Hans-Peter Raddatz is a well-known German scholar of Islam whose work has appeared previously in this space.
Below is the first part of a three-part essay by Dr. Raddatz about the EU, the Mediterranean Union, the Islamization of the West, and the deliberate engineering of the “Arab Spring” by the global elites to serve their own long-term goals. It was originally published at Die Neue Ordnung in pdf form, and has been kindly translated from the German by JLH:
Islamic Seasons and “Democratic” Global Policy
by Hans-Peter Raddatz
Part I: Democracy Breaks out in Spring and Summer
1. An Awakening on the Mediterranean
On the basis of pertinent scholarly and practical experience, this writer can fall back on an ever-dwindling knowledge resource, namely, the comparison of the twin marches through the institutions accomplished in recent decades by the so-called ‘68 generation in Europe and their radical counterparts in the Islamic world. In the course of this tandem process of marching separately but striking in unison, there has been an intensive ideological rapprochement of the leadership classes since the 1970s. Under US and UN aegis, they formed common Euro-Islamic facilities, which — under the rubric “intercultural dialogue” — infiltrated the institutions of member states. Through massive, primarily Islamic immigration and dictated notions of Muslim tolerance and abundant peaceful inclination, their populations were confronted with the fait accompli of a present increasingly burdened by the immigrants. Their perspectives — the more concentrated they are, the more radical they will be — will accustom EU administrations, the non-Islamic community and the state itself to the Islamic drive for dominance.
And so this dynamic scenario in the context of the double march through the institutions of the EU is dismantling its democratic structures and replacing them with the expansionist interests of the Islamic elites, in which process their swiftly growing economic and financial heft plays a central role. The goal of the “coming Caliphate” with the interim stage of the Mediterranean Union (2005) was targeted under the shared control of the EU commission and OIC general secretariat, encompassing all Euro and Islam residents. At the beginning of 2011, the “Arab Spring” broke out, and was supposed to be the direct “path to democracy,” a cliché propagated and subsequently fostered by the Western media, which embarked in summer, 2013 on an intensified and complicated continuation.
Within two years, the first contours of the actual Islamic drive to power and global political configuration became visible through the dissolving billows of the political media’s smokescreen. After the “dialogue” propaganda had systematically suppressed knowledge of the EU/US collaboration with the most important forces of radical Islam, which were subsequently introduced, it was then necessary to feign astonishment when the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists gained 70% of the votes in Egypt. This strong position, along with the special case of Palestine, had been built up through years-long, US/EU-supported subversion by the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Syria, and was unleashed in the aforementioned “Spring,” which turned out in the first three countries to be similar to but weaker than in Egypt.
Since Libya and Syria deviated from this model, they had to be subjected to a special treatment by the “international community of nations.” Libya is shaped by an archaic tribal structure whose manageability was changed not at all by either the slain long-time despot Ghaddafi, or the “freedom fighters” who were bombed into power by NATO. Syria descended into a barbaric civil war which could not be resolved by the “Libyan” technique of carpet bombing. With an Alewite ruling family and close contact with an Iranian despotism following its ambitious atomic strategy and maintaining through Hizbollah partial control of Lebanon, Syria is a special case. It is the keystone in the Mediterranean Union. Its delayed realization, a.k.a. radicalization, is causing the drivers of the Euro-Islamic fusion to become increasingly impatient. In addition, there are direct connections to Russia and — through Iran — also to China, making the struggle for power in Syria a proxy war between primarily Russia and secondarily China vs. the USA primarily, and the EU secondarily. In the process, the Iranian interests of Europe are maneuvering the EU into some awkward shadow-boxing. Here too, a considerable role is played by the Muslim Brotherhood, which has not forgotten the massacre of Hama (1983) and has recuperated since then, with Saudi help. With other Islamists — chiefly Salafists and Al Qaida fighters from the Islamic area and Europe — it is an important factor in the “fight for freedom” against the (still) entrenched Assad regime.
