Bloody Horsemen of Apocalypse: Islamism, Nazism, Communism

The 20th century was very big on messianic political movements. Europe was a particular hotbed of messianic utopian revolutionaries. First communism, then Nazism.

Communism promised a return to an Edenic paradise, once the evils of capitalism and the bourgeoisie were eradicated from the earth. This was to be a paradise of the proletariat, the true heirs of the earth. There are still true believers in communist/socialist paradise, lurking under dead logs, in universities, in the media, and such. Many of these true believers stand ready to join in the final revolution to place the rightful dictators on their thrones.

Nazism was supposed to be the messianic triumph of the true people--the Aryan race--over the "inferior" races of the world. There are still holdovers from that messianic movement. Many of these true believers stand ready to re-ignite the race struggle, to trigger a race war, to place the "rightful" race on top of the world.

Islamism was reignited in the 20th century by Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood. This messianic movement is based upon the ascendancy of Islam over the world of infidels. It consists of both Shia and Sunni movements which often collaborate toward a common goal, in spite of the hatred and distrust between Shia and Sunni.

Islamism aims for a world that is under the boot of Islamist leaders, although true paradise for Sunni islamists is achieved through "martyrdom"--a euphemistic term referring to a death that involves killing as many non-islamists as possible, including women and children. Paradise for Shia islamists can be achieved through martyrdom, but there is also the mystical messianic element of the twelfth imam.

Apocalyptic thinking:

"It means a belief that a cosmic transformation is imminent. The coming transformation of the world can take two forms. The first is that it will end entirely (eschatology). Alternatively, it can be the coming of the Messianic Age. This latter expectation is often called 'millennialism' (mille = 1000, anni = years) not because of the advent of a 1000-year marker like the year 2000, but because it promises a 'thousand-year messianic kingdom'.

"In moderate forms, millennialism exists everywhere since most people have the hope that the world is going to fundamentally improve. But rarely do millennial beliefs become apocalyptic, sweep up groups, movements and whole populations in a frenzied belief that the millennium is now!

"Among believers in an imminent apocalyptic transformation, two major schools exist. The more common passive one says: 'God will cause the transformation, which will lead to either the end of time or the earthly millennium.' The activists claim: 'we are God's agents and have to bring about the apocalyptic transformation.' When they believe that the apocalypse calls for cataclysmic destruction, they deem they can 'save the world by destroying it.' Often their first and most feared targets are Jews and Judaism.

"Hitler's aim for a thousand year 'Reich' - a millennial kingdom - represented the quintessence of the most negative aspects of violent, apocalyptic action. Nazism exploded from a toxic cocktail of conspiracism, rage at a perceived humiliation of the German people, and complete contempt for human life, all the while using the discourse of the salvation of the Aryan race to win over converts. It could thereby inspire 'modern' people, capable of handling sophisticated technology, to engage in the most inhumane activities with a good conscience. The Holocaust was an apocalyptic deed."

.... "According to this teaching, Muslims stand at the brink of a glorious global victory for Islam and a devastating destruction of the West, starting with Israel. Then the world can enter the peaceful millennium of the global Dar al Islam. For many Muslims, Bin Laden is a central player in a cosmic battle between the warriors for truth against Satan's agents in the world, i.e., the West and, in particular, the United States and Israel.

"These are recycled concepts from the time Islam originally spread. Then, Muslims thought that once they threw out the world's bad governments - the Roman/Byzantine and Persian empires - God's dominion would be everywhere. With this ideology, Muslims conquered and spread to half the world, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. However, modern times have treated Islam badly. In particular, from the time of Napoleon's invasion of 1798-99, they have found their political - and now, despite all their oil wealth, economic - inferiority a source of great pain.

...."Jihad operates on two major levels. The first is outright violence. Its aggression emerges in most places where Islam has a border with another culture. From Nigeria, on the Atlantic, across the sub-Saharan divide to Sudan, across Asia to the Pacific, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.

"Apocalyptic Jihad in the global era has intensified both the rhetoric and the action. It now emphasizes terrifying hadiths, in which the end marks a genocidal slaughter of Jews, when even the rocks and trees will call out 'Oh Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him!' Others include the Christians in the carnage, a theme common in the 'secular' nationalism of Arab riots in the pre-Zionist period: 'First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people.'

