Wilders interviewed by Beck

After his speech in New York City last Thursday, Geert Wilders had a brief but punchy interview on the Glen Beck program. One stand-out moment: Beck said (close paraphrase), “Are you making no distinction between extremist Muslims and other Muslims, because I have a Muslim who works on this show, and he’s a peace-loving guy.” Beck’s reasonable question was in fact the primal liberal challenge to any discriminatory, non-liberal position, the challenge that makes strong men turn to jelly: “Are you saying that all Muslims (or Mexicans, or illegal aliens, or female soldiers, or uncreditworthy minorities who want to own their own home, or fill in the blank) are objectionable?” And Wilders replied, “There are moderate Muslims, but there is no moderate Islam, Islam is a fascist ideology.” With this answer Wilders sensibly acknowledged the existence of individual Muslims who are moderate, while making it clear, with a telegraphic minimum of words, that they are moderate only because they don’t follow the religion. What he was really saying was, “There may be individual Muslims who don’t adhere to the Muslim ideology, but they don’t matter. What matters is not the exceptions, but the generality. What matters is this ideology that threatens our existence, and the more Muslims there are among us, the more power that ideology has.”

Thus, on the main point, which is the nature of Islam, he didn’t give an inch. He was unyielding in his characterization of Islam as inherently dangerous and destructive. He then went on to say that the culture of Islam in the Netherlands is violent and expansionist. He strikes no PC notes, and makes no bows to the liberal orthodoxy of non-discrimination. And this was on a mainstream American television program.

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October 1

Sage McLaughlin writes:

Of course, everyone has his pet Muslim, just as everyone has his pet feminist. But ordinary people understand that no matter how many women self-describe as “feminist,” and no matter how many of these do not actually despise the nuclear family and long for its annihilation, the fact remains that feminism is extremely hateful to and destructive of the nuclear family. That’s because, as the left has known since well before Gramsci laid out his plan for Western suicide, it’s in the institutions where the action is. Glen Beck’s nominally Muslim buddy is not an Islamic authority figure, and has no special influence over the temper of Islamic growth in the West. The point is that it doesn’t matter what percentage of Muslims take up arms or make donations to CAIR. The plain fact is that the pure demographic force of Muslims in general greatly expands the power and influence of Islamic authorities and of Muslim political power in general. In the face of this obvious and elementary point, people like Beck are often reduced to arguing that Muslim political power need not take on an especially Muslim character, which is political naivete of the highest order. Organized Islamic political power always, always takes a hostile stance towards Western particularity, and ever shall.

Possibly the most corrosive hermeneutical sickness of advanced liberal society is the “man who” fallacy to which Beck and people like him resort. “I know a man who is both Muslim and will pet a dog, therefore Islam is basically moderate, assimilable, and non-threatening.” Liberal society tells people that making generalities is narrow and unreflective. I say the opposite: Refusing to make generalities, relying instead on the razor-thin slices of our own personal experiences, is narrow and thoughtless to the nth degree.

Also, as a Republican party partisan, Beck ought at least recognize the simple point that when a Muslim comes into the West and abandons any seriously orthodox adherence to Islam, he does not thereby become an ally of the West—it usually means he has become a liberal, and indeed the worst kind of liberal, since he will always feel estranged from the actual historic West, which is white, and Christian, and forever defending itself against the jihad. In my studies I have come across numerous Muslims who are of an irreligious or heterodox bent, and to a man they have been extremely leftist, admirers of anti-Western intellectuals such as Said and his disciples. In my personal contacts, I have met numerous “moderate” Muslims who are solidly, almost exclusively, left-leaning Democrats. If men like Beck take their own rhetoric very seriously—that the left hates this country, that the Democratic party, is bringing American society knees and is guilty of every sort of treason—then why would they shrug off the notion that the last thing we need is another fast-growing liberal minority group to swell its ranks?

Answer: Well, you know. They’re liberals.

October 2

Philip writes from England:

In the past when faced with the “good Muslim” question, I have asked my interregator if he thinks good Muslims also exist in countries like Saudi Arabia, and when he replies “Yes,” I ask him why, if the good Muslims have not been able to reform those communities, he thinks they will be able to reform the ones in the West. Whilst this has him rocking on his heels, I then follow up by asking him if we could at least have a moritorium on Muslim immigration until the “good Muslims” have reformed Islam (i.e. never), at which point we can then consider letting them in again.

Nora Brinker, the Editrix, writes from Germany:

Here, the common consensus is that Geert Wilders is a “right-wing extremist populist,” but nobody bothers to explain what a “right-wing extremist populist” is. (Nota bene that there are no “left-wing extremist populists”!) Not to belabour the fact any further that a radical liberal is a phenomenon our culture doesn’t know, let alone understand, Wilders is no populist (right wing or not), because he tells the people what they do NOT want to hear, whereas a populist does just the opposite.

In his own country, he, and not, perversely, the large Muslim minority, is seen as a threat to the Dutch reputation as one of the most liberal and tolerant societies in Europe because of his anti-immigration and anti-Islam stance. But that little country has always produced people with a dogged independence, like, for example, “Iron Rita” Verdonk (the scourge of Ayaan Hirsi Ali) or Pim Fortuyn, another extraordinarily courageous right-liberal, who was denounced as a “right-wing extremist populist” and who paid for his convictions with his life. As Wilders said in the interview, it’s five minutes to midnight to save Europe. May he remain unharmed. Men like him don’t grow on trees.

On a personal note, I was intrigued by the point one of your commenters made when he quoted Mr. Average Dhimmi: “I know a man who is both Muslim and will pet a dog, therefore Islam is basically moderate, assimilable, and non-threatening.” I had a similar encounter at a group where we train our young gun dogs in field work. One of the other attendees is a man from Tunisia. He is obviously very fond of his young German wire-haired pointer. In fact, we had an argument because he thinks I’m putting too much pressure on my young dog. What is the conclusion to draw here? Isn’t it: “I can trust THAT VERY MAN BECAUSE he violates the rules of his religion”? To what length will people go in their preemptive obedience to the Dhimmitude regime who are drawing the opposite, totally illogical, conclusion?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 30, 2008 11:10 PM | Send