Phillips on Britain’s appeasement—Physician, heal thyself!

Writing in the Daily Mail, Melanie Phillips decries Britain’s ongoing appeasement of extremist Islam, and makes clear the extent of such extremism in Britain’s Muslim population:

Opinion polls suggest that more than 100,000 of our Muslim citizens think the July 2005 attacks in London were justified.

A report by the Policy Exchange think-tank revealed that around one third of British Muslims thought that if Muslims left the faith, they should be killed; and 37 per cent of 16-to-24-year-olds wanted to live in Britain under Sharia rather than English law.

These numbers subscribing to such extremist views are deeply disturbing. They swell the sea in which terrorism swims.

If this tide is to be held back, Islamist extremism in Britain must be stopped and British values reasserted and stoutly upheld.

The situation Phillips is describing is unreal. But unfortunately Phillips’ own position, despite the fact that it’s better than that of the whole British establishment, is also unreal, and would be seen as such by any society other than modern liberal society.

Think of it. She is speaking of a vast population of Muslims in Britain who are declared enemies of that country. Throughout history, what does any society do with alien enemies? It removes them and doesn’t take in any more of them.

But what does Phillips want? She wants the British government to wage an all-out campaign against the extremism of Muslims in Britain that consists of disapproving of their extremist views and shutting down their extremist organizations, while leaving those same extremist Muslims in Britain and allowing more of them to keep coming.

The painfully obvious thought never seems to occur to her: if the Muslims’ beliefs and organizations are so dangerous that they must be continually suppressed, doesn’t that suggest that the Muslims themselves, and not any particular Muslim organizations, are the problem?

Now that I’ve established a context for understanding Phillips’s empty and self-contradictory position, let’s read some more of her article:

To defeat such extremism, we have to make it abundantly clear that we will not give an inch to those who want to destroy our values. [Phillips calls on Britain “not to give an inch” to Britain-hating Muslims, even as she remains stone-cold silent about the ongoing immigration of Britain-hating Muslims into Britain.]

But we appear instead to be doing nothing to stop the spread of radical Islamism. [But to do and say nothing about continued Muslim immigration into the West is to allow the spread of radical Islamism.]

Indeed, in a myriad different ways we are giving out the lethal message that we have neither the will nor the courage to defend our way of life. [But by remaining absolutely silent about stopping Muslim immigration, Phillips and her fellow establishment Islam critics are themselves sending out the lethal message that we have neither the will nor the courage to defend our way of life.]

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James N. writes:

You continue to make a very important critique of the Euro-American critics of Islam who do not draw logical conclusions from their own observations.

But, as I’m sure you realize, they are not stupid.

The problem is, they arrive intellectually at a place beyond which they cannot go. The obvious things to do, things which any society would have done instantly up to 1965, let’s say, cannot be done BECAUSE THE OPINION MAKERS AND LEADERS CANNOT THINK OF THEM.

This problem is in the realm of psychiatry. I don’t know what the solution is. But I’m pretty sure we are cooked unless right liberals can be brought to an understanding that, in vast domains which are of vital importance, their brains are not working.

LA replies:

Yes, the thought about the immigration aspect of the Muslim problem literally cannot form in their brain. I have demonstrated this in my discussions with and about them. Even when they think they’re talking about it, they’re actually avoiding it. It’s evident they have never thought about it and have no ability to think about it, and have no curiosity about why they don’t think about it and why no one else talks about it.

The proof that they’re unable to think about it is that they do not even acknowledge the odd fact that they don’t discuss it. They don’t say something like, “I’m aware that some people feel immigration restriction is a key element of handling the Islam problem, but I don’t want to deal with the immigration issue for the following reasons.” No, they never even say that much.