"Lately, disturbing evidence suggests that the hadith that claims that at the end of time, every Muslim will have 'a Jew or Christian to substitute for him in hell,' has been interpreted to mean that every Muslim has a Jew - or a Christian - to kill in order to be saved. The Arab Muslim French youngster who slaughtered and mutilated a neighbor since childhood, a successful Jewish disc jockey, last winter, came up to his parents' apartment with bloodied hands and said, 'I've killed my Jew, I can go to Paradise.'

.... Landes considers that we have to watch how the apocalyptic discourse's momentum is developing. "It's common to say that Jihadism is an extremist, marginal form of Islam. In order to comprehend its potential role in current events, we need to understand it in terms of apocalyptic dynamics. Successful millennial movements, like the Nazis, spread from the fringes to the center. And in cultures that are vulnerable to apocalyptic messages - e.g., the conspiracist and disoriented Arab world - technology greatly amplifies its impact. Instead of local pockets, a critical mass of people can grow very quickly.

"Once such a mass has developed, a society's leaders use apocalyptic rhetoric, as has the Palestinian Authority. Thus, this discourse becomes predominant in public. Anybody who disagrees is on the defensive and keeps quiet."

When asked what the future will bring, Landes says: "A billion Muslims are at least attracted to an Islamic millennial scenario in which they take over the world. The vast majority is not yet apocalyptic, but it is certainly possible that both Arabs and Muslims worldwide could get swept up in a fever of apocalyptic hope and violence. Such a scenario may strike us as ridiculous. But in millennial matters, since the millennium never actually comes, unintended consequences play a major role. The more violent and active the apocalyptic scenario, the more destructive its consequences can be, no matter how unrealistic its goals.

"The West cannot afford to dismiss these fantasies because we consider them as unrealistic. We have to listen to what the Jihadists say, and especially, what they say to each other. The West needs - at the very least - to stop encouraging the apocalyptic thinkers by wrongly pretending that they are just upset about the Israeli occupation or American imperialism. Jihadis do not read our self-critical breast beating as a cause for moderation but rather to the contrary, an invitation to further violence.

Source.

These three messianic riders of the apocalypse are bloody through and through. Communism killed over a hundred million people in the 20th century, and if Fidel and Kim could work their will there would be many more millions dead in the 21st. Nazism killed ten million or so in the 20th century, and if the neo-nazis succeed in provoking race wars, millions more may follow.

Islamism is the most active bloody horseman of the apocalypse, and given its strong ties to the billion+ strong religion of Islam, it is the messianic horseman with the greatest staying power, and destructive potential.

Nuclear weapons in the hands of Putin are quite different than nuclear weapons in the hands of an Ahmadidinejad. The Iranian madman plans to eradicate entire nations and peoples--he intends radical genocide, lacking only the means, for now. Previous calculations of mutual deterrence do not apply to a messianic.

To understand messianics, a person should have once been a messianic himself. Otherwise it is difficult to think like a messianic, to understand what the radical apocalyptic is thinking and planning. That is the shortcoming of most western analysis. A further shortcoming of western analysis--particularly leftist analysis--is making the a priori assumption that western civilisation is bad, so that any civilisation opposing western civilisation must always be given the benefit of the doubt.

This undercutting of the west by so many western analysts leaves a profound vulnerability, an unpreparedness, in large sectors of the west. That bodes ill for the inevitable conflicts to come. Nevertheless, it is discussions such as this which allow second, third, and deeper level currents in the west to prepare for what is coming. To paraphrase Kyle Reese from The Terminator:

Listen! And understand! They are out there. They can't be bargained with! They can't be reasoned with! They don't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!

Hat tip augean stables blog.

Crime and Race--Trying to Clarify

Everyone is fascinated with crime statistics, particularly people who have been victimised by crime, or know someone who has been victimised. Take the graph above. Many people will mentally extrapolate the existing curves for each country to supply up to date rates, but is that accurate? No--for reasons of changing demographics, particularly in Europe, and in the more multicultural regions of North America, Australia, and other developed regions.

