As a girl and later as a young grown-up I could never understand how - in the run up to World War II - Nazi Germany could arm itself to the teeth with no one doing anything to prevent it. Entire weapon systems were stockpiled in the Soviet Union as the arsenals and warehouses in Germany proper were stored to full capacity. Yet the furnaces and steel works were operating full steam 24/7 as unemployment rates dropped to zero percent, thanks to Hitler's National Socialist Party's 'employment policies' of everyone on the state's pay roll.
Yet Europe had influential pacifist movements (
here's an brilliant take by Sanity on the subject). The U.K. had Richard "Peace in our Time" Chamberlain, and Mayoresses who promised to "not so much as darn a sock if it assisted the war effort", while 'bluestockings' and other enlightened academics conducted Peace Marches in Europe's streets.
I never understood how advanced, civil societies could let such disasters as World War II take place. That is, until yesterday. In fact, it's becoming blatantly obvious how last century's great wars, the holocaust and the enslavement of half the continent in its wake, could take place. Now, as then, we are closing our eyes to a reality that is too scary to contemplate, let alone deal with it.
Yesterday in Brussels we saw the conflation of three great isms taking place before our eyes. It is very sad to see just how far indeed we have already sank into the black hole of dictatorship.
It's a bit of a pity that Stephen Hicks'
explanation of Postmodernism (or cultural Marxism) doesn't get the attention it deserves. Hicks comes to another categorization of ideologies than is common. He explains that both Communism and National Socialism derive from the Counter-Enlightenment movement that started with the philosophies of Rousseau. This was a reaction to the primacy of reason that features so prominently in Enlightenment thought, of which Classical Liberalism or Libertarianism became the political offshoot (not to be confused with today's liberalism, which is Left Light).
Does the following Rousseau quotation on the ideal state strike anyone as compatible with Islam? "... the state cannot ... pursue a policy of toleration for disbelievers, or view religion as a matter of individual conscience. It absolutely must ...
>>>After
theocrat extraordinaire Rousseau, both Hegel and Kant expanded on anti reason philosophy, eventually even doing away with objective reality and epistemology: man is incapable of knowing anything, to each his own universe: reality is
subjective. This has provided Communism and National Socialism with their subjectivist basis.
Experts in Islam never stop to point out there is not 'one Islam'. Every Muslim has his or her own subjective perception of it (apart from the five pillars that is, presumably). I have no reason to doubt it: after Rousseau's take on the ideal state, this makes the second, basic conflation of the three great isms.
As hinted at earlier, from 1939 to 1941 Communism and National Socialism shared a history of cooperation. The German army held manoeuvres in Russia and vice versa. Both totalitarian ideologies were Socialist and differed only on its implementation: the Nazis were nationally inclined (using the ethnic dialectic of the German
Volk), while the Communists favoured global subjugation (hence the 'Internationale').
After World War II the Left portrayed Hitler as the great satan. Here the dichotomy of Nazism versus Communism was born: this was however a Communist PR ploy which has worked to this day. But far from being opposites both ideologies are in fact each other's mirror image, cousins if you will, while the real opposition, the actual enemy, is Classical Liberalism or Libertarianism, rooted in the Enlightenment and in the West, which by the way wasn't originally radically atheist at all, on the contrary.
Over time and through various
twists of history the two totalitarian isms also got transplanted onto Middle Eastern soil, where they gave birth to Panarabism, Arab Nationalism and Ba'athism.
Today's political correctness emanates from a revived Marxism from which the baby boom generation of the 60s cannot seem to say goodbye: their hatred of a free West is burnt onto their souls and treason has become their second nature. Some one described it aptly as "they just cannot pop out of the Marxist dialectic". It is th
eir mindset that is our ruin today, as they now inhabit the corridors of power.
If a recently unearthed 1985
interview with KGB agent and Soviet defector Bezmenov is anything to go by, the moral compass of the 60's generation has been totally and irrevocably removed by the KGB subversion program. What that left undone, was completed by the fifth columnists at the
Frankfurt School of Cultural Marxism, as the undersigned can personally attest to. (For novices, here's a commentary on
Gramsci, another luminary)
The influence these intellectuals had on that generation can simply not be overstated: they prescribed how 'thinking people' should act and what their opinions should be, from the books and the newspaper they read, the friends they kept, to the movies they saw, to the brand of tobacco they smoked and the coffee they drank.
They were in no uncertain measure specifically 'present' in the bedroom, which - if they had any say in the matter, should preferably be shared by any number of people. The family a gonner as women dragged husbands through divorce courts whole-sale, Eros and Agapi were kept strictly separated as per Kinsey ukase. Children became a kind of common property, to be raised and cared for, by whoever happened to be present (if any).
