Erich replies to Spencer

The other day Robert Spencer replied at Jihad Watch to the criticisms of him by blogger Erich and myself posted at VFR. Spencer said he was not guilty of the contradiction imputed to him, namely that one hand he says Islamic reform is impossible and on the other hand he undermines that message by constantly stating his hopes and expectations that Muslims will reform. I have not gotten around to writing a reply, but Erich has done so at his weblog, Jihad Watch Watch. It is stimulating to find someone who is an even closer reader than myself of Spencer’s endless self-positioning and game playing.

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Richard W. writes:

The author of Jihad Watch Watch used a lot of words to make the same point you have made repeatedly vis-a-vis the whole crew of them (Steyn, etc.): they don’t have a plan.

Curiously, as much as they profess respect for Oriana Fallaci, they somehow missed the central point of her two books on Islam, which I would take to be: Islam is not compatible with Western civilization. We must roll back, reduce and eliminate the existence of Islam in the West.

Say what you will about Fallaci, her writing is crystal clear in its message.

I think the best response to Spencer’s attack on you is an open letter that asks him simply: What do you propose we in the West do about Islam? As is pointed out on the JWW site you have to strain Spencer’s writings with fine screen to get an answer to this most basic question.

I have a related observation on Spencer.

Many thoughtful conservatives understand the seriousness of the Moslem problem in Europe, and the importance of European health to the future of America. Another problem I have with Spencer et. al is they are focusing on someone else’s problem rather than their own.

I believe the Moslem percentage in the USA is one percent or less. There is really only one city, Dearborn, Michigan that is called out as a Moslem enclave in the USA. I have never seen a scenario where this small percentage becomes the same level of threat that Denmark has. It’s likely that Mormons will always outnumber Moslems in the USA, as they do today.

Meanwhile the number of Mexican and Latino illegals is said to number as high as 20 million. There is, to be sure more of a terrorist threat from the Moslems, regardless of their number. Perhaps this alone justifies the attention spent on them.

But many of the problems that Europe faces vis-a-vis the Moslems we are not facing here in regards to our Moslem minority. We don’t have Moslem riots. We don’t have a demographic trend that says Moslems will be the majority. We don’t have Moslem “no-go” zones in our major cities. The cultural jihad of Islam is pretty minor here.

Not so with the Mexican Cultural Jihad. That is in full swing. We do have lots of Mexican ghettos. We have large, violent Latino gangs, including the universally feared MS-13. There are large de facto no-go zones in many cities controlled by these gangs. We see American culture giving way to Mexican culture in everything from pervasive lack of insurance by Mexican drivers, to ticky-tacky ad hoc building additions (I observed a lot of this on a recent trip the LA), to farm animals being kept in urban neighborhoods, to the prevalence of pregnancy among teen girls.

And most importantly we see the overwhelming sense of arrogance, destiny and entitlement among Mexicans in the USA that we see among Moslems in Europe. Recall the May Day protests of several years ago, for instance.

The call for Amnesty for the unknown number (of millions) of illegals and other Mexification schemes (from dual citizenship to the NAFTA superhighway) seems like a threat to our American culture that is much more akin to what the French, British and Dutch face from their Moslems. Yet Spencer et. al. are essentially silent on this, too.

Which indicates to me that they are not really serious people concerned with maintaining Western Civilization as much as people who found an interesting niche in the ideological universe. (Steyn at least addressed some of this in his America Alone, but generally comes to the conclusion that high Mexican birth rates are a plus because it will keep the Moslems a minority in the USA. In this case the cure may be worse than the illness.)

Victor Davis Hanson, much to his credit took on this whole topic in his book “Mexifornia: A state of becoming,” although not entirely satisfactorily.

Endless yammering by Americans about how terrible the Moslem threat is in Europe without any discussion of the parallel Latino threat in the USA strikes me as a very odd type of denial. Or else, these are simply not serious and deep thinkers, which is probably true of at least some of them.

I would like to see more discussion of fixing our problems and avoiding Aztlan, which is happening. I can go read Brussels Journal if I really want to tune in on the status of Islamic takeover of Europe. They are a lot closer to the problem than Spencer (and a lot more realistic about what might be done to fix it too.) This goes for the entire segment of American Jihadi-obsessives.

LA replies:

The reason for the phenomenon you describe is that Islam is not like other immigration problems. It’s unique. People who can see that Islam is a threat, often do not see that the Hispanic invasion is a threat. It’s very common. Take Catholic and Jewish neocons. The Catholic neocons at First things are someone concerned about Islam, but love Hispanic immigration because they want to Catholicize America. Some Jewish neocons are somewhat concerned about Islam, but Islam with its 1,400 year old sacralized hatred of Jews represents a highly distinct threat that is not posed by Hispanics.

The thing to understand is that Islam both has overlap with the immigration problem generally, AND it is distinct and needs to be dealt with distinctively.

However, I have not addressed your deeper point. It is true that the selective concern about one big immigration problem and the ignoring of another big immigration problem shows that these people do not have a holistic sense of our civilization and therefore do not grasp the threats to it. Careerism, as you point out, may also be a part of this. Being a professional warner about islam has become a career niche for some people.


Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 24, 2008 06:04 PM | Send
    

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