Audacious Epigone has posted an article that looks at the relationship between "race" and "crime." Using multivariate regression, he found that knowledge of the percent black and/or hispanic in a given population, gives an "r" correlation coefficient of 0.800, which is very high. When he combined the following variables together statistically, the r was only 0.689. (don't add the coefficients arithmetically, or people will laugh at you)

% of population in poverty: .399
% of population with a bahelor's degree: .289 (inverse)
State gini coefficient: .627
% of population owning at least one gun: .060 (inverse, not statistically significant)
% of population with a high school diploma: .388 (inverse)
% of population unemployed: .309

Go the Audacious Epigone's article yourself and look over his methodology. These are his statistics, which he compares to findings of others. Here is an Al Fin Potpourri article looking at a similar topic.
Another interesting variable that would be interesting to look at using the same method, is prison population. This graph shows the New York experience in the 1990s.

For all the people who check their parking spot to see if their car is still there, almost every day, crime is not a joke. For all the people who balance the enjoyment they would get out of the opera, ball game, or concert, with the chance of being mugged or worse, crime is not merely a political issue. For all the people who have their lunch money taken more often than not, crime is not an academic issue.

Arabs are a little people, a silly people - greedy, barbarous, and cruel

Lawrence was describing the arabs of the early 20th century, all the way back to antiquity. And he may as well have been describing modern arabs. The recent raids for hostages by Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel, are prototypical arab tribal raids, a throwback to prehistoric raiding cultures.

At one time, arabs in the Mecca/Medina area made progress toward civilisation, by moving away from raids and blood feuds--the tribal ethic--toward trade and laws. Then came Muhammad, who forced the return to tribal blood feuds, raids for slaves, and other primitive tribal customs. But Muhammad wanted to lead one great tribe--the Umma. He wanted to bring primitive arab barbarism to the entire world, under the banner of a religion custom-made for that purpose, Islam.

Ancient tribal societies, especially nomadic societies, which frequently came upon other societies, were warrior societies. Warfare was a part of their culture. Men wanted to be good at it for the sake of their people and to be respected.

Men exercised their skills as warriors by raiding. Raiding happened among tribal people .... Beyond raiding, battles among tribal people were fought. People have gone to war believing that sickness of disease among them was caused by a member or members of another society having cast an evil spell on them...... In the twentieth century the Yanomami of Brazil went to war believing that an evil spirit had been cast upon them - wars for retribution or punishment. Or tribal people went to war merely because tribe had come upon tribe. We have knowledge of tribe coming upon tribe in Eastern Africa, the men of each side in ranks, posturing with their weapons and making threatening gestures, with their women watching from the sidelines, cheering them on.

The nature of war changed when tribes on the move saw advantage in holding ground and exploiting those they came upon. This happened after settled people were successful enough in agriculture to have surplus enough for conquerors to tax. With this, empire was born. A local ruler, if he survived conquest, might become a tool of the conqueror, collecting taxes and controlling the locals for the conquerors.

Wars for empire were wars for wealth. Power was the instrument for wealth and also a means of protecting oneself. In the earliest age of empire -- which included the time of the Sumerians -- the idea arose that if one did not conquer he would be conquered. A competition for power had erupted. Wars were common because a would be conqueror perceived others as weaker. And warring was accepted. Civilization had arrived but the world was still fragmented. Each conqueror had his own god - the ancient Hebrews included - and a conqueror spoke of his conquests as the conquest of his god. He saw his god as more powerful than the god of rival peoples. There was no recognized political body with rules as to which power should rule where. In such a world there were many ready to go to battle to settle petty disputes. War was often chosen over negotiation and compromise. There was fear of becoming a slave or annihilation, and there was still an inclination to see those of the other side as not worthy of the kind of trust and friendship that made agreements work.

It was not an age when people of different groupings were looked upon as equal. It was not a democratic age. It was, instead, the age described in the Old Testament, an age when authority was created and demonstrated through violence.

Source.

Muhammad wanted to place the entire world under the banner of Allah, the conqueror's god. Since Islam was born of primitive arab tribal customs, these customs would eventually rule any world that Allah's fighters conquered.

