Racist!
Recent events at LGF and Gates of Vienna, amongst others, have left me at something of a loss. I’ve made several attempts to organise my thoughts on the matter in to a coherent narrative but, unlike some of my compatriots, it would appear that my ability to essay is rather lacking except in the spur of the moment, when I’ve been known to say rather silly things…
The blessing and curse of the internet is that things once said can never be unsaid, no matter what your subsequent views. A blessing, because such things can be used to reveal double-talk and outright lies, which LGF excelled at in the not so distant past; but a curse, in that anything you might say will forever be available for others to attack you no matter what decisions you make afterwards.
The whole farago has now reached the point where even Robert Spencer, who spoke at the SIOE conference in Brussels not so long ago, is starting to make distancing noises about some of the people that took part. The problem seems to be that Spencer has not yet examined the evidence presented, and is relying on the word of his friend, Charles Johnson of LGF. This is of course entirely understandable, however it must be pointed out that every objection Spencer has raised has already been answered.
European politics are not the same as US politics, no matter how people might want to think otherwise. Simplistic statements in the vein of “The right in europe is authoritarian” or various versions of the idea that all europeans are racist are, frankly, hogwash. Rhetorical nonsense. It would be so easy to dismiss the last few weeks as politicking by far-right groups who are trying to hijack the anti-jihad movements, but that ignores just about everything that has actually happened on the ground and the historical roots of the movements that are getting involved. There is a wider context than simply fighting Islam. Europe has “history”, in the same way that a separated couple or a criminal and the detective who have played cat and mouse for 30 years have “history”. To simply dismiss a party like VB as racist and far-right ignores their stated goals, but it also ignores the stated and unstated goals of the people that oppose them. VB threatens the entire political order of the European Union by pushing for the secession of Flanders. It threatens the very raison d’etre of the entire project by proposing a national solution to problems that were created by a supranational organisation. The EU is predicated on the destruction of national identity and anything that promotes national identity must therefore be taken out of play; it is deemed racist, xenophobic, hateful. The very concept of patriotism and national pride are opposed by the EU and its camp.
Those people, the ones that opposed VB, also oppose us. The EU is now openly - in its fashion - moving to incorporate large parts of the Mahgreb in to a “Mediterranean” extension of the Union, shifting the focus east and south, away from the old christian centre of Europe toward an islamically oriented centre. The first public inkling of this was proposed by Sarkozy not long after he was elected, as an alternative to Turkey’s accession, but this is like the many non-official institutions and agencies that the EU has been setting up in recent years, many of which form the seeds of governmental institutions, and that will be incorporated as such under the provisions of the Lisbon treaty - the “reform” treaty that is the EU constitution in all but name.
It is this background against which the association with VB and SD must be viewed. They are a means to open up a second front against the threat we face. Shutting them out now won’t doom us, but it will set us back years in the long run.
