Source: Wikipedia.

Huntington himself offered some explanations for why civilizations clash in the typically modern, Harvard style of over-explaining fairly banal concepts, i.e. civilization is profoundly felt, profound differences cause conflict, etc. — not news to anyone who was socialized outside the coddling reach of the American progressive clerisy. More liberal-minded Westerners, especially ones who serve as functionaries of the American Empire overseas (what has been variously labelled the Cathedral, the Blue Empire or USG), tend to be unable to grasp these basic tenets of Homo sapiens, owing to the degree they themselves have actually evolved into another species, Homo economicus. Well-meaning progressive bureaucrats proselytizing on the ancient blood-soaked soil of the Balkans, for example, exit largely unsuccessfully, and with a progressive faith either deeply strengthened or fundamentally shaken. Adored Western celebrities like Benedict Cumberbatch have to apologize profusely for using innocuous and vaguely outdated terms like “colored people,” for fear of offending the omnipresent Other. Elsewhere float around sectarian paeans with tenderhearted, tolerant lyrics such as:

Both women and children / Throw them off a bridge!

Your mosques will pay for each of our churches / … Let them kneel when they see Jesus on the cross

Soup from your blood / Cake from your flesh

And, as if purposely trying to further corroborate Huntington’s outlined clash of civilizations:

Serbia — on your feet, win many battles against …

Modern barbarians from America who nurture degenerates.

Even in the fairly neutered Federal Republic of Germany, an extremely popular rapper like Fler can brag about his “blue eyes, white skin” and proclaim “People say I’m a Nazi / I don’t care, say whatever you want.” Identity is not quite out of fashion yet, even for Europeans, though the thought of similar proclamations happening a little further West is nigh unthinkable. PEGIDA, despite internal drama, is making waves. These contemporary examples from the yet-to-be-enlightened parts of white Europe abound. But I digress — back to the clash of civilizations.

In the years since the early 1990’s, Huntington’s predictions of conflict have not been proven wrong, as a more extreme fan of Francis Fukuyama might have wished. The ‘bloody borders’ of the Islamic civilization have only intensified in violence. Various conflicts — political, military, economic or otherwise — can be identified at essentially all the limits of Huntington’s civilizations. Conflicts can be identified within them too, but the bloodiest and most inflammatory ones inevitably occur at the eternally-disputed boundaries between civilizations. Take another gander at the map above. Between Orthodoxy and Islam we get wars in Bosnia, Kosovo and the Caucuses. Between Islam and Africa we get Boko Haram. Between Islam and the Hindu civilization we get perpetual terrorism. Between Orthodoxy and the West we get wars in Croatia and Slovenia and the current crisis in Ukraine. Between the West and Latin America, we get quiet rumblings of future upheaval. And of course, between the West and Islam, we get Charlie Hebdo. The clashes of civilizations which are revving up between Huntington’s West, Orthodoxy and Islam will be the defining historical movements of this century.

Skeptics of the gravity of the clash of civilizations between the West and Islam ought to consider the fact that in a mere 14 years since the September 11th attacks in 2001, practically every major Western city has suffered some sort of Islamic attack. New York City, Washington, D.C., London, Paris, Madrid, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Brussels, Glasgow, Boston, Ottawa, Sydney, Stockholm — all have tasted the bitter brew of jihad. To that list we can even add smaller locales like Fort Hood, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Endeavour Hills and the French cities of Toulouse, Montauban, Dijon, Nantes and Joué-lès-Tours. Granted, these attacks vary significantly in form, organization and casualties. The highly-coordinated attacks of 9/11 were not quite the same as the incident involving the fanatic shouting “Allahu akbar!” and mowing down Dijonnais pedestrians in a van. Yet, somehow, I am not comforted knowing that, when strolling through the greatest centers of Western civilization, I can now expect a number greater than zero of Islam-inspired mass shootings, beheadings, bombings (suicide and otherwise), stabbings, hostage-takings, hijackings, assassinations and vehicular manslaughters — all of which, just since the start of the new millennium, have taken place on Western streets where blue-eyed, white-skinned children used to wander and play, at will, carefree.

