Discussion of Fitna continues

Scott B. writes:

I’m amazed by the tepid responses of some of your commenters about Fitna, which I saw for the first time today. I was hugely impressed—it’s a brilliant distillation of Islamic supremacism, and the elegiac melancholic classical Western music backdrop creates a superbly subtle emphasis on the civilized values that mass immigration from barbaric cultures is destroying.

Given the threats he is under and that are now probably much worse than before, for Wilders to make this movie is a heroic defense of Western civilization—who else is putting his life on the line? Almost no one else in Europe will even risk losing his job, never mind his life, over speaking his mind about this issue, and this hero gets damned with faint praise on a website that is dedicated to defending Western civilization?!

- end of initial entry -

Barbara V. writes:

What got me was the ironic use of that beautiful Arabian music, from Tschaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, to accompany the visual horror. Geert Wilders also used a lovely, tranquil piece of Grieg. Did you notice?

LA replies:

I didn’t notice the music specifically, except that it was very good and produced a mood and worked. I need to see it again.

Ed L. writes:

LiveLeak, which used to be ogrish.com, has always been controversial, like the ACLU. You’d think that people who stake their employment at such an organization would have a deep personal commitment to free speech as an absolute uncompromisable ideal. If “Give me liberty of give me death” really means anything to such people, to the point where they’re willing to defend Nazis marching through Skokie, defend flag-burning, or countenance the display of the crucified Jesus in a vat of urine, I think that they ought to be willing to put their own physical safety on the line against threats from Muslims.

The Dutch prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, has publicly condemned Wilders’s creation and release of Fitna as a vile publicity stunt that will only have the effect of endangering Dutch citizens (both in Holland and abroad) and Dutch soldiers in Afghanistan. If the Dutch troops aren’t militarily strong and impregnable enough to withstand uprisings and attacks in Afghanistan, they shouldn’t be out there in the first place. As for the safety of Dutch citizens, the admirable thing for Balkenende to have done, in my opinion, would have been to call for the Dutch people to weather this hideous storm and, yes, to be willing to put their own lives on the line in defense of traditional Dutch liberal beliefs. A real leader would have done that, and had confidence that his countrymen would have been brave. Balkenende has demonstrated, however, that he is a worthless craven coward.

The European establishment has not only reacted timidly to the anticipation of Muslim violence following Fitna; they have actively berated Wilders, denounced and explicitly rejected the substantive point about Islam made in the movie, and have even invoked heavy-handed methods to suppress its circulation. This interview, with Der Spiegel, strikes me as representative of mainstream European attitudes. Note the interviewer’s axiomatic presumption that, oh, youth crime is just one of those normal nuisance things; it can’t possibly have any deeper explanation in terms of religious motivation.

In the European establishment and amongst other liberals, the belief in the existence of overwhelming numbers of “moderate” Muslims has become a matter of militant faith and gut conviction. Anybody who questions this article of faith or who sounds the slightest sour note of any kind is automatically branded as a moral leper. The liberal establishment doesn’t really care, apparently, about the truth of the moderate Islam axiom. They’re not willing to regard it as a tentative, provisional, falsifiable hypothesis; they never actually expect anything from moderate Muslims to demonstrate their moderacy. Belief in moderate Islam is a moral imperative in and of itself.

Bill Carpenter writes:

Geert Wilders certainly deserves the high praise given him by Scott B. and others. If the response from conservatives has been tepid, I think it is for the following reasons. First, the film provides no new information to people who are familiar with the issues. The praise for effectively packaging old information for the general public, a valuable and essential task, is inevitably going to be less enthusiastic than praise for providing profound insight. Second, the film appears to present the liberal version of universal human rights as the essence and highest achievement of our civilization. While in ordinary people’s minds, freedom may well mean the ability for peoples to continue in their established, even traditional ways, it can also stand for a leftist-utopian freedom from any inequality imposed by the distribution of rights and goods in any real society. By making the rights of children, women, and homosexuals exemplary, Wilders tacitly appears to accept the liberal proposition that peoples as such have no right to preserve their cultures and traditions (including religions) unless such cultures and traditions embody liberal universalism. Thus some conservatives may feel that the film is at bottom liberal in the same way that the conservatism of many conservatives is liberal. Wilders’ presentation may be justified on the ground that he is attempting to create, as quickly as possible, the broadest possible alliance against the Islamization of the West, which is arguably even more urgent than proselytizing for traditionalist (or realist) conservatism. However, admiration for political effectiveness is of a different quality than admiration for presenting the unvarnished truth. Conservatives should congratulate Wilders for what he has accomplished, thank him for his sacrifices, and accept his challenge to us to join him in defending our peoples and ways.

LA replies:

“Wilders tacitly appears to accept the liberal proposition that peoples as such have no right to preserve their cultures and traditions (including religions) unless such cultures and traditions embody liberal universalism.”

It seems to me that that’s reading a lot into into it. I mean, the same could be said of all people who are not explicitly anti-liberal. But that’s so far from being what the film is about that it seems unfair to find the film wanting on the grounds that it is not explicitly anti-liberal.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 02, 2008 07:28 PM | Send