Defenders of "Western Civilization" !!!!!!!!

[Daanyeer]

Source: Original Dissent
July 24, 2007 Author: Max Shpak


After the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, a great deal of media and public attention has been devoted to the nature of Arab culture, the Muslim faith, and particularly Fundamentalist "Radical Islam." People are buying and reading the Koran, along with a spectrum of historical and political books about the Middle East, ranging in quality from the impeccably scholarly to the spurious. The general public is trying to understand the conflict by understanding Islamism, and by and large the punditocracy is obliging the view of the so-called "War Against Terror" as a conflict between the West and Islam. Regardless of George W. Bush's endless repetition that "this war is not against Islam," the general consensus from the mass media makes it obvious that this is potentially another chapter in the long struggle of Occident against Orient.

As Rightists, we cannot help but look at the general perception of the conflict as one between The West and Islam in a potentially favorable light. Perhaps the most obvious consequence of the fact that the terrorists culpable in the attack were foreigners is the increased public awareness about the dangers of the disastrous open-borders policy favored by liberals and neoconservatives. Indeed, among the American people at large, one sees the distrust of Arab and Muslim immigrants gradually evolving in the direction of a general, healthy nationalist mistrust of immigrants from alien and potentially hostile Third World cultures. It is certainly no stretch to argue that Muslims are hardly unique in their animosity towards the US and Europe, one need only look at the rantings of Hispanic or negro militants to see that this is the case.

At a more abstract level, the perception of the "war on terror" as a conflict between Islam and Christendom, or of the Semitic/Turkic/Persian Middle East with the European West should have raised an increasing awareness of the merits of Western people and their culture. For the first time in decades, people are not afraid to break politically correct taboos and openly state that Western culture is superior to Third World cultures, and that American and European ideals are superior to those of their rivals around the world. We even hear rhetoric to this effect from some rather unlikely sources, as the liberals and establishment "conservatives" who have in the past always sung the praises of multiracialism and "melting pots" are now suddenly proclaiming "western civilization" and the "American way" to be better.

One should not deceive oneself into believing that we are witnessing a change of heart on the part of the establishment pundits, however. As a matter of fact, if one looks closely at what these pundits are championing as "Americanism" and "Western values," what one will find is that their version of these things is nothing for anyone on the Right to celebrate.

The Leftist vanguard of yesteryear maintained that the key cultural battle was between Western values and the deracinated Multiculturalism peddled by cultural Marxists and their fellow-travellers. Today, with multiculturalism victorious at establishment institutions in Europe and America alike, advocates of leftist social doctrine now treat liberal multiculturalism as synonymous with "Western Civilization" and "Americanism." Consequently, when they suddenly announce that "Western Civilization is superior to Islamic Civilization," what they really mean is that official, party line liberalism is superior to Islamic "intolerance."

While a cultural conservative might still see the current conflict as a modern-day incarnation of the European wars against Muslim power (such as the victories of the quasi-legendary El Cid against the Moors, the expulsion of the Moors by Ferdinand and Isabella, Martel's victory against Abder er Rahman at Tours, Jan Sobieski's liberation of Vienna from the Turkish Siege, or the Crusades), that is certainly not how liberals and neoconservatives look at the situation. Their definition of "Western Civilization" has nothing to do with classical antiquity, with Medieval Christendom, or for that matter with the Renaissance or the Enlightenment.

Rather, in the establishment lexicon, "Western Civilization" simply denotes the dominant liberal ideologies that have comparatively recently taken root in western lands (and are as a matter of fact hardly "western" at all in any sense). "Western Civilization" is in their minds synonymous with the rather dubiously occidental values of "women's liberation," "gay rights," the sexual revolution, Hollywood, MTV, dogmatic racial egalitarianism, "tolerance and diversity", crass consumerism, and all of the other poisonous fallout of Frankfurt School doctrine.

Consequently, when liberal and neoconservative pundits attack Islam in the name of "Western Civilization," they do so not because Islam is the enemy of Christendom, and certainly not because Arabs and Persians are culturally alien to the West. Rather, they attack Islam because it is "intolerant," "xenophobic," "Medieval," and "unenlightened," which, no surprise, are the same smear words they attach to American conservatives. They attack Islam not on historical and certainly not theological grounds, but rather because the allegedly evil Muslims don't respect "women's rights," "abortion rights" or "gay rights." Liberals now hate Islam for the exact same reason that they hate Christian conservatives and European nationalists, and they are simply exploiting 9/11 and legitimate anti-Muslim sentiments to advance their agenda of further social deconstruction. To ever-opportunistic liberals and neoconservatives, anti-Islamism is simply another stick which these self-styled "enlightened progressives" and "humanists" can use to beat the traditionalist Right.

So far from leading to the growth of a Nationalist worldview or an increased awareness of our roots in the traditions of Christendom, the pundits are actually making use of America's conflict with the Muslim world to advance the very opposite opinions. After all, in recent years these same liberals and neocons championed Muslim immigrants in the name of "tolerance and diversity" and pushed for war or sanctions against European nations that "mistreated" their Muslim minorities. With blatant pro-Muslim propaganda obviously untenable today, the establishment had to change its strategy while pushing the same "enlightened humanist" ideology.

Turning on a dime, those who once championed Muslims in the name of "diversity" now tell us that Muslims are the enemy because they don't respect "diversity" themselves - in other words, Muslims are evil not because they are alien but because they are too conservative. They would have us believe that Islam is actually "Islamo-Fascism," so by fighting Islam, America is fighting the greater bogey man of "fascism" and the "ultra-right." Hence, even the trendy Hollywood crowd now feels free to attack Islam, so we have emotionally unstable lesbian actresses at the Academy Awards flaunting their sexual tastes and bizarre masculine outfits as a means of "sticking it to the Taliban."

