Islam and its Denial - Part VII
Most people today, on the left or on the right, still can’t face the growing threat of Islam. I’ve blogged on this topic and summarize the main points in longer articles (see the links at the right under “Articles”). This is disheartening given the numerous books and websites devoted to exposing this threat. Yet, it is not without precedent. In the early 20th century, a few lone voices warned of the threats by the nascent totalitarian movements of communism and fascism. They watched helplessly as European civilization disintegrated into savagery.
It took thirty years before the threat of communism was taken seriously by our country as a whole. From the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 to Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech in 1947, many had warned of the pernicious nature of this ideology but those in power, backed by influential intellectuals, failed to face the stark reality. During the Red Decade of the 1930s, left-liberals minimized or trivialized – if not out right denied – the evil nature of communism and the horrors of the Soviet Union. I review the history of that denial here.
Similarly, during the 1930s too many people found it hard to believe that Hitler meant what he said. Nor that the German people would support him in another world war. As usual, it was common to project our war-weariness and decency onto the German people. Many still say that most Germans didn’t buy into the worse aspects of Nazism but that as good people they did nothing as “evil triumphed.”
Today we see the same smug dismissal of Islamist leaders who openly advocate a supremacist ideology of world conquest. Unable to see the implications of the ideology of Islam, our leading writers in the media and press, across the political spectrum, assure us that this is just a few malcontents. And once again, the silence among good Muslims – those lax, lapsed, perfunctory, or selective in their practice of Islam – should give neophytes to the study of Islam pause for concern. Their silent sanction is as dangerous as a vigorous endorsement.
With the rise of secular totalitarianisms, we can look back and in the stereotypical manner of Monday morning quarterbacks, imagine our ability to recognize and fight these threats. There were opponents, to be sure, but those that fully understood the grave threats of both communism and fascism were rare indeed. It is common for those that chastise the willing blindness to fascism to hold up as heroes, anti-fascists, blind only to communism. And vice versa, some applaud opponents of communism that failed to understand the depths of depravity of fascism. But there were a few who saw the coming horror of both.
I’ve summarized the blindness to the communism threat in the 1930s. In the following post, I review how blind many were to the fascist threat but this time I discuss it through the eyes of one witness to history: Eugene P. Wigner. A Hungarian born physicist, Wigner was instrumental in the creation of the Manhattan project and, like his friend Edward Teller, continued to be a fierce opponent of communism.
It took thirty years before the threat of communism was taken seriously by our country as a whole. From the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 to Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech in 1947, many had warned of the pernicious nature of this ideology but those in power, backed by influential intellectuals, failed to face the stark reality. During the Red Decade of the 1930s, left-liberals minimized or trivialized – if not out right denied – the evil nature of communism and the horrors of the Soviet Union. I review the history of that denial here.
Similarly, during the 1930s too many people found it hard to believe that Hitler meant what he said. Nor that the German people would support him in another world war. As usual, it was common to project our war-weariness and decency onto the German people. Many still say that most Germans didn’t buy into the worse aspects of Nazism but that as good people they did nothing as “evil triumphed.”
Today we see the same smug dismissal of Islamist leaders who openly advocate a supremacist ideology of world conquest. Unable to see the implications of the ideology of Islam, our leading writers in the media and press, across the political spectrum, assure us that this is just a few malcontents. And once again, the silence among good Muslims – those lax, lapsed, perfunctory, or selective in their practice of Islam – should give neophytes to the study of Islam pause for concern. Their silent sanction is as dangerous as a vigorous endorsement.
With the rise of secular totalitarianisms, we can look back and in the stereotypical manner of Monday morning quarterbacks, imagine our ability to recognize and fight these threats. There were opponents, to be sure, but those that fully understood the grave threats of both communism and fascism were rare indeed. It is common for those that chastise the willing blindness to fascism to hold up as heroes, anti-fascists, blind only to communism. And vice versa, some applaud opponents of communism that failed to understand the depths of depravity of fascism. But there were a few who saw the coming horror of both.
I’ve summarized the blindness to the communism threat in the 1930s. In the following post, I review how blind many were to the fascist threat but this time I discuss it through the eyes of one witness to history: Eugene P. Wigner. A Hungarian born physicist, Wigner was instrumental in the creation of the Manhattan project and, like his friend Edward Teller, continued to be a fierce opponent of communism.
posted by Jason Pappas at 6:23 AM
4 Comments:
In the centre of Berlin there is a permanent display, it is called the road to terror and it traces the rise of Hitler from the 1930’s to his demise in 1945.
In the north of Berlin is Sachsenhausen concentration camp a little known camp that slaughtered hundreds of thousands, this included Germans who did not comply with the dictates of the third Reich
In Plotzensee Prison 2500 men and women were put to death for not accepting the third Reich
The camp and the prison send chills through your body that cannot be described. I have been to them both and I still cannot find words to describe the emotions that flooded through me. To see gas chambers and ovens designed to kill human beings
Is terrible.
I did not take photographs here, it would have been sacrilegious.
The train station where thousands were shipped to such camps still stands; standing on the platform you cannot help but see the ghosts of the people who in the past stood there never to return.
Hitler’s bunker no longer exists; the land directly above it is now a memorial to the holocaust victims.
Do we want things like this to happen again, of course not, but alas it is, the fascism of Islam is worse than that of the Nazis and it is happening now
The Copts in Egypt are slowly but surely being wiped out, they are Christian.
In the Sudan Christians are now virtually extinct, their genocide has always been denied by the Sudanese government
It is here in the Sudan that gangs of men would approach a woman if she was not Islamic she was raped, her breasts cut off and she would be left to die.
In Palestine the wanton destruction and desecration of Jewish Holy sites is underway.
In the UK churches have been torched.
The signs are all around us, the complacency that led to the last conflict must not be allowed to take hold again.
Such is the pattern of history that a dangerous ideology is ignored until the crisis-management mode. As weaponry has advanced, such a wait has become more and more dangerous.
How often we look at history and exclaim, "Couldn't the world see trouble coming?" We pat ourselves on the back and claim that we would've been wiser.
As Gandalf has pointed out, The signs are all around us. We are not wiser and are in a state of denial. At what point does the denial stop? For some, that point never comes.
Hitler wasn't an isolated madman. He was the ultimate applier of a totalitarian ideology, which moved, step by step, to achieve its goals.
Jason
I have a different take on this then you. I think the far left is coopting Islam,s rage. The traditional muslim was too busy opressing people to cry victim.
The left is the enemy we must deal with first.
You’re completely right, Caroline. I, too, didn’t find it hard to face the facts in the weeks after 9/11. You raise the most important question: why is it so hard for others? Two factors.
First, the left’s multi-cultural moral-equivalence has saturated this culture. We fail to vilify the enemy as the barbarians they are and we fail to re-affirm our greatness. This leaves most to believe that it is just a few exceptions in the Islamic world that we have to deal with – 9/10 thinking continues.
The second is the failure of the right to provide an alternative. The intellectuals who dominate the conservative magazines have an ecumenical all-religions-are-good disposition that holds them back. In the Cold War they provided the alternative but today the mainline publications – National Review, the Weekly Standard, etc. – just won’t attack Islam. This is a reminder of how differently conservatives vilified communism and how they talk today about Islam.
We have to wake-up everyone. So far, many of us, mostly right-leaning, understand the threat. It's frustrating and infuriating but we must keep fighting.
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