Sabaditsch-Wolff on Islam and the West

Below is the speech given by Austrian anti-Islamization activist Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff this weekend at a conference of the Alliance of the European Freedom and National Parties in Ashkelon, Israel. With unusual insight, Wolff plainly states that Western civilization is in the process of committing suicide, and that its openness to Islamic immigration is one of the main ways it is carrying out that suicide. She concludes that those of us who believe in the West and want it to survive must “close the doors against expansionist Islam.”

What a refreshing change from the mealy-mouthed American conservatives who say that the problem is “Islamism”!

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am very excited to be here in Israel, and I thank former MK Eliezer Cohen for inviting me.

The State of Israel is a modern incarnation of one of the ancient sources of today’s civilization. Our civilization—Western Civilization—traces its origins to the confluence of Judaic, Hellenic, and Roman cultures in what eventually became Christian Europe.

This civilization is now under siege, both from without, and especially from within.

I am here today to represent two defenders of our civilization, the Citizens’ Movement Pax Europa—in German, Bewegung Pax Europa—and ACT! for America.

Let me tell you more about each one.

Pax Europa is a European civil rights movement and a human rights organization. Our objectives are to protect not only the democratic, free, and secular rule of law in our country, but also to struggle for European culture based on the Judeo-Christian traditions and—especially—on the values of the Enlightenment. These are the values that are currently under threat throughout the nations of the West.

In order to achieve our objectives, we offer lectures, panel discussions, and conferences. In addition, Pax Europa also participates in the OSCE human dimension. We are an independent, non-partisan movement. We clearly distance ourselves from all right-wing or left-wing extremists and all xenophobic movements. Our sole purpose is to champion the values and freedoms that form the cornerstone of our civilization. Pax Europa is the enemy of anyone who threatens those values and freedoms, and the friend of anyone who defends them.

ACT! for America is the largest national security movement in the United States. It is an issues advocacy organization dedicated to effectively organizing and mobilizing the most powerful grassroots citizen action network in America. We are committed to informed and coordinated civic action that will lead to public policies that promote America’s national security and the defense of American democratic values against the assault of radical Islam.

As an ACT! for America international chapter leader from Austria, I wanted you to know just how much a safe and secure Israel means to me and to Brigitte Gabriel, our organization’s Founder and President who was able to save her life by escaping into northern Israel from war torn Lebanon in 1982.

We value you immensely! We work and fight and pray for you. We support Israeli-made products. We are constantly promoting pro-Israel rallies in the West. We are in your corner and at your side every step of the way.

Thank God for Israel. Know that we will do anything in our power to love, respect and defend you. May God bless you!

Ladies and gentlemen,

No civilization is eternal. Because Western Civilization has been in the ascendant for the last few centuries, there is a tendency to think that what we have built is the final state at which mankind has arrived—that we have reached, as Francis Fukuyama put it, “The End of History.”

This is hubris of the highest order, especially given all the indicators of the dangers currently faced by our civilization, both from without and from within. The signs may