Have I Been Robbed of my Humanity?

Well, I’ll leave it up to our readers to answer that question. The interesting thing is that someone would choose to ask it of me, as if it were a serious question and he were expecting a serious response.

In a couple of previous posts, I outlined an ongoing email exchange I’ve been having with a British journalist. The gentleman from the Fourth Estate originally wanted to talk to Fjordman, but failing that, has been engaging me in conversation instead.

Evidently dissatisfied by my earlier answers, in his latest communication he became somewhat bolder in the phrasing of his questions. Below is his email to me today (his words are in italicized block quotes), with my responses.

I know from what Fjordman has written on your site that he feels no responsibility for July 22. Though a proclaimed believer in personal responsibility, he cravenly suggests that if anyone is responsible beyond Breivik himself, it is the Norwegian polity.

Your choice of the adverb “cravenly” reveals volumes about your own agenda.

To refer in that manner to someone whom you have never met, who is known to you solely through his writings and those of others, is to cast aspersions on his character in the most offensive manner possible. You possess no evidence whatsoever for Fjordman’s cowardice, or lack thereof. So how is it appropriate to describe him that way?

Your political opinions place you comfortably within the mainstream of 21st century British journalism. If you never veer significantly from the positions you now hold, you need not fear being sacked, or failing to win assignments, or finding a publisher for any book you might choose to write.

You will need no armed police detail stationed outside your residence, nor will death threats be issued against you by anarchists on web forums and street placards.

Unlike Fjordman, you will not lose your job because of your political opinions — which, for both of you, are peacefully held and do not advocate violence in any form. You will not be driven from your flat or hounded from your country because leftists wish to kill you. You need not worry about being recognized in public by someone who wants to stab you to death or shoot you.

Your political beliefs will never force you to invest in a bullet-proof vest nor result in your being guarded by state security, as is the case for Lars Hedegaard, Geert Wilders, Kurt Westergaard, and Lars Vilks. Nor is it likely that you will be found dead on the streets of London with your head sawn half off and a jihad polemic pinned to your chest with a kitchen knife, as happened to Theo Van Gogh in Amsterdam.

Your political views will keep you safe and secure. The same cannot be said of Fjordman.

As for precisely who is courageous and who is craven: I’ll leave that for God to sort out. He alone can untangle the mysteries of the human heart.

Without wishing to make a leap of judgement about personal motivations from him to you, I was quite particular about my questions. I did not ask whether you felt responsibility. I asked about involvement. I also asked about whether you might lose sleep.

“Involvement”? By all rights I should refuse to even respond to a question of such impertinence and insult!

I should have thought the answer was obvious. My involvement in what happened on 22-7 is exactly none. Zero. Nothing.

I hold particular positions on Islamization and mass immigration which are considered heresy by the political, media, and academic mainstream. Those positions not only advocate no violence to attain their ends, they specifically advocate against violence. Our only hope to avoid the War of All Against All is to resolve our problems through peaceful democratic means.

I’ll repeat what I said in my earlier email: I lose no sleep whatsoever over what happened, any more than I lose sleep over what happened in the Tube on July 7, 2005, or in the Katyn Forest in the spring of 1940.

Horrible as these events were, I lose sleep only over actions for which I bear some responsibility. I bear no responsibility for the actions of the Butcher of Utøya.

I repeat: Sir, you are impertinent!

In an earlier age I would have struck you with my glove and referred you to my seconds.

I rather hope that if a Marxist theorist was cited a dozen times by Pol Pot as the Cambodian leader sought to justify his slaughter, the professor might, yes, lose some sleep over it.

Strangely enough, Pol Pot did justify his slaughter by citing a Marxist theorist — specifically, Karl Marx himself.

So did Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, a.k.a. Lenin, who was responsible for hundreds of thousands of political murders before his death in 1924.

So did Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, a.k.a. Stalin, who was responsible for possibly fifty million political murders.

So did Mao Tse-tung, who was responsible for yet another fifty million political murders, possibly more.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Yet the writings of Karl Marx are held in high esteem even today in universities throughout the West. Students are assigned to read them and write about them. Learned scholars publish approving treatises based on them.

I’m still amazed that you fail to see the blatant double standard at work here.

Is it possible, I wonder, whether your politics might have robbed you somewhat of your humanity?

Now, that’s an interesting question. Of all the are-you-still-beating-your-wife questions, that one takes the cake.

