possible scenarios are required.
- - - - - - - - -
This is yet another example of the development of a Second Generation of activists and analysts working against Islamization. The First Generation analysts continue to emphasize current reporting and creating an awareness of the immediate threat, which has a value on which all can agree, but which is no longer adequate.

A Second Generation of activists and analysts is now envisioning scenarios for possible futures, developing policy and legislative initiatives, and aggregating in political parties and community organizations. The new phase of resistance is not a rejection of the older efforts, nor a devaluation of them, and the continuing efforts to create a public awareness of the threat have lasting value.

However, more active resistance is bound to occur — including the organized generation of future scenarios required for planning — with or without the approval and participation of the valued First Generation who sounded the initial warnings about Islamization.

They are the respected “Paul Reveres” who kept watch and alerted the public; but wars are not won solely by watchmen. As Churchill said, “Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.”

Herman KahnDuring the 1950s and 1960s Herman Kahn, one of the founders of the Hudson Institute, applied systems theory and game theory to “thinking about the unthinkable,” which at the time was the strategic importance of a second strike capability in a nuclear war with the Soviets — and the survivability of a nuclear war. Responses to his work were often highly negative.

From Wikipedia:

Due to his willingness to articulate the most brutal possibilities, Kahn came to be regarded by some as a monster, although he was known as amiable in private. Unlike most strategists, Kahn was entirely willing to posit the form a post-nuclear world might assume… A willingness to tolerate such possibilities might be worth it, Kahn argued, in exchange for sparing the entire continent of Europe in the more massive nuclear exchange more likely to occur under the pre-MAD doctrine.

Interestingly, a number of pacifists, including A. J. Muste and Bertrand Russell, admired and praised Kahn’s work, because they felt it presented a strong case for full disarmament by suggesting that nuclear war was all but unavoidable. Others criticized Kahn vehemently, claiming that his postulating the notion of a winnable nuclear war made one more likely.

The latter criticism is similar to that applied by critics to GoV for considering the scenario of genocide as a possible outcome of the weakness of European governments in the face of a truculent and supremacist Islam.

Kahn helped develop the American discipline of wargaming and the developing of scenarios for contingency planning. See, for example, his many articles on developing future scenarios at the Hudson Institute, and perhaps most apropos, “In Defense of Thinking”, in which he wrote:

Seventy-five years ago white slavery was rampant in England. Each year thousands of young girls were forced into brothels and kept there against their will… One reason why this lasted as long as it did was that it could not be talked about openly in Victorian England; moral standards as to subjects of discussion made it difficult to arouse the community to necessary action…Victorian standards, besides perpetuating the white slave trade, intensified the damage to those involved. Social inhibitions which reinforce natural tendencies to avoid thinking about unpleasant subjects are hardly uncommon.

[…]

The psychological factors involved in ostrich-like behavior have parallels in communities and nations. Nevertheless, during the sixty years of the twentieth century many problems have come increasingly into the realm of acceptable public discussion.

[…]

If thinking about something bad will not improve it, it is often better not to think about it. Perhaps some evils can be avoided or reduced if people do not think or talk about them. But when our reluctance to consider danger brings danger nearer, repression has gone too far.

In 1960 I published a book that attempted to direct attention to the possibility of a thermonuclear war, to ways of reducing the likelihood of such a war, and to methods for coping with the consequences should war occur despite our efforts to avoid it. The book was greeted by a large range of responses — some of them sharply critical. Some of this criticism was substantive, touching on greater or smaller questions of strategy, policy, or research techniques. But much of the criticism was not concerned with the correctness or incorrectness of the views I expressed. It was concerned with whether any book should have been written on this subject at all. It is characteristic of our times that many intelligent and sincere people are willing to argue that it is immoral to think and even more immoral to write in detail about having to fight a thermonuclear war. [emphasis added]

There is a persistent tendency within polite society to think that merely discussing a horrific possibility makes it more likely to occur. This fallacy may be difficult to refute, but it’s also difficult to support — can anyone identify a chain of causation that leads from a discussion (without advocacy) to the awful events in question?