It seems clear that Muhammed became the leader of the Muslim Arabs because his personal qualities and feats as a religious, military, political, legislative, and judicial leader proved to his followers that he was the charismatic leader that he claimed to be. It is very doubtful, however, that he would have been at all successful had he not respected to an absolute degree the internal structure and independence of the tribe and its leadership. Even his own personal followers, the Muhajirun, were accepted into the Medinan tribal system as members of an individual tribe responsible directly to himself. The geneological principle obviously prevailed since their being Muhajirun never meant that they ceased to be Quraysh. Also the idea generally prevailed that the successors to the Caliphate had to be Quraysh. This failure of the early community and of Muhammed himself to overcome tribal structures other than in the terms outlined gave rise to impossible problems with the subsequent conversion of great masses of people, culturally superior to the Arab clansmen, by means of clientship. This was not due to the lack of a universal religious outlook on the part of Muhammed or his followers, but rather to the inability of the Arab mind, including that of Muhammed, to think of society other than in terms of tribal structures.

Source.

So Muhammad led the arabs of Mecca and Medina from a more enlightened culture back into the primitive barbarism of arab tribal blood feud/slaving culture. Then he permanently fossilized this primitivism into the Islamic religion so that no one could be muslim without submitting to the primitive barbarism of ancient tribal raiding/slaving culture.

This is an ongoing horrific crime against over a billion people of the modern world, a crime that threatens the future of western civilisation and the human race itself. For if the civilised world can find no way to deal with an ascendant primitivism that arms itself with weapons of mass death, massive slaughter and destruction is inevitable.

In the Demography Contest, Islam is Kicking Western Butt

Demography is destiny. If the prosperous developed nations of the world decide to stop having children, the people that shaped those nations will disappear from the earth, and be replaced by other people with a, perhaps, less savoury history.

A recent Fjordman Report discusses this issue most bluntly--in the only way in which it is worth being discussed. Al Fin has posted on this issue many times, but this is the first time I have seen a well-known European blogger discuss the issue so plainly. Here is just a taste of Fjordman's excellent report:

Japan has a declining and ageing population, Yemen and Pakistan have booming populations. Does anybody seriously believe that it would be “good” for the Japanese to open their doors to millions of Muslims from Yemen? “Do you have any education?” “Yes, I know the Koran by heart and can say ‘Death to the infidels!’ in ten different ways.” “Splendid, just what we need here in Japan. Can you start tomorrow on developing a new line of plasma TV screens for SONY?”

When it comes to stagnating populations and Muslim immigration, the problems are not nearly as damaging as the cure.

Among political right-wingers, there is frequently a belief that what is good for business interests is good for the country. The problem is, this isn’t always true. There is sometimes a gap between the short-term interests of Big Business for cheap labor from Third World countries, and the long-term interests of the country as a whole. You cannot compete with cheap commodities from Third World countries unless you lower the general wages to Third World levels.

A few decades ago, Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew realized that Singapore could never win the worldwide competition to offer cheap labor. He decided instead that the country was to become a high value-added producer. To Lee, that meant wages had to be high enough to encourage Singapore’s businessmen to invest in labor-saving technology. To raise Singapore’s salaries he had to make sure that local wages wouldn’t be undercut by migrants. Yes, you could pay an unskilled Bangladeshi $400 dollars a month. But in that case you had to pay the state another $400 a month.

In Europe, the one nation that has proved to be most successful in technology, ”Nokia nation” Finland, is also perhaps the one country within the EU that has accepted the least amount of immigration. Today, this small Nordic nation boasts a thriving hi-tech economy ranked the most competitive in the world and the best educated citizenry of all the industrialized countries. Neighboring Sweden, in contrast, with the largest per capita immigration in Europe, is in serious economic decline, and the only thing growing seems to be the crime rates.

Ethnically homogeneous nations enjoy a “trust bonus” which reduces the amount of conflict. There is little evidence that any theoretical “diversity” bonus from immigration will cancel out the loss of this “trust bonus.” South Korea and Japan are among the world leaders in technology. They are both ethnically homogeneous nations. Even China, which does have significant ethnic minorities, could soon be more ethnically homogeneous than many so-called Western nations. There will be no lack of “diversity” in the 21st century, but there could be a lack of functioning, coherent nation states. Maybe the West will “celebrate diversity” until our countries fall apart, and global leadership will be transferred to East Asia.