Let’s examine the possible answers using the discipline of logic:

1.   Yes, I have lost my humanity.

What sort of person would answer in the affirmative?

How would anyone who had lost his humanity know that to be the case?

If somehow he did know, why would he ever admit it?

Why would anyone asking the question expect a meaningful answer from such a monster?
 

2.   No, I haven’t lost my humanity.

How would you know the person who answered in this way was telling the truth?

Isn’t it likely that a person with no humanity would also possess no scruples, and would therefore lie?

How could you determine the veracity of his response without approaching your interlocutor in person to see if he attempted to tear out your jugular with his teeth?

This sort of question — the Greek philosophers had a name for it, but I can’t remember it — isn’t intended to elicit an answer, but to entrap the person who is being questioned.

It is very much like the “you’re a racist” accusation — there is no substantive response that does not acknowledge the validity of the premise behind the question.

Therefore, just as I do with “racism” accusations, I decline to engage the topic. The question is not offered in good faith, but is intended to force one’s opponent into a corner where he is always in the wrong.

I refuse to play that game. I refuse to accept its rules. I decline even to enter the playing field.

It is your game, with your rules. You play it.

But I thank you once again for asking such thought-provoking questions. Our exchange affords me the opportunity to express myself on several important issues that I might not otherwise address.

37 thoughts on “Have I Been Robbed of my Humanity?

  1. Do you think this journalist has any feelings of responsibility, belonging to a profession that ratcheted up the hatred towards Dutch gay communist Pim Fortuyn. The Dutch journalists practically begged someone to assassinate him, and a loyal leftist vegan actually did it.

    http://4freedoms.ning.com/group/dutch/forum/topics/the-demonisation-of-pim-fortuyn-how-the-media-kill-the-canaries

    Have any of the hate-filled muslims in the west been assassinated, the way that Pim Fortuyn or Theo van Gogh were? Does anyone even remember the name of the assassin who marked the descent of european civilisation into a new civil war, the first political assassination in the tolerant Netherlands in 350 years.

    There needs to be an examination of the leftist mind. Whilst harping on about the universality of man, universal human rights, etc. they have rules that apply to us, that don’t apply to them. Collectivists will see thousands or millions sacrificed for their goals. Prominent communist academics in the west happily supported Stalin’s genocides.

    To leftists, Fjordman is responsible for the Uttoya massacre, but leftists are not responsible for the assassination of Pim Fortuyn, and muslim preachers are not responsible for 9/11, 7/7, Madrid, Bali, and the 20,000 other terrorist crimes by muslims in the last 20 years. Even though Fjordman never implored anyone to go and kill, he is held responsible; those muslims and their texts which do implore muslims to go and kill are given carte blanche. Collectivists are entirely indifferent to the monstrous behaviour of their followers, provided the goals are furthered by that behaviour. They have no morality, no humanity: the ends justifies the means.

    As Orwell said: “4 legs good, two legs bad”. Orwell had been up close to the scumbag Left in Spain (where they tried to assassinate him for not being ideologically pure). He understood the leftist mind (as did James Burnham http://4freedoms.ning.com/group/argumentation/forum/topics/james-burnham-suicide-of-the-west-1964 ).

    The collectivist mindset is diseased.

      • No, “communist” was not a mistake. I don’t know enough about Pim Fortuyn’s views in later life, but he certainly was a communist early on. The point is, he was never “right wing”, but that will not stop the leftists; they will kill their own people who step out of line.

  2. Chapeau! Yet it seems more likely than not that clear logic goes squarely over this typewriter monkey’s head.

  3. Right On Baron!!!
    I’m sure you have noticed, but I have to remind people once again, that these Heroes of the Left NEVER criticize the only group on the face of the earth that is widely known for killing people who criticize their religion; while at the same time they feel bold enough to slander the most accomplished, the most gifted, and (other than when they are being attacked by The Religion of Peace)the most peaceful people in the history of the world? (Okay, maybe except for the Buddhists)

  4. Baron, Brilliant! We need more people being offensive minded (see Pamela Geller’s recent exchange) against these awful, msm types. Keep up the great work!
    Rob

  5. I must be the only person in the Counter-Jihad (for want of a better phrase) who doesn’t reflexively close ranks on this issue, but rather sees problems on both sides. The problem outside the Counter-Jihad, of course, is rather obvious; the problem inside is one of a strangely persistent disingenuousness at worst, or obtuseness at best. I’ve articulated this many times, and may again in the near future; for now, it wearies me with an incipient headache to think it’s even necessary.