On the other hand, it’s easy to see that opening a previously closed topic might help prevent dreadful future events. When people who loathe the idea of such occurrences become aware of their likelihood, they begin to mobilize to prevent them.

Thinking the unthinkable isn’t merely a sound wargaming strategy; it’s a public duty.

32 comments:

Bilgeman said...

"Thinking the unthinkable isn’t merely a sound wargaming strategy; it’s a public duty."

It's also common f*cking sense.

Recognizing the possibility of a car crash is not advocating careless driving. It IS finding the underlying reason for the precaution of wearing a seatbelt.

Right before your skull shatters the windshield as you're catapulted out of the car and over the hood, maybe you'll have to time to reflect that you could have avoided your fate.

A little too late, at that point.

randian said...

.

Frank said...

Funny, I was just writing about the escalation ladder yesterday. His 44th point is one of those rare Hemingway distillations of language that carry so much description in so few words: "44. Spasm or insensate war."

no2liberals said...

Excellent piece!
I'm reminded of a management seminar I attended on MBO, managing by objective.
The speaker spoke of the silk scarves the pilots of WWI wore. They were not ornamental, or an identifier, but were necessary. The pilots, while constantly scanning for German planes, would rub their necks raw on the wool uniform collars, thus the silk scarves made it more comfortable for them...they had to constantly scan their environment for opportunities and threats.
As should we all.

PRCalDude said...

"This is descriptive, not normative."

What was so hard to understand about that? The entire freaking article was hypothetical.

Zundfolge said...

Minor epiphany here.

"The Left", "Progressives", "Liberals" ... whatever we're calling them today, are obsessed with destruction. I honestly believe the goal of the left is to destroy western culture (for an explanation of what I mean, watch Evan Sayet's lecture titled "How Modern Liberals Think" it can be seen here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaE98w1KZ-c).

A major result of Political Correctness is the inability to debate contentious subjects (Islamization, racism, sexism, abortion, gun control, environmentalism). More and more I think this is by design.

The left doesn't want the worlds problems solved because if we actually solve any of the worlds problems we push their glorious day of destruction farther off into the future.

Annoy Mouse said...

It sounds like the wrath of Herman/A.Q. Kha(ah)n

Fellow Peacekeeper said...

Zundfolge said... I honestly believe the goal of the left is to destroy western culture

Yes. Welcome to world of cultural marxism, Gramsci, "critical theory", deconstruction and the Frankfurt school. Now take this red pill (Lind's primer on the origins of political correctness), and see how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Profitsbeard said...

The alternatives in the Resistance to Islam need to be more comprehensive and more creative.

If Islam is debunked, by scholarly and historically-sound Koranic criticism (exegesis of the texts, especially recently-discovered ur-Koranic fragments found in Yemen), our Civilization's looming disaster can be defused at the source.

And it should be emphasized that Muslims are victims of Islam.

And are our brothers and sisters.

They need to be saved from its dismal clutches as much as we need to be spared its imperialistic march to Mohammedism's goal.

Which is for a medievalist global gulag built on irrationalism and totalitarianism.

The Koran's ideology has to be fought more than do its brainwashed adherents .

That was the missing angle from El Ingles' analysis.

Undermine the Koran, and its zombies will wake.

Zenster said...

From the article: "Others criticized Kahn vehemently, claiming that his postulating the notion of a winnable nuclear war made one more likely."

The latter criticism is similar to that applied by critics to GoV for considering the scenario of genocide as a possible outcome of the weakness of European governments in the face of a truculent and supremacist Islam.

How primitive are people allowed to be before they finally are dismissed from intelligent discussion?

When I traveled to Taiwan, I had to keep in mind that when witnessing or hearing about some or another danger a person had experienced, you were not supposed to say, "Oh, but you might have been killed!", as though even just such speculation was tantamount to enabling that negative outcome. That, merely by voicing such a notion, it gained more probability.