The one exception to this that I know of is Bill Warner of the Society for the Study of Political Islam, who after I e-mailed him about his total ignoring of Muslim immigration in an interview at FrontPage, in a later article said something like, “We can’t do anything about immigration now, first we must all study Islam and talk about Islam, then we’ll be ready to take action about Islam.” It wasn’t much, but at least he acknowledged the fact that he was not dealing with an issue which the logic of his position would seem to require him to deal with.

Jeff In England, commenting on further unfruitful exchanges (both public and private) that have had with Islam critics, writes:

If these mostly “conservative,” certainly anti-Islamist, (to use that dreadful word for the moment) analysts and thinkers can’t make the most obvious of conclusions or even mention the possibility of restriction, then what hope is there that the government or mainstream will do it? Answer: zero hope. Maybe another 9/11 or 7/7 (which I don’t hope for) would change attitudes but even then I doubt it.

It may be “over” whether specifically on Islamic immigration or immigration to the West in general. There really may not be the willpower to stop them. We’ve got to consider that. We’ve got to face that. We may have to concede that. This almost surrealistic Suspects scenario has shown us the shocking lack of clear thinking in the West, not only by out and out liberals whom we would expect it from, but from various “conservatives” and “anti-Islamists” whom we expected better from.

Mark J. writes:

I’d like to believe that Jeff in England is wrong when he says it may really be over with regard to the ability of the West to stop the Islamic/Third World influx. I’d like to think that if enough Western people wake up to the problem in time, we could fix it before our only option is civil war against our own governments that will have been usurped by these alien peoples. (In fact I have been pleasantly surprised recently by some unprompted comments from liberal friends and family that suggest they are frustrated and feeling threatened by the influx of alien people.) But I find it difficult to see much hope for saving our existing nations because I can’t picture a way that is left open to us to reverse the problem given the legal constraints.

You have written in the past, I believe, about how we should aim to stop alien immigration, revoke Green Cards, and by reasserting our intention to be the dominant majority, encourage people who don’t belong here to voluntarily leave. This is good as far as it goes.

But non-whites are already a third of the population. They are citizens. Most were born here. They would not leave voluntarily because there is nowhere for them to go that isn’t a hellhole, and I see zero prospect of a (mainly white) traditionalist conservative bloc gaining the degree of political power that would be needed to amend the Constitution to strip citizenship from people based on their ethnicity, religion, or political beliefs (assuming we got Islam reclassified as a political system rather than a religion in the sense the Founding Fathers meant it).

They reproduce faster than us. And even if somehow we manage to raise our reproductive rate to match theirs, large swaths of our cities would remain no-man’s lands as long as they and their descendants lived here.

So in this sense, the whole immigration debate is almost a distraction. Yes, it would accelerate the alien takeover, but it’s not the core problem. The core problem is that a people needs a nation for itself alone. And when a third of our American population is already non-white, I don’t see any realistic sequence of legal maneuvers that would result in a white, Christian America. We have to have a separation, and it will almost certainly not be mutually voluntary since these other peoples have no real desire to live separately from us.

I am optimistic about my people’s future, but I don’t see anything to be gained by pinning our hopes on something which isn’t possible—namely restoring the historic American nation by passing laws or changing regulations within the current framework. I think that someone who pins his hopes on enough people waking up in time to change the existing system enough to save it is setting himself up for a long series of disappointments in the decades ahead. It would be terribly demoralizing. I think the real solution lies in establishing the intellectual foundation for a separation from, or replacement of, the existing unrecoverable nation. I think it’s time for the next generation of Patrick Henrys and Sam Adamses to begin arguing that the only real long-term solution is a nation for our people alone.

To put it a bit confrontationally, you accuse Phillips of being blind to the obvious conclusion to be drawn from these threats, but aren’t you perhaps also being naive to think that the path of a nation already 1/3 non-white can be reversed so as to legally make the country virtually all white again? Isn’t what we need actually “separationism” writ large?

LA replies:

This harks back to the important debate between Rabbi Schiller and Sam Francis in AR in (I think) 1995. Schiller advocated separation. Francis advocated winning back America. I agreed with Francis.

