Saturday, January 14, 2012

Interview with Fjordman: Europe is the Sick Man of the World

Fjordman was interviewed for the latest issue of the Berlin-based weekly newspaper Junge Freiheit, where his responses were translated into German. Below are excerpts from original English text of his replies, as published at Tundra Tabloids:

I was asked whether it was OK to publish a few of my essays in German, and I said yes. I am currently completing a different kind of book in English called The Curious Civilization, which should be available at some point in 2012. Germany is a very important country for the future of Europe as a whole so it is of great significance to be published there. The title Defending Europe is appropriate in my view because European civilization is going through a low point in its history right now. Today, merely saying positive about the European cultural heritage and the peoples who created it is almost considered a sign of extremism.

I have studied Arabic language at the American University in Cairo and lived in Egypt during the terror attacks of September 11th 2001. I am not sure I would describe this as a turning point since I was already growing skeptical of Islamic culture and mentality before that time, but things certainly escalated after this event.

What shocked me the most, though, was not witnessing how happy many Arabs and Muslims were over the mass murder of thousands of unarmed civilians. What shocked me the most was how Western mass media and the political establishment lied about this fact. 9/11 was in my view clearly an Islamic Jihadist act of war against Western civilization, yet the West was in complete denial about this.

I also worked in Israel and the Palestinian territories as an observer in Hebron in 2002 and 2003 and could there see first-hand how biased, anti-Israeli and pro-Islamic much of the media coverage from this region truly is. I myself narrowly missed a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv on April 30, 2003 that was committed by a young Muslim man who was a British citizen. I could literally hear the explosion behind me as I had just left the nice beachfront area where this happened a few minutes earlier. Two of my colleagues were murdered in March 2002 in a Jihadist terror attack by the very Palestinians we were supposed to help. In contrast, I found most Israeli Jews to be friendly, with the partial exception of a few of the most militant settlers.

Read the rest at Tundra Tabloids.

26 comments:

Hal K said...

In the full interview at Tundra Tabloids Fjordman says that there is a civil war between Westerners and post-Westerners. He does not emphasize the racial nature of this conflict. The main weapon of the left is the accusation of racism, but the "Western" side of the "civil war" refuses to defend their side on a racial basis. Fjordman says that it is about civilizations and nations, but why not admit that the conflict is ultimately about race?

The post-Western side is incoherent in stating its goals, because they say they want equality and tolerance while welcoming intolerant people who are demographically replacing us. Instead of playing along with the anti-Western side, by eschewing "racism" we should recognize their incoherence and explicitly stand up for our own races, which are subsets of the broader white (or "Western") race.

The non-whites obviously have racial motivations, but they tend to phrase this in positive terms, at least in reference to their own people. We forfeit our right to defend ourselves when we refuse to explicitly stand up for our own race.

Anonymous said...

Failing "to explicitly stand up for our own race" may be a component of some forfeiture of the right to self-defense, but there is a difficulty in asserting them as equivalent.

For one thing, the idea that European peoples should be held to different standards than other races is usually rooted in those standards being "higher", available only to the white races because they are better than other races. It is an ideological descendant of the idea of the "White Man's Burden" of sacrificing their own narrow racial interests to 'uplift' and serve all the other races of humanity.

Only "whites" can be racist because only whites have the ability to place humanity as a whole above their own race. Of course explicitly saying this is forbidden, it would be crass and graceless for whites to point out that they can sacrifice their race for "the good of all humanity" while exhibiting a lack of expectation that other races could do the same. Whites are not only the only race good enough to lay down their racial survival for the good of other races, they are too good to even mention it.

As Fjordman indicates, perhaps it is time to stop putting on such a (literally) deadly conceit about the special status of white people. Maybe European nations can learn something from even Arab nations. As Fjordman says:

"They certainly don’t make the natives pay immigrants huge sums of money in welfare support so that they can import their relatives from abroad in “family reunification” and make them citizens as well. Guest workers in Dubai work and then they go home, unlike the Turks who are currently colonizing Germany. If Arabs can take proper steps to ensure their national survival and expel large numbers of illegal aliens without being branded as “racists,” why can’t Europeans do the same?"

Other than excessive vanity about the innate moral superiority of the white races, why not indeed?

Chiu Chun-Ling.

