Imitating a Broken Record
Keir Martland
(4th August 2016)
Since I last bothered to write something about terrorism on 12th June following the deaths of fifty gay men in Orlando, there have been a number of new atrocities. One of these was in Nice, one in the Alps, two in Munich, one in Reutlingen, one in Ansbach, and on the same day one in Rouen and one in Berlin. And then there was London, in the small hours of the morning of 4th August. These attacks are obviously sickening to any person of sound mind, and yet it is very easy to get bored – for want of a better word – of responding to them.
Even so, I am still of the opinion, which I express to my friends following every such incident when asked for comment, that these attacks are caused by bad politics and that we should not be scared, as libertarians, anarchists, nationalists, and conservatives, of ‘politicising’ them. The correct response is to properly mourn the loss of innocent Europeans, and then to have a proper think about how to avoid a repeat of the incident. What has actually happened every time is that we have seen countless people tweet their sadness or add a temporary overlay to the Facebook profile picture, and then wilfully forget about it. Furthermore, the words of the Prime Minister of France, that we should “learn to live with terrorism”, are entirely inappropriate since it is the duty of the State to protect its citizens. As I said, bad politics caused these attacks; good politics can prevent them.
For the sake of clarity, let me also say that I am aware that not every one of these attacks has been linked conclusively to the group calling itself ‘Islamic State.’ However, even those attacks could have been prevented or their risk of happening seriously reduced.
Let me now give my best imitation of a broken record.
The latest wave of atrocities have roughly the same causes as the Orlando Atrocity, the Brussels Atrocity, and the Paris Atrocity, and I elaborated on these causes in two essays written at the time, Paris: A Few Political Points to Make (14th November 2015) and Brussels: Déjà vu (22nd March 2016). I will now attempt to summarise the main causes on which I touch in the aforementioned essays:
First, the US and its satellites have been both indirectly funding and arming ISIS and also conducting airstrikes in Syria which I do not for a moment believe have done any serious damage to ISIS. Indeed, in Autumn 2013, the purpose of British intervention in the Syrian Civil War was to be to remove President Assad by supporting the “rebels”, from whom ISIS have grown. Further to this, when Russia began bombing ISIS, the US was quick to denounce her. Western intervention in the Middle East has fuelled the rise of Islamist scumbags. The destruction of Libya in 2011 has made this country in particular a training ground for Islamist mercenaries. Furthermore, the reason for the exponential growth of late in the number of such mercenaries is that it is no longer just the United States and Saudi Arabia training and funding them, but countless countries, with predictable consequences. In addition to this, it now appears to be the main military strategy of the United States, as opposed to just one of many strategies under Bush. When asked the difference between Bush and Obama, President Assad replied, “The former sent troops; this one sends mercenaries.” Of course, Wahhabist, i.e. crazy, mercenaries are not as easy to control as American soldiers.
Second, France, Belgium, the United States, Germany, Britain, and other western nations, do not have sensible immigration policies. The kind of immigration policy that allows someone entry into your country who is capable of killing fifty homosexuals in a nightclub, or cutting the throat of a priest inside his Church, is perhaps overdue a tightening. Or are we going to carry on with the tired mantra “Oh, but [insert country here] is a nation of immigrants!”? An Open Border is not a requirement of libertarian theory (see the work of Hans-Hermann Hoppe on this thorny question for more detail). For those who do believe in Open Borders on principle, surely it is a luxury ill-suited to a 2016 when the United States and its allies are not exactly popular with the citizens of Iraq, Syria, Libya, ad infinitum.
Third, not only has the West been invading the world and then inviting the world, but it has been disarming its citizens. This has progressed further in Europe than in the United States, but the US is catching us up. As citizens become progressively disarmed, they will become progressively defenceless against lunatic Islamist mercenaries who have just returned from their little holiday in Syria or from “home-grown” Islamists who have seen their homeland bombed out of existence on Russia Today or Al-Jazeera.
I will therefore repeat my policy recommendations as I have made them countless ties to the French, Belgian, American, British, and other Governments:
- Get the hell out of the Middle East.
- Shut the borders.
- Arm your citizens, or just stop disarming them.