In the summer of the “democratic path” on which the world of Islam allegedly is traveling, we are dealing predominantly with factors encompassing the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafists and Wahhabi Saudi Arabia on the Islamic side, and the USA and leading EU countries as well as Russia and Turkey in the West. Here, besides Russia — for example in the context of the G8 — there are mainly Western participants, while Turkey plays a complicated secondary role. This, because it is confronted with Syrian refugees and Kurds and the ruling party, the AKP, has inherited from its predecessors an affinity for the Muslim Brotherhood and the battle against Israel. This tradition continues in its foreign arm, Milli Görüsh, which presses its mosque politics forward in Europe — concentrating in Germany — as well as in connection with Al-Nusra (Arabic for “backup”) and Iraqi Al-Qaida offshoots which strengthen the anti-Assad front with Saudi, Qatari and Turkish weapons.
In this context, and noting the EU’s permanent declarations of loyalty, it is understandable that Turkish leader Erdogan sees himself as the neo-sultan, but it is also contradictory, since the EU must consider its auxiliary function on the way to the coming caliphate, and cannot serve two masters simultaneously. That is, the oriental tradition of long memory does not just play on the keyboard of bad colonial conscience, but also on the keyboard of good colonial conscience, which the successors of the Ottomans are playing for the Arabic region and, by doing so, creating mistrust. Just as Saudi Arabia contends with Iran for dominance on the Gulf, so long-lived Arabic resentment smolders against the Turks, who seem to be extending their 400-year hegemony by insisting upon their leadership role in the dismantling of Europe — a consummation they approach, as their entry [to the EU] becomes likely.
2. Growing Euro-Islamic Similarity
Under the Euro-Islamic-party-hack “dialogue” label, such points of view are subject to suspicion of racism or, at best, hate speech, and at the very least conspiracy theory. However, these compulsive ideas begin to fade with the tendency toward de-democratization and there is a softening of the high-pressure, worldwide war against Islamophobia — proclaimed in the Mecca summit of the OIC in December, 2005, adopted by the EU as a criterion of its foreign policy, and dictated to its member states as a guiding principle of its interior politics (cf. Bat Ye’or, Europe and the Coming Caliphate — Berlin 2013).
Outside of the political parties and the universities, the best indicators of this Islamocentric strategy of accommodation are the media and foundations, which — engrossed by obsessive modern thinking and proceeding against what remains of still extant indigenous structures in citizenship, family, law and church — are making the EU states and their societies “fit” for not only global employment and the consumer market, but above all for the leveling out under a unified culture that is both global and Islamophilic. A new priest corps of top journalists and TV moderators have taken over the implementation of mass indoctrination, supporting their own profiteering firms from the fees collected as “democratic levies.” And so we have an efficient variation on the severe corrupting of opinion and revenue, which utilizes Al Jazeera, Al-Arabiya and other channels which are not just Islamic, as well as prominent regional print media, thus closing the circle of the OIC-led, Islamocentric and Christian- and Jew-hostile strategy.
This development has for quite some time been pointing beyond the out-of-control party state as a “decadent form of the constitutional state” (K. A. Schachtschneider) to the preparation for the Euro-Islamic “path to democracy,” as it is pre-figured by the extremist tradition of the left-right people’s democrats and the Islamic-inspired successor version of the EU — a radical democracy in the sense of Rousseau-like educational dictatorship and with the implementation of the social-technical coding, or PC system à la Habermas and Luhman (cf. Bat Ye’or, Introduction). From this purely functional point of view, it seems quite natural that Islam not only “belongs to Germany,” but is also “co-owner of Europe,” making itself felt in the form of its growing presence in financial markets and national budgets.
In monetary standardization, violence cannot be a deciding factor, because all Muslims — especially Islamists — are on the same “path to democracy” as the Western societies. Under the unrelenting pressure of pro-Islamic propaganda — to which “there is no alternative” except Islamophobia — the reduction of thought conditioned by considerations of employment and consumerism gradually seems to these societies to be an accomplishment of ethical tolerance. It can even assure a future means of salvation, if we can believe Cardinal Tauran, according to whom “God is coming back to Europe with the Muslims.” This is not undisputed. In the first months of his tenure, Pope Francis gave different signals, suggesting rather an abatement of the excessive political “dialogue” and a return to the successful Catholic formula of pastoral care.