Columnist said...

Again, Chiu Chun-Ling shows himself to be one of the better posters.

There are two reasons the counter-jihad movement shouldn't be explicitly racialist.

First, it might alienate non-White enemies of Islam.

Second, although Islam is inherently Arab Supremacist, it is still basically a religion, so there do exist White muslims, and they do accept converts. Ironically, when Whites become muslim, they get higher birthrates.

The Left, however, is inherently Anti-White.
If Whites have "White Privilege", why aren't Leftists on the electric chair?

Anonymous said...

Have you ever considered that becoming the enemy might be the only way to defeat the enemy at this point?

jeppo said...

If Europe is the sick man of the world, what does that make America? The terminally diseased walking corpse of the Milky Way, perhaps?

Political Europe, meaning the peninsular countries west of Russia and Turkey, has a population of about 600 million, of whom at least 550 million are native Europeans. Meanwhile America, population 315 million, is down to less than 200 million whites, and white newborns are now a minority in a country that was 90% white only 50 years ago.

That's not to say that Europe isn't facing an existential crisis of its own, just to put things into proper perspective. So while Europe may be demographically turning into America, America is turning into Brazil (which is turning into South Africa, which is turning into Zimbabwe).

Standard and Poor's just downgraded France and Austria's AAA credit ratings, underlining Europe's massive debt problems. But they had already downgraded America's AAA status, and rumours are that another downgrade is in the works. That leaves only 12 nations rated AAA by all three major ratings agencies, S & P, Fitch and Moody's: Canada, Australia, Singapore and 9 countries in Europe (Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and the UK). So even with the ongoing crisis in the eurozone, Europe is still judged to be in better fiscal shape than the US.

And now the usual suspects in the US are pushing hard for yet another Middle Eastern war of choice, this time with Iran. They're more than willing to risk a worldwide depression (if the Straits of Hormuz are blocked) because Iran *might* be developing nuclear weapons that *might* one day threaten Israel, which has an estimated 200 nuclear weapons of its own. I hope and pray that the Europeans aren't stupid enough to follow America down this particular road to ruin.

The American policies (both political parties) of unchecked Third World immigration -- legal and illegal, borowing and spending on an unprecedented and unsustainable scale, and endless and pointless wars and occupations will surely lead to the death of the once-great republic. I don't mean to minimize Fjordman's warnings about the impending doom of Europe unless they change their suicidal ways ASAP. But from this side of the Atlantic, Europe looks like paradise compared to Amerikwa.

Anonymous said...

Let's hear it from a member of the multicultural

"Norwegian culture should die
- The culture should become multicultural
by Malik 15 January 2012

Norwegian culture and language is on its way out. The culture is more and more becoming multicultural and international.

At many sites in Oslo you can manage as well in Urdu as in Norwegian.

In a few generations we will be laughing at any demand of learning Norwegian.

It should be required that employees at state and municipal offices speak Urdu. Fluency in Urdu it is getting more normal as today's generation is growing up.

Why would we need learn a marginalized language like the Norwegian?

At the social welfare office where I live, there are persons who speak Urdu. The same, at school, and at the grocer's.

Integration of asylum seekers should be no goal in itself. Few of us, muslims, want integration.

We don't want to drink and have sex before marriage. You, ethnics, should respect this.

We do not want to adjust to the Norwegian society, and I'm saying this outright.

..."

Hal K said...

A non-racial defense of the West will not work by itself. Explicit white racial solidarity has been out of bounds on both the left and the right in mainstream politics for decades now, and the results speak for themselves.

Chiu makes some good points, but it is fruitless to try to beat the left by accusing them of being "the real racists." It is clear that they are on the side of the non-whites, and in trying to paint those on the left as covert racists, our side just digs itself in deeper by further committing to racial neutrality.

Anonymous said...

"That leaves only 12 nations rated AAA by all three major ratings agencies, S & P, Fitch and Moody's: Canada, Australia, Singapore and 9 countries in Europe (Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and the UK)."

Some things are obvious but go unsaid.

We will all be Detroit some day soon. A quick thanks to Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, Carl Marx, The Frankfurt School, Ted Kennedy and 1965 and John Calvin's willing executioners.

Anonymous said...