A bit belatedly, French special police hunt for Islamists with whom to do the ol’ civilization-clashing.

Huntington’s Orthodox civilization has had its fair share of struggles with Islam as well, from Serbia’s tit-for-tat genocidal episodes with neighboring Muslims in the 90’s to Russia’s mindbogglingly violent Chechen saga. Chechens as a group are a bit of a crack team for Islamic civilization. Only Chechens could find time to nearly simultaneously terrorize both America and Russia in their own territory, while also leading the establishment of a brutally sincere Islamic Caliphate in the Middle East. Not bad for an ethnic group barely 2 million strong.

The Great Unspoken Truth in the West, that groups like PEGIDA are attempting to speak, is that the clash of civilizations between Islam and the West is not one that could be traditionally regarded as inevitable. Efforts of Europeans long gone have put firm geographical barriers between the West and Islam. The poorest, most rural, most fundamentalist Muslims find not high walls and sentries at Europe’s proverbial gates, but secular governments welcoming them with patronizing words and generous benefits. These Muslims follow the money, slowly accumulate in urban ghettos, and, sooner or later, the clash of civilizations occurs. A couple of left-wing cartoonists are riddled with bullets. Alternately, Western interference in Muslim countries half-way across the world contributes to increasing proportions of dead, angry, and/or gun-toting Muslims. Sooner or later, some armed and aggrieved (usually by the same Western powers) Mahometans come up with a way to strike back at the Great Satan. A couple of skyscrapers experience — ahem — “controlled demolition.” The West, through a combination of schizophrenic foreign policies and reckless immigration policies, is forcing a clash of civilizations that was last settled at the gates of Vienna in 1683.

The once-imagined “Third Way” of Mitteleuropa was mortally wounded by the Boot of Progress in 1918, and put out of its misery in 1945. Western “Progress” and Eastern “Progress” stared each other down until the East buckled under the weight of its Marxist delusions in 1991. The West, triumphant, sounded its own death knell with talk of the “end of history.” History, the cheeky little scrub that he is, came back as quickly as he disappeared upon hearing victory bells. Now the civilization of the West is contending with an Orthodox jihad and an Islamic one, neither of which it is adequately prepared to face, since it can’t even admit it has any opponents left to face. The Islamic civilization, held at bay for more than 300 years, is invited into a West deeply doped up with an ersatz eschatology. The Orthodox civilization, now a quarter-century after the ignominious death of its own ersatz eschatology, is flexing new muscle. The problem with progressivism is that reality doesn’t progress — only narratives do. From TIME:

“This is not another Cold War that we’re entering into,” [U.S. President Barack Obama] said in his 36-minute address. “After all, unlike the Soviet Union, Russia leads no bloc of nations, no global ideology. The United States and NATO do not seek any conflict with Russia. In fact, for more than 60 years we have come together in NATO not to claim other lands but to keep nations free.”

Any perceptive watcher of the world will notice there are more than a few ideological differences between Russia and America to complement the geopolitical ones. Considering NATO’s aggressive expansion since 1991 into Eastern Europe and the otherwise post-Soviet space that was Russia’s proverbial backyard, the claim that NATO is not about “claiming other lands” seems suspect, to say the least. Every great empire in history has tried to frame its own expansion as anything but temporary naked conquest. The American President’s words are in any case as disingenuous as can be. The ruling class of the United States, the Cathedral, the self-organizing consensus of academia, the media and the state bureaucracy (that, for far more complicated reasons, conveniently organizes around chauvinistic left-wing progressivism), viciously hates President Vladimir Putin, Russia, and the Russian people. The politically correct descendants of America’s Puritans cannot stand the forthright, alcoholic Russians, who refuse to join the “international community” and don’t see why anyone would want to sacralize the act of shoving male penis into male anus. For this transgression against progressivism, Russians deserve to burn alive. Russians, surprisingly, aren’t too fond of the choice the “end of history” has offered them — your ass or your life! — and are rather vehemently organizing, opposing, and combating the West’s latest intrusions into Orthodox civilization.