Here, we must consider the as yet uncontested anti-Christian financial power of the money aristocracy, which serves the above-mentioned avant-garde for global organizations (UNO, IMF, WTO) in expediting the structural change that can result in a neo-totalitarian world view — optimized as far as possible by taxes, that is, friendly to the precariat* and generally acceptable to the masses. Within this dynamic, self-energizing tendency which has been going on for half a century, runs an epochal rapprochement between Europe and the Islamic area of the Near and Middle East — in the case of Europe, through the de-democratizing action of the EU imperium; in the case of Islam, through narrowly confined democratization. This is less about a desired trend toward political emancipation than about gradual concessions made to the masses who have emerged through the facility of worldwide communication — concessions which are unavoidable in the long run. As a balance to that, increasingly “smart” algorithms arise which enable a drastically improved correlation of enormously increasing amounts of data and those extensive control dimensions revealed by NSA renegade Edward Snowden in the summer of 2013.
From this may be deduced a widespread power process which makes the Western and Islamic elites more similar, but can at the same time not preclude the historically increasing competitions in Islam as well as in the West. The increasingly aggressive attitude of Europe against America compels ideological demarcations and preferences which, in turn, become recognizable in the complex inner Islamic currents. Willi Brandt’s famous formula can be paraphrased to the effect that the power of similarizing “lets what belongs together grow together,” in this case, the Western-Islamic elites and radical democracy. Because the financial appeal of this structural change activates enormous potential in the institutions , which steadily make available new resources in the form of people, facilities and publications, a mainstream of corresponding breadth, variety and penetrating power has developed which assumes the task of achieving the old goal of “world community” on the model of Jacobin, Bolshevik and Nazi-fascist attempts, but now with the inclusion of Islam.
True, mainstream writing is limitless, but really only successful when the authors manage to follow, or possibly offer useful food for thought for, the mercurial twists and turns of the play of power in general, and the even more flexibly deceptive routines of the elites in particular. Its dilemma and at the same time its advantage, is in the logical pressure to sell Westerners on the pros and cons of their sacrosanct Islamic object — both as a region and as a wave of immigration — as completely risk-free, win-win investments, so that previous cons become present pros.
Since modern society is wholly ignorant of history, the Crusades can be used to imply a thousand year-old guilt, and the Cordoba culture to suggest an example of tolerance which built a glittering civilization a thousand years ago and could do it again, if it weren’t for Islamophobia. Since the former of these models continuously deprecates the clergy elite, and the latter masks the wringing dry of Jewish-Christian subjects in Islamic Spain, these two clichés serve the “culture dialogue” which preaches respect and acceptance so that it can represent the dhimmitude of non-Muslims — their Koranically mandated subservience to Islamic dominance — as tolerance, and can also present the Islamic system’s endemic lack of education, its poverty and its violence as long-term effects of Western exploitation, or at least ecclesiastical defamation. Because this requires a pettifogging command of the ideological landscape, it is here that the great mass of dialogic lightweights are separated from the cleverer minority, who are so much easier to identify, when their proxies in the MSM appear on the talk-shows of the media priests and on the lists of the appropriate award presentation ceremonies.
The essential advantage for analysis comes, of course, from the ideological dynamic which, perforce, like a physio-chemical reaction, must filter out those Islamic currents which invariably optimize the common self-reflexive trend toward radicalization and limit possible resistance to a reasonable amount. To clarify exactly what is meant in this context, we must introduce the constellation of Islamic “movements,” which are among leading contributors to the seasons of Spring and Summer, before we pass on to radicalization, to the evil of “academic discourse” in the second part on the metaphysics of radicalization. Proceeding from Kant, Baader, Hegel and Nietzsche, by describing the controversial long-term process of transformation by other-cultural influence and the Jewish-Christian resistance to it, it assesses which side will have to reckon with a Fall and Winter phase. The essential forces are delineated, which, according to “dialogue” propaganda, are driving Islam toward democracy in Wahhabism, Salafism and the Muslim Brotherhood (ikhwan al-muslimeen).
Next: Allah’s Order and Democracy
* Combination of “precarious” and “proletariat.”
Previous posts by Hans-Peter Raddatz:
I would suggest that apart from Syria being a stumbling block in the plan for NWO that Egypt is now presenting quite an unforseen problem!
So too is the state of everyone’s economy that was meant to be stabilized by now and not be producing the uncertainty that comes with giant Ponzi schemes getting completely out of control.
Then we have Russia, China, North Korea and Iran and an assortment of South American identities that prefer fence sitting to any real show of hands and who are no doubt watching and waiting to see where the idiots in charge of all this mess will strike next!
