I recently finished Douglas Murray’s The War on the West, and thought it pretty good. Its thesis is that the Woke, and extreme Leftists in general, are espousing an activism of destroying all of Western culture, which, including music, literature, capitalism, politics, food, and so on, is seen as uniformly deplorable as it’s largely the produce of white European men. (The chapter on “cultural appropriation” is particularly good.) You’ll especially appreciate it if you like examples of stupid wokeness.
Now I’m not 100% in agreement with Murray that Western culture is superior in nearly every way, but neither am I sure that he really believes that. I know he’s more xenophobic than I, thinking that anti-British immigrants should be expelled from the UK, but I can live with some disagreement. But I do like his approbation for Israel in the current war, an approbation expressed quite eloquently. At any rate, I think you should read the book, ideally after having finished his earlier The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race, and Identity.
Speaking of those who hate America, I think this is instantiated in a pro-Palestinian rally that just took place in Dearborn, Michigan. There are videos at the link for verification, and you can go to the site by clicking on the Middle East Media Research Institute headline below (MEMRI is reliable, and it’s run by my friend Yigal Carmon):
A summary (note that Linda Sarsour showed up):
On November 29, 2023, the New Generation for Palestine, founded by Michigan comedian Amer Zahr, held a rally marking the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People in Dearborn, Michigan, which was streamed live on the organization’s Facebook page. Abdullah Hammoud, mayor of Dearborn, spoke at the event, he said that Dearborn is a “city of resistance.” He said that the question is not whether his community will vote for Biden or Trump in the 24 presidential elections, but whether Biden listens to them, or to constituents who stuff his pockets with money. Master of ceremonies, Adam Abusalah, a former congressional aide to Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) and campaigner for Biden in the 2020 elections, addressed President Biden and said: “You are a cancer in our country.” Later in the event he led the crowd in the chant: “Genocide Joe!” Osama Siblani, editor and publisher of the Arab American News, said that a new generation has emerged, who will “clean” the U.S. Congress and White House of the bloodthirsty killers. He said: “We are on the road to a great victory here in D.C. and there in Palestine.” Siblani pledged: “No vote for Biden and no vote for Trump!” Political activist Linda Sarsour said that there will be a “permanent ceasefire” between Hamas and Israel, because Israel has lost the war. Co-master of ceremonies, Lexis Zeidan, concluded the rally, saying: “It doesn’t end with a ceasefire, that is the bare minimum, it ends with the dismantling of the terrorist racist State of Israel.”
As Malgorzata said, “I’m horrified: these are people who hold public office in America and yet hate America.” Indeed. these people seem to be Islamists. Indeed, if you read the Qur’an, a good Muslim must also be an Islamist. Note that there’s a call to dismantle Israel. Yes, that’s what they mean by “From the river to the sea. . . “. These people are not ignorant of the meaning of that phrase, even if some college students are.
Douglas Murray would say that these people should be expelled from America given that their aim seems to be to destroy the country and recast it in an Islamic mole. I can’t go so far as to call for deportations, but, like Malgorzata, I’m horrified. Genocide Joe, indeed!
Our tax dollars and lacking education system and integration policies all at work here.
I can only imagine how other points in history – wilder even than now – must’ve broken the brain.
As Bari Weiss has stated on her site:
Since 7-Oct-2023, the mask has fallen from these people. Now we know what the really think.
Knowledge is power. Act accordingly.
We should demand they renounce their citizenship in this evil realm.
Who gets to decide the criteria for being “America-hating” enough to forcibly renounce one’s citizenship though?
I’m not American, but saying “I believe the United States has no right to exist”, as Akiea Gross does in one of today’s earlier posts, crosses any threshold you might want to imagine for renouncing citizenship — voluntarily or not.
There have always been groups within America who are seemingly bent on destroying the religious and political diversity that defines America. Here, because of a combination of unfortunate circumstances, we may well get a xenophobic & toxic narcissist of a president who will be the opposite of what these activists intended.
The trouble is that it’s probably not even the opposite of what they intend any more. They *want* America’s political system to fail. Ideologues always imagine that somehow *they* will get to define whatever new system arises from the chaos of that failure, just as the communists and liberals who united against the Shah in 1978 imagined that they would be the ones to mould the new Iran.
The 13 Colonies were incredibly lucky (or blessed) about what emerged after the British sailed home. Especially when you consider what befell France a few years later in 1789.
People of good will are stuck in a bind. On the one hand we are steeped in democracy and want to tolerate all comers to the pluralist table. On the other hand if there is one group who’s stated aim is to subvert our culture and our democracy, a theocratic mob who have no interest in tolerance, how do you absorb them into the fold? Gradual assimilation is the hope, of course, but in the extreme case that might not work. So, you may feel compelled to submit and be overwhelmed or to use force to settle the matter. Not good choices.