Just how much of this superstitious twaddle are we supposed to put up with? Remember:

IT'S BAD LUCK TO BE SUPERSTITIOUS

The author's analogy to white slavery in Victorian England is spot on. Even more bizarre is how the current situation with Islam bears exponentially worse consequences making it just that more urgent a topic for discussion. Instead, the Leftists hope that by labeling something "unthinkable" it therefore will not be thought of. Such inchoate pseudo-logic is a match for "If wishes were horses all beggars would ride." Again, it is as if the power of words exceeds that of physical reality.

Finally, most stupendous of all is how the global Muslim community seems even less inclined to pursue this channel of thought. They have the most to lose. All Islam precariously teeters on an evaporating knife edge of Western tolerance and yet they cannot summon forth enough courage to examine the repercussions of continued Muslim antagonism towards those upon whom their very survival depends.

At least Islam gives Muslims some pretense of an excuse to defy all reason. I still cannot figure out how liberals and their ilk justify or tolerate such willful blindness on their own part.

Zenster said...

Profitsbeard: They need to be saved from its [Islam's] dismal clutches as much as we need to be spared its imperialistic march to Mohammedism's goal.

This is my own theory about "Western Liberation Theology" (so to speak), in that it is our moral obligation to liberate Muslims from their abusive ideology. The only other alternative is indulging their collective death wish, which we have heretofore been so churlish as not to have granted them.

Sir Henry Morgan said...

Above all, people are disposed to mistake predicting troubles for causing troubles and even for desiring troubles: "If only," they love to think, "if only people wouldn't talk about it, it probably wouldn't happen." Perhaps this habit goes back to the primitive belief that the word and the thing, the name and the object, are identical.

At all events, the discussion of future grave but, with effort now, avoidable evils is the most unpopular and at the same time the most necessary occupation for the politician. Those who knowingly shirk it deserve, and not infrequently receive, the curses of those who come after. I can already hear the chorus of execration. How dare I say such a horrible thing? How dare I stir up trouble and inflame feelings by repeating such a conversation?

The answer is that I do not have the right not to do so. ...

Enoch Powell April 1968.

Steven Luotto said...

As it is pertinent to the discussion "Cassandras," the rant below is what got me kicked out of LGF. May a flock of pigeons poop in both my eyes if I have changed anything but some spelling and punctuation.

Charles Johnson: "What is to be done is to continue educating people and exposing the agenda of the jihadists. "

Me as "Mammamia":
Please allow me to dissent. And please bear with my long posts.

You say: "What is to be done is to continue educating people and exposing the agenda of the jihadists."

Well, creating awareness is certainly a form of "doing," but obviously it is not enough. In fact, seen from another perspective it is doing nothing at all.

For example, I can denounce malaria, describe everything science knows about malaria and wax extremely eloquent about the harms of malaria, but unless I or those influenced by me actually go out and spray DDT (or whatever they do these days), I've done nothing, or rather, despite all my good intentions and hard effort, I have failed to get anything done.

BTW I am not suggesting that Muslims are vermin that need to be sprayed with poison. They are men, women and children with first names and last names and personalities... and Islam is an old and majestic belief system, strong and complete enough to survive 1400 years, and the likes of Mongol invasions, colonialism(s), modernism(s), etc.

When I read the term "Islamo-Fascism," I chuckle. We WISH it were Fascism which only lasted 20 years! Today in my Italy, (the country that invented Fascism), there are very few real, honest-to-badness Fascists. In "liberated" Iraq instead, a girl was just religiously murdered by her father for falling in love with an Englishman. If one is to believe reports, this has also happened (and gone unpunished) thousands and thousands of times in the UK itself!

So despite defeat and exposure to freedom and superior Judeo-Christian and/or Secular values, Islam is as strong as ever and posits itself as an alternative system, with its own charter of Human Rights, its own complete set of values, which though perhaps abhorrent to us all, has certainly proven its ability to successfully weather the ages.

