The Historical Praxis of Current Events

I reported last week on an email conversation I’ve been having with a British journalist who originally wanted to talk to Fjordman, but had to settle for me instead. The exchange is ongoing, and his latest message, which arrived early this morning, finally got down to the nitty-gritty: Anders Behring Breivk.

Below are his questions (in italicized block quotes), and my responses.

I confess I had wondered about your focus on Europe. This [the fact that you lived in England] rather explains it: though I cannot believe you encountered a particularly egregious type of Islam in 1960s Britain?

No, the Pakistani invasion had just barely begun when I left England. I lived in what was then the West Riding of Yorkshire, and local jokes made reference to “Pakis in Bradford”, so even then Bradford was known as Pakistani territory. But there were none in Leeds that I noticed. West Indians were far more commonly seen; they were called “niggers” by the locals, without any derogatory intent. The word sounded strange (and unpleasant) to an American, of course. But it had no significance in Yorkshire back then.

The multicultural changes came after I left. I was astonished at the difference in England when I returned for a visit in 2002, almost 30 years after the last time I had been there.

Another question if I may: in your other reply, you mention Dr Pipes, and lament his unwarranted association with Anders Breivik.

Breivik is the elephant in the room. So let’s address it.

Given that your blog is cited a dozen times and more in his manifesto, and you are quoted several times individually, do you feel any sense of involvement in 22 July?

Not in the slightest. He was (is) a psychopath, whose ideas, wherever they come from, serve simply as the rationale or self-justification for his murderous impulses. He spoke highly of Thomas Jefferson, too, but I think Mr. Jefferson may rest easily.

The same goes for Che Guevara, for that matter — Mr. Breivik was a devotee of the bloodthirsty Argentine Communist, but I hardly think that means the Progressives must abandon their reverence for Che.

The political opinions of a psychopath are at most tangential to his violent acts, since the acts themselves are his raison d’être. Had he been brought up in a different environment, Mr. Breivik’s murders might have been justified by citing Herbert Marcuse — or Mohammed.

Fjordman is the most cited individual. Given your friendship I wonder if you know whether he loses sleep over what happened to those children? Do you?

Fjordman will have to speak for himself; it would be presumptuous of me to say anything about what I think he might feel.

As for me, once again: absolutely not.

University professors who devote their careers to Karl Marx do not lose any sleep because hundreds of millions of people were murdered in the name of their idol by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Kim Il Sung, and Pol Pot.

Nor should they — the only people responsible for murderous deeds are those who commit them, and those who directly incite them. University professors (mostly) do not do that.

If you had actually read what I write, you would know that I advocate an urgent course correction for the West through peaceful democratic means only. This is our sole, slim hope of escaping violence and bloodshed instigated by people who are not at all like me, who do not share my philosophy and temperament, and who are not enamored of all the niceties I hold dear, such as the democratic process, civil liberties, and the rule of law.

People like Fjordman, Geert Wilders, Tommy Robinson, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali are all that stand between modern Western civilization and a rude, brutal form of mass violence, of a sort that has not been seen at least since 1945, and more likely since 1683 or 1453.

The fact that the vast majority of educated, intellectual Westerners do not understand the historical praxis of current events is a sign of how slight our chances are. But still, we can but try.

14 thoughts on “The Historical Praxis of Current Events

  1. I wonder how this jornolist is going to twist your words or create false impressions by omission. Why did he even want an interview with you? I’d be
    mighty suspicious, seems like you are about to be dobbed in it. Which rag or comic
    strip is he/she from?

    • s.ducain —

      Every time I reply to an email (especially when the recipient is a journalist), I choose my every word with the utmost care, under the assumption that what I say may eventually by published.

      In this case, I am pre-emptively guarding against being quoted out of context by publishing the text of the questions with my full response BEFORE any excerpts are published anywhere else. This grants me precedence, sets the record straight in advance, and makes it less likely that my words will be misused or distorted.

      I’m under no illusions about the ethical standards, such as they are, observed by journalists. However, this fellow has treated me politely and reasonably thus far, so I won’t identify his publication or give other information that might tend to identify him.

  2. The whole Moslem debate grows apace here in Australia. Sadly, Wilders has been subjected to the usual interviews from the hounds of the media who prefer to cherry-pick and make irrelevant histotical allusions that bear little relationship to their understanding of the real intent of militant Islam. We’re living in a fool’s paradise downunder, despite occasional riots, over THAT movie for instance. Luckily Wilders still has supporters in Parliament, like this man, Corey Bernardi:-

    http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/bernardi-defends-wilders-right-to-speak-in-australia-20130220-2eqzu.html

  3. I wonder if this journalist and the whole MSM echo chamber of the PC/MC/NWO/Eurabia/UN/OIC/Comintern/Davos ethnocidal scam lose sleep over how many people in Europe and the Anglophony are murdered, maimed and raped by Muslims, every year for decades now.

  4. Yes, having lived somewhere years before then returning, you’d be more likely to see any significant differences than someone who had lived there all the time. If I think back to my childhood and what my country is like today, there is of course a significant difference.

    It is simply beyond dispute that politicians secretly initiated a huge social engineering project in our country – that is to say they did it without the consent of the citizens they were elected to represent. This is now a matter of public record.

    And several top European politicians – Cameron, Merkel, Sarkozy – have stated that multiculturalism has been a failure.