No other choice? please….you ignore them, you make jokes about them, you exclude them from meetings…..you bounce their checks…..assimilation is happening but it will still take two more generations for full break. In the meantime fathers will continue to behead their daughters.And leftist Jews will continue to see Muslims and Arabs as friends.
There’s no good solution. The best hope is that the general drift away from religion will affect Muslims too.
They’ll always be a core of believers. Plus some of it may be ethnic rather than religious.
Here’s Ralph Nader (son of Lebanese Christians) supporting Palestine.
https://www.ctpublic.org/news/2023-12-20/ralph-nader-criticizes-us-response-to-israel-hamas-war-internet-gulag-of-social-media-and-more
Frightening…
We need a more probationary immigration system. When immigrants come in and express anti democratic and anti semitic ideas they could be expelled. Under this regimen,they wouldn’t get citizenship until after a couple of generations. A rote Muslim ban would exclude liberal Muslims like Qanta Ahmed and alienate Muslims who have some capacity for liberal democracy. Immigants who bear more than two kids should be taxed for the 3rd kid and expelled if they have more. A major part of the take over agenda of Islamists is to move in, out breed the natives and take over. This process is considerably advanced in France.
Only 11% of French citizens are Muslim.
53% have no religon. 34% are Christians. (Data from 2020)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France
53 % of who? Thirty four % of Muslims are Christians? Eleven per cent means that, in an election, Muslims can be the swing vote. Increasingly, politicians will have to pander to them in order to win.. Eventually, France may break off relations with Israel and develop a diplomatic enmity for Israel in the long term.
He’s referring to French citizens in general. (Follow the link).
11% Muslim! France is forever changed.
How many immigrants (legal and otherwise) from Muslim countries in France are citizens? France doesn’t have automatic birth citizenship (although citizenship is granted to all born in France upon application) and naturalization requires that the immigrant satisfy the authorities that he has integrated into French culture and society. Since most immigration to France (and all of Europe) is from majority Muslim countries, and Muslims are well-known to be marginalized in ghettos, it seems likely that naturalization to citizenship is not a predictably common event.
Since most non-citizens in France are Muslim, the proportion of French residents (legal and illegal) who are Muslim must be higher than 11%. In certain cities (Marseilles, Lyon, and the grottier banlieus of Paris) the proportion is much much higher, high enough to cause a great deal of simmering grievance that ignites into trouble. Whether this leads to “taking over” is another question but random violence by Muslim extremists against strangers is noteworthy in an otherwise peaceable country.
You should read about Qanta Ahmed, Zuhdi Jasser and the average Balkan Muslim.
Thank you for highlighting these Muslims whose aim is anything but a “global caliphate”. I do not wish to be associated with the kind of rot contained in the majority of this thread. Broad brushed, maligning statements lodged against all members of any one particular group sicken me. I appreciate your guts in rising above the fray.
Well bless their hearts. I wish them every success in their necessary endeavours to convert their co-religionists.
We,ve got a world wide population problem to begin with
I’d apply it to every one, not just immigants.
France has a large Vitenamese minority, Do you ever hear of them rioting?
A “liberal” or “moderate” muslim is not a muslim. Sorry they don’t exist, they are all the fifth columnists in our midst. The aim is a global caliphate, as Hamas stated “After Israel we are coming for you” you being non muslims. The liberal democracies of the west in particular need to wake up!
+1
Tax immigrants who have more than two kids? I think it’s a bad idea to subvert the ideals of Western Civilization in order to save it.
And western countries encourage immigration for the express purpose of keeping our population demographics young enough to keep the gerontocratic economy going. We accept that social cohesion suffers but if you want Medicare for all (or even for some) you need young workers. (I trust no one thinks we encourage immigration just to get “diversity” or to rescue people from persecution.) If immigrants are restricted to two kids — they pretty much are anyway by the high cost of housing in the large cities they tend to settle in — they will end up with the same average 1.5 children per woman that we are saddled with in our native-born population. If the tax is large enough to deter that third child it will be counterproductive.
Of course this assumes that the immigrants we get are the ones we want having large(r) families and unfortunately this assumption may be breaking down. If so, we are screwed.
No, tax ANYONE who has more than two kids. Decrease welfare and other benefits if couple already has two children. Ban immigrants with more than two children.Give priority to single immigrants.
To what end would you make those rules, Lorna?
We want to increase our birth rates, not decrease them. That was China’s mistake. Now it is a gerontocracy. So far nothing has worked to try to get women in the West to have more babies but we should at least not deter them with taxation.
How to deter the poor from having children is an age-old problem. (I would pay a bounty for abortion and a bigger bounty for sterilization — because the benefits are more durable –, but I’m warped.)