Many of us laugh at these bedouins, these "rag-o-heads" and "camel-riders," but the way things stand, one way or another (through their merit and our demerit and perhaps through the the way petroleum collected under the earth's surface), the green oriflamme flag seems destined to fly triumphantly over huge swathes of Europe. And who knows? Even the next president of the USA might have three Islamic names and the full support of Farrakhan!

Where was I? The difference between denouncing and "doing." There are certain things to be considered, certain questions to be asked.

Do Muslims have a conscience? Well yes, of course, they are men, women and children. Anybody (perhaps not openly Jewish or Danish) who has traveled to the Middle East or Pakistan can vouch for the incredible graciousness of the people. They, the Muslims have an Islamic form of conscience, resulting from an ethos derived from their religion. They don't seem to get upset so easily about their wrongdoings whereas they are easily offended to paroxysms of rage by perceived slights from others.

For us this is the very definition of lack of conscience, for them it is simply being a good Muslim. It's the old story of tribality totally trumping ideals. "The worst of ours is still better than the best of yours... and that is why one of our terrorists can walk around our sacred rock whereas one of your saints who has spent the best of his boogie years spoon-feeding the starvelings of the Sahel cannot."

I certainly don't like the word genocide and I am no Fascist, but I think back on the Aztecs and underneath it all, honestly, I'm glad that their culture of human sacrifice was obliterated from the face of the earth by the Christian invaders. Can one say that? Admittedly, the Spaniards (and others) didn't go about it too nicely. They were Fascists and Nazis and Pinochetists and worse... Ponce de Leonistas...

But wait! Did I say "Culture of human sacrifice?" You know something, Mr. Charles? The Muslim culture of human sacrifice is even worse than the no longer extant Aztec one. The old Aztecs would at least hold grand ceremonies at appointed times and places and pluck the throbbing heart out of designated victims (captured enemies). The Muslims (40% of British Muslims) but if silence is consent, (and it is) I would say 99.9% of all Muslims, prefer random, helter-skelter slaughters: "kaboom" splatter orgies (any time, any place and whoever is there is there) with of course that quintessential Islamic touch of the perpetrator's suicidal participation, in an act of sneaky self-sacrifice to be rewarded by instant matrimony with 72 fawn-eyed virgins possessed of self-repairing hymens. Being a Frank Zappa fan myself from way back - I bet even before you - we can say that the suicidal heroics of Islam are intimately entwined with plooking privileges.

Wow! Imagine having so many of these worse-than-Aztec people in your country! Millions of them as in the Netherlands and the UK and Belgium and Sweden and France! Millions of people who consider your country "Darul Harb" - "Land of war"... and whose men of God defend terrorism in a day and age when the goods to kill an entire city the size of Paris can handily fit inside a briefcase and the technology to do such a dastardly deed is available on the Internet.

Now into this comes characters like me and - no doubt - the dreaded El Ingles. Big Isaac Asimov fans, wanna bet? Ever read the Foundation Trilogy, Harry Selden and the psycho-historians? We think we're geniuses, but all we're really saying is the ultra-obvious "something's gonna break... and it's gonna get very ugly."

What does it take to imagine a dirty bomb going off in Birmingham or a water supply poisoned in Padova or a mega-train acident arranged in Barcelona? What does it take to imagine 20 Jumbo jets with thousands of passengers simultaneously dropping into the ocean? Why is it so easy to imagine a huge bomb killing tens of thousands of people somewhere in Israel with alternate / parallel images of ululating women, Kalashinikovs joyously fired into the air and candies handed to children.

CANDIES TO CHILDREN - to celebrate SLAUGHTER! CELESTIAL VIRGINS - to reward suicdal SLAUGHTER!