Fast forward to the new millennium. The cooperation in the Unholy Alliance of the Western Left with Islamists, as the latter swap their secular subjectivism for a theological one, is simply a Feast of Recognition: egalitarian collectivism against individual liberty, totalitarian statism versus limited government at the people's pleasure, anti reason against science and technology, socialism vs. capitalism and free markets, state (which in Islam is synonymous with religion) against voluntary mutual benefit, state/divine intervention versus free will: in short, combined totalitarianism against the classical liberal values as embodied by the West: freedom and democracy.
And of course the collectivists share the dialectic of Oppressor versus the Oppressed and socially constructed victimhood. This mock epic battle is the basis of all collectivist ideologies, uniquely cultivated to keep the 'struggle' going. Communism had its classes; the Nazis the German
Volk; Cultural Marxism its students, women, gays and blacks, as Islam has the true believers versus the infidel.
Multiculturalism is a later manifestation of Cultural Marxism and keeps true to the dialectic mechanism on a cultural level, while N.G.O.ism (U.N.) and transnational progressivism (E.U., N.A.U.) play the same trick on the global scale of nations and states. The same story is transposed and extrapolated on all levels. So much for defeating Marxism, fifty years overdue.
Last but certainly not least the totalitarian isms share a justification of violence to power: the Western versions'
passe-partout is provided for by Messrs Rousseau and Marx; the Islamic variety is of course rooted in Koranic scripture, which in the early stages also served as a platform for the conquest of the Christian lands in the Middle East and beyond.
I have laid down the ideological histories and how the three isms relate, in
Chart I: The Straight Red Line for easy reference.
But the uncovering of the close ties within the Unholy Alliance doesn't stop here.
AEL's Abu Jahjah's vocabulary of choice doesn't come by accident straight out of the Marxist-Leninist handbook for Leftist dummies ... dhimmis.
Just in: Hodja has published
"Postmodern Jihad - What Osama bin Laden learnt from the Left", insights into the more recent relations between Islamism and Cultural Marxism: have hardly read it myself, but I think I should share it.
Much is made of political correctness. Some interpret it as latter day Cultural Marxism itself. Personally I see it as soft social pressure, to coerce others into conforming with the Left's ideology: the 'redistribution' of freedoms and rights along the lines of the dialectic. The idea is to shift power, capital, rights, etc. from the Oppressor to the Oppressed minorities. The great trick is to treat gender and faith, on an equal footing with race. But what we have to keep in mind here, is that gender is subject to choice, while Muslims are born as such.
This can be taken very far indeed, as legislation is put in place in support of the same object. We have recently seen that played out with the SIOE demo and Brussels Mayor, Freddy 'The Toad' Thielemans. At that stage, we have
de facto a totalitarian situation where dissenters are made common criminals, case need on trumped up charges of assaulting a bus driver. Baron Bodissey of Gates of Vienna is spot on in today's post
"Democratic Europe R.I.P." Freddy and His Walloon Troopers made European history yesterday.
But for most, including the good people of
the silent majority [1], if reality gets too scary to deal with, denial erects a impenetrable curtain of make-belief in the hope the bogey will go away. I just read this morning in a paper that the Dutch as a nation, have become happier than they were a few years back during an economic downturn. Happy totalitarian dreams every one! I hope your bank accounts grow at an even pace!
Others - like
Council of Europe's Secretary General Terry Davis - have become completely deluded in their psychological pathology. To them it's simply beyond the realm of the possible - indeed, a crime! - that people might be genuinely worried about the fate of their culture and continent. This type of custodians of 'European values' have no qualm whatsoever of beating up and criminalizing civilians and politicians with whom they happen to disagree. Even manufactured charges do not seem to trigger a red-hot-moral-no-no meme with these Quislings. They have become amoral thugs, who have lost sight of their opponents humanity, and do not know it. That is what scares me to death.
Update: The New York Times is offering a fascinating view of a German officer's
World War II photo album of Auschwitz. The commentary is wrong at one point, when exclaiming that this is what "antisemitism, racism and hatred" does to humans. This should actually be: "this is what happens if ideology is valued over human life".
- National Geographic: "Violence in Myanmar Exposed By Satellite Images" - "A detailed analysis of images spanning several years pinpoints locations where villages have been burned, settlements have been relocated, and military forces have expanded their camps. >>>
- Jotman.com blogging Burma live from Bangkok: "Vigil at the Myanmar Embassy in Bangkok" - "There was a organized protest at the Myanmar Embassy in Bangkok earlier tonight. There were about 100 present for a prayer and meditation vigil. This Embassy is located on a busy street under the skytrain tracks two blocks from Sathorn Station. I'll try to get my video up tomorrow. Bangkok religious groups were well represented, as were expatriots. >>>
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