If we had more babies we wouldn’t need immigration at all, except for specific types of work that native-born can’t or won’t do.
Large numbers of single young men immigrating to your country are a recipe for trouble even if they work gainfully. A terrible idea.
Married people with large families (present or future) who can earn their keep are the kind of immigrants Canada tries to solicit. Of course no one wants welfare claimants or people with contagious or chronic health conditions but I don’t understand the enmity toward large families of industrious productive healthy immigrants. They are our countries’ future.
The idea that we should stop making babies is a strangely Western conceit that hit the baby boomers particularly hard. So many of us are childless by choice or by chlamydia. Looking around our neighbourhood I see subsequent generations (including my son) having babies again. That’s good.
Edit in P.S. to the host: I really like the Archeopteryx logo! (For some reason I see it only on the desktop, not my iPad.)
Dream on and ignore the facts: developed secular countries are mostly below replacement numbers. The promoters of population growth are increasingly distressed as they see the religious mandate for lots of kids being completely ignored. Their pal economists and countries like Germany are in a panic because they dont see sufficient births to carry on and expand the capitalist growth economy as well as consumption. Like abortion, marijuana, gay rights, racial equality, population control of one kind or another will be the norm.
You are being inconsistent. If sub-replacement fertility is inevitable — we are already there — (because only religious fanatics want population growth) why would it be necessary to further disincent childbearing with taxation or through other forms of “population control”? You seem to want population control for reasons other than to rebuke religious imperatives. Would you be happier if people had no children at all? I guess I don’t understand your zeal for imposed population control. I don’t think it will ever become the norm beyond a woman’s choice not to procreate.
I don’t favour population growth per se. It would be fine to euthanize one old person for every baby born if you really wanted for some reason to keep the population stable. The important thing is to reduce the dependency ratio. It’s not just paying for the services that old people need. It’s providing the actual labour: Even under negative-growth and shared-poverty communism, who is going to cut their grass, do their shopping, fix their roofs and plumbing, change their diapers, operate on their cataracts and bad hips, cook their meals, and feed them if you don’t have young workers being born, or immigrating? The last generation to live on this earth will be pretty miserable once all of it is all over 80…even if 80 is the new 60. (Dream on.)
Humanity is already creating robots to do the things that no human wants to do. This will continue. For the sake of ecosystems on Earth, we need fewer people on Earth. But if desired, there’s room and resources for a trillion or more people off Earth in our Solar System.
I agree, Leslie. That said, be careful of predicting with the (very important) dependency rate held steady.
I’m a techno optimist and I believe better productivity will reduce that problem.
That said, having been born in 1971 I bought into the “too many people” argument. I/we have no kids by choice. Population wasn’t central to that choice, but it was a factor.
“And if my genes don’t like it they can jump in the lake.” Pinker.
Instead, we have a doggie! A much better idea given our preferences.
to wit: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/
🙂
D.A.
NYC
I agree Sastra. I find the general tone of many of the comments on this article disappointing and disturbing. It is not what I have come expect to read on this excellent website.
Disgusting and scary. There is no ambiguity here regarding what it means to say “From the river to the sea.” And of course, Jew-hater Linda Sarsour was a featured voice.
Sarsour has been quieter of late. Thankfully.
Did you know “sarsoor” (sp) is Arabic for cockroach? Really.
“cockroach” (English) in Arabic is
صرصور
Love that.
My Arabic got better in Lebanon, especially the creepy crawly vocab.
D.A.
NYC
These people are not just nasty. They are also delusional as regards the political situation in the US and how it will develop.
“In the late eighties, when controversy arose over the teaching of required courses in Western civilization, the public became aware of the existence of an Academic Left. “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western culture’s got to go,” shouted radical black and white students at Stanford.”
(Diggins, John Patrick. The Rise and Fall of the American Left. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1992. pp. 291-2)
War on the West is one of the best books I’ve read in the last decade.
Hold on, PCCE: I think Murray wants more the actual, legit terrorists thrown out of the UK. These are people on lists for being paid up members of terrorist orgs.
For some reason their filtering for terrorists mechanism is absent in the UK.
He’s a restrictionist but it is too far to suggest he wants legal immigrants already there to be thrown out.
D.A.
NYC
This Feb 6 article (https://www.npr.org/2024/02/06/1229437685/dearborn-wsj-arab-americans-jihad) on NPR’s website claims that Stalinsky’s WSJ article incites hatred against Muslims. It also states: “NPR was unable to confirm any of Stalinsky’s allegations.” This, despite the video evidence (MEMRI link) from the rally and speeches of the Dearborn MI mayor and other leaders, which clearly supports Stalinsky’s argument. NPR’s inability or unwillingness to consult the evidence is disturbing. (And yes, i am aware this is not the first time, yet still find it very disappointing.)