You, Signor Charles, accuse us of toying with Genocide. But give it a bit more thought. Isn't Ken Livingston toying with genocide when he invites his sheik friend? Isn't the BBC toying with genocide when it hides the truth? Isn't the Storting of Norway, the organism that gave Arafat a peace prize and now finances Hamas toying with genocide? Isn't Jimmy Carter toying with Genocide much more than a Northern League Umberto Bossi type regionalist who has a Fiamma Nierenstein in his Berlusconi coalition? You would probably call Bossi a Fascist or a Nazi, dear Mr. Charles. 'Cause he's like that Belgian guy you're not fond of (the one who supposedly thinks that Belgians are the superior race). Check out who Fiamma Nierenstein is... What is she doing in a government with Massimo Fini ex Movimento Sociale... that is to say Fascist?!

http://www.fiammanirenstein.com/articoli_politica.asp?Categoria=5

Who are you jiving with your political debris, Signor Charles?

Anyhow... What's gonna happen when the Lincoln Tunnel explodes or Seattle suddenly finds herself poisoned to death? Why not? The spiritual leader of the man who might just rule the USA howls "God Damn America!" Isn't the Reverend Wright - and by extension - Obama toying with Genocide?

Okay, never mind the rhetoric. Here's the question. Let's say America is hit in a big way again by the Muslims. Everybody in Topeka Kansas writhes and moans to death because of a light dust that a passing glider drops. It's traced to the Muslims, an organizaton called Habibi el Mahmoud Shabaam. Like 9/11, candies are handed out, there's dancing in the street and there are lame apologies and freaky excuses. What's the right reaction? Should only Habibi el Mahmoud Shabaam be punished or all of Islam? If all of Islam, how? Wouldn't it be more or less what El Ingles would do if he were dictator (in the last part of the essay)?

Out of this you might imagine me a genocidal fascist-hugging freak. I'm an ex-hippy, Jew-loving, Catholic and full of Kumbayah. I even like multi-culturalism... that is, I liked it until the Muslims came along. What's wrong with Chinatown and Little Havana?
==========================
Yes, dear members of GoV and - if any of you are here - dear Pajama People, supposedly defenders of free speech and grassroot opinionating: the above got me kicked out of LGF by Charles himself who wrote:

"Disgusting. The fascist sympathizers and genocide spouters always seem to show up in dead threads two days later.

This one will not be back."

Sir Henry Morgan said...

Bit like what happened to Enoch Powell eh?

Francis W. Porretto said...

Gates of Vienna, like the late Dr. Kahn, performs a public service appreciated by far too few.

The most important thing about any idea is what consequences it would germinate when put into practice. They who are unwilling to contemplate consequences do a huge disservice to us who concern ourselves with ideas, and a bigger one when they seek to silence or marginalize others more farsighted and candid than they.

Keep up the good work.

Anonymous said...

There is a persistent tendency within polite society to think that merely discussing a horrific possibility makes it more likely to occur.

Enoch Powell brought up this very problem in most peoples' thinking in his 'Rivers of Blood' speech:

Above all, people are disposed to mistake predicting troubles for causing troubles and even for desiring troubles: "If only," they love to think, "if only people wouldn't talk about it, it probably wouldn't happen."

Perhaps this habit goes back to the primitive belief that the word and the thing, the name and the object, are identical.

At all events, the discussion of future grave but, with effort now, avoidable evils is the most unpopular and at the same time the most necessary occupation for the politician. Those who knowingly shirk it deserve, and not infrequently receive, the curses of those who come after.

Anyone who thought Gates of Vienna or the author of the "genocide" post was promoting genocide is just FAR OUT!

These are the sorts of thoughts and these are the sorts of conversations that any sensible person concerned about Europe's/the West's future should be having. As we've all seen, mass immigration to Europe (and within Europe) is already causing discord between populations. And, it's not as though genocidal attempts are ancient history in Europe....

We need to be having this conversation in order to prevent such things from ever happening again here in Europe.

Thanks to Gates of Vienna and El Ingles for their bravery!

Steven Luotto said...

Ciao Sir Henry Morgan,

Sorta... but not really. Enoch Powell was peering deeply into the future like an Isaac Asimov psycho-Historian (or a prophet), he was way ahead of his times and - well - what's the expression? "No one's a prophet in his home country."