I do not believe it is a foregone conclusion that what the author of this article hints at is set in concrete, it is more likely set in dry sand where every twist and turn will head off into another direction.
Can’t wait for the next post!
Unintended consequences are always the nemesis of every “progressive” project.
Pardon the pun?
Unintended consequences are a design feature of reform.
Look at Obama’s healthcare reform.
A mandate to buy a private product! What a confidence trick.
I needed to read this three times before I considered that I had understood it fully. Like most academics, the author sacrifices clarity in his desire to thoroughly present his arguments. I do hope the succeeding chapters are clearer and easier to understand.
Peter, you are not alone. But he did not sacrifice clarity, he just challenged our wits. Of which I have fifty percent.
JBP
In the context of this article, this too is an interesting read
http://www.voiceofthecopts.org/index.php/categories/op-eds/11063-egypt-s-trial-true-justice-will-reveal-morsi-s-alliances
Was it Morsi who stated that “democracy is just a bridge” – implying that you cross that bridge to get what you want (power) and then burn it down; it no longer has a purpose. One can only raise one’s hat to those in Egypt who would not stand for this.
Oh my. Sorry but the translation must not have come out properly. Can someone put all of that into plainer english. I cannot take:
“This development has for quite some time been pointing beyond the out-of-control party state as a “decadent form of the constitutional state” (K. A. Schachtschneider) to the preparation for the Euro-Islamic “path to democracy,” as it is pre-figured by the extremist tradition of the left-right people’s democrats and the Islamic-inspired successor version of the EU — a radical democracy in the sense of Rousseau-like educational dictatorship and with the implementation of the social-technical coding, or PC system à la Habermas and Luhman (cf. Bat Ye’or, Introduction). ”
It hurt my head. I get the guy’s gist, though. I think. Same point being made as the GOV’s website has been documenting for years.
JBP
Word.
OTOH this is not only academese, it is translated from the German, so it’s doubled-down academic thickets. Consider the poor translator, experiencing headpain on meta-level.
Look at what Peter said, above: he read it three times. That’s about right for German, even in translation.
It’s a great example of a continental philosophy miseducation.
I reckon the EU will implode or end up exterminating smaller ethne’s like the Greeks. It’s practically made Belgium a Muslim ghetto already. The bureau’s have already used English NHS rules to sue for benefits for Muslims in extraordinarily high numbers.
Mega long sentences is a german speciality. An eternal dilemma for a translator is to judge how much you are allowed to deviate from the source text. Personally, I am a brutal bastard. When I translate from English – especially american English – to Swedish, it’s normal that the target text contains 40-50 % fewer words than the source text.
But I will support JPB on one point. As a translator, you are allowed to break long sentences with periods.
German can be a little rough. But not even that will stop a good writer. Kant can give you a headache, but Schopenhauer is like a breath of fresh air. Some people can express complicated ideas plainly and clearly and others just don’t have the gift.
Schopenhauer lived in Wimbledon. It has a civilizing effect on all.
As pointed out in the introduction, Dr. Raddatz writes for a scholarly periodical (Die Neue Ordnung), hence there appears to be a certain expectation that readers will be familiar with the background concepts. Sometimes his words appear simple enough, but there is much more behind them. I will attempt to explain some of the expressions which appear in the above quotation offered by JBP. Overall, the quoted section is describing a political development which moves from a constitutional republic to a (partisan) party state, then to peoples’ democracies and finally to the EU system, which is slowly taking on the characteristics of “radical democracy” (Habermas). The most important concept to be discussed here is “radical democracy”.
But let us start from the beginning. JBP’s excerpt begins: The “party state as a “decadent form of the constitutional state” (K. A. Schachtschneider” http://www.webinformation.at/htm/res%20publica%20res%20populi.htm). German readers will wish to follow the above link which goes to Schachtschneider’s “Public Affairs are the Peoples’ Affairs”. It is the source for the above quotation and also for the paragraph which follows immediately.