His best argument, as I remember, was something like this:

Both separation and winning back America require revolutionary events outside our present order. If, either way we go, we must be make revolutionary changes outside our present order, I’d rather aim them at winning the country back, not at surrendering it.

Also, as I always say, it’s not necessary to conceive of some complete solution at this point; since any complete solution seems so impossible that people will just give up. The key is to reverse the current direction of things, so that the European-American majority is steadily regaining its power and legitimacy and its confidence in the future, rather than steadily losing them

It is analogous to the argument about illegal immigration. If the only solution is some overnight deportation of all illegals (as the open borders advocates tell us), that seems so impossible that it’s dismissed, resulting in accommodation and surrender to the illegal alien invasion. Therefore the solution to the illegal alien problem is not some overnight fix, but steady attrition.

Laura G. writes:

Much has been written about the European plan for suicide which centers on wildly uncontrolled Muslim immigration, both legal and illegal. Here in the U.S., we are less advanced along the same trajectory, but the end point is visible and identical. Because we are less extensively threatened, at least today, we have had the luxury of criticizing various European nations for their toleration of a continued Muslim influx, especially in England, France, and Scandinavian countries. Notably few politicians or commentators from those nations are doing anything other than, at most, bemoaning the vanishing memory of the nation they used to know and love. Virtually none actively support a sharp ban on further entrance of Muslims. The reasons for that muted response are undoubtedly manifold, and several include politically correct thinking patterns, multicultural fantasies, personal fear, intimidation, fear of riots and the usual “seething” behavior, fear of legal consequences of even raising the issue, etc.

I write to ask if you are aware of any politician in the U.S. who is advocating that the U.S. begin the process of discussing if and how we would cease to welcome members of this troublesome group. As far as I can see, we are as muted as any Westerner in Europe, even though the actual risks to us appear to be less…so far. We cannot seem to be able even to discuss why we issue thousands of travel visas for students who are not here to study English poetry, or why we tolerate speakers who incite violence in our mosques and streets. The hypocrisy of our criticizing European patriots who stand silently by, while we do not defend ourselves from the same foreseeable threat, is very depressing indeed. So, in short, have you identified any politicians who need support and who seem to be trying to begin the process of raising the subject.

LA replies:

I think there is also an implied (and fair) criticism of me in Laura’s comment. Because Europe’s situation is so much worse, it’s a little too easy to focus on the Europeans’ failure to defend themselves, when we in the U.S. are showing the same failure. Of course the issue has reached an incredible “ripeness” in Europe that makes the issues much starker there than here.

The only politician I know of who has said that Islam is a problem and that U.S. immigration policy should reflect that fact is Rep. Virgil Goode of Virginia, whom I’ve written about here and here.

Which leads to further thoughts. Given that there is no short or medium term prospect that mainstream politicians or mainstream conservatives or even mainstream Islam critics will recognize that Islam itself is the problem and call for immigration and other policies consistent with that fact, we cannot keep waiting for them to do so. There is a need for an organization that will lobby for an end of Muslim immigration, as well as for drastic reductions of immigration generally. It’s the only way to get this issue into the mainstream debate.

It’s worthwhile to criticize the “Usual Suspects,” the inadequate Islam critics, as I am always doing. But that is not enough. Since, as I am now convinced, the mainstream conservative Islam critics are at bottom liberals who are unwilling to call for the policies that are needed to defend the West from Islam, other people will have to take up the slack.

Gintas writes:

Jeff in England says, “Maybe another 9/11 or 7/7 (which I don’t hope for) would change attitudes but even then I doubt it.”

Consider for a moment the pre-9/11 (and 7/7) world. I am sure all of us would have agreed at the time that something like 9/11 would have been the decisive moment in a change of attitude.

Then 9/11 and 7/7 happened, and they have not been decisive moments in a change of attitude. I’m sure we could come up with a list of potential attitude-changers, but who would have believed that 9/11 would not have sufficed?

