The coming war?
The below story makes me realize that there may be no escape from the coming war within the West.
AMSTERDAM, 07/02/08 (Netherlands Information Service)—The city of Amsterdam has developed teaching material warning children against the politics of Geert Wilders, newspaper De Telegraaf yesterday reported. Wilders calls the campaign “sickening”.
The newspaper quoted from a letter that the city council has sent to three hundred primary and secondary schools in Amsterdam. Primary school heads believe that the letter is intended to anticipate the anti-Islam film that Wilders, MP and leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV), intends to release in March.
The letter, which the newspaper claims is intended as teaching material, contains cartoons of Wilders, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende and a white family that wants nothing to do with a polite Islamic boy. The text reads: ‘If you say bad things about someone, they will feel hurt. They may not dare to say anything in return, because they are afraid of being hurt even more. Then there is not much left of freedom of speech,’ according to De Telegraaf. [cont.]
Here’s what this story says to me. Modern Western liberals want the West to surrender to Islam, or, at best, they are unwilling to resist that surrender and oppose Islam. Therefore the moment that any prominent figure such as Geert Wilders takes a serious stand against Islamization, the left will declare open war on him; it will undercut him at the very moment he is seeking to prevent some Muslim power grab. Imagine, then, what the left—which still controls all cultural institutions—would do if an entire political party opposing Islam and seeking the restoration of Western society took power or was close to gaining power in a Western society. Would the left quietly accept the end of the liberal order? No, it would freak out and fight back with everything it had.
I’ve said many times that for the West, the historic West, to have any chance to live, the rule of modern liberalism must die. I’ve said that liberalism might die as a result of liberals losing faith in it, or as a result of liberalism being discredited by the disasters it has brought about, or as a result of Islam gaining power in the West and destroying much of liberal society along with its liberalism. But there is one scenario that I have never really discussed, because it is so terrible to contemplate. Liberalism might die—or, the West itself might die—in an all-out civil war within the West, a war to the death between those who believe in the West, and those who seek its destruction.
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Alan Roebuck writes:
A civil war in America would indeed be a horror, but it is possible that the left will not give up without an actual, physical, fight. Although they are busy surrendering to aggressive foreigners, they may finally find the courage to fight the ones they really hate: American (mostly white) Christian conservatives.
So I must reiterate: people will not fight the left unless they believe it is fundamentally, dangerously wrong. (That’s not a sufficient condition, but it is necessary.) And most people will never think the left is wrong without an organized campaign to raise people’s consciousnesses about liberalism ans to argue for proper traditional ideas. Perhaps nobody at VFR has the ability to lead this campaign, but somebody will need to do it.
Think of what you said at VFR about Joe Sobran. He needed to see it in print, in Buchanan’s book, in order to acknowledge the obvious. We need to talk up the obvious
There has been talk about the need for a new party, a party that will properly advance traditionalism and national survival. Fair enough, but such a party will get (almost) nowhere without a campaign such as I mentioned above. If liberalism remains as the unofficial state religion, a traditionalist party will be just a minor splinter group. Granted, a minor party will be better than no party, but we have to think big.
People who can do the work of founding the party and the campaign need to notice and be inspired by these ideas. So let’s talk up these ideas.
Kevin V. writes:
You write of a dire possibility: “Liberalism might die—or, the West itself might die—in an all-out civil war within the West, a war to the death between those who believe in the West, and those who seek its destruction.”
This is in my view the most likely outcome, as terrifyingly sad and horrific as that may be. My reasoning behind that thought is that for far too many in the West the central tenets of liberalism have been effectively codified into their very conception of what it means to be a European, what it means to be a Briton and, even worse, what it means to be a good American. When faced with the choice of either abandoning their most cherished beliefs, to which they give what measure of patriotic devotion they are capable of to, or using the power of the state, which is now and shall be on their side, to silence to opposition, they will choose to go to war against their own with a clear conscience.
As you say, it will freak out and fight back with everything it has. Sadly, “everything it has” includes all major pillars of our society, including the state and the armed forces.
When we are faced with this dark hour we will find ourselves outgunned, outmanned and denounced as the worst sort of traitors.
Figuring a way out of this trap is THE key question facing the nationalist right.
George writes:
Kevin V. writes:
“As you say, it will freak out and fight back with everything it has. Sadly, “everything it has” includes all major pillars of our society, including the state and the armed forces.
“When we are faced with this dark hour we will find ourselves outgunned, outmanned and denounced as the worst sort of traitors.”
