Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations?

October 27th, 2005 at 21:39 Björn Hallberg

If you think that is a cliché heading I’ll let you know it is not of my making. I happened to come upon an editorial in The Washington Times by a Tony Blankley dated September 12. Better late than never I suppose. Apparently the editorial-page editor has published his new book, tritely entitled “The West’s Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations?” When you strike gold like this, it doesn’t really matter how old the article is.

Blankley paints an obtuse and cliché picture by setting the level at this, already in the first paragraph.

The threat of the radical Islamists taking over Europe is every bit as great to the United States as was the threat of the Nazis taking over Europe in the 1940s.

The title of part one by the way is “An Islamist threat like the Nazis.” I normally wait a couple of paragraphs before pulling a Goodwin (aka Godwin’s rule of Nazi analogies). Also, I usually offer an actual analogy, no matter how shallow. Just calling Nazis on “Islam”, which of course is also left in its pristine and uncomplicated form, is really not helping anyone.

It’s all downhill from there. Here is where the analysis gets really bizarre.

It is beginning to dawn on Europeans that the combination of a shrinking ethnic-European population and an expanding, culturally assertive Muslim population might lead to the fall of Western civilization in Europe within a century. This phenomenon, called Eurabia, is viewed with growing fatalism both in Europe and in America. Such fatalism, however, is premature.
Last November, an Islamist terrorist’s butchering of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who had made a movie revealing abuse of Muslim women, aroused deep fears in Holland and across the Continent.
The public anger, which included the burning of mosques in traditionally tolerant Holland, is evidence that the European instinct for survival has not been fully extinguished.

So the burning of mosques is now an instinct for survival? Must be going really great then because we torched one in Sweden just the other day? Imagine the reaction had I used the corporate media to postulate that the burning of synagogues was a “survival instinct.” Now that would have been a riot of condemnation and name calling.

But that survival instinct is threatened by the multiculturalism and political correctness advocated in media and academe — and institutionalized in national and European Union laws and regulations for half a century.

The problem however with these “conservatives” (for lack of a better word) is that they can’t make up their mind. All of a sudden Europe is in grave danger. Because of their tolerance. The same Europe that is usually painted by American jingoists as an oozing pit of anti-semitism and general intolerance. After which it is usually common practise to remind everyone how those poor fanatics, later to be known as pilgrims, left Europe fleeing the same basic persecution and intolerance. The truth is perhaps somewhere in between. Europe is, in general, no more or less intolerant than any other part of the world. And while we are at it, there are more than a dozen countries on the core European continent. Countries that are much more distinct than any union, whether it be the US or India or whatever. The point is that different countries may not all feel alike, or indeed treat immigration in quite the same way.

Europe’s effort at cultural tolerance since World War II slowly morphed into a surprisingly deep self-loathing of Western culture that denied the instinct for cultural and national self-defense.

So it’s the *-loathing / hating approach. Never seen that before. Self-loathing of course as opposed to American self-centered arrogance …

Most other religious developments around the world, such as the spread of Christianity in the Southern Hemisphere, have benign or nonviolent consequences.

If we for a moment accept that Islam is marching across Europe with the express purpose of Islamizing the continent, this statement is only good for the contemporary world. In the past, Christianity has done its fair share of bloody crusades and religious atrocities. And you forget modern Hindu extremism. And the continual destruction of indigenous life and artificially changing culture. At this very moment there are Christian missionaries afoot in less developed countries preying on inexperience to add more to their flock. They bring in their wake diseases and far from “benign” consequences for those that stray from the path. Here is a real destruction of culture and civilization that the American right wing establishment could spend some time lamenting.

Radical currents within Islam drive some Muslims to terrorism and push others at least to a more adversarial view of their relationship to non-Muslim nations and cultures in which they live — whether in Paris, London, Hamburg, Rotterdam, or any American city.

This resurgence of militant Islam also drove America to pressure Saudi Arabia to change the way it teaches religion to its children and others (through madrasses) around the world. It forced America to pressure Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Somalia, among others, to change domestic security policies. It prompted America to build a ring of bases in Central Asia across what used to be the Muslim part of the Soviet Union.

Repugnant apologetics. A familiar theme. It seems everything is DRIVING America, the reluctant superpower, and like everything is centered around the US. Everyone else is without agency. The truth of the matter is that none of the aforementioned countries are very hot for radical Islam elements because they stand to lose far more than the US. After all, many if not all Islamic organizations that are defined by the US as terrorists are first and foremost interested in reforming their own societies. Something which the people in said countries are less than enthusiastic about, not to mention the fear of losing power among the ruling elite.
And here we go again with the bases. Another reluctant superpower thing. As if permanent foreign bases is a new phenomena and as if these bases are there to protect American citizens or indeed the peoples is the region. American base proliferation is one of the most hideous scourges that we have seen over the last hundred years or so and the rationalization that Blankley apparently subscribes to is a flimsy and transparent one. Perhaps more importantly, this proliferation and inherent meddling will invariably lead to so called blowback and the very insecurity that the US claims to eliminate. I invite everyone to read Chalmers Johnson’s excellent work on the topic, namely “Sorrows of Empire” and “Blowback.”

The real irony however remains the Nazi reference. What is most troubling is that those that use them the most and in the most cavalier of manners are those that understand political science, history and National Socialism the least. Yet, the author is right without even knowing it.
For one, the most striking analogy between Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the sentiments of that era and Islam in Europe today is NOT that both represent invading armies armed with bizarre ideologies. And no, you may not use totalitarianism, because that word is reserved for special occasions. The analogy that comes to mind here is that Muslims in Europe today are in danger of becoming the “Jews” of that era. How so? Well, looking at right wing extremism in Europe today, and indeed the discourse in above editorial, it is not only that Muslims have replaced Jews as the number one perceived threat, but even the argumentation to support such antagonism is similar. One of the main ideas of the late 1800s and beyond was that Jews collaborated to subvert and overthrow not only the governments of Europe, and indeed the world, but “our” “civilization” and “our” “culture”. Today the discourse is somewhat different but still the same. Muslim immigrants are pouring into Europe and they have a plan. Namely they want to subvert and conquer Europe for Islam. And like the right wing stresses, it is a coordinated attack. Nothing less than an attack on “our” western “civilization”. Hence, this new theme has become a substitute for the old conspiracy theory. Extremists are eagerly adopting this discourse and apparently are a great many on the right as well as on the left. Don’t let the political spectrum fool you, irrational thought is usually not an exclusive conservative phenomena, and when the public discourse is clouded and poisoned, even the best of us can falter.

Entry 295 filed under: Rants and raves. This entry was posted 3 years, 1 month ago. RSS feed for comments on this post.