105 lines
6.9 KiB
Plaintext
105 lines
6.9 KiB
Plaintext
Suicidalism
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<p>The most important weapons of al-Qaeda and the rest of the Islamist<br />
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terror network are the suicide bomber and the suicide thinker. The<br />
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suicide bomber is typically a Muslim fanatic whose mission it is to<br />
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spread terror; the suicide thinker is typically a Western academic or<br />
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journalist or politician whose mission it is to destroy the West’s<br />
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will to resist not just terrorism but any ideological challenge at all.</p>
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<p>But al-Qaeda didn’t create the ugly streak of nihilism and<br />
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self-loathing that afflicts too many Western intellectuals. Nor, I<br />
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believe, is it a natural development. It was brought to us by<br />
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Department V of the KGB, which was charged during the Cold War with<br />
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conducting memetic warfare that would destroy the will of the West’s<br />
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intelligentsia to resist a Communist takeover. This they did with<br />
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such magnificent effect that the infection outlasted the Soviet Union<br />
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itself and remains a pervasive disease of contemporary Western<br />
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intellectual life.</p>
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<p><span id="more-218"></span></p>
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<p>Consider the following propositions:</p>
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<ul>
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<li>There is no truth, only competing agendas.
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</li>
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<li>All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority<br />
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over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West’s history of racism and<br />
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colonialism.</li>
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<li>There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture<br />
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to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such<br />
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standards is an evil oppressor.</li>
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<li>The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of<br />
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the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be<br />
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impoverished and miserable.</li>
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<li>Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal.<br />
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Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to<br />
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criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.</li>
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<li>The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only<br />
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victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals<br />
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are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying<br />
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with poor people and criminals.)</li>
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<li>For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It<br />
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is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself.<br />
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But “oppressed” people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are<br />
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merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.</li>
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<li>When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner<br />
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is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist’s point of<br />
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view, and make concessions.</li>
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</ul>
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<p>These ideas travel under many labels: postmodernism, nihilism,<br />
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multiculturalism, Third-World-ism, pacifism, “political correctness”<br />
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to name just a few. It is time to recognize them for what they are,<br />
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and call them by their right name: suicidalism.</p>
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<p>Trace any of these back far enough (e.g. to the period between 1930<br />
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and 1950 when Department V was at its most effective) and you’ll find<br />
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a Stalinist at the bottom. Among the more notorious examples ware:<br />
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Paul de Man — racist and Nazi propagandist turned Stalinist, and<br />
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fonder of postmodernism; Jean-Paul Sarte, who described the effects<br />
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of Stalinism as “humane terror” and helped invent existentialism; and<br />
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Paul Baran, who developed the thesis that capitalism depended on the<br />
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immiseration of the Third World after Marx’s immiseration of the<br />
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proletariat failed to materialize.</p>
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<p>Al-Qaeda didn’t launch any of these memes into the noosphere, but<br />
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it relies on them for political cover. They have another effect as<br />
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well: when Islamists characterize the West as “decadent”, and aver<br />
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that it is waiting to collapse in on itself at the touch of jihad,<br />
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they are describing quite correctly and accurately the effects of<br />
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Western suicidalism.</p>
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<p>Stalinist agitprop created Western suicidalism by successfully<br />
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building on the Christian idea that self-sacrifice (and even<br />
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self-loathing) are the primary indicators of virtue. In this way of<br />
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thinking, when we surrender our well-being to others we store up grace<br />
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in Heaven that is far more important than the momentary discomfort of<br />
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submitting to criminals, predatory governments, and terrorists.</p>
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<p>The Communist atheists of Department V understood that Christian<br />
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self-abnegation tends to inculcate a cult of self-sacrifice even among<br />
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Westerners who are themselves agnostics or atheists. All the<br />
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propagandists had to do was make the case that the value of<br />
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self-abnegation applies to culture as well as individuals. By doing<br />
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so, they were able to entrench the idea that suicidalists are morally<br />
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superior to non-suicidalists.</p>
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<p>They did this so successfully that at least one major form of<br />
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Western self-abnegation seems to have developed as a secondary<br />
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phenomenon: “deep environmentalism”. I can’t find any sign that this<br />
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traces back to the usual Stalinist suspects, but it is rather<br />
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obviously a result of generalizing suicidalism not just to culture but<br />
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to species.</p>
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<p>I think it’s important to understand that, although suicidalism<br />
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builds on some pre-existing pathologies of Western culture, it is not<br />
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a native or natural development. It is an infection that evildoers<br />
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and their dupes created and then spread as part of a war against the<br />
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West; their goal was totalitarian control, and part of their method<br />
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was to talk the West into slitting its own throat.</p>
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<p>Al-Qaeda’s goal is the restoration of the Caliphate and the<br />
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imposition of shari’a law on the West so that the Dar al-Harb is<br />
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abolished and absorbed into the Dar al-Islam. In other words,<br />
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totalitarian theocracy. Western suicidalists have transferred<br />
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their allegience from Communism to Islamofascism without a hitch.<br />
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They’re doing their best to see that we lose — and their<br />
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best is rather more effective than any bombing campaign.</p>
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<p>Thus, to defeat al-Qaeda, stopping the suicide bombers is<br />
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not sufficient. We must recognize, condemn, and reject the<br />
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suicide thinkers as well.</p>
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<p>UPDATE: Readers who think I’m peddling mere conspiracy theory here should read<br />
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1929631200/103-2318992-6001459?v=glance">Double Lives : Stalin, Willi Munzenberg and the Seduction of the Intellectuals</a> for a description of the way KGB disinformation activity, espionage and memetic warfare fused in the 1930s.</p>
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<p>MORE: Some intelligent comments on these memes<br />
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<a href="http://weblog.roth-cline.net/archives/2005/09/the_rest_of_the.html">here</a>, pointing out that they get their<br />
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infectivity from being partially true.</p>
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