The major problem with the liberals using the military to attack whites—either inside or outside the United States—is that the U.S. military’s officer corps and military personnel are still overwhelmingly made up of conservative white men. Of all the institutions in the West in general, and the U.S. in particular, the left has had the lowest level of influence and infiltration within the armed forces.
At a minimum, the left would have to think twice before using the military to maintain racial Marxist doctrine because they could never be 100 percent sure the white led military would actually carry out orders to physically attack white Americans or Western Europeans.
In the case of conflict within the United States, the liberals would always be looking over their shoulders wondering how long the officer corps would stay loyal to them or whether the Joint Chiefs of Staff might privately conclude that society is spiraling so out control that the military should instead take down the government in a coup and impose martial law.
The risk of the military turning against the left is so large that I can’t envision liberals resorting to armed force—at least not successfully.
Rachael S. writes:
It is depressing. The only people who have racial consciousness are you and a handful of other disembodied web personalities, not counting the neo-Nazis.
When I have touched on this subject with other whites, they seem bemused or change the subject. A significant change in the nature of our societal order is the realm of science fiction for them. They probably read reports like the one published today (whites will be a minority by 2050) without registering a single blip of alarm.
Quotes from family members:
“I try not to think of myself as a white person.”
“I think it is interesting to be in the minority.”
“I am going to teach my children Spanish so they are ready for the future.”
When I mentioned that Mexico has historic claims to the American Southwest (and this may be why they are so flagrant about pouring over the border, and might be trying a reconquista) a friend smilingly said, as if it was amusing: “It’s like an invasion!”
(The zombiesque lack of alarm amongst European-Americans makes me wonder if we are being conditioned more aggressively than we think to be suicidal. Are there subliminal messages being beamed into our brains through the television and movies that tell us not to defend our culture, race, etc.? This sounds ridiculous, but is it more ridiculous than white people acting this way? While accepting race-consciousness in other groups? Otherwise intelligent people?!?) [LA replies: I don’t think it’s ridiculous. It is a total immersion in a total mindset. Because it’s everywhere,—in tv sports, in commercials, in entertainment, in our relatives and friends and schools and places of employment, as well as in the formal statements of politicians and opinion-makers—it is not perceived. There is no place from which to see it, much less to stand and oppose it.]
Of course, how do you defend your race when you know your racial-fellows will either turn on you and rend you, zombie-fashion, or ostracize you? What is there to defend? It would be like being the only soldier in an Army who didn’t want to surrender.
Part of this, I think, is the racially mixed aspect of white people in America in general. When I tell people what my ancestry is (Irish, Swedish, German, English, a little bit of Scottish) the usual dismissive response is “So you’re a mutt (haha).”
It is harder to feel racial solidarity or racial identity when one has confusion about which part of Europe they are from … (Notice how half- or full- Italians and Irish are more clear about who they are?)
Once I corrected someone (when they called me a mutt) by replying “I am of European descent.”
To which she responded, “You’re-a-peein,” I’m-a-peein”!”
LA replies:
That’s crazy that people say that. Your ancestry is the typical (one might say classical), mixed northwestern European ancestry of white Americans—Irish, Swedish, German, English, Scottish. The original American ethnicity was formed of people of English background plus closely related northwestern European background. I never heard “mutt” applied to people of that background. That shows the extreme extent of the loss of American identity, turning into contempt for American identity.
I feel for Rachael, surrounded by people like that. But we’re all in the same boat. In most of our cases, the overwhelming majority of our relatives and acquaintances are liberals.
Mark Jaws writes:
Now you are talking, Mr. Auster, and I don’t think it will so hard as you think to get folks worked up into a 1773-type state of agitation. One could make the case that liberalism is dangerous to the financial and physical well being of white traditionalists. I do believe there is a caboodle of undeniable data concerning the costs of illegal immigration, the cost of low-skilled legal immigrants, the cost of the native born welfare class, and so on. Then of course is the crime data with staggering colored-on-white crime rates. “The Color of Crime” is a powerful and alarming read and there is a plethora of terrifying images on YouTube of black savagery being played out on white victims. Furthermore, once the economy turns due south and the Baby Boom starts packing it in, I do think within the next ten years things will get very interesting. The good news for us traditionalists is that Red State America has the oil, the food, the guns, and the people who know how to use them in much greater quantities than the folks in Starbucksland.