I can understand (though not condone) why he was ostracized back then. Me instead - or rather - El Ingles, who unlike me is very smart, methodical and analytical, is dealing with hard facts, solidified trends. He is crunching the information and interpreting the patterns that Charles Johnson himself has dedicated his life to churning out.

El Ingles, though brilliant, is no prophet and paradoxically that is why we cannot afford to ignore him. What he writes could very well become tomorrow's news. Enoch Powell was scoffed: "Rivers of blood ah-ah-ah!" Today no one would laugh, not least of all because we've already had rivers of blood and - never mind Cassandras - we now have hundreds of thousands of people dedicated to terrorism prevention... We even have video cameras attached to computers that can divine intentions from the gleam of an eye or the curl of a lip. One could laugh at old Enoch back then and in fact he was the butt of jokes and ditties. Today he'd be arrested by grim-faced individuals, Charles Johnson types.

Well no, Charles Johnson, despite it all remains cool and a hero of sorts.

Okay, so he doesn't want people to think obvious thoughts based on what he himself has exposed about the religion of peace.

So he'll report the news: "Islamic Plot to simultanously send 20 Jumbo jets crashing into the ocean foiled just in the nick of time." but in his comments sections, he'll only allow some sighs of relief ("pheww") and some scoffing and perhaps some fist waving but absolutely no musing of popular reactions.

And to think America got started because of some out-of-control displeasure over a Royal tea tax! I only wonder what the Muslims could do that they haven't done already to start a big movement to send the believers back to where they came from. Reality truly does surpass the imagination. Who could have thought up a Beslan? Killing and raping little girls to the tune of Allahu Ackbar?!

thll said...

The amount of flak one catches for thinking the unthinkable increases in direct proportion to the accuracy of the thinking.

Afonso Henriques said...

Agred. Good post!

livfreerdie said...

The only problem with undermining the Koran is it won't be the millions who will react violently. It will be the hard-core imams who will tell their well financed minions to "Kill the infidel". And they will happily do so.

How would one go about deprogramming millions?

What are the reasons for the awakening in Iraq being successful? Tribal pride, tired of family being killed, religious schism, bribery?

Tom

Bezzle said...

The Spanish didn't commit genocide in the Americas (against the Incas or Aztecs) -- that's Leftist propaganda.

In actuality, smallpox and other diseases wiped out all but remnant populations, leaving mostly empty continents for Europeans to colonize (as opposed to, say, Africa, India and China, which were "full" and remained "full" of their native populations).

-- All this talk of "genocide" is nonsensical for the following reasons:

1) Islam isn't a racial-subtype; it's a political ideology. There is no such thing as a "Muslim baby" any more than there is such a thing as a "Communist baby" or a "Capitalist baby".

2) The way Islam will be destroyed is in the same way that historical psychotic death-cults (like the Aztecs or the Thuggee) were destroyed: The priests are killed and their temples and other iconic symbols are razed. Everyone else is "assimilated" (liberated) into the replacement culture. -- It isn't necessary to wipe out millions of what essentially captive populations, only to eliminate the proponents and practitioners of totalitarianism.

-- Necessary to this is the identification that Islam is a totalitarian culture whose practice must be destroyed. It cannot be "moderated" for the simple reason that we must not endure "moderate amounts" of jihad, honor-killings, etc.

==//==

The ONE GOOD THING that Islam will accomplish in Europe: It will permanently bankrupt and destroy the Socialist Welfare-State. (Europeans are essentially feeding the children -- that they otherwise could have afforded to raise -- to a hungry pet tyrannosaurus in the back yard....and the T-rex keeps growing bigger every year -- and why shouldn't it, as long as it keeps being fed?

Anonymous said...

Mike18xx: The way Islam will be destroyed is in the same way that historical psychotic death-cults (like the Aztecs or the Thuggee) were destroyed: The priests are killed and their temples and other iconic symbols are razed.

The Muslims destroy each other's Imans and mosques these days, it only feeds the animals. If the west were to systematically take out Imans and mosques, it would be a new "crusade" which galvanizes Muslims to action from Morocco to the Philippines.

