The War of Ideas

The link is to a rather long post about the evolution of the modern assault on Western Civilization by the forces of Islam, and is a good primer on how we got here. Where exactly "here" is is a bit ambiguous; Walid Phares places us in the "Fourth War of Ideas" since 2009, and I don't really know what the chances are of us surviving as secular technological societies, but I do know that it has to happen.

Ideas are obviously the key to an ideological struggle of any description, so the trick in our progressive societies is to identify those which are incompatible with those societies. As we are a very big tent, there are a lot of things that we can digest, but there are various rumblings of indigestion in societies both progressive and would-be progressive. What is causing these problems? Well I'll have to identify symptoms before I can get to more specifics. Since I am
talking about Islam (quel surprise) I will use a couple of recent and controversial developments.

First, close to home Quebec is cracking down on the niqab. The niqab, as you may know (or not) is the full-face covering worn by particularly repressed Muslim women, only a small step away from a burqa in that you can see her eyes. I'm not a fan of the headscarf, but it's pretty recent even in our (western) history that women don't routinely cover their hair, so I can't be too
upset about those. More importantly than my opinions/feelings is the fact that a headscarf doesn't obscure your identity, and is therefore not an outright offence to civil society. Both the niqab and the burqa SHOULD be banned in Canada and any other civilized place too.

What Quebec has been doing with this (and with several other reactions to recent immigrants trying to make us conform to them) is to drag these issues out into the light, force the public and politicians to confront them. Part of the War of Ideas is to suppress criticism of your side of the fight. If every criticism of anything "Islamic" becomes "Islamophobia" it harnesses the forces of Political Correctness to protect the jihadi agenda. Unlike the Illuminati and other notional world-spanning conspiracies, this one is real and has millions of adherents living and expounding in plain sight. Quebec's actions here are tilting the balance back toward us and away from the jihadis, although it is but a battle in a war that has so far lasted 1400+ years.

The fundamentalist Muslim base in Canada is relatively weak, especially politically, so opposition to Quebec saying "no" to the niqab has been limited and not gaining any traction that I can see, despite the CBC's best efforts. Europe however is on the front line as always (except 9/11) and the next example shows what can happen when you run into the full force of jihadi money and resulting political influence.

Libya, in case you didn't notice, has declared war on Switzerland of all places. Not of course in the standard Westphalian model of a declaration thereof, or even a Pearl Harbour-style attack, but in a call for jihad against and the dissolution of Switzerland. As this was coming from the head of state of Libya you would be inclined in most cases to call up the reserve and put the air force on high alert. That is, if the head of state in question wasn't Gaddafi (pick your spelling).

The trigger was ostensibly the Swiss plebiscite of November 2009 which banned the construction of any new minarets in their country. Of course Gaddafi had a bone to pick with the Swiss after they had the temerity to arrest his swinish son Hannibal for beating some of his retinue in the lobby of a posh hotel in Geneva in 2008. There were some tit-for-tat travel restrictions, the end result of which was the EU throwing Switzerland under the bus and sucking up to Gaddafi. Much of this after Gaddafi declared jihad on Switzerland. Shows you how much backbone the EU has, but that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

Two of the most powerful weapons in any kind of war are money and fear. Oil gives Gaddafi a lot of money and a certain amount of fear-mongering capability associated with both what he can do with the money and (much less of a threat) the effect of turning off the tap to Europe. It has been shown that fear works against him; Iraq (2003) scared the shit out of him and prompted him to come clean on Lockerbie and his abortive WMD program. Now however he has recovered from that and has found a lever to use against the EU and anyone who displeases him.

Appeasement has been tried before, and we know how that came out in 1939, but it's a lot older than that:

IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,
To call upon a neighbour and to say:-
"We invaded you last night-we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld
And then you'll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:-
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray,
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:-

"We never pay any one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost,
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"

A long insert, but this way you couldn't just ignore the link and besides, excerpts just didn't work for full effect. A common theme here, but you have to stand your ground in the War of Ideas as much as in any other. The difference in any other kind of fight is that there are times and places for a tactical withdrawal, whereas with Ideas you can't give an inch. That leads into another problem in warfare, and that is weak or otherwise unreliable allies.

Switzerland stood firm here, but were undercut by pusillanimous Europe. The parallel here being with Czechoslovakia in 1938, the final act of appeasement to Hitler which weakened the forces against him when a firm stand would have told him where to get off. Hopefully we can't stretch this analogy too far, but we all know what came next.