Lisa writes:

This whole issue of Muslim immigration to Europe has always baffled me. I never understood why those Europeans would voluntarily import a hostile unassimilable underclass to their countries, until I read Oriana Fallaci’s book The Force of Reason.

Apparently, this whole Muslim immigration business started in response to the Arab oil embargo of 1973. The European countries did not want a disruption of their oil supply, so they basically sold out to the Arab League. Fallaci, who quoted the writer Bat Y’eor, wrote about how Europe agreed to take in loads of muslim immigrants, and not demand that they assimilate, in exchange for not having their oil cut off. Another part of the agreement was that heads of the European countries and their media would side with the Arab rogue states on foreign policy issues (as in Israel, America, the “palescuminians” Iran and Iraq) And probably the most important part of the deal was that Europe would sell these Arab rogue states weapons. The purpose of this “partnership” was, according to Fallaci and Bat Ye’or, to establish a Euro-Arab counterweight to America’s power.

Personally, I agree with what Fallaci wrote. After all, it was France that built Iraq’s nuclear reactor, that Israel later destroyed. And Jacques Chirac (along with the French company Total Final Elf) were up to their necks in the Iraq Oil For Food scandal.

Otherwise, I totally agree with you that the reason these so-called “anti-Islamist” writers do not take a stand on Muslim immigration is that they are at heart liberals.

On a more personal note, and since I am a Jewish woman and the daughter of Iranian Jewish parents, I think I can add something to your comment about the veiled women. As non-Muslims, many people will look at those veiled women, and think that they’re being oppressed. But that is not the case. These people look down their noses at the West, which they feel is decadent.

LA replies:

Of course. A Westerner who looks at these frightful covered Muslim women and thinks, “Poor subjugated females,” instead of thinking, “Hideous aliens who are out to destroy everything we are,” proves by that fact that he is a liberal.

Lady Lexington writes:

I do think that … but it still doesn’t mean I want them in the US.

Spencer Warren writes:

Remember the basketball photo you posted a couple of years ago?

Mark A. writes:

You are correct: the situation cannot continue. But it will continue. And for a very good reasons, which are neither bizarre nor unreal. Political movements and beliefs are tools, and not ends in themselves. The “ends” in most of human history are always the same: money and power. Global trade (in both capital and labor) enrich the elite in all Western nations. The top one percent in the U.S. now owns almost 40 percent of the wealth in the U.S. In the early 1970s, it was about 20 percent. Why? Capital has moved freely for quite some time now. What has changed since the early 1970s? Now labor moves freely. This is the essence of the immigration problem and it is the essence of liberalism/multiculturism, etc. Liberalism is a tool that allows this to happen. Countries with traditionalist governments would not let this happen as they would value family, ethnicity, and religion as more valuable than the almighty dollar. Liberalism, on the other hand, facilitates the free movement of labor across the globe as it assures the host citizens (whose wages need to be lowered by the elite) that everyone “is the same” and there is no such thing as “race.” Thus, liberalism is the ultimate guiding principal of the elite. It is, quite literally, a source of enormous wealth for them.

Mark P. writes:

Gintas wrote: “Consider for a moment the pre-9/11 (and 7/7) world. I am sure all of us would have agreed at the time that something like 9/11 would have been the decisive moment in a change of attitude.”

The only “change in attitude” we will see is after a staggering death toll large enough to thin the population of liberals and to instill the fear of more destruction into the rest. Simply put, not enough people have died to make anyone consider moving away from liberalism.

I’m certain if 100,000 people are killed and an entire city is rendered uninhabitable, then you will see a change in attitude. I doubt anything will happen before that.

I think a white majority society is one that can and should be pursued but, for now, I think focusing on “citizenism” is a more viable strategy. Whites are too fragmented and too competitive with each other (especially further up the income scale) to deal with anything as gauche as “white” issues.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 01, 2007 07:39 AM | Send