Abandoning the 18th century meaning of race as "one of the great divisions of mankind based on physical peculiarities" is by no means a bad idea. The theory that there are distinct "races" of humankind never qualified as significantly successful in scientific terms, it has almost no predictive value compared to theories which track specific genetic traits or those more "soft" theories that access the totality of ethnicity as a characteristic of natural human population dynamics.

If defenders of Western culture can move past discredited racial theories of nationality to the well-established ground of ethnic background being an important determinant of national destiny, then there can be a rational defense of defending the native culture of the Western nations which is compatible with upholding the vital principles of equality before the law and individual responsibility.

People can change their ethnicity, but it is rare for individuals to do so on their own...someone who genuinely rejects the culture in which they were raised without following a relatively large movement is probably an iconoclast by nature. They may leave behind their previous ethnic identity, but they are unlikely to adopt a new one.

On the other hand, mass ethnic conversions can and have occurred, and while they might be deplored today, the methods of imposing them are fairly well understood, if Europe would rather Christianize its invaders rather than expel them.

Having an honest discussion about the significance of ethnic culture and the requirements of changing an ethnic identity, Europeans can make a reasoned decision about whether to attempt mass conversion or not. Either path will accept that ethnic identity is not immutable (thus a choice for which individuals can be reasonably held accountable) even though most Muslims will not choose to accept the demands of citizenship in European nations unless they are forced to do so by the implementation of policies aimed at producing mass conversion.

Chiu Chun-Ling.

Anonymous said...

Oops.. make that Karl Marx.

Anonymous said...

I second Chui's commentary here.

Precise and accurate language matters.

EV

Anonymous said...

Norway's first multicultural newspaper Utrop, "Exclamation"
- or, like one reader says, a tax funded crypto-communist propaganda paper, a propaganda-channel by the extreme left


Let's hear it from a member of the multicultural society in Norway

"Norwegian culture should die
- The culture should become multicultural
by Malik 15 January 2012

Malik says a lit more, far out, you can just guess this is something they discuss here and there


Let's hear what amir has to say
My Title

"Norway needs a new flag, national anthem, coat of arms
by amir 30 august 2011

I think the Norwegian state must get rid of the cross in the coat of arms, get a new flag and create a new fatherland's song if they wish to appear fully multicultural.

At UN-level it is the UN Human Rights Committee that interprets the commitments, and in the flag, national anthem, coat of arms matter they should pronounce a rule that forces Norway to change these (remove the cross and racist nationalism) because they are contrary to the human rights."

(This was originally written in fluent Norwegian)

Is this something that is being discussed in all mosques? A matter they are working on, on every level by infiltration?

Unknown said...

Race does exist and it matters. People can be grouped into races based on how they look and based on how they act. Islam is racial because it resonates with those of certain races and not those of others. To deny it is to deny what is plainly visible.

Dingo

Anonymous said...

But it is not at all clear to me that Islam does resonate with certain races and not with others. Islam has always been resisted by competing ideologies, never by any given race. Whites (at least those currently holding political dominance) seem as prone to fold in the face of Islam as anyone else. Only the Asian races seem to show much in the way of resistance to Islam, and I suspect this is more a matter of the somewhat more intense nationalism common to the longer history of Asian nations than it is to any special racial characteristic.

Regardless, Asian racial resistance to Islamization wouldn't be much help to Europe even if it existed.

It is true that, in the dirty sort of war that observes no conventions (the kind that Islam seems to resort to by choice), visible racial character does become an unavoidable part of the tactics that are used. But if such a war begins, then there is no need for encouraging the use of visible racial characteristics in selecting targets...it will simply happen no matter what you try and do to stop it.

And I should hope that one of the goals of the Counter-Jihad would be to avoid having such a situation develop to endemic proportions in Europe.

Chiu Chun-Ling.

Hal K said...

I agree with "Unknown." To deny the existence and significance of race is to deny what is plainly visible (literally and figuratively), as well as to obfuscate the true motivation of our opponents.

The existence of race is also readily apparent from DNA analysis. Forensic experts can tell one's race from DNA, for example. There is no reason to think that average innate behavioral and cognitive tendencies are the same for each race. If you assumes that there are no differences, then you are led into contorted and improbable explanations for obvious differences between different nations and different ethnic groups within nations.