    The Prime Minister has also stated that the heritage of Great Britain is Judeo-Christian, and the teachings of the Bible form part of our political history.

    The flip side of that coin is that Great Britain is not Islamic and never has been, and the teachings of the Koran do not form part of our heritage or our political history.

    At a logical level, it is quite clear that the doctrines of Islam are incompatible with Christianity or with human liberty. If the doctrines of Islam are implemented in a country with a Judeo-Christian heritage, then the negative freedom (to use Isaiah Berlin’s term) of the human beings under its sway will be reduced. (This includes those human beings who have been taught to think of themselves as Muslims: consider the penalty for apostasy, for example.)

    Given all this, perhaps this journalist can explain why it is that blogs such as GoV, which discuss these straightforward philosophical issues, are criticised by his colleagues in the traditional media?

  5. Judging by the tone of the questions and the dishonest assumptions on which they are based I doubt that your reporter acquaintance is really acting in good faith. Fjiordman is actually the second most cited person in the Breivik manifesto so this reporter is mindlessly parroting a common reporter’s meme about the number of times anyone was cited.

    Daniel Pipes has prepared a list of names and frequency of mentions at this link.

    LIST

    The top seven are:

    Bat Ye’or (71), Fjordman (63), Jesus Christ (63) Robert Spencer (54) Charles Martel (53), Adolf Hitler(50), Shaykh Anwar Shaaban (48)

    Then there’s a bit of a drop off. Twenty three persons are mentioned between 20-36 times and include, in order:

    Mohammed, Daniel Pipes, Geert Wilders, Osama Bin Laden, Karl Marx, George Lukacs, Theodor Adorno, Aristotle, Herbert Marcuse, Andrew Bostom, Antonio Gramski, Winston Churchill, Bruce Bawer, Jean-Louis Bruguière, Serge Trifkovic, Speros Vryonis, Jr., Eudes the Great, Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Colin Barker, Ivo Andric, Jean-Francois Ricard, Tony Blair, William Shakespeare.

    Barack Obama with only 19 mentions didn’t quite make the cut

    • Obviously, the mere numerical quantity of mentions of a name is less important than the qualitative significance in the text in which it’s mentioned.

      Neither side seems interested in this aspect (though, ironically, it would tend to favor, in part, the perspective of PC MC slash Leftist critics in this regard). It’s fairly clear from Breivik’s Manifesto that he agrees with certain elements in the Counter-Jihad that there is an imminent, if not immediate, emergency situation in the West where “Cultural Marxists” using Muslims are threatening the West, and he even uses phrases these elements use, like “traitor class” to denote various individuals and organizations of elites in the West. (His “support” for jihadists and their terrorism is from what I have read only in terms of admiring their tactics as effective; not in terms of supporting their ideology; a distinction childishly ignored by those afraid of Breivik cooties.)

      The main difference Breivik has with those Couter-Jihad elements is that he was, for whatever reasons, more prone to take this view to its simplistic logical conclusion, which means that those who realize the full deadly purport of this emergency must begin to fight back now in terms of armed self-defense (which would include proactive pre-emptive attacks). He also seems to have seen himself and his attacks as a catalyst to hasten a Western Civil War that was a-brewing anyway. I find that certain elements in the Counter-Jihad are being strangely disingenuous if not irrational in their strenuous attempts to distance their extreme rhetoric about “Cultural Marxists” and the inimical emergency they represent to the West, from Breivik.

      While it is tempting to think some good can come (at least temporarily) from avoiding the truth; ultimately it is anti-Western to cultivate it, particularly in important sociopolitical matters like this. One has to take responsibility for one’s luridly quasi-conspiracy-theory rhetoric that tends to crystallize the Main Problem as a clear and present emergency of a “traitor class” engaged in “destroying” the West now. One can’t indulge in such grotesque scenarios with one’s rhetoric, and then think one can get away with shrinking back from their logical implications. It’s not only childish; it is a betrayal of the heart of the West, the love of truth, not to mention of faith in the West.

      • I agree with you on taking the conspiratorial theories to their natural conclusions and I have done exactly that but this site are a little embarassed to print them even though they are only one logical step after another. There HAS to be a degree of manipulation from globalists when the grouping we are talking about have had very little state sanction on their activities for so long. Check JFK speech circa 1962 on ”the Money Power”or even some of the mumblings of Ron Paul. Check David Rockerfeller autobiography where he freely admits to having spent his entire life working against the interests of the US, that is when he is not busy building up his fortrune. We still don’t know how to deal with this. I personally believe that these big money boys are worried that Americans especially are becoming aware of the presence of these global parasites. It’s possible that Obama, their chosen one, is expected to clinch the deal by the end of the next 4 years. The deal is to take down the US so that the power of middle America is permanently destroyed. Middle America is middle class White Christian America.

        • “I agree with you on taking the conspiratorial theories to their natural conclusions …”

          I wasn’t advocating that. You weren’t reading me carefully enough, evidently.

  6. The fact that Jesus Christ was mentioned in this mad man’s manifesto 63 times makes all other conclusions regarding direction of his actions ridiculous.
    That the European press wants to continue its witchhunt regarding Bat Yeor and Fjordman in the face of the 63 mentions of JC just makes them ignorant of philosophy.
    Which is a shame and a condemnation of our current western education system.

  7. He was also a fan of Top Gear, but I don’t hear any reporters blaming Jeremy Clarkson for his actions!!

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

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