LA replies:
Just to clarify, I wasn’t talking about getting people worked up. Also, I wasn’t speaking in racial terms, but of doing something about Islam, though it’s unavoidable that race would be involved, since any conservative reaction will be overwhelmingly white, and the liberals will see this reaction as white, even if it doesn’t present itself as white.
What I was saying was that if there were some national crisis, with, say, some Islamic power play, and if a conservative president tried to stop it, or if there was a genuine attempt to remove illegal aliens, or whatever the issue might be, the liberals would intrude on the side of the Muslims or the illegal aliens or whatever.
So long as there is no real challenge to liberalism, there is social peace. But if there were a real attempt by a genuinely conservative movement or genuinely conservative office holders to reverse liberal policies and save America, liberals would rise against it and there would be some kind of civil war. And the ingrained power of liberalism being what it is, it is hard to see conservatives winning such a confrontation, or winning it in such a way that they would then be able to carry out their policies. Unless one envisions some kind of conservative dictatorship, ruling over liberal America by force, imprisoning liberal journalists and politicians, and so on. But that is too far out for me to envision.
That is why, as I’ve often said, given the fact that liberalism has become the essence of modern Westerners, it seems to me that there is no hope for Western countries short of liberalism dying of its own accord. And I can’t see that happening short of terrible disasters and sufferings brought on by liberalism, that make people finally give up their liberalism and turn to something else.
And that’s where Mr. Roebuck’s approach comes in. When people do start to look for something other than liberalism, a fully developed critique of liberalism and a conservative philosophical and political alternative to liberalism would need to be in place to give them someplace to go.
Dan McCulloch:
Civil war? Come on, people. There’s not going to be a civil war. There may be a skirmish or two, but nothing will come of it. By the time a country gets to the state we’re in there’s no longer the willingness to sacrifice in that way. There’s no willingness, no intelligence, no leadership, no community, no unity, no faith, no trust, no vision, no identity, no philosophy, and our numbers are smaller than we imagine. The Right is always imagining, hoping, spoiling for a great reckoning, a blaze of glory. Our end will not be like that. Our end will be like … Brazil. We are undergoing the Brazilification of America. After which, there will be factions, group identity politics, terrorism, oppression, little race-based enclaves, multi-culti polyglot cities, no-go areas, bribery, corruption, poverty, Marxism, and pot-holes. (and lots of pot-holes) But life will go on. It just won’t be very much to our liking. Whites are going to have to learn to function as an ethno-centric minority within the larger population, in much the way Jews have done for the last 1500 years. If we can do that, we will survive as ourselves. Eventually, there will be a reorganization. In the meantime, we haven’t lost our country yet. We’ll do all we can.
Kilroy M. writes:
Mr. Roebuck states that “people will not fight the left unless they believe it is fundamentally, dangerously wrong.” I disagree (although I note that he does qualify his statement).
Many people see the left as intrinsically flawed but do not have the courage to fight against it. People will go to war only when their stomachs and gas tanks are empty, and when the modern narcotic of infotainment and mindless “idiotbox” amusement is taken from them. This is the product of two generations living under the reign of deracinated materialism. Kevin V. is correct when he writes that “the central tenets of liberalism have been effectively codified into their very conception of what it means to be a European.”
A parallel can be seen in the post Soviet sphere, where three to four generations living under communism have prevented these people today from realising the merits of an honest work ethic and democracy. The Russians apparently want to live in an autocratic feudal state, just like Westerners want to live in material comfort, no matter how much the culture from which their liberty derives is undermined.
Hannon writes:
What modern liberals have done so deftly is to suffuse national life with their version of morality and at the same time not threaten the economic basis of our existence. At least some of them recognize that their own ideological success would be impossible without the underlying material success of previous generations of thinkers, workers and investors. Their politics has avoided the effective promotion of collective bargaining (rather it has declined), nationalization of lynchpin industries and similar oppressions. As long as this holds true, liberals may never bring about their own demise, even though the logical end to their scheme is self-immolation. Could a serious right-left conflict arise from socio-political causes? This seems very unlikely unless it is accompanied by national economic hardship, which history has shown to be a powerful catalyst. And an inevitable development.
I’m not sure where I read this but it seems right: energy and effort expended in “promoting the good” is better than “denouncing the bad” by an order or magnitude, at least. We need to beat back the Dark Forces and claim what is true, especially regarding Islam, but also expound tirelessly on the virtues of the Constitution, Christianity, the legacy of Greek and Roman civilizations and many other anchors of Western development. The key to preventing the extirpation of traditionalism is to attract those with seeing eyes that it represents something much stronger and more equitable than what is promised by modern schemes. The effect of these souls leaving the ranks of liberalism will be much greater than any frontal attack on the decrepit world view of the latter.