This is, in my view, a rather minimalist manifesto. If the Governments of the West were to follow this manifesto, I suspect we would see fewer such atrocities as we have seen in Normandy and Berlin and today in London. Yet, I have had a very good record at predicting whether governments will follow these plans in the past; I predicted that France and Belgium would instead do nothing and I was right. I predicted that the Obama administration would do the same. Mrs Merkell will do nothing. Mr Hollande will do nothing. Our own Prime Minister, Mrs May, will use this latest attack in London as a further excuse for her police state ambitions. Leaders of nearby nations, with the exception perhaps of Viktor Orbán, will also do nothing worth doing.
The terrorism will continue and the bodies will pile up, just as they have done in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and goodness knows where else. Oh, but there can’t be any connection here at all, can there? After all, as everyone is telling us, the problem is Islam. Yes, the Islamic World hates us for our freedom, and our own States are entirely blameless. If you believe this lie, then I am truly sorry that the government has been closing all those asylums. No, as Adam Curtis argues in his excellent documentary ‘Bitter Lake’, the more our own politicians feed us the lie that the world is full of ‘good’ people and ‘evil’ people, the more dangerous a force the West becomes.
Keir my friend,
This is in many ways a fine, insightful essay. But…
You know the saying “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” When I read your recommendation for “good politics,” I said to myself “There ain’t no such thing as good politics.”
And when you said “It is the duty of the State to protect its citizens,” I sighed. The state, as it exists today, is entirely hostile to honest, peaceful, productive people. Look at the comments on Sean’s “What about the Workers?” thread, for example. (They’re not all by me).
In the rest of this particular comment, I’m going to concentrate on immigration. Your views on ISIS, terrorism and disarming citizens deserve a more considered response.
But on the subject of immigration, I’m the one who feels the need to behave like a broken record. I think I understand Hoppe’s proposals – indeed, they’re based on how things were done in Germany in the first half of the 19th century. And if you’re going to have an “immigration policy,” then Hoppe’s “no residence without invitation” is as good an idea as any.
The problem is: who sets immigration policy, and for whom? In my view, each property owner (individual or group) has the right to set “immigration policy” for the property of that individual or group. But this right is violated when an external party, such as a state, claims a right to override that policy.
I’m going to give a flippant example. Mr. Blake, a successful, very rich historical novelist who lives near Dover, is seriously ill, and knows he needs long term treatment and constant personal attention from a specialist doctor he trusts. He can’t find one locally. He searches the world, and eventually finds one who can treat him, Dr. Trekhsvyatytelskaya. (I didn’t make the name up; it’s actually a street in Kiev!) He makes enquiries of his friends in the region, and finds that she is everything she claims to be. And so, he contracts for her services. But when she arrives at the Port of Dover with the medical equipment and drugs that can cure Mr. Blake, some uniformed goon says to her, “You can’t come in here. This year’s quota for Ukrainians is filled already. Go back and apply next year.”
Do you not see the problem, Keir?
Given that Mr Blake is, as we all know, a fantastically rich, handsome and successful writer and novelist, with legions of fans, both here and in the Ukraine, would he not simply sail to the Ukraine on his luxury yacht, and receive the good doctor there?
I imagine a week or so stopover in the Black Sea would do his health a power of good. Just what the doctor ordered. He could also mug up by reading David Webb’s essay on the country, possibly hiring Mr Webb as a travel consultant for the duration. I would be happy to volunteer my own services in sampling the country’s cuisine and advising on social events and nightlife. Shall we say six months? That should be long enough for the doctor to work her miracles.
Yes, indeed he could. For a time. But unfortunately the Ukrainian long stay quota for historical novelists is one per century. It’s already filled.
And Mr Webb isn’t the only one around here who’s been to Ukraine. In fact, I’m about to make my fourth visit in 18 months. This time, the itinerary reads, “Go straight towards the war zone, then turn right and stop just before you reach Crimea. Then turn left and go into the boondocks.” Should be fun.
As to the country’s cuisine, it’s very good, and good value too; as long as you stick to the upper tier of “domestic” restaurants, and keep away from the “international” ones.
[QUOTE]”…unfortunately the Ukrainian long stay quota for historical novelists is one per century. It’s already filled.”[UNQUOTE]
You’re making the Ukrainians sound like vulgarians. Surely they would make an exception for the esteemed Mr Blake, especially given his singular contribution to literary fiction in the matter of the Byzantium Empire, a major influence on the Ukrainian Church.