Yes, it is true that the ability to attract ambitious and talented scientists from other countries has benefited the USA in the past, and given it an edge over Europe. However, it is not without dangers to “celebrate diversity” in a country as diverse as the US. Americans should try celebrating what binds them together instead, or they may wake up one day and discover that they don’t really have a lot in common. What then for the United States?

Anthony Browne notes that Britain “became the largest economic power in the world in the nineteenth century, in the almost complete absence of immigration to these isles. Japan became the world’s second largest economy after the second world war in the almost total absence of immigration.” “Britain can never compete on the basis of low wages with low cost countries such as China for the simple reason that the cost of living is so much higher, and it is a mistake to try. Although cheap labour immigration may have staved off the demise of those industries for a short while, it also compromised them by encouraging them to go down the cheap labour route, and discouraging them from going up the high productivity/value added route.”

The revered former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, stated in a testimony given to the U.S. Senate: “Although discovery of new technologies is to some degree a matter of luck, we know that human activities do respond to economic incentives. A relative shortage of workers should increase the incentives for developing labor-saving technologies and may actually spur technological development.”

Robert Rowthorn, academic economist, criticizes the claim, frequently repeated by Tony Blair’s Labour government since it took office in 1997, that “if we don’t have immigration, we won’t have economic growth.” According to Rowthorn, “if you repeat something often enough, you can perhaps make people believe it.” There is no evidence “that large-scale immigration generates large-scale economic benefits for the existing population as a whole. On the contrary, all the research suggests that the benefits are either close to zero, or negative” as unskilled migrants and their families often are net consumers of taxes.

“Immigration can’t solve the pensions crisis, nor solve the problem of an ageing population, as its advocates so often claim. It can, at most, delay the day of reckoning, because, of course, immigrants themselves grow old, and they need pensions.” “The injection of large numbers of unskilled workers into the economy does not benefit the bulk of the population to any great extent. It benefits the nanny-and housecleaner-using classes; it benefits employers who want to pay low wages; but it does not benefit indigenous, unskilled Britons.” “While Britain has always had immigration, the recent influx is totally without precedent in modern times. Relative to population, the scale of immigration is now much greater than during any period since the Anglo-Saxon and Danish invasions over a thousand years ago.”

Rowthorn also points out, correctly, that “refugees and others granted special leave to remain under the asylum rules account for only 10 per cent of immigration to Britain. Most permanent immigration consists of people who are economic migrants together with their dependants.” Most of them aren’t people fleeing persecution.

There is much more at the Fjordman Report, on the GatesofVienna blog.

Very slowly, the hardworking citizens of the developed nations are beginning to realise that their politicians are selling them out. Some of these politicians are susceptible to the voters, and should be removed from office. Others, within the EU bureaucracy, have insulated themselves from voters, and may have to be dragged--kicking and screaming--from their well paid sinecured positions of arbitrary power.

It is nothing less than a question of the survival of western civilisation--the most advanced and enlightened civilisation the human world has ever known. The alternatives are dismal throwbacks to more brutal and barbaric times. Wake up, western world. You have not much more time to decide.

Unelected Euro-Elites Undermine Europe

Fjordman has submitted another excellent Fjordman Report over at GatesofVienna. Fjordman is a throwback to the crusty, worldly European who is not afraid to speak his mind. This time it is multicultural europe that is on his mind, giving him mental indigestion:

Is it “xenophobia” if Norwegians, who make up less than a tenth of a percentage point of the world’s population, worry about being overwhelmed by immigration? As American writer Gore Vidal said in a lecture: “Liberal tradition requires that borders must always be open to those in search of safety or even the pursuit of happiness. But now with so many millions of people on the move, even the great-hearted are becoming edgy. Norway is large enough and empty enough to take in 40 to 50 million homeless Bengalis. If the Norwegians say that, all in all, they would rather not take them in, is this to be considered racism? I think not. It is simply self-preservation, the first law of species.”