On the bumpy road towards a clash of civilizations.

John R. Schindler (a.k.a. “The XX Committee”), former U.S. intelligence spook, has more than a few interesting things to say about the Russian perspective of this ongoing confrontation.

If nothing else, the current crisis has demonstrated to Russians, with Kremlin prodding, that the United States remains their Main Enemy that it was for decades, now led by the arrogant and weak Obama, who is hated by the Russian public. [Author’s Note: 76% of Russians “personally hate” Obama.]

[…]

To the shock and dismay of hopeful Westerners, including nearly all NATO leaders, the hard hit of sanctions has caused Russians to hate the West, not Putin. Most Russians view their war in Ukraine as a legitimate defense of Russians and Russian interests, certainly nothing like America’s aggressive wars of choice halfway around the world, and they are backing the Kremlin now.

[…]

The Kremlin now believes they are at war with the United States, an Orthodox Holy War in the eyes of many Russians, and that struggle is defensive and legitimate.

[…]

…what they are battling against is not the Ukrainian government, nor American neoconservatives, rather the Devil himself.

President Putin inaugurated the New Year by signing off on a new military doctrine designating NATO as Russia’s #1 adversary. It emphasized Russia’s right to respond to conventional threats with both nuclear and conventional weapons. Schindler does not see good things in the future of Poroshenko’s Ukraine. Huntington’s Orthodox civilization advances consciously on the West.

Serbia — on your feet, win many battles against …

Modern barbarians from America who nurture degenerates.

The West (and Europe in particular), Russia and Islam form a dueling trio in the 21st century iteration of the clash of civilizations. The problem for the West is that it seems to be the only participant unaware that a contest is underway. The Islamic terrorist attacks in Paris occurred on the very same day rebel French writer Michel Houellebecq’s latest novel Soumission was published — of all things, the novel’s plot concerns a future France ruled by Islamists. God apparently has a sense of humor, if only a sick one. Houellebecq’s fictional (or are they really?) Islamists take power over the nationalist opposition with the crucial support of France’s left-wing establishment, dutifully following its progressive directives all the way to the graveyard of civilizations. Following the non-fictional Paris attacks, Western mainstream media duly warned us that the real danger was not swarthy fanatics from the hostile continent across the Mediterranean, but Islamophobia.

In a sense, they are only rejecting one half of the truth for the more palatable half. If you’re a progressive leftist or liberal, especially one in Europe, you’re going to be targeted by both Islamists and Islamophobes. Anders Behring Breivik, Europe’s only notable right-wing terrorist in recent memory, bombed Norwegian government offices then shot up 69 people at the youth summer camp for Norway’s Labour Party. He did this because the Labour Party was supporting Islamic immigration to Norway, a typically leftist thing to do. Breivik did not bomb a mosque and he did not shoot up a madrasa. The motley Islamists who perpetrated Paris’ most recent attacks targeted Charlie Hebdo, a police officer, some random passersby, and a Jewish grocery store. They did this because Charlie Hebdo was blaspheming (a typical leftist thing to do), because the police officer was French (a typical leftist thing to be), because the Jewish grocery store was Jewish (another typical leftist thing to be) and because the random passersby were French (don’t make me repeat myself). The Islamists did not target: Front National, neo-Nazis, Varg Vikernes, Catholic churches, far-right-wing bloggers. Funny that, innit?

This bizarre convergence of interests among radical rightists in Europe and radical Islamists has hardly escaped notice. None other than Michel Houellebecq examines this increasingly incongruous situation in the novel Soumission. Still only available in French and German (an English translation is scheduled for September 2015), yours truly had to rely on this little compilation of reviews by Steve Sailer for enlightenment (yours truly was not about to spend upwards of 22 EUR on the German version — not with a time preference as aristocratically low as yours’ truly!). I will assume you read the linked compilation of reviews, and I will highlight only the most important parts, which are substantial nonetheless:

The new university President, Muslim convert, and rising political star Robert Rediger is revealed as a former identitarian [Read: nationalist] who has quickly advanced up through the ranks and is becoming one of the ideological leaders of the Islamic movement.