For the “party state” Dr. Schachtschneider actually uses the term “partisan party” state (parteiliche Partei: an ideologically driven party), by which he means that government and citizenry have become separated. In the republic, by contrast, the real politicians are the citizens, a condition which is not subject to “dogmatisation” (presumably, ideologisation). When the identity between ruler and citizen is lost, the essence of the constitutional republic is gone; what remains is the party state, a decadent form of the republic. Doctor Raddatz’ context is the journalistic corruption described in his previous paragraph. The level of state indoctrination implemented by the press identifies today’s Germany as an example of a decadent form of the republic, a party state. For by the act of indoctrination it identifies itself as “partisan” and sets itself against the citizen. It is well known that all five parties in Germany’s Bundestag have largely the same ideology and policies on important matters; for example, Islamisation and the implementation of the EU dictatorship.
The next expression in JBP’s excerpt is “the road to democracy”, which according to Raddatz, is an expression that has been used “monotonously” since the “Arab Spring” : It refers to “. . . a system of government which is in the process of radicalising and anonymising the elites” (Europe and the Coming Caliphate, Introduction, Section 1). Our quoted JBP paragraph tells us that this anonymous form of “democracy” (discussed below) is prefigured by the “peoples’ democracies” (Volksdemokratien) of which the German Democratic Republic was an example, but the party state concept also embraces Nazi-Fascism, Bolshevism and also Jacobism. The EU is “the “Islamic inspired successor version” of the peoples’ democracies, and Dr. Raddatz understands it as a fourth wave of totalitarianism starting with the Jacobins.
But the EU system is now a developing “radical democracy”. Radical democracy is “a disguised discipline of obedience, which, – with decades of pluralisation – metamorphosed into ‘voluntary obedience’ and emerged as communicative action, correctness, excellence and self-reflexivity (Selbstreflexivität)…” (Europe and the Coming Caliphate, Introduction, Section 1). Among these undefined terms, the most pivotal is “self-reflexivity”, as found in the expression “self-controlling mass society” (sich sellbst kontrollierende …. Massengesellschaft : (cf. section 5 of Part I of the current essay).
Self-reflexivity literally refers to the dynamic of a “reflex”, as opposed to refection (Reflexion: thought, contemplation). Reason and self-reflection are replaced by automaticity, especially at the communicative level, hence “communicative action” (Habermas). ‘Action’ is of course behaviour, hence the term suggests the absence of a conscious subject, unless it is outside of the communicative system itself. For readers in the English speaking world, Behaviourism constitutes a mechanistic system which roughly parallels this type of reflexivity (the operantly conditioned reflex), although it is much less abstract than Habermas’s system, but Behaviourism also represents a type of automatic communication. Behaviourism’s reward system is modelled after the mechanistic theory of Natural Selection: those behaviours which are consistent with the environment (reward or reinforcement) automatically increase, otherwise they become automatically extinguished (analogue of Darwin’s “extinction”). The exclusive focus on behaviour rules out consciousness, hence Behaviourism de-subjectivisation of the individual.
With respect Dr. Raddatz’ mention of the Habermas and Luhmann, it is sufficient to note here that the theories behind these Sociologists are also radically mechanistic after the fashion of the theory of Natural Selection to which they too show some correspondence. Dr. Raddatz represents these mechanistic theories as models of communication and interaction which “de-subjectivise” man, for the theories emphasise interactions which become reflexive rather than reflective. “Change”, for example, is a highly valued word. It becomes an end in itself, or more literally translated, it becomes its own purpose (Wandel zum Selbstzweck werden läßt” Cf Part II of this essay.). Mechanism, or automatic change, is an unconscious process and not within the conscious power of the individual as a person. In Part II, Dr. Raddatz refers to the expression used by Angela Merkel and others, that there is “no alternative” (to the Euro currency). He points out that when there is “no alternative”, there is only power. It is within the vacuum thus created by “no alternative” that a passive mass emerges which is subject to a radical determinism, a de-subjectivised system (“Kommunikation als entsubjektiviertes System” (cf. Kirsten Reich: Luhmanns Entsubjektivierung des Konstruktivismus “Luhmanns de-subjectivisation of Constructivism http://www.uni-koeln.de/hf/konstrukt/reich_works/buecher/ordnung/band1/II_2_5.html%5D.
Parallel to self-reflexivity is “self-dressage”, the training for radical democracy. For Dr. Raddatz, the “dialogue”, which has its beginning in Vatican II, is a training procedure en route to radical democracy, and it too has the character of reflexivity, hence he refers to it as “self-dressage”. “Dressage” is Dr. Raddatz metaphor for the automatic and reductive training character of the “dialogue”, hence he mentions it in connection with self-reflexivity which is apparent in the definition of dressage as horse training: “…it [the horse] walks, trots, and canters …, all in response to barely perceptible movements of its rider’s hands, legs, and weight” (Dressage: Encyclopaedia Britannica http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/171419/dressage#ref215634).