Exactly right Keir.
The disconnect between myself and some of my friends on these subjects grows further polarised by the day.
I may be called bitter and cynical I suppose, but it is the very attitudes that we tend to see in the aftermath of these things that have caused them to occur in our societies in the first place – and what I regard as “liberals” do not ever, ever, consider their own role in creating the society we have become.
Take for example one of my best friends. They uploaded a video from Australia which was in essence a plea to not let “hate and fear win”.
It was based on the premise that we are all “fearful” because of the news media (unfounded fear, like little sheep reacting to scary news media, because these events are not definitive of anybody in particular, etc) – and that was important that we do not let this “fear” turn into “hate”, because “hate breeds more hate” – and that is letting the terrorists win.
At one point, it asked us to (hashtag) “forgive”. Seriously. It asked us to forgive those who carried out these attacks, because the people who did it are “victims” of propaganda and hate, themselves….and by reacting with “hate” and “bigotry”, we can only make things worse.
I cannot express how much these kinds of views frustrate me.
Nowhere along the line are liberals forced to reflect upon what they have created for our nations. Nowhere are they questioning themselves.
They sit there and pontificate from some supposedly “superior and more elevated intelligent” position, to plead with the ignorant plebs not to irrationally “fear” or “hate” whilst their nations are incrementally steeped in terrorism and ultimately taken away from them through demographics.
Their solution? More cultural relativism. More general relativism. More putting up news stories of atrocities in Pakistan to show that it is not just we Europeans dealing with it, and that we are all in it together – and implicitly suggesting that we Europeans are racist for making so much noise about events in Europe, when others are also facing it elsewhere.
A recent other one was a cartoon that was doing the rounds, where a towering minaret is bending over towards a towering steeple, and a Muslim imam and a Christian priest are reaching out of the windows to hold hands, saying “lets not make events stop us from talking” – or some other retarded nonsense.
Muslims and Christians “talking” is not going to solve this. It never has. In the real world, none of this “dialogue” matters a jot. I find it absolutely staggering in its ignorance – but people support it, support them, think it is great. They think they are doing their bit for “world peace” or something, I don’t know what the hell goes through their mind any more.
Yet what are you supposed to do with these kinds of liberal attitudes? They are very common, and the basis for those viewpoints – individualism, egalitarianism, multiculturalism, religious and cultural relativity, favourable to immigration, refugees, etc – are so distant from the real world harshness of what is transpiring in this world, that I really don’t see what could be said to these people to shake them out of their delusions.
None of this is down to the policies, principles, or actions of nationalists like me. We would not have “invaded the world” and we would not have “invited the world”. We would not have had other races here in such large numbers, or allowed grievance politics to take over. We would have the friction, the creeping police state, the costs and burdens of it all, or the “hate” and the fear” we are supposedly feeling.
There is nothing we have done to engineer this. In fact, we have been the ones trying to stop it from manifesting. Liberals and the liberal media keep pounding a drum that expects us to just “put up with it”, to keep quiet, to not react like “bigots” and to certainly not take any measures to do anything!
It is like being smacked repeatedly in the face whilst they rob you, and condemning you for even thinking of taking some form of defence, or, god forbid, a counter attack.
I can understand their fear of what might happen in the future as people polarise on these subjects and each side gets entrenched.
But they have helped create all the conditions for their worst fears to come true – and sticking up videos about “togetherness” or pictures of “inter faith dialogue” is just not going to be enough to deal with this, which, on the bigger picture, is the slow capitulation, the slow transformation, the slow erasure of European peoples and their traditional societies.
It reminds of the film with Bruce Willis, where the little boy can see dead people. Europe is in many ways already a corpse, unable to fight for survival. Only, thanks to all these pretences and “wishful thinking” attitudes, many just don’t realise we’re dead.
The solutions are, unfortunately, going to be rather brutal, nasty, horrific, “prejudiced”, “bigoted”, “racist” and indeed based upon groups and not individuals. It cannot be dealt with on a one-to-one basis. I wish it wasn’t the case, but nothing else can revive our own nation and that of other European nation states.