Bezzle said...

> If the west were to systematically take out Imans and mosques....

"The West" -- i.e., (socialist) *governments*, can't do it. They wouldn't anyway.

It'll have to wait until their replacements (ref. "The Danish Civil War"). Until then, Islam marches forward in continuous, incremental victory.

> ....it would be a new "crusade" which galvanizes Muslims to action from Morocco to the Philippines.

Then take out the "galvanizers" until there aren't any left.

Such a campaign would be accompanied by explicit reasons why each and every action is being done. I.e., these priests and their temples were blown up for preaching slavery and totalitarianism. IOW, actions earn consequences.

Sic semper tyrannis.

Pastorius said...

I largely agree with your post here, Baron. I have always worried that, if the governments of Europe and America do not live up to their responsibility to protect their people, that eventually, the people will take control in the chaos of mob rule.


Baron said: I don’t believe that there are legions of unwashed slope-browed atavistic Europeans who will be activated by my words.


I say: That's quite a cariacature. It wasn't slope-browed Europeans who engineered the Holocaust. So, where that cariacature comes from, I don't know.

That being said, history doesn't repeat itself exactly. However, one can look at a group of people over time and deduce how they will respond.

The modus operandi of Europe has been that when it is truly challenged, it breaks out into an orgy of violence, in which it kills all of the people who are not in their group, "the other", rather than just the group that offends them.

To use a Biblical analogy. Rather than plucking out the eye that offends them, they shoot their entire head off.

This is what Europe did during the Crusades, during the Spanish Inquistion, and during WWII.

And, of course, more often than not, the Jews get blamed, especially when Muslims are involved.

It has always been the Ethnic Nationalists who have executed this kind of mass killing.

In my opinion, the only way to avoid a repeat of such European orgiastic violence is to turn away from Ethnicity as a definition of culture, and to turn towards ideology.

The Europeans, being an intelligent people are more than capable of codifying their values and living by them.

Will they do so in time?

Henrik R Clausen said...

To use a Biblical analogy. Rather than plucking out the eye that offends them, they [Europeans] shoot their entire head off.

Wow. You seem to have a serious dislike for us Europeans... Sure that's not, ehm, racist..?

This is what Europe did during the Crusades, during the Spanish Inquistion, and during WWII.

I'm really glad you're skipping WWI. For in that case, Europeans were ready to make peace in 1917, but the Americans under Woodrow Wilson found it opportune to move in and shoot some more heads off. The result was, well, not so nice.

And I commend you on not mentioning the Vietnam War. For that was of course a "Justified battle against Communism", because it was done by the US. Calling it "shooting heads off" would be soo unfair to the lads who did the shooting.

I'll return to the three events you mention a bit later. They deserve more comments.

And, of course, more often than not, the Jews get blamed, especially when Muslims are involved.

That's just a piece of anti-European libel. I'll skip that.

It has always been the Ethnic Nationalists who have executed this kind of mass killing.

Grand. Did you even *hear* of the Soviet Union? The most extensive mass killing in European history. Done on basis of political ideology, not on ethnicity. I suppose not.

You are right on exactly 1 point, only: Hitler. In a way, that is. Exploiting patriotism for his genocidal purposes was one of the most evil things done in history. A repeat of that is not exactly desired in Europe today.

We cleaned up the mess in extensive trials and it even seems we'll now have Mein Kampf out in an annotated edition (the idea is endorsed by Jews in Germany) to make it clear to everyone how this mess happened, what seduced the Germans, and how to prevent it from taking place again.

Anyway, for mass killings you seem to conveniently skip Maoistic China, who has an even larger casualty count than the Soviet Union. It's outside Europe, of course, but it's another case of mass killing based on ideology, not ethnicity.

As for the Crusades, you're wrong in the double. Those were religious wars, not nationalistic/ethnically based. And they were not mass killings, as some Arab historians would like to portray them (for obvious reasons). They were a reasonable counter-offensive, limited in scope, to the vast Islamic conquests.

