How Finkielkraut went beyond excusable self-protection

A reader feels I was too harsh in my assessment of Alain Finkielkraut’s interview on Europe 1:

As I’ve mentioned previously, I believe your website is the only one which addresses the current world crisis head on as a war between Islam and Christianity—a Western one in this case since much of the East has been conquered with a few exceptions.

Islam has entered society insidiously, and people have to be made aware of that. I think your website does a tremendous job on that.

But if I may disagree on your analysis of Finkielkraut’s capitulation, I strongly believe that Finkielkraut understands very well what is going on. Despite his May 1968 “leftist” stance, he is now really termed as a more “conservative” republican.

What he has done during the interview, a public lynching by Elkabach (who with his darting eyes looks seriously disturbed) if I may use that word, was act like a Dhimmi. He had received death threats and his whole family (and people) was on the spotlight because of him.

He must be the very first public Western Dhimmi. Free to walk the streets, rather than closed up with bodyguards. An individual now, but a whole nation next?

At least Van Gogh refused to act like one. And died for it. He really did fight the a war head on (although I don’t think he rebelled against Islam as much as against authority), and Holland has seen something of the future because of him.

My reply:

I know I was being a bit tough on Finkielkraut, but the reason was, he didn’t just say the sounds he needed to say to avoid death, if that was his purpose. He could have said, “I don’t mean this, or this was misunderstood,” and so on. Instead, he said things, like, “I don’t recognize myself, I wouldn’t shake the hands of this person….” This was bizarre, Orwellian, and it made me feel that what he was doing went beyond rational self-protection and had become an abandonment of his self.

Thanks for the comments on VFR. Of course a site like Jihad Watch also sees Islam as our civilizational adversary and has incomparably more material on Islam than I do, but I guess the difference is that their focus is entirely on the Islamic menace to the West, not on the meaning of the West itself.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 07, 2005 11:09 AM | Send