  6. To grab a quote from a bit of a more “hyperbolic” blog – your references to a “Double Standard” are incorrect.

    This is from “Oscar the Grinch” a commentator at Unamusementpark.

    “what they want is a quite deliberate double standard where blacks are allowed the racial consciousness whites are denied”

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Stop complaining about a double standard, and see the truth.

    For the left, there is no “double standard”; there is a single standard, universally applied, and it is this:

    [Obscene taunt against white people redacted]

    That is the core of their belief. They are not your loyal opposition, with whom you can argue in good faith. They are your deadly ENEMIES, who want you exterminated from the face of the earth. And they don’t care about any abstract principles, their only true principle is to exterminate YOU. They are more than happy to pretend that there are outside standards or principles of fair play, because so long as you believe that, then they have the advantage.

    Remember: whenever a leftist/liberal/anti-racist opens his mouth, all he is really saying is: Die, white man. [obscenity deleted]

  7. P.S.: I remember why this gives me a headache: I had written several essays on my blog plumbing, probing and palpating this welter (largely rendered complex by virtue of the knots of denial and/or obtuseness examined), including The Thin Blue Line.

    If the reader wishes to fully appreciate, and give due justice to the complexities of my argument, he would follow through on the further essays linked in the above-noted essay — particularly the one titled “I Cheated”, which itself links to a vast comments thread here on Gates of Vienna back in June of 2011 attached to an article by Fjordman, in which I added about five pertinent, albeit rather dense, comments.

  8. Pay no attention to this Brit. These people have screwed over just about every country on this planet. I hate them almost as much as Mel Gibson.

  9. British Jornolist: if you are reading here, perhaps you’d like to research the recent revelations (reported in the Norwegian MSM) that the Norwegian Defense League, of which Breivik was a member until 2010, was created by the Norwegian equivalent of the CIA, in concert with the Maoist, criminally convicted “anti-racism” organization, SOS Racisme.

    It would seem that Breivik was indeed a “creation” of someone, but perhaps not the people you think.

    You might try to follow up, if you were in fact a “real” journalist, instead of just a “jornolist.”

  10. This journalist seems to have forgotten the photos of Breivik wearing MASONIC regalia.

    Perhaps he’d like to go upstairs to the office of whichever media outlet he’s working for & start asking his employers if any of them are freemasons, & when he finds one who is, he can blame them for the actions of Breivik, & ask THEM if they have lost touch with their “humanity”.

    I wonder how that would go.

  11. The underlying logical issues seem to have escaped this journalist. Breivik cited many writers in his so-called “manifesto”. Why is “Fjordman” being targeted?

    David Cameron publicly stated in February 2011 that multiculturalism was a failure. Merkel & Sarkozy made the same assertion. And in July 2011, the Norway attacks took place. Why aren’t they being targeted?

    If reading “Fjordman” was a sufficient condition for people to go out on a spree-killing rampage, then how come people who read “Fordman” aren’t going out on spree-killing rampages?

    The reason that does not happen is that Fjordman, just like Cameron, Sarkozy and Merkel, has seen that multiculturalism and cultural relativism are failed political philosophies, and has spoken out about that – in a factual, logical, non-violent way.

    There is a reason why anyone can read Fjordman’s essays, or listen to David Cameron speaking, or read his speeches on the No. 10 website, and not rush out and commit acts of violence. Those essays, and those speeches, do not preach violence. They discuss political matters which are of interest to citizens living in a free democratic country. And that is all.

    However there are writings in this world which do preach violence, exclusivity and supremacy. And people who read those texts regularly commit acts of intimidation & even violence against others. I wonder if this journalist would have the audacity to ask an imam who was preaching against freedom, democracy, womens’ rights and inciting hatred against homosexuals in their local mosque if they had lost their humanity? Has this journalist ever bothered to actually read the Koran and the hadith?

    The other issue is that anyone can take or leave an essay by Fjordman, or a speech by David Cameron. Whereas the foundational texts of Islam are supposed to be the direct, perfect & eternal word of Allah – human beings who have been brought up to think of themselves as Muslims cannot take the Koran or leave it. The very nature of those texts is different from anything David Cameron might say, or Fjordman may write – never mind the content!

  12. Baron –
    This person with which you are communicating is a verified journalist from a print publication or a well known on-line source in the U.K.? You verified that?
    I guess you refused to give him the answers he seems desperate for. That is why he has reduced himself to slurs.