Dr. Raddatz: “The self-dressage [Selbstdressur] of the ‘dialogue’, in accordance with the dogma that Islamic peace consists in the elimination of all that is non-Islamic, envisions its objective of salvation as now being on the path toward another kind of democracy; namely, “radical democracy”, which is associated with the sociological dogma of self-reflexivity” [Selbstreflexivität] (“Europe and the Coming Caliphate” Section 3 http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.ca/2013/01/europe-and-coming-caliphate-dhimmitude.html).
As a good example of how the dialogue works as dressage, in section 2 Dr. Raddatz mentions French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, whom he quotes as saying that “Muslims have brought God back to Europe”. Dr. Raddatz has “the dialogue” in mind here, for Cardinal Tauran is president of the “Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue”, a discastery of the Roman curia which appears to be oriented mainly to “dialogue” with Islam (http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/interelg/). The Cardinal is reported to have said the following:
“‘Islam makes people afraid: It is a fact. For many people, Islam is reduced to fanaticism, holy war, terrorism, polygamy and proselytism, all preconceptions that circulate in the Western world’, he said”
“’Should we be afraid of Islam? No, certainly not,’” he said. But only dialogue allows people to overcome such fear, by informing them about the religious traditions of the others, identifying what unites and what separates them, and cooperating as much as possible in the societies where they live, he said” (Catholic News Service http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0902850.htm).
As an aside to the Tauran reference, Dr. Raddatz, immediately following the mention of Cardinal Tauran, mentions that “Pope Francis gave different signals, suggesting rather an abatement of the excessive political “dialogue”. This “abatement” is far from apparent after reading the recent interviews the Pope has given. Consider the one to La Repubblica’s founder, Eugenio Scalfari on 1 October 2013: “The Council Fathers knew that being open to modern culture meant religious ecumenism and dialogue with non-believers. But afterwards very little was done in that direction. I have the humility and ambition to want to do something.”
With respect to “social-technical coding” (mentioned at the end of JBP’s quoted paragraph), this term further accentuates the de-subjectivised world of Sociologists such as Luhmann. For Luhmann, “systems (social, political, economic etc.) have reference only to themselves (self-referential) and are self-producing. Each system, money for example, is marked off from its environment by its own specific binary code, in this case “pay/not-pay”. In the legal system, the code is just and unjust. Government and business have different codings which relate to efficiency. “‘Coding’ comprises a complexity reduction, which lends systems a higher order in respect of themselves, albeit a reduced one vis-a-vis the environment” (Reich, Kersten: Die Ordnung der Blicke. Band 1; Kapitel II.2.5 http://www.uni-koeln.de/hf/konstrukt/reich_works/buecher/ordnung/band1/II_2_5.html).
There are highly specialised elites which permit the otherwise isolated and differently coded systems to communicate with each other at their point of contact. These elites are called “differentiation parasites” (Armin Nassehi), a term which is not necessarily construed negatively by its inventor. Due to the high level of complexity at the coding level of operation, differentiation parasites remain invisible, hence a reference to the anonymity of the elites mentioned above. For Dr. Raddatz’ application of the concept of coding, the point of contact for the operation of the parasites is the interface between the general mass and the elites. Here we have the separation of state from the governed, which once again defines Dr. Schachtschneider’s decadent “partisan state”.
The dynamic of a binary code, which is peculiar to each social system, contributes to its specialised automaticity (unconscious functioning). This have noted this same reflexive character in respect of ‘radical democracy’. What we have here is the technologisation of human relationships (Source: Eliten als Differenzierungsparasiten… Outline of a Research Programe) http://www.gesis.org/sowiport/search/id/iz-solis-90325977).