But our national “leaders” are not even taking basic steps to reduce the decay. Such is their delusion and aversion to self scrutiny, they will continue to flood Europe with millions of other peoples, regardless of what it means for the future, because all of this mess – be it racially, religiously, terrorism, culturally, criminally, repressively – is apparently “not linked” in any way.
The liberal solution is to double down on liberal assumptions, and do nothing but call for more dialogue……which a bloody joke when people are being hauled into police stations and courts for their speech, and when liberals who spout these calls for understanding cannot understand or tolerate the views of others.
It was not worth my time, or a strain in my long term friendship to try and enter dialogue with them. It is futile. I would not know where to even start with them, anyway.
would not have the friction…. (I wish there was an edit button!)
Dear CB,
This is (at least, I intend it to be) a rather more serious comment than my earlier, rather flippant ones on this thread. And I really do understand your frustration.
Yes, the news media urge us to fear. Because they want us to fear. Why? First, because fear sells (for now). And second, because their masters want us to fear.
And you’re quite right to call them out for telling you to “forgive.” That’s a classic guilt trip ploy. Consider: If you don’t harm other people, there’s nothing for them to forgive you for. So, when they harm you, why should you forgive them in any way? That would be to deny justice. One of my bons mots is: “No forgiveness without compensation.”
You’re right again when you berate what you call “liberals” (I call them “politicals”). They also include the religious establishment. They think they’re a superior species to us. And they don’t question themselves, for that very reason.
As to minaret versus steeple, as an agnostic I don’t see much difference between the two.
I do disagree when you include “individualism” in your list of bad things. As I wrote in response to David Webb here about a year and a half ago: “The essence of individualism is a focus on the individual. It is a way of thinking, which puts the human individual at centre stage. It views ethical codes and political structures in terms of how they affect each individual, and of how they benefit and what they cost each individual.”
How can focusing on the individual be bad?
But of course you’re right that the politicals are “creating the conditions for their worst fears to come true.” Their worst fears to come true for you, that is. Not for them; they plan to be in control. And that’s important. It isn’t Muslims who are your enemies. No, it’s the political class; those that are doing these things to you.
You and I have many differences of opinion. But I’ll say this to you: don’t give up, CB.
Thanks Neil.
I appreciate the culture of fear being manufactured. I remember an Adam Curtis documentary called the Power of Nightmares, which went in some way to explain the concept of the culture of fear.
The thing is, the people I see putting up these “everybody is just reacting in this media manufactured fear” things on social media, are pretty much suggesting any opposition to their plans and world views are based on some kind of irrational fear.
I don’t see the end of this country, Europe, Europeans and, eventually the “Western world” as something not to be concerned about. I don’t “fear it” – for it will be after I am dead – but it does gnaw at me and I do think it is entirely unnecessary, mostly planned, and something that ought to be averted.
With the “bigotry” – they assume that all those against what is taking place are, for example, worried that the Muslim woman down the street in a burka is secretly an ISIS supporter or preparing to be a suicide bomber or something ridiculous like that – and the attitude is that “if only we got to know them, overcame our ‘prejudices’, we’d see them as being nice individuals.
But we already know this. The trouble is, what I see as transpiring – albeit in slow motion – is not about “the woman down the street” or “all Muslims are terrorists” or “all black people are violent criminals” or whatever. It is what happens when enough people of a different race, different culture, different religion, come to dominate in a land mass.
This is why the cartoon of the minaret and steeple is stupid. It is the idea that “interfaith dialogue” can solve the problems of our civilisation collapse, or somehow stop terrorism, and bring ‘harmony’ between religions.
But it is not a religious fight, on our score. Churches are vastly irrelevant in this country and in wider western Europe. Nobody cares what they say or do. Muslims certainly don’t. Terrorists are even less likely to give a damn. The priest who has his throat slit in France last week was another typical “doo-gooding” Church type – pro-refugee, pro-immigration, and they gave away some of the church land so that Muslims could have a mosque to pray in.
My mill town is just a fraction over 40% Pakistani now. Several churches are shut. About three remain. Of the three that remain, at least one of them is pro-active in “building bridges” – a project to “create harmony between communities”.
This church organised an “open day” with a new mosque that was built in town, and liberal church goers no doubt went along, grinning like idiots and being all polite and inquisitive, saying it was marvellous to have “people of faith” and that they have much in common, etc.
