The Unoriginal Muse

This post is cross-posted at Gates of Vienna.

In the latest issue of Private Eye (No 1129, 19th September – 2nd October), The columnist named `Ratbiter´* inadvertently highlights one way that we can distinguish our allies from our opponents by who they in turn ally themselves with.

Anyone who knows anything about nationalism knows that there are two apparent types of nationlists – the real nationalists, who aim for the right of a nation to make its own decisions, and “pseudo-nationalists” who are often just socialists in disguise.

This brings me to Scottish Nationalism, the subject of Ratbiter’s column. Scotland’s nationalist movement grew out of the idea of not wanting to be even remotely associated with the English. I mean it’s fair, really, because we haven’t been particularly nice to the Scots in the past – but then neither were they particularly nice to us, what with all the allying with France and so on when they thought it would be an advantage, and the constant invasions… The history between Scotland and England could fill an entire book. The point is, Scottish nationalism exists and is real, and understandable. They want their own country and their belief is that Scotland is, first and foremost, a land for the Scots. Just don’t ask the Picts what they think…

Unfortunately the Scottish National Party, the self-declared source and defender of the Scottish nationalist movement, is socialist to the core. Scotland has been dominated by Labour and the left almost since leftism was invented and their nationalism, at the political level, is filtered through this leftist lens. Labour has in turn been dominated by Scotland, with the artefact that nearly the entire Labour Cabinet is scottish, as is much of the front bench.

The SNP stands in opposition to “unionist” or “internationalist” Labour as a “nationalist” party of Scotland. Labour wants to preserve the Union in order to maintain its power base and it does so through a combination of pandering and political manoeuvring to make Machiavelli look like a rank amateur. The SNP’s stated policy, in contrast, is independence for Scotland and then immediate accession to the European Union. I find this bitterly ironic. Can you guess why?

As with just about any socialist movement, the name is the exact opposite of the intention. As “liberals” are illiberal, “social democrats” undemocratic and socially-minded “community organisers” neither working for the community nor particularly organised, so “social nationalists” of the SNP, as we might call them, are fundamentally anti-nationalist. Socialism’s ultimate goal is the abolition of individual freedom and the creation of a universal non-national socialist utopia. The preceding internationalism, as exemplified in organisations like the EU, is aimed at removing government as far from the people as possible in order to reduce their control over their own lives.

Speaking of The People, the other ultimate goal of socialism is the abolition of the old identities and beliefs and the creation of a new, universal socialist identity. The soviets called it New Soviet Man, the Germans called it the übermensch but, the principle is the same – a homo superior, shaped by the state, serving the state, owing all to the state and never deviating from the will of the state. The state replaces God and faith and family and becomes the only aspiration of will.

Curiously enough, if you replace “the state” with “allah” you find there is little difference between this socialist ideology and that of Islam. Small wonder that they find it so easy to cooperate.

Last month the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations condemned [Assembly Leader and SNP leader Alex Salmond] for giving £400,000 to the Scottish Islamic Foundation. The foundation is headed by one Osama Saeed, who just happens to be the Scottish National Party’s parliamentary candidate in Glasgow Central.

…

Saeed’s membership of the SNP is not his only interesting connection. His Islamic Foundation is in fact a front for the Muslim Brotherhood which wants to create a global Caliphate (motto: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”) Saeed is an enthusiastic supporter and was furious when BBC Radio 5 accurately reported that Yusuf al-Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Brotherhood, had ruled that wife beating and female circumcision were fine, and that gays, Israelis and apostates deserved death.

According to `Ratbiter´ the brotherhood’s main aim in Scotland is to establish Muslim faith schools, aping similar schools already operating in England. These schools are known to be a source of “intolerance”, mediaspeak for the dissemination of Islamic and Arabist supremacism, and are widely resented by native populations that have to live with them.

Speaking of the media, the BBC is up to its usual tricks as well:

The Kelvinside numpties who control BBC Scotland are equally impressed and have also been flirting with radical Islamic chic. About the only Muslim voices they allow listeners to hear are those of Saeed and Aamer Anwar, a solicitor and former Socialist Workers’ Party activist who was nearly done for concempt of court after he claimed that a wannabe-terrorist, convicted of possessing CDs and videos of guerilla tactics and bomb-making, was just “doing what millions of young people do every day – looking for answers on the internet”.