The essence of the paragraph quoted by JBP is its end point, ‘radical democracy’. For Dr. Raddatz, “radical democracy” is a resurgent collectivism which is part of a broad “counter concept” to the Judeo-Christian tradition which, to the extent that the latter is still part of Western consciousness, even if it is not literally believed, must be extinguished whatever the cost. As a counter concept to Judeo-Christianity, it is not simply a matter of it extinguishing Christianity as one belief system among others. At the heart of ‘radical democracy’s’ automaticity and reflexivity is its rejection of the Logos, understood as logic, speech, reason and the Word; that is, a rejection of Christ Himself as an historic and cosmic event which, in reality, cannot be reversed at all. Hence the conflict of our time is between Christianity and a resurgent collectivism, between a hard fought for consciousness, and a regression to a pre-Christian condition of the Father (Allah), between the free individual and the natural human condition of slavery (Hilaire Belloc) – a future symbolised and evident in the dhimmitude under Islam.
Terrible writing.
This is like slogging through an Adorno essay or Derrida.
Let’s cut to the chase. Is the author saying that the EU is a tyranny? That the EU is in cahoots with Islam?
Yes.
The immediate response I have to this is the Euro currency. This is essentially the Mark in all but name. The absurdity of lashing Spain and Greece to the German juggernaut isn’t even addressed by the author. In effect Greece is being sold off to Arabs and Turks by Germans. The same problem has occurred in Ireland. The Irish jumped from the frying pan of English colonialism into the fire of German finances. God forbid the Scots ever go it alone, they will fall for every Darien-like speculation bubble that comes their way.
If Raddatz’s claim is accurate — that the Western Elitocracy supposed to exist in his terms wittingly and willingly are colluding with global brushfire of Islamic revival — the question becomes: What is the motive of these “Elites”? Is that motive supposed to be as diabolically calculating as the various dastardly and Macchiavellian machinations they devise and deploy by which to hold the entire West in their crypto-totalitarian thrall? That would not make sense; for the supposed puppets they are enabling (viz., through fanning the flames of a global revival of Islam) represent a welter of a force far too volatile and unstable to be useful. Sense to this fantastic speculation is only restored if we impute a curiously high degree of stupidity and illiteracy about Islam to these same Elites who otherwise are supposed to be so dastardly and diabolical they have managed to crypto-conquer the entire West (and much of the rest of the world) and hold it in the thrall of their globalist scheme.
Unless basic incoherencies like these can be plausibly explained, one must conclude Raddatz is indulging in an unwarranted conspiracy theory.
Follow the money. Arab Petrodollars are keeping the west solvent. Our leadership is in thrall to the Sheik Sherif and Sultan. We are all in thrall to Our own leaders.
That’s way too glibly cynical to be plausible — unless you have apodictic evidence.
Who holds the bonds?
“If Raddatz’s claim is accurate — that the Western Elitocracy supposed to exist in his terms wittingly and willingly are colluding with global brushfire of Islamic revival — the question becomes: What is the motive of these “Elites”? Is that motive supposed to be as diabolically calculating as the various dastardly and Macchiavellian machinations they devise and deploy by which to hold the entire West in their crypto-totalitarian thrall?”
People need to consider Burnham’s thesis: the world will end up with 3 non-democratic super-powers. This was the basis for Orwell’s 1984. Burnham was a close associate of Trotsky, who went on to join the CIA. There are several notable “paleocons” in the US who find Burnham’s work very convincing.
National identity must be destroyed if all the warring, independent european states to be dominated in one non-democratic, totalitarian, super-state. More than that may be required: the population need to (mostly) oppose democracy. That’s where islamisation comes in: provided what muslims are given accords with islam, a majority muslim population in europe will more easily forego democracy. European elites really are about population replacement. The elites and their muslim population will conspire against the indigenous populations (as they have been doing for decades)
What is going to happen when the oil runs out? How are the elite going to maintain their position, when 90% of the population in a democracy are not going to be able to drive a car or heat a home? They need to have a population that cannot vote to share the wealth of the rich among the 90%.
By the time the oil runs out, the elite need to ensure there is no democracy. Without oil, societies such as ours will be plunged into poverty and slavery. What we’ve been experiencing the past 100 or so years is not normal. In the absence of oil, the skyscrapers and other massive buildings we take for granted can only be built by slave labour.
And the non-muslims will be at the bottom of the pile. Let us remember: in the centuries leading up to 1815, muslim leaders built their grand palaces using slave labour, they fought their wars using slave armies.
You accurately observe the irrationality of the Western political and financial elites using an alliance with Islam as a way to achieve preeminence, money, and political control of Europe and the Middle East.