And once the conquest was done, kingdoms were established that lasted some 150 years, where even the Muslims were better off than in the neighboring Islamic realms. Thomas F. Madden has a couple of nice books on the subject.

The Crusades, though full of mistakes and often excessive violence, were not mass killings. And they were not based on ethnicity, but on religion.

The same is true for the Spanish Inquisition, obviously. Based on and blessed by the Catholic Church, primarily, targeting people by faith (ideology), not ethnicity. And generally ridiculed throughout Europe today - just watch Monty Python's take on it.

Lumping it in here makes three mistakes in one sentence. Quoting Wikipedia (yes, I'm aware of the problems with that source. Should be OK here):

The Inquisition, as an ecclesiastical tribunal, had jurisdiction only over baptized Christians. The Inquisition worked in large part to ensure the orthodoxy of recent converts.

There. Not nationalistic, not ethnic. And not based on mass killing, they did individual trials based on (more or less useful) evidence. The resulting sentences prescribed cardinal punishment only in a small minority of the cases, not unlike what US courts do today.

Other documents, discovered in the Vatican Archives in 2004 put the toll of heresy cases tried by the Spanish Inquisition between 1540 and 1700 at 44,647, of which 1.8% (804) led to an execution, while another 1.7% were burned in effigy because they had somehow escaped before the sentence was carried out.

Just 30 minutes spent with Google and Wikipedia shows that your quoted arguments for anti-European generalizations and prejudice are garbage.

VinceP1974 said...

And I commend you on not mentioning the Vietnam War. For that was of course a "Justified battle against Communism", because it was done by the US. Calling it "shooting heads off" would be soo unfair to the lads who did the shooting.

Well I think the United States could thank France for Vietnam. If France didn't occupy it and then leave with their tails between their legs while asking for our help... only so that we can keep yet another destructive European ideology from destroying the people there.

Yeah.. we're so bad, aren't we?

Henrik R Clausen said...

Yeah.. we're so bad, aren't we?

Of course you're not :)

The Vietnam War took on a dynamics of its own. Sure, the French were really asking for help, and it seemed feasible to provide it. "Victory right at hand. Just a bit more effort."

Didn't work so well. But this is not about pointing fingers, it's about correcting the misconception that Europeans have this particular obsession for 'shooting heads off'.

Actually, we really don't, which is why we tend to ask our American friends for help. Having a stronger European willingness to defend our home turf would probably be good.

Conservative Swede said...

Wow. You seem to have a serious dislike for us Europeans... Sure that's not, ehm, racist..?

I think it's safe to say that Pastorious is a racist. It's the same guy who is obsessed by the idea the Pamela Geller is a negro (his words). Among other things...

Pastorius said...

Henrik Clausen,
Good points. The Spanish Inquisition, the culmination of the Reconquista, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain were all executed by Ferdinand and Isabella, although they were done for the sake of the Catholic Church. They were not by order of the Catholic Church. They were done by a nation.

I am, with regard to the Crusades, making the mistake of conflating the Catholic Church with Europe itself, and Europe with the nations of Europe. So, my mistake. I conflated European nations with the Catholic Church.

My larger point, and concern, is that Europe has a bad history with the Jews.

Maybe I shouldn't single out Europe on that issue, because it seems, everyone has a bad issue with the Jews.

However, Europe is famous for its mistreatment of the Jews, and that's where my mistrust of Europe comes from.

I don't hate Europe though, or at least not in the sense that you might think. I believe Europe is vital to Western Civilization. I want Europe to fight back against Islamization, and I want it to be victorious.

However, I would like its victory to come without the "mistakes" of past victories.

Pastorius said...

Conservative Swede,

Pamela is a negro.

:)

Henrik R Clausen said...

However, Europe is famous for its mistreatment of the Jews, and that's where my mistrust of Europe comes from.

OK, got it.

Rather than distrusting Europe, I propose that you stand up for the Jews.

That's what I do.

Henrik R Clausen said...

Pamela's cute.

That's what I pay attention to :)

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