BE writes:
I agree that the prospect of a civil war is almost too terrible to contemplate, and yet, like you, I see little hope for change under the current order.
There is one demographic fact that is in our favor, however: liberals have a lower rate of reproduction than conservatives. This means that they are passing their beliefs onto fewer children than the conservatives are, and eventually, we may outnumber them. The downsides are as follows:
1. “Hispanics” have an even higher rate of reproduction and are definitely not on our side; 2. Many high-IQ individuals are liberals, with the consequence that current reproductive trends are dysgenic (i.e., tending towards a lower IQ for the population as a whole); 3. Most conservatives are no more than right-liberals; and 4. Even if the conservatives out-reproduce the liberals over the next few generations, the institutionalized liberal ideology that permeates our society will continue to indoctrinate new converts.
Bleak but not hopeless. Our best hope is for liberalism to die of its own accord, but we cannot take that outcome as a given: we must continue to fight it and provide a superior alternative.
Kilroy writes:
BE writes that “[e]ven if the conservatives out-reproduce the liberals over the next few generations, the institutionalized liberal ideology that permeates our society will continue to indoctrinate new converts.” This only highlights the value of home-schooling. I think the most effective thing we can do is create some sort of cultural separationism. If this is successful, it denies our enemies the recruiting ground (i.e. our children). I am not surprised therefore at the strength of the Left’s insistence on controlling schools, universities, day-care etc. They know they can’t replicate without controlling the youth.
“Snouck Hurgronje” writes:
You ask the question: “Would the left quietly accept the end of the liberal order? No, it would freak out and fight back with everything it had. “
This is what we have seen in the Netherlands. Liberalism and Liberals completely dominated all institutions and all thought that was permitted. However since the attack on the Twin Towers there have been people who challenge Liberal orthodoxy. Who manage to get into the media lime light. Such as Fortuyn, Van Gogh and now Wilders.
The Left reacts by creating waves of hysteria in the media. What happened in the case of Fortuyn is that members of violent extreme leftist groups, such as the squatters and animal rights activists, are activated and may use violence to kill the challenger to orthodoxy. This may intimidate would be challengers. E.g. Conservative Paul Cliteur chose at some point to stop critizising Liberalism and its Shibboleth Islam.
The problem for Liberals is that the method may actually become counter-productive. The more Liberals rail against the challengers, the more popular they become. This is what happened to Fortuyn and to Wilders now. The cat is out of the bag. The huffing and puffing of the Liberal elite only serves to strengthen Wilders’ political base. Wilders completely dominates the media scene and the political landscape with his little party.
It is possible that if Wilders is killed by a Leftist or a Muslim that the Netherlands will return to a state of calm again. But it is also possible that someone else will take over the banner of heterodoxy. The Liberals risk all if they let the mask of benignity slip.
At some point a similar situation might arise in the USA as well. Because the USA has a two-party system it is more difficult for challengers to gain a political base.
Kevin V. writes:
Your correspondent George writes in response to my earlier comment that “[t]he major problem with the liberals using the military to attack whites—either inside or outside the United States—is that the U.S. military’s officer corps and military personnel are still overwhelmingly made up of conservative white men. Of all the institutions in the West in general, and the U.S. in particular, the left has had the lowest level of influence and infiltration within the armed forces.”
I believe George is vastly under-estimating the influence of liberal orthodoxy in our modern Department of Defense. It has been some years now that officers have had their career and promotion critical evaluations include very important sections concerning the officer’s approach to race relations. The modern Army’s commitment to “diversity” and all of the babble that goes along with that rivals any major corporation and, in some cases, even some of our universities.
I would ask readers at VFR to note that there is a mosque on the grounds of the Naval Academy and another at the Navy base in Norfolk and that all Naval officers are taught to believe that this fact denotes the modern Navy’s commitment to tolerance, inclusion and diversity as American ideals. Ideals which they then take a solemn oath to defend. What are such officers’ likely response to be when one of us tells them that we must as a matter of course demolish those mosques and expel Muslim officers from the ranks?
George is right, the officers are mostly conservative, but only in the sense that Rush Limbaugh is.
No, those guns will be pointed at us unless we come up with a plan to avoid this deadly trap and soon.