Raddatz’ entire thesis revolves around the mechanisms by which the European political elites put a democratic face on their totalitarian power structure. The real question you pose is, why do these elites collaborate so willingly and so effectively with the very Islamic forces which will grind them to nothing once their mutual objectives are achieved?
You can make a very cogent case for the plain stupidity of the European elites. The European aristocracies gained their fortunes through the military prowess of their ancestors, and not through the sophistication of their thinking. In addition, the leftist sector in the government and academia may be brilliant in their tactical ability to manipulate the reins of power, but are extremely lazy when it comes to any sort of self-examination. Actually, they have built a shaky intellectual structure based on the pseudo-intellectual writings of Marx.
Like any cult, the Marxists are terrified of any real analysis, and avoid it like the plague. Thus, they are quite capable of allying themselves with Islamic forces, and remain blind to the fact that they are putting into power the very people whose open objective is to totally dissolve any vestige of the European civilization and power structure. This fact seems so obvious to the regular readers of blogs like GoV and JihadWatch, that sheer stupidity, intellectual laziness, and a cult mindset seem insufficient to explain the degree of irrationality exhibited by the leaders of the West, including US Presidents, both Republican and Democratic.
Probably the strongest barrier against the Islamic co-option in the US is the first amendment, the absolute right to freedom of speech. There is a huge difference between spying and information-gathering, as practiced by the NSA, and actual suppression of speech. The more Muslims we allow into Western society, the greater the necessity for government spying to prevent spontaneous or planned terror attacks. I see the efforts to prevent government spying as being ill-advised, as they will result in horrific incidents. I would prefer to see an emphasis on a real distinction between legal and illegal actions. Anyone plotting, preparing, or supporting terror activity will be subject to immediate prosecution, while mere advocacy absolutely falls within the bounds of freedom. We have to accept the notion that racists, libertines, and holocaust-deniers will have the right to advance their ideas in absolute freedom. Jihadists, violent leftists, and various violent cults will not have the right to plan violence and coercion.
The Muslims in Europe to a man would deny that the Holocaust happened.
But Holocaust denial laws in Europe are reserved for white men. It’s a massive guilt trip aimed at suppressing white natives. It’s got nothing to do with ethical consistency.
As if, as if, as if a National Socialist party would ever rise again anyway!
I would not call this a good piece of writing in the remotest sense.
Anyone who is not thoroughly immersed in the blogosphere of anti-jihad, and the European orientation of blogs such as GoV would have no idea whatsoever what Raddatz is talking about, let alone being convinced by his arguments.
For people like regular readers of GoV, there is no logical chain of argumentation to support his points, but simply a stream-of-consciousness exposition. Your first task is to determine what he says, no easy feat, and the second task is to discern some reasoning to support his ideas, of which there is none whatsoever.
What Raddatz is saying, in part, is that although the different branches of Islam, such as the Sunni and Shi’ite sects, fight among themselves, they jointly support an Islamic takeover of the Western world, specifically Europe for the present.
Furthermore, the Islamic takeover of Europe is facilitated by the collaboration of leftist and bureaucratic elements in the European countries themselves. Because the infiltration of Western institutions is proceeding so well, the Islamists are temporarily suspending their efforts to criminalize or physically suppress any criticism of Islam. The strategy of the Islamists is for the moment to not emphasize any aspects of their philosophy which would upset their present allies in the Western academy, governments, or the press.
One questions whether communications such as this by Radd, which are so dense, and fragmented as to be almost indecipherable, and also totally devoid of actual logical arguments, are really worth writing or reading.
Rembrandt Clancy–
Thank you for an illuminating exegesis.
Clearly you know your way around terms and concepts that I am still absorbing as I go. Not that I am young–far from it! But teaching and analyzing syntax and fiction are far removed from the concepts you deal with here. I have translated a little Raddatz before, but this time he does seem–as you suggest–to be attempting to compact even more into each sentence than he has before, i.e., writing in a more academic style.
Anything I know about Habermas or Luhmann and attendant theories is self-taught, impelled by the need to understand the sentence I am dealing with. I hope and expect that it is a cumulative process. The closest I ever came to Behaviorism was a peek at a colleague’s white mouse maze. And what Raddatz envisions as the end result of the “seasons” he is describing strikes me as disturbingly similar.
If you should decide to write something in a venue like this, I, for one, would be very interested to read it.
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