Jonathan Friedman, an American living in Sweden, mentions that the so-called Integration Act of 1997 proclaimed that “Sweden is a Multicultural society.” Notes to the Act also stated that “Since a large group of people have their origins in another country, the Swedish population lacks a common history. The relationship to Sweden and the support given to the fundamental values of society thus carry greater significance for integration than a common historical origin.”

The Act thus implicitly states that the country of Sweden doesn’t have a history, only the various ethnic groups that live there. Native Swedes, who have shaped the country for centuries, have thus been reduced to just another ethnic group in Sweden, with no more claim to the country than the Kurds or the Somalis who arrived there last Thursday. The political authorities of the country have thus erased their own people’s history, without staging any public debate about this. I have read that Muslim immigrants in Sweden say that Sweden doesn’t have a common cultural or religious heritage; it’s just made up of different groups tied together by the use of a common language. It is thus “racist” to even talk about how “we” should integrate “them,” since there is no “we” to begin with.

Jens Orback, Democracy Minister in the Social Democratic Swedish government, is worried about “the public’s lack of faith in politicians.” Yet the same Orback said during a radio debate that: “We must be open and tolerant towards Islam and Muslims because when we become a minority, they will be so towards us.” It sounded almost too crazy even for Sweden that a minister could say something like this in public, so I checked with several independent sources, and apparently, he really did say this.

This is a government that knows perfectly well that their people will become a minority in their own country, and yet, is doing nothing to stop this. On the contrary, they are actively working to achieve this result. Has this ever happened before in human history, that the leaders of a nation are working to erase their own people and their history, and present this as an act of tolerance? No wonder some Swedes say that there is a war against Swedes going on: A physical war waged by Muslim immigrants, and a cultural and legal war waged by their own political élites.

Following threats from Muslim hardliners, some of the largest companies in England were afraid to display the English national flag during the football World Cup. In Sweden, a man was attacked and nearly killed for the crime of wearing clothes with his own national flag while Sweden was participating in the World Cup. Sweden, of course, has the same Christian cross in its flag as does England, and apparently, some “Multicultural youths” found this to be an intolerable provocation. The 24-year-old man was run down by a car in the city of Malmö. According to the police, he was wearing some clothes with Swedish national symbols on them, and this “provoked some emotions.”

Much more at the Fjordman Report.

Multicultural "nutzis" are running amuk across Europe, with few countervailing forces available for restoring sanity to the continent. Fortunately, there is Fjordman and his cohorts, willing to speak up in the face of tyrannic multi-culti intimidation on the part of authorities.

Too Stupid to Know . . . .

. . . . when people are trying to kill you, part IV. Today's TSTK (too stupid to know) installment is inspired by the May-June 2006 message from Dan Simmons. The current message goes into more detail to clarify the April 2006 message from Simmons, which I posted on here. If you have not read the April message, be sure to do so before proceeding to the May-June message.

As I mentioned in TSTK part II, a lot of people reflexively reacted against the warning from Simmons' time traveler guest. Rather than thinking the issues through, they allowed their viscera to determine their instinctive response--probably without even reading the entire essay. This is typical of the denial response that one sees in people who have adopted a rigidly fixed view of the world based upon old notions learned "once upon a time." This type of person is generally not flexible enough in viewpoint to digest conflicting and contradictory information, nor can he integrate new information easily into his worldview that does not smoothly fit into pre-existing concepts.

For more open-minded individuals, Simmons' recent message is rich with references and supporting quotations:

Books commented on in this essay include—The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan, The Book of War: 25 Centuries of Great War Writing edited by John Keegan, While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within by Bruce Bawer, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order by Samuel P. Huntington, Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History by Lee Harris, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History by Philip Bobbit, and Replay by Ken Grimwood

Go to Simmons' message, and carefully read through the logic. It is one thing to understand an argument and to possess a reasonable counter-argument. It is quite another--and very infantile--to simply stop reading in the middle and state categorically "this is bullshit", when you have not even read the entire piece, nor understood the foundations of the argument.

This is why the news media is such a poor guide to modern realities: most of the practitioners of media are incapable of incorporating real world level contradiction into a report. Journalists and columnists almost invariably simplify and dumb down their reports to match the world view and meet with the approval of their peers in the media club. The members of that club, as well as a large proportion of the public who take media club reports seriously, are too stupid to know . . . .