What the Right has not come fully to grips with is the key fact that the FBI sends its special-agents-in-charge to CAIR fund-raisers in their official capacity. Only when one fully grasps the meaning of that act does one begin to glimpse the enormity of the task ahead of us.
David B. writes:
First, I agree with Kevin V. that liberal orthodoxy infests the American military. I have written on the Forum several times about a book by Brian Mitchell concerning the feminized U.S. armed forces. Mitchell wrote that we even have political commisars, they are called “Equal Opportunity Officers.” Anyone who is not sufficiently for “Equal Opportunity has his career ended. People who say that the military is “conservative,” must remember that the military is also obedient, especially to its political masters. The politicians are for the foreseeable future, liberals.
Over a decade ago, Thomas W. Chittum wrote a book titled, “Civil War Two.” This book got a lot of play on the “Hard Right.” It predicts a balkanized America along racial lines. The Southwest will become Mexican. The Deep South would be a black nation. The Midwest and Northwest would be the white nation. Tennessee will be the southern-most part of the white country. Chittum foresees a violent civil war between these elements. Perhaps because he wrote it in 1995, Chittum says nothing about the Islamic factor.
Chittum is sometimes very lucid, at other times scatterbrained. Samuel Francis reviewed the book in Chronicles a decade ago. Francis concluded that the all-out civil war that Chittum predicted is unlikely to happen. One, the U.S. government would do everything they can to prevent it and hold on to their power. Two, modern Americans are for the most part, “couch potatoes.” I couldn’t find this magazine when I looked for it just now, but I remember Francis making these two points. Samuel Francis seemed to predict the “Brazilization” of America would continue.
Zackary R. writes:
I have been following this discussion closely. If you or any readers are interested, a link to Chittum’s work Civil War 2 in pdf format is here.
As for the debate as to whether or not there will be violent conflict in the future (whether racial or ideological), all I can say is that if the economy tanks, all bets are off.
Thank you for all your work.
Dimitri K. writes:
I once came across a great comment at Gates of Vienna blog: How do you plan to win the civil war if you cannot win the majority in the parliament? I think, and you probably agree with me, that in order to win, conservatives must start producing some persuading ideas. The left has long been doing that using expressive means in their possession. For example, yesterday I watched Star Wars movie for the first time. I was really impressed how talented and powerful leftist propaganda may be! All movie consists of well-made episodes, each 2-3 minutes long, and each having a clear leftist message, often pronounced by the hero aloud as a formula. When we conservatives learn to produce anything as talented and persuading as that, we will win.
By the way, one German director called 9/11 a great play. I know it is immoral, but I believe what he actually meant is that 9/11 had a great persuading potential. Though I would prefer that we create persuasive arguments ourselves.
Transatlantic Conservative writes:
Before civil war comes to the U.S., it will happen in Europe. It will be short and brutal because the peoples of Europe are unarmed, because the armies of the European countries are firmly on the side of the Europe-wide social-democratic power and because—just as in Kosovo—the U.S. is going to be on the side of the socialist EU establishment. [LA replies: This is a terrible possibility I’ve written about before; if it happened, we would have to become enemies of the U.S. government.]
My take on the development of the situation in the U.S. is bleak. I think the ostracizing of conservatives and of Whites more generally will take on forms that are hardly imaginable today. Look towards England that, in many ways, is ahead of us in the dhimmification and nannyfication process: there are serious efforts to prohibit white candidates for election in certain, predominantly black districts. We will be ostracized in academia, in business, media and politics. For a while, we will be the whores, financing the system, then it will collapse because it cannot work without us. If we want to survive, we will have to learn from the Jews. Our situation will be a lot like theirs has been for millennia. Something like a balkanization is bound to happen in the U.S.
The ridiculous thing is: I moved to the United States from Western Europe half a year after 9/11 because I thought, this was the Land of the Free and to join the good fight. I am one of the few LEGAL immigrants to this country and have ended up in one of these blue northeastern states where I dare not send my kids to school. I have taken them out of public school three years ago and we teach them at home. Although this move was never planned before we moved here, it turns out to be a wonderful thing for all of us. The liberals here are very much like the commenter Rachael S. describes her friends and relatives and they are everywhere. Such pompous fools who do not see they work on their own destruction.
I tried the Republican Party: I’m in my mid fifties and I was the youngest at the meetings. Does that say anything about the future of the Republicans?
We need networks beyond the www. I am willing to work and fundraise for a new party or movement.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 11, 2008 07:55 PM | Send