    • Babs,

      Yes, he’s a journalist in Britain. He has Twitter account and an online profile and has written things for publication in the past.

  13. We need to realize that this journalist is a representative of the left who accepts the premise that multiculturalism and tolerance are self-evident virtues and those who oppose and question the truth of the premise are viewed as unintelligent, imbecilic, moronic, and evil. They view us, the non-conformists who fail to accept their revealed truth, as if we are freaks at a carnival, and maybe even on a lower level in the animal kingdom. The left believe that it is metaphysically impossible for them even to try to understand us, and consequently, any attempt at understanding is futile. They only can contemplate how to be rid of the vermin.

  14. Baron, this journalist is engaging you in a one sided cross examination. You may wish to consider questioning him and insist that he respond to turn it into a conversation instead.

  15. The journalist stated “I did not ask whether you felt responsibility. I asked about involvement.” Perhaps the journalist should answer whether he feels responsible himself for importing a civil war into the UK via his involved support for the ahistoric multiculture ideology combined with mass immigration.

    • I wonder if he’s part of the news outlets (BBC & Guardian) who have encouraged the London riots and then started a stonewall propaganda about the rioters getting minimum sentences.

      Wonder if he’s losing sleep over that.

  16. The collectivist mindset is as readily to be found in the ranks of the Right. Witness the groupthink about the reality of global warming. Or just look at some scientific studies of how people think about officiating at football matches. One’s own team almost invariably is the one that the officials are not treating fairly. 🙂

    It is right there in the Bible. The mote and the beam.

    One must be careful not to fall into the trap of thinking that one’s own side is right about pretty much everything.

  17. What this fellow fails to realise is that people like us talk because of our humanity. It is all too easy to play logical games with the assertions made by this fellow and his colleagues, but they are almost impervious to logic and rational thought.

    They have had the multiculturalist worldview embedded within their software years ago, and debugging their own operating system is a difficult and time-consuming project which few are willing to undertake.

    However, I would ask the journalist in question to consider this possibility: There are people in this world who have taken the time to educate themselves about Islamic doctrines and history, and who have legitimate concerns about Islam.

    And this is about ideology. There are many human beings in the world who have been taught to consider themselves Muslims, and those people are the primary victims of Islam!

    Does this journalist believe that someone can read the Koran and hadith, take the demands made in the foundational texts of Islam seriously, and still retain their humanity?

    And by humanity I mean love of other people, including those who do not believe what you do, respect for others, especially women and children, and the desire to base one’s own thinking and speech during one’s time on this world on that love, respect and most of all, on the truth.

    Because that’s where we’re coming from.

    We write what we do, we live as we do, we have a worldview based on love, respect and truth because of our humanity.

    Is it possible, I wonder, that the journalist in question cannot understand this because his politics have robbed him of his humanity?

    • Nick,

      Thanks for your comments. I have not seen your name among commenters enough to remember it, if I’ve seen it at all. I hope you keep writing. It seems to me that the world needs to read especially the kinds of things you’ve said in your two long comments on this thread.

  18. This escalation on the part of the British journalist is disappointing. The previous exchange seemed to me to offer the possibility that the Baron, who I thought made his points very well and courteously, too, might actually effect some change in the journalist’s perspective.

    By contrast, in this exchange the journalist started out closed-minded and attacking and turned moreso that way as he progressed. It was discouraging in that respect.

    The Baron’s answers, on the other hand, were exhilirating. Three cheers for you, Baron! Congratulations on, and thanks for, a gentlemanly self-defense that spoke well for a number of us. I hope and pray that your words and civil manner bear fruit in the journalist’s life, even if it takes a while.

    • Correction:

      Instead of “previous exchange” I should have said “first exchange.” I somehow missed the second posting from this email conversation– or perhaps that is too benign a word for it.

  19. Baron, I think perhaps you should have answered his following question: “Is it possible, I wonder, whether your politics might have robbed you somewhat of your humanity?”

    You could have said that the more you learn about the inhumanity displayed by Islam toward women, homosexuals, democracy and all non-Muslims, has only made you more aware of your own humanism and reinforced your desire to oppose Islam on the very basis of humanity.

    It is a good point of defence to turn the liberal/left’s alliance with inhumane Islam against them, particulary when we are advocating what they would term “minority rights” which they purport to care deeply about.

    • Paul —

      You are correct — that is, the answer you suggest would be correct — but answering the question is not a prudent tactic.