[…]

As the novel goes on, the mystery concerning the identitaire role in the new regime only mounts. There were already questions during the “civil war’ as to the various motivations of the jihadi youth and the identitaires. Since they were almost always hooded, it was hard to tell who exactly was attacking whom and there were debates over which side had more of an interest to disrupt the elections. But slowly it is revealed just how much ideological influence Roger Rediger has on the new Muslim government. The clincher is that next door in Belgium, a new Islamic regime comes to power headed by an ethnic European who has well-known roots in the identitaire movement. In Lenin’s classic Who/Whom framework of power relations, it becomes increasingly clear that far from being the weak and subjective Whom, at least some European far right nativist identitaires are actually on the power-holding Who side of the struggle.

But why would the right-wing nativist identitaires want to help push Muslim overlords into power in their country? Jacques searches the internet and finds a very interesting article written by none other than Roger Rediger:

The whole article was an appeal to his former identitaire and traditionalist comrades. It’s tragic, he pleaded fervently, that irrational hostility towards Islam prevents them from recognizing the obvious: they were for the most part in perfect agreement with the Muslims. On the rejection of atheism and humanism, on the need for the subordination of women, on the return to patriarchy: their struggles from any point of view were exactly the same. But this fight to establish a new and natural phase of civilization could not now be conducted in the name of Christianity. No, it’s only with Christianity’s newer, simpler, and truer sister religion Islam that this battle could be waged.

Therefore it was Islam which now had to carry the torch. Because of all the dainty rhetoric, cajoling, and shameful stroking by progressives, the Catholic Church could no longer resist moral decadence. It was now unable to clearly and vigorously resist gay marriage, abortion rights and women moving into the workforce. We had to face the facts: the church had reached a repugnant degree of decline. Western Europe was no longer in any condition to save itself – just as ancient Rome had not been able to so the 5th century. The influx of massive numbers of immigrants — who were still under the influence of traditional cultures which not only accepted natural hierarchies, but also obliged both the submission of and respect due to women — was an historic opportunity for a moral and familial realignment of Europe. In fact this opened the prospect for a new golden age on the old continent. While these new immigrant populations were sometimes Christian; but we must admit they were mostly Muslim.

Roger Rediger was the first to admit that medieval Christianity was a great civilization whose artistic achievements remain forever alive in the memory of men. But little by little it lost ground, medieval Christianity was forced to compromise with rationalism and submit to secular power, and by degrees, was doomed. And as to why? Basically, according to Rediger, it was a mystery; God had simply decided it would be so.

 

Deus vult?

Houellebecq’s identitarians use the mantle of Islam to finally subvert and defeat the decadent Western order. Western civilization, decrepit but poisonous, is finally replaced by Islamic civilization, with the twist that Islam’s existing adherents from the warmer climes only do half the job of replacement — the other half enthusiastically accomplished by native rightists! Whereas today Leftists use the Muslims to buttress their electoral margins contra the Right, tomorrow the Right will use the Muslims to buttress their cultural margins contra the Left. Instead of fighting the Left head-on as the elitist progressive’s low-status, hated country bumpkin, Houellebecq’s rightist simply converts to Islam and enjoys his role as the left-winger’s minority dominatrix, meting out white guilt and otherwise enjoying traditional life.

As a Eurocentric Catholic chauvinist, I take great issue with this prophecy. I am unwilling to sit idle while Europe turns into Saudi Arabia (or worse, Syria) and the United States turns into Brazil. It is lucky, then, that Houellebecq’s perfect timing less provides an argument for Islamism than it illuminates the clash of civilizations soon coming to a head. For Houellebecq’s insightful prophecy is not that Islam will inevitably replace Western civilization, but that Western civilization will be necessarily replaced soon, by something. Islam provides just one convenient path to explore for a writer of fiction. I will now point out that in the same way that France’s rightists, nationalists and identitarians share some uncomfortably similar interests with jihadists, they — crucially — share just as many, if not more, with the other “jihadists” –Huntington’s Orthodox civilization. “Europe’s Far Right and Putin Get Cozy, With Benefits For Both.”