I am not sure whether Islam is inherently racial, except that it is definitely pro-Arab. What is clear, though, is that race explains why the left supports Islam even though it is intolerant. It is also clear that the accusation of racism is used against the defenders of the West from Islam.

Hal K said...

Chiu, I was not saying that there was a need for "encouraging the use of visible racial characteristics in selecting targets." What I am saying is that whites have to start speaking out for their interests as whites, specifically. This means, for instance, speaking out as whites against media double standards, not because they are double standards, but because they are anti-white. It means speaking out against anti-white racial preferences because they are anti-white. It means, as well, creating white advocacy groups.

I don't understand why there is such a mental block out there about pro-whiteness. When you take pro-whiteness and turn it into "targeting" non-whites, it is just like the common leftist tactic of saying that a positive explicit white identity is equivalent to white supremacism. This is extremely frustrating. The anti-white double standards are obvious and glaring, but people like you keep turning white advocacy into supposed white aggression against non-whites. What is the matter with you?

Hal K said...

"Only the Asian races seem to show much in the way of resistance to Islam, and I suspect this is more a matter of the somewhat more intense nationalism common to the longer history of Asian nations than it is to any special racial characteristic."

No again. The West was resistant to Islam in the past. Isn't this obvious from history? The difference between East Asians and the West is that whites can be cowed by the accusation of racism, and this is a problem that has only appeared in the past 100 years or so (although there were incipient signs of it before that).

East Asians (I prefer the term Oriental) look out for their own kind and whites don't, because of recent social conditioning. East Asians contribute to this problem, in my opinion, by continuing to play the race card against whites. If you are East Asian I would be interested to hear what you have to say about this. I could say more as well. It would be nice if "The Baron" would create new thread so we could continue this discussion in detail.

Dingo Hammer said...

Dog breeds have different temperaments that are genetically programmed. Some dog breeds are smarter than others. Most people don't have a problem with that. But, say the same thing about the various human races then cognitive dissonance sets in. It is easy to see that religions are going to appeal to the different races based on their temperaments and intelligence. Christianity resonated with Europeans and Islam resonated with Middle Easterners and that is why they adopted these religions. After all, Europeans are not converting to Islam in mass and Muslims in Europe are not converting to Christianity in mass, even though it is now easier than ever for them to do so.

Other races are not compatible with Europeans. That is the crux of the matter with immigration.

Dingo

Chiu ChunLing said...

Well, if one is going to talk about "races", then one must identify them in terms of the original theory of races as it developed in anthropology (as opposed to modern work in specific genetic traits which are not explicitly tied to identifiable phenotype). When you do this, you realize just how outdated all racial theories are. Mainstream science abandoned race theory long before PC made "racism" a cardinal sin (and began to attack all scientific human genetic diversity studies as "racist").

The situation with different breeds of dog is quite instructive. Here we have an artificial construction that has been allowed to separate populations of a single species by specific characteristics. And yet, within about two or three generations, you can create mongrels from disparate breeds that are not readily identifiable in terms of the characteristics of their parent breeds. This amounts to proof that, even if you could eventually artificially constrain human genetic diversity into a set of defined racial lines, it would be fairly short work for any free people to demolish your edifice of racial types.

The state of human genetic science is in a sad state as a result of political interference based on PC MC, but choosing to either regress to discredited theories or to use the immature genetic science to support a political program on that basis is incomprehensible to me. Continuing to appeal to "racial science", which is was throughly discredited on scientific grounds well before it became a term of opprobrium, as the foundation of a political movement strikes me as being a way to ensure failure of the political program.

It is true that surveyors base their local observations and measurements on the assumption that the Earth is effectively flat. This does not mean that you will get very far with a political program that argues it deserves to be adopted because of the "obvious" fact of a Flat Earth. Indeed, I wouldn't attempt such a thing even if I somehow could be sincerely persuaded that the Earth really were flat.

Chiu Chun-Ling.

Sundancekid said...

Chiu,

Races do not need to be absolute to be important. And besides, the main argument for taking it into account is not genetic but pychological; most people, unless it is drummed out of them by way of propaganda, feel an attachment to their race since it is usually a reliable marker of shared history, experiences and, most importantly, reciprocating that feeling of attachment. Telling a people to value an abstract humanity over their own tribe is about as worthwhile as telling a mother to value other people's children as much as her own.

