Spencer discovers I am a “racist,” and pronounces me unfit for public debate

Yesterday at Jihad Watch there was a long exchange between Robert Spencer and me on the question of whether Spencer is a conservative defending Western civilization, or a neocon defending a liberal universalist idea that he calls “Western civilization.” (Here is his initial article, and here is the beginning of our exchange.) After I had posted what I thought would be my last comment, a commenter named Undercover Black Man, whose criticisms of me I’ve previously posted at VFR, appeared at Jihad Watch and quoted some (very mild) things I have said on race. Spencer immediately replied that I am a racist and that I wasn’t worth talking to—thus proving that he is the liberal that I have been saying all along that he is. (See in particular this comment below.) Spencer’s attempt to delegitimize me (added onto his unceasing personal snipes that have no place in an intellectual discussion) required a further response by me. Since only a couple of people from outside Spencer’s circle of “knee-jerk liberals against Islam” have posted in this exchange, it might be useful for Spencer’s readers to hear further traditionalist voices.

- end of initial entry -

Judith writes:

I read through the debate with Robert Spencer. It is the old problem of the inability to acknowledge racial difference and the impact such differences have on society. Spencer and his readers are egalitarians, they just want to get rid of jihad, then we can all go back to being equal again. [LA adds: Well put!]

Now, Flemming Rose, editor of Jyllands-Posten, may have to go into exile in the U.S. He will no doubt have a close friend in Robert Spencer, possibly not in Lawrence Auster, considering this comment:

“These drawings do not violate the laws on racism and blasphemy. The Counsel for the Kingdom confirmed that. Muslims, who are 3% of the Danish population, must be treated on an equal basis with the other groups in Denmark…Not to be able to use them in caricatures is tantamount to granting them special treatment, to marginalizing them, as if they were not an integral part of our community. The Muslims in this country enjoy rights that are considerably more respected in Danish society than in Muslim lands.”

On a different, but related topic, it is always interesting to see how much more honest European writers were in the past regarding “differences”. How would Robert Spencer answer Flaubert, who said, “In the name of humanity I demand that the Black Stone be ground to dust and the ashes thrown to the four winds, that Mecca be destroyed and that Mahomet’s tomb be sullied. That would be the way to demoralize fanaticism.”

The two articles are posted at Galliawatch, here and here.

One last thought, I also published an article recently on Mosque-building in France. Mosques are being built, re-built, and planned every day everywhere, at taxpayers’ expense. If this happens in the US, would Robert Spencer regard it as part of the jihad he wants to defeat? Or would he consider it as a normal consequence of the equality of all beliefs?

LA replies:

Well, Rose is thinking like an old liberal or right-liberal. Everyone should live under the same rules, including being open to criticism. But where does such right-liberalism lead? It leads to Rose’s saying that the reason for publishing the anti-Muhammad cartoons is not to criticize Islam as Islam, but to include Islam more fully in Danish society, based on the assumption that Muslims are fully capable of assimilating into Danish society! But since, in the real world, Muslims as Muslims are NOT capable of assimilating into Danish society, Rose’s right-liberal openness to Muslims must inevitably lead to the growth in Denmark of a population of Muslims hostile to Denmark and its right-liberal principles. Right-liberalism, the belief that society is constituted of nothing except the belief in universal equal rights, leads inevitably to the takeover of society by alien groups who will destroy the regime of equal rights.

An Indian living in the West writes:

It would seem that race is the litmus test for who is a liberal and who isn’t. If mere mention of race (or anything politically incorrect about race) makes the interlocutor run away screaming from the room, that is a sign of his innate (and incurable) liberalism.

LA replies:

Yes. Thank you for seeing this.

And not only that, but (though it wasn’t the issue between Spencer and me), this reflects back to my view that race is THE controlling issue in the civilizational crisis. It is the belief that all races are the same in their abilities and aspirations, it is the belief that all races can get along in perfect equanimity in any society regardless of their respective numbers, it is the belief that any white racial consciousness or any white exclusivity vis à vis nonwhites is evil, it is white American guilt over blacks, it is white European guilt over colonialism, it is the liberal animus against whites as the dominant and successful race, it is the racial vengeance and racial will to power on the part of nonwhite groups (largely released by the white guilt), that are the driving forces in the suicide/destruction of the West. And the greatest of these driving forces and ideas is the conviction that any frank criticism of these forces and ideas is racist.

This is why I argue to people (and I’m afraid I haven’t been very successful at this so far) that even if a person is not himself concerned about race or the whiteness of the West and so on, he will not be able effectively to defend the West from the forces that threaten it unless he takes seriously these racial realities, including the whiteness of the West and the anti-whiteness of liberals and minorities.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 28, 2006 04:13 PM | Send