Fast forward 15 years from now – and those three churches will be long gone, along with the elderly congregation. No use looking at a younger generation to take it up, as around 80% of the school age children at nurseries and infants are Pakistanis.
So – nobody cares about “interfaith dialogue”, It does not change anything on the ground, and the traffic of “interfaith” is 8 out of 10 times our host society learning about the overtaking of themselves with others. Muslims in this town couldn’t give a rats ass about Churches and their longevity.
One day Christians in this country will be like the Coptic in Egypt, and they will have helped bring on their own subjugation with open arms.
I hope this better explains my criticism of the minaret and steeple “meme” I was shown. It is not about the commonality of the steeple and a minaret, or even “faith” – it is about how the whole concept of the meme is ridiculous and something that people seem to put up in order to believe they will make things better and that they are more tolerant and “understanding” than others.
When it comes to extreme forms of individualism, I have it on my list of negatives because I feel society, communities, nations, civilisations, do not operate on the basis of individuals and atoms just bouncing around their own little cages.
I believe the world operates on group dynamics, shared interactions, shared beliefs,history, language, ethnicity……and when people eschew those things for individual gain, or greed, or selfishness, or apathy…it causes ruination and the ability to overthrow those societies and those nations, not only by the governments, but by imported guests who stick to a strong sense of being a collective group.
That is the main reason. Another reason is that I don’t think it is possible to separate the effects that individuals do to themselves, and what happens to wider society.
It could possibly be argued from a libertarian perspective that people should be free to stick crystal meth into their veins in the privacy of their own house if they wanted to do. It is their choice to buy it, their body they put it in, and they do it in their own house – so it is none of our business what they do as individuals, right?
But unfortunately, having a community full of junkies smacked out of their heads would not be my idea of somewhere healthy and nice to live. What they do to themselves has an effect on all around them, and indeed the wider nation itself.
When people think of themselves as individuals and “sod the rest” – such as drugs, or say a landlord of a property that the government pays a £Million to for housing Somalian migrants in – their self interest and greed damages the rest of us.
Why would the landlord turn down such wealth? He wouldn’t, would he. He will see himself as an individual and do right for himself and his family in the here and now. Yet, his actions would be helping to sell the wider community and the country down the river. “I’m alright Jack, everybody else can look after themselves”.
That’s why I think there is a balance to be had between the right to privacy, rights as individuals – and that of being for a greater good and for a country, society, nation we can feel happy to hand over to our future generations.
Everything I see about the future is heading in the entire different direction…..and these people I describe on social media just seem to have no idea what’s going on or what is at stake, or how their approaches are actually making things worse.
Cheers.
CB, I agree completely. The threat is demographic and it is urgent. We have now to act and no other time. And nobody is acting, and there appears to be no “we” to act anyway. All of the push is, as you say, to get us to “accept” the incomers. But this is a false argument, because in demographic terms we will soon be no more. It is not a question of tolerance, being less bigoted, accepting change. It is a question of whether being a white European minority in a majority Muslim or African society is a good place for our children and grandchildren to be.
History and the present day revealed preferences of Western people say that it is certainly not a good or even acceptable place to be, and often a particularly horrible place, filled with fear, pursuit, murder, rape and death. Why then are we so accepting of it? We are like the Eloi awaiting our fate. Why are we so blind to this? It is baffling to me, and it has happened so fast; within my lifetime the coup de grace. How do we escape this, where do we run to?
I don’t know Tom. You have succinctly described the essence of this situation, including the most rapid demographic transformation of this land since the thawing of the Ice Age.
Within the space of 100 years, the English will have gone from being 99.8% “White British” to being an ethnic minority in their own country. From there, it can only be a further downward spiral into the horrors you describe, until there are none of us left at all.
People have been conditioned into accepting it, and thinking nothing of it. This has allowed the ones engineering it to get away with it, to the point where we are actually funding our own eradication and telling each other we’re supposed to like it. It is a crazy, crazy situation.
For me, it sadly returns to “individualism” again. We are taught and are expected to deal with all these people as individuals. As individuals, they may be very nice people. In come cases much nicer than those we consider our own. The problem comes in how this situation is not about individuals, but the sum mass creates a whole and creates, in turn, the future.