The confluence between Islam and Socialism becomes clearer the more one studies any situation where Islam is making headway. Just as the socialists allied themselves with islam to overthrow the Shah in Iran, so Muslims have allied themselves with Labour in England and the SNP in Scotland to progressively alter social and government institutions in order to further their goal of islamisation. The reasons why are absurdly simple and naïve, so that one wonders whether the politicians could really be so stupid.

Why a supposedly nationalist party – in theory concerned first and foremost with its own nation’s well-being – would align itself with people like this is confusing, until you realise that the “nationalism” of the SNP is merely a convenient coat-tail to power.

[Salmond] seems to want to make the Scottish Islamic Foundation / Muslim Brotherhood the authentic voice of Scottish Islam, in the hope that it will return the favour by helping the SNP take Muslim votes from Labour … He is talking of putting representatives of the Scottish Islamic Foundation on to commissions investigating the future of Trident and sending them as ambassadors to the Middle East.

As the Labour Party has traditionally used Scotland and the North of England to maintain and power its ambitions, so the SNP is now coming to rely on Islam to power its ambitions for an “independent” Scotland. The SNP has very high approval ratings in Scotland so there seems to be little reason for turning to an external electorate but, perhaps, the party has simply observed the swing vote that Muslims provide in England and is preparing in advance for when its own constituency – the Scots – inevitably lose trust. Much of the SNP’s support seems to be based on the fact that they aren’t Labour (these days often seen as an English party due to its London-centric outlook). Scots vote for Labour in the Westminster elections because they’re more Scottish than the Tories, and because the Labour party gave them their shiny new parliament but don’t expect them to be grateful for it.

Scotland, at least in British cultural history, has always had a reputation as both the home of rabid socialists who make Che Guevara and Lenin seem laissez-faire and penny-pinching industrialists who could make Scrooge look positively generous (it’s possible these two traits are related, but I think that would be btter handled by a psychologist). Neither reputation is entirely fair but it is fair to say that your average Scot, whilst socialist at the macro level, will react harshly when that socialism is applied at the individual level. The Times article I linked in the previous paragraph demonstrates this quite aptly, where the SNP’s Local Income Tax policy, an attempt to take in more tax revenue whilst pretending to “reform” the system. Support is hovering just on the safe side of 50%, had high approval ratings until it was realised that it would be dipping an extra hand into the sporran.

Approval for that policy is now just shy of 50%, from 88% last year. It’s in areas like this where the Islamic swing vote becomes important. The SNP, acting on its socialist instincts, will use the Muslim vote to push through contentious policies just as many other European governments have done in the recent past. The fact that the “local income tax” will only affect earning households and not households who’s income is derived entirely from benefits – a very large number of which are Muslim – only sweetens the deal.

Now, `Ratbiter´ writes from a centre-left position, along with much of Private Eye’s staff (I regularly find myself eating bits of it in frustration at how obtuse the publication can be – especially when it comes to “climate change”) which means that any “nationalism” is considered to be the same – populist, right-wing, somehow “bad” in an indefinable way. Except the SNP demonstrates that the problem isn’t nationalism, but socialism wearing nationalism’s cloak. Nationalism seen through a libertarian or free-market lens will not be authoritarian simply because that would interfere with the rights of the individual.

The idea that a nationalist party could ally itself with Islam is only contradictory when you ignore the actual politics of that party. The Islamic colonisation effort is anathema to any real nationalist party, as it would be to anyone concerned with freedom and the rights of man, but it is almost a requirement of any socialist-minded party to support Islamic immigration.

Where you see “nationalism” allying itself with Islam, be sure to check for the little authoritarian streak on its belly.

It’s usually red.

* Due to the “controversial” nature of Private Eye’s reportage it is common for columnists to write under pseudonyms in order to prevent costly libel actions being brought against individual writers.