      Every time we answer an are-you-still-beating-your-wife-question, our arm gets stuck in the PC/MC Left’s own tar baby and we cannot help but be sucked further and further in. These are arguments and discussions where our opponents control all the premises. They are designed to trap us and immobilize us in impossible rhetorical positions so that we waste our energy constantly defending ourselves.

      Every time I hear Tommy or Geert say “I’m not a racist”, I wince. Oh, I quite understand why they feel the need to defend themselves in such a manner, but by doing so they are being dragged onto a playing field where they cannot possibly win the game — the rules are rigged so as to make them lose.

      No one believes the man who answers in the negative when asked if he is still beating his wife. In a similar way, no one outside the Counterjihad believes a Counterjihad person when he says he is not a racist. They already know he is a racist. They don’t need no stinkin’ evidence or logic. They just KNOW.

      Therefore, the way to avoid losing is to decline to play the game. To refuse to accept any of the premises behind the ideological structure our opponents have so painstakingly constructed.

      “Lost my humanity” indeed! That I should have to waste my time dealing with such inanities is a sign of the degraded condition into which modern intellectual discourse has descended. My interlocutor in this case is a young man, as you may have guessed. His capacity to ratiocinate, rudimentary at best, is evidence of the devastation that has been wrought upon British secondary education over the past two generations.

      Any ability I possess to reason effectively and write lucidly I owe to the quality of the grammar school I attended in England more than forty years ago. I didn’t realize it at the time, but those years represented the final glory of a magnifcent educational structure that now lies in ruins across the entire nook-shotten isle of Albion.

      As Riddley Walker said (in the eponymous novel by Russell Hoban), upon seeing the “shyning of them broakin machines” at Fork Stoan: “O, what we ben! And what we come to!”

      • You are probably correct here BB. They don’t want to listen to our explanations so why bother. They are already Lost Souls and I doubt we can help them to find them….

        • Paul —

          Yes, that’s exactly true. But even more important, engaging them on their turf, using their premises, playing their game by their rules does us damage. In the eyes of people who still sit on the fence, people who have not made up their minds on the issue either way, we look bad when we say “I’m not a racist.”

          In the mind of a disinterested onlooker, denying an accusation always leaves open the subconscious possibility that the person doing the denying is dissembling, and that there is at least some truth to what he is being accused of.

          That’s why a smart politician, when asked about a rumored extramarital affair, tells reporters: “I refuse to grace such an absurdity with any kind of answer.” This is the recommended response, even if he is entirely innocent of any hanky-panky.

          In the media game, a denial of anything always leaves the denier one down.

      • Your and Paul’s writings are lucid, beneficial and enlightening. Why half of the population of Britain is not rational like that? Talk about fossilized minds and dead emotions.
        Murad

  20. Q: “Is it possible, I wonder, whether your politics might have robbed you somewhat of your humanity?”

    A: Doubtful, it would appear however, that your politics has robbed you of your ability to recognise or identify humanity.

  21. Hesperado

    As far as i can see, you are trying to ask a moral question – if we are indeed headed for a conflict with thousands if not millions of dead, or a future where millions of us are enslaved or second class citizens, shouldn’t we act now to avert that future? Even if, or perhaps especially if, that requires us to commit heinous crimes, like Breivik?
    It is a very moral question. What you need to understand is that most people can not give a logically consistent answer to that question, or atleast that’s what i saw in a lecture on morality on youtube. We are not purely logical beings, and demanding we be so is a logical fallacy I think.

    Regards

  22. Pingback: The Shyning of Them Broakin Machines | Gates of Vienna

  23. To parry: Put the islamophiliac on the Couch.

    Ask questions. (Socratically?)

    1) Have you read the Koran?
    2) What’s a Hadith?
    3) What prophet came immediately before Mohammed?
    4) What prophet came immediately after Mohammed?
    5) What is a Sufi?
    6) What is a Salafist?
    ….

    Typically, a PC/MC player is counter-informed on just about everything Islamic.

    So… Play at being a rube… That’s the role already slotted to you by your ‘betters.’

    As they lead you — both will find that they ‘run out of road’ pretty quick — not uncommonly with the very first step. They don’t know anything consequential about Islam.

    So, placing them on the couch, podium or behind a lecturn permits an airing of their gasbag.

    Venting should be continued until the gasbag is completely deflated.

    Relentless queries — shift everything back towards the errant source.

  24. Pingback: Leave These Frivolous Demands! | Gates of Vienna

Comments are closed.