Nobody knows how to deal with this in a humane way, which is why the situation is so volatile,why the liberals are so worried about what may happen, and why those of us who wanted to take sane, sensible measures over the last few decades (and who have been denied at every pass) feel to have no options left other than the horror option.
I suspect we both know how things will ultimately pan out, should we become minorities – and indeed, what this country will be like and what traits it will have when non-Europeans completely dominate it.
It will be the kind of gradual, slow, deterioration we see now, then, when the balance tips, it will be the slow build up of all the ills and horrors and ineptitude that caused them, or their forefathers, to want to leave their original nations.
It is, to me, ridiculous to expect it to go any other way. None of them may want it to go that way, it is not intentional. It is just what tends to happen. A raindrop on its own is not much an issue, they are quite innocent. Many million of those innocent individual raindrops can cause devastation, and no single one of them is to blame or had the intent.
Nobody wants to think this way though. Nobody wants to deal with it. It is “make do and mend” or completely going the opposite direction and actively encouraging it to transpire, like some kind of Stockholm syndrome, because they are made to feel good about it – more compassionate, more enlightened, more liberal, not dragged down in any real fight, struggle or judgement of others.
It is much easier for people to wash their hands of it in this way. It is uncomfortable, it is unpleasant, it is depressing, it is against the social and moral mores we are expected to hold and which are pressed into us at all times as being the right thing to do, to think, to behave.
Nobody really wants to break out of this spell, and because society is not given the tools to actually understand what is going on and what the real issues are, people do not have the vocabulary to arm themselves and defend themselves against any discomfort that they may feel about it all. If they don’t have the vocabulary, they cannot formulate arguments or even think things through properly.
This is why you can have fannies like John Gaunt or Richard Littlejohn talking about the Burkha, or liberals chirping about this or that topical issue (like some celebrity may have said “coloured people” instead Black, or somebody was harassed at work over their race) – but neither of them are anything at all to do with what our situation is and why it is so serious.
Yet people digest these kinds of things as being the issues. It seems to be all they know, the vision they have of it. It is so limited and controlled in scope.
I know there are two or three organisations now which are aiming at establishing pro-white communities in England. They are aiming to establish strongholds which are not fickle and not reliant on democratic whims and democratic processes, such as ‘nationalist parties’.
They are struggling a bit to get off the ground, in terms of dedicated involvement, changes of peoples lives, finding pioneers – but although it is not as speedy as is needed, I am quite convinced that the push could yield results in the decades to come.
Sadly, it will take decades to build these things, and we only have decades left before the tide turns.
One of them is not “running away” as such, but the first stage of a fight back and extension outwards to reclaim. If that fails, at least there will hopefully be somewhere to go to for the dwindling future demographic – should they ever come to care.
Other than that, I think it may end up being Hungary and Poland taking in the remnants of Western Europeans and the British – well, again, those who care.
Without any kind of co-ordination, or deadline, or day of action, or even agreement or plan for what ought to be done – and how – I foresee it just slipping through our fingers like it has since the late 1940s. Things just drift on, relentlessly, always “reacting” to our decline, rather than being pro-active towards goals which are practical and clearly defined.
Good post, but makes me so sad to hear someone else confirm what I have thought for a long time now. Most people can’t bear to consider it, let alone talk about it. If you mention it to the average person you become a racist loon immediately. I think our society has lost the ability to think in this way since WW2. I think that maybe it was just too much trauma, and so we instead made up an imaginary world where merely believing things made them true.
You are spot on when you mention the the way that society is dealing with it. It is all couched in the language of yesterday; silly questions about whether we are racists or not, small victories we can achieve by insisting on “Britishness” (whatever that now is), pointless balanced waffle from broadcasters standing in for actually talking about the urgently looming end of our culture and people. It is as if our leaders no longer wish to lead us, our storytellers no longer wish to tell our story, and we ourselves no longer know who we are.
I don’t know if it is intentional or whether people just can’t bear to face it, but we will still be debating such stupid things as burkhas and racists when the cultures we are importing are in the majority, when we have nowhere left to go, and even, eventually, when we start being killed like the Christians in Pakistan or the Yazidi in Iraq. Even then out leaders will want “dialogue” and “compromise”, rather than doing us the honour of leading us somewhere we can defend and fighting back, even if it is hopeless. It makes me incredibly sad to think of us departing the world without even a fight.