The clever inversion of healthy nationalism into its very opposite by the establishment Left is an old, time worn strategy, of which the exploitation of anti-Muslim sentiments is simply the most recent manifestation. At the heart of the matter is the insidious inversion of words and definitions into pundit and politico doublespeak. Thanks to the dutiful efforts of our mass media, left is right and up is down, because the busy Court Historians of our times have appropriated words once associated with "dangerous" beliefs and used them as talismans for their own ideas.

Thus, criticism of aggressive internationalism and an Israel-First foreign policy became "anti-American," support for globalization by force became "patriotism," serving as global policeman became "fighting for America," and now support for the agenda of cultural Marxists and the politically correct Frankfurt School has become "western culture." Unfortunately, it seems to be human nature to latch onto words instead of ideas, as a result (and to the delight of our rulers) the fetishized, misappropriated words and symbols would lead and the masses would follow. The American public was loyal to the terms "patriotism" and "Americanism," so to win the support of these masses to the opposite cause, one need only attach the terms to an entirely different concept. This is precisely what our elites and their court historians across the (official) political spectrum accomplished.

To show just how pervasive this distortion of the term "western culture" happens to be, I will cite the words of the ostensibly "conservative" high priest of the neoconservative movement, Irving Kristol. In a Commentary article dating back to September of 1948, he opined,

The application of the term "totalitarianism" to both Stalin`s Russia and Hitler`s Germany seems to me a source of confusion. True, the effects of both systems on the free individual are similar. But in ideology, motives, and the mainsprings of power, there is an essential difference between Communism and Nazism. Communism can claim a certain continuity with significant aspects of Western Civilization- which may possibly make it a more profound and enduring menace to freedom and liberty. It has an elaborate ideology (Marxism) that claims absolute truth, and whose historical origin is linked to the flowering of "scientific" and "humanitarian" sentiments; thus, it has an initial appeal to "good'" people. Furthermore, it receives constant encouragement from the present industrial society, with its twin drives towards a centralized "welfare state" and a "democratic" mass culture.
In other words, according to neoconservative and liberal sensibilities (insofar as the two differ at all), "fascism" is defined as a rejection of "western civilization" while Marxism is in some ways consistent with "western" values. The new neocon catch-phrase "Islamofascism" fits in quite nicely given this set of dubious definitions.
Of course a rather cursory knowledge of history and political theory exposes all of the above for the fraud that it is. For all of its brutality and failings, one thing that cannot be said about Fascism is that it rejects Western Culture, properly understood. By any meaningful definition of Western Culture (in the sense of centuries old traditions of government, art, learning, and theology in Europe), the Fascist "ultra-right" stood for the preservation and glorification of these traditions against the forces of revolution. Francisco Franco was a pious Catholic and a stalwart Royalist in spirit. Mussolini drew on Italy's past, both ancient and Renaissance, for his inspiration, while the Nazis styled themselves as the successors to the First and Second Reichs.

In contrast, the Marxists sought to destroy every vestige of their host nation's pasts. While Falangists and National Socialists glorified their nation's history, the Communists vilified it. The Bolsheviks destroyed the Russian Church, banned most Russian literature, and worked to create a new "Soviet Man" to replace to "Medieval," "bigoted," and "anti-Semitic" Russian peasant (it sounds terribly familiar to modern initiatives, does it not)? Communist movements in Europe attacked the "Feudal" and "Bourgeois" native traditions of their lands and worked to replace the heroes of European history and folklore with new "cultural icons" in the form Marxist ideologues. Similarly, the heirs to Marxism in America - the multiculturalist advocates of political correctness, have been hard at work for decades slandering the heroes of American history. Colombus was guilty of "genocide," Washington and Jefferson were evil "slaveholders" to be replaced by new heroes such as Gloria Steinem or Martin Luther King.

Liberalism in all of its manifestations (whether it appears in the guise of "socialism" or of "capitalism") works to destroy and subvert history and heritage, and the pretense that modern liberalism is consistent with "Western Civilization" is laughable beyond belief. How could a set of beliefs set on destroying the traditions of Western Civilization be its modern incarnation? How could an ideology that hates the founders of Western thought and Western Christendom possibly claim to be its modern representatives? Most significantly, how can an ideology that is so utterly divorced from history and heritage even make the pretense of attaching itself to some land or culture as a name? Are we to believe that what was once called "rootless cosmopolitanism" is now the heart and soul of the West?

Unfortunately, "Western Culture" and "Americanism" are invoked in the name of liberalism and internationalism because there aren't enough voices present to speak otherwise. We have both the hardcore Left and the neoconservative pseudo-Right (witness Kristol above) claiming that the multicultural faith of "tolerance and diversity" is "Westernism," thereby creating a self-fulfilling consensus.

It is precisely for the sake of this false consensus of liberalism and deracinated internationalism that today's political and journalistic hacks are so vocal in their recent anti-Islamism and anti-Arabism. What better a Trojan Horse than a common enemy to peddle one's belief to the crowds? Before too many well-intentioned people jump aboard the latest crusade against Islam (or is it "Islamofascism"?) they should seriously think about who they are allying themselves with and to what end. That neoconservatives have taken advantage of 9/11 to advance the Israel-First agenda has already been well-documented, but there is something else at work here which is in many ways far more sinister. It is a case of the Left using rightwing nationalist sentiment as a means of diffusing the Right and render it toothless. A true pact with the devil if there ever was one.