For our discourse to accept that whites are not just people, but a people, should not entail syllogisms or delving into genetics, but simply a commonsense acceptance of human nature and that there are limits to what can be achieved with it. Nor would it mean that Europe must be "whites only"; only that we abandon our mad utopian pretensions. A Europe that is predominantly and unselfconsciously white for the foreseeable future will follow.

Chiu ChunLing said...

See, I agree that there are "peoples", and that this is a normal and healthy part of the bond shared by a national community, but I disagree that "whites" are a people in the same way that, say, the English or Polish or Chinese are peoples.

"Whites" were never a people before the invention of race theory in the 18th century. Yes, there were issues with blacks not being considered "people" in the same way that European peoples were people, but this is a rather different thing. The older debate was really about whether non-European people were fully human, or had souls, or free-will, or intelligence, or whatever. That debate was addressed by promoting individual examples of "blacks" who were clearly fully human from a moral perspective.

The racial theory advanced by early anthropologists was an attempt to reconcile the proved fact that there was no hard and fast distinction between the European species of humanity and non-European humanity and the obvious observation that the average intelligence and artistic inclinations of non-Europeans seemed distinctly lower. I submit that some of this effect was the result of cultural bias (in my opinion, modern Japanese culture has surpassed the West in musical achievement, while individuals of Asian extraction have shown an aptitude for music at odds with the history of its development in Asian cultures). But at least some of it is definitely born out by unbiased measures of mental capacities.

Of course, one can point to certain temperamental advantages of other peoples compared with those of Europe, and say that Europeans are typically deficient in some regards when compared with other nationalities. Whether a neurophysiological difference is good or bad can sometimes be a matter of opinion (or circumstance). But that just reinforces the point that genetic differences between different peoples are real and meaningful.

But the theory that there was a large difference between "whites" as a group and other groups that could also be easily identified by outward appearance has always had severe scientific difficulties despite being intuitively appealing enough to be the first theory advanced in the study of human genetic diversity. The embrace and promotion of "racism" (though now they officially only apply the term to opposition to their schemes of racial preference) by progressives is instructive. It is a 'flexible' theory because at its core it is self-referential.

And that makes it perennially useful to progressives because it can prop up their various lies about how best to order human society.

Chiu Cnun-Ling.

Dingo Hammer said...

SundanceKid,

The whiter the better for Europe. I say this because of synthesis. Consider a synthesis of a lot of European and a little Islam. It means a Europe where women are a little less free and a little less educated and a little more covered and a little more beaten. It means a Europe that is a little more superstitious and a little less intelligent and, well, you get the idea.

Dingo

Hal K said...

Chiu seems to want acceptance in the West for non-whites. Even though our governments use race to discriminate against us, he would have us not stand up for ourselves on the basis of race. Essentially he tells us to deny the obvious because such a smart person as he tells us we are ignorant.

Since Chiu presents himself as an East Asian, based on his name, he cannot presume to tell Westerners how to describe themselves. If he really wanted to be Western he would use a more Western name. The very fact that he doesn't means that his motivations are questionable, from a native Western standpoint at least, given his inclination to lecture us about race.

Chiu ChunLing said...

The argument that a person that belongs to one race cannot share common goals with a group of people predominantly of another race depends for its logic on the premise of races as being essentially monolithic internally and in direct competition with each other.

That is to say, it is a form of petitio principii, or begging the question.

Of course, if one is really going to say that non-'whites' cannot, by virtue of their 'race', ever make a genuine contribution to the survival of the indigenous European peoples, then I suppose that there is no point in my protesting this. I am not 'white' and find racial theory to have no compelling basis anyway, so I do not see the point of arguing for the interests of the 'white race' rather than of the native ethnic character of Europe, which I can appreciate and enjoy without having to be a European.

My assertion that most native Europeans are more comfortable defending their particular national ethnic character than defending "whiteness" could be backed with a great deal of evidence...but ultimately is just an assertion by someone who is not 'white' and thus can never be trusted if we are determined to look at things from a strictly racist perspective.

Chiu Chun-Ling.

Anonymous said...

S & P,Fitch,Moody's,...are junk.

Columnist said...

When we know Urdu, and they don't know Norwegian, it is good for us.