“In Russia today there is a mix of exalting nationalism, exalting the church and Christian values,” says Lellouche. “They are now replacing the red star with the cross, and they are representing themselves as the ultimate barrier against the Islamization of the continent.”

The Christmas tree outside of Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral is traditionally purchased by French groups and worshippers. This year it was a gift from the Russian government.

Marine Le Pen, head of the National Front, has made no secret of her admiration for Putin and has traveled to Moscow on several occasions. It seems to have paid off. Last month a Russian bank lent the National Front $11 million.

Two more salient points:

1. “Lellouche” is Pierre Lellouche, a “member of a mainstream conservative party.” His dismissive tone of Front National and its Russian orientations tells me all I need to know. You can always be sure a “conservative” is doing the opposite of what he should be doing if he wanted to defeat the Left, and will always be thinking the opposite of what he should be thinking. Don’t be a “conservative”– remember the rules.

2. One of Houellebecq’s details in his story of France’s Islamization is the new role of far-off, foreign, resource-rich Islamic nations like Qatar and Saudi Arabia in providing funding for France’s elite universities (presumably suffering financial difficulties). Am I too optimistic to see the parallel with a far-off, foreign, resource-rich Orthodox nation like Russia providing funding to a French institution like the Front National, or to the Notre Dame Cathedral’s Christmas Tree?

Houellebecq’s prophecy for France’s future under Islam ought to be reconsidered with the three-pronged clash of civilizations in mind. It is not Islamic civilization, but Orthodox, that stands the better chance of rescuing the ruins of the West. The two faces of European civilization — Western and Eastern, Latin and Greek, Roman and Byzantine, Catholic and Orthodox — have shared a fraught, but fraternal, history. The Russians put an end to the madness of Napoleon. They put an end to the madness of Hitler. They may, perhaps, put an end to the madness of Obama. Trapped in the abyss of its own vast wealth, the West lobotomizes itself with mad ideologies that dissolve families and all other organic bonds, replacing them with sub-optimal publicly-produced substitutes. It normalizes insanity and pathologizes health in the quest for eternal equality. Sickness, sterility and death are touted as moral advancements, while all expressions of natural virility are feared, medicated, suppressed, diverted, or finally quashed by the State. The results — such as plunging fertility rates — speak for themselves. I myself hear it now already; but in thirty years, the silence of a missing generation shall be deafening. I can only hope that the silence, once in a while, will be interrupted not by the shrill howls of the muezzin, but by the ringing and chiming of old church bells — and perhaps even the laughter of children playing in the streets, carefree.

The post The Clash of Civilizations in 2015: The West, Russia and Islam appeared first on Social Matter.

All three walked quickly. They maintained a nervous gait, as if trying to angrily injure the ground with each step. Hands in pockets, their backpacks hoisted high and tight so that they were leaning inwards. Their eyes never met mine, because their peculiar postures kept their lines of sight directed firmly downwards two meters ahead of them. All three had white earphones firmly implanted into their heads. All three became separate again as quickly as they had become close.

For a moment as they walked away, I felt as if I had witnessed something of supreme importance, even though I didn’t know what it was. Breath firmly bated, balanced somewhere between contemplation and bewilderment, I then finally exhaled a knowing chuckle: I had just witnessed social alienation!

Exhortations on the dangers of social alienation (or atomization, or isolation, if you prefer), are hardly limited to the Right. Slate, among other things, relates a statistic that “loneliness” has doubled among Americans since the 1980’s. The Los Angeles Times says “People who are socially isolated are more likely to die prematurely, regardless of their underlying health issues…” Social alienation – the term I will stick with – is hardly an invented problem for traditionalists and Luddites, yet its manifestations are poorly articulated by the secular clerisy and its implications even more poorly.

The most recent vogue seems to be to describe problems of social alienation in relation to, or as a result of, social media and technological advances. The Slate writer in the previously linked piece only implicates new technologies as causes of social alienation. Her personal anecdote about loneliness begins with a coast-to-coast relocation, but she doesn’t overtly identify her move as a culprit. It is easy to see why technology attracts the most blame – throw a stone through Times Square and you’re more likely to break someone’s iPhone than someone’s skull (at least, you’ll break both).

Yet technology alone cannot be blamed for social alienation – iPhones and Facebook accounts do not force themselves on unsuspecting socially integrated people in the middle of the night in a dark alleyway (or frat-house, for the feminists out there). The three atomized individuals who passed by me and my street corner made a conscious choice before they began their journeys across town not to care for the bustle and noise of their homes and fellow citizens. If a fellow citizen was whistling holiday tunes, they would not know. If songbirds sang today, they would not know. If a cry for help rang out from behind a building, they would not know. Since they had made a conscious decision to notice nothing but their feet and the two meters of pavement in front of them, they would hardly know anything about their surroundings at all. Ought one not feel a chill realizing that pop music might get in the way of rescue after an accident or attack?

Where does one typically shove in the earphones and ignore reality? On airplanes? Public transport? Yours truly, who strives to be socially integrated rather than alienated, typically only turns on the iPod on international flights, surrounded by cranky foreigners. I recall one particularly interesting transatlantic flight, wherein I was sandwiched between a number of uniformed American soldiers returning from Iraq on one side, and a number of bearded Muslim scholars of some sort attired in traditional Islamic garb on the other. Yes, in such a situation, I would imagine the healthy response to be alienating oneself from the particular social situation, and inputting the earphones. Yet what does it say about Western society, then, that self-imposed isolation by technology, even while in public, is the norm? Frankly, it says that the average Westerner has come to expect to meet cranky foreigners in daily life outside the home.

I see the roots of social alienation in the political policies enacted by government functionaries steeped in the ideologies of materialism, globalism, internationalism, secularism and socialism. From small Italian city centres swarming with Bangladeshi families to sprawling German cities filled with loitering Africans, the doctrines of diversity, multiculturalism and mass immigration have never been proven so harmful yet been so devoutly implemented anyway. While the precise source escapes me, I recall one German identitarian remarking that, above everything, what bothered him most about immigrants was how loud they were compared to Germans – boomboxes, shouting matches, loud conversations; all these disrupted the rhythmic lulls of native German life. In such a situation, why not atomize? Choice of music in, “vibrant” “multicultural” life out. This has become the default situation, seemingly, from Seattle to Stuttgart.

International industrial capitalism certainly plays a role too – the modern world is unique in the way it prompts people to move from city to city, or even country to country, in search of a paycheck. A growing class of rootless cosmopolitans certainly doesn’t positively affect the average social alienation of a society. Yet, the most flagrant gestures of inward, anti-social movement do not stem from periodic relocation. It is not just that citizens fail to invest money in their local communities, or fail to establish long-term clubs or businesses or relationships due to their nomadic modern lifestyles. Rather, they have opted not to invest even their eyes or ears in their surroundings. Modernity has turned the public sphere into a 3:00am Bangkok—Kabul flight with a crappy airline, and the Cathedral reassures us this is a great improvement on our societies of old.

On a recent trip to Germany, I spent an afternoon exploring the streets of my hotel neighborhood and killing time in the cafés and bars therein. In the few free hours I had, I remember noticing an animated Greek couple, an angry Serb yelling into a mobile phone, a visibly intoxicated (and possibly retarded) Russian, a Turkish kebab vendor who couldn’t affect a German “r,” and a surly blonde German waitress, covered in tattoos, who served me my coffee. (The café bathroom had an ANTIFA sticker on the door). The stream of native Germans, whom I passed on the street, silent and unobtrusive, failed to make an impression on me. I can’t remember how many of them wore earphones.

The post Thy Name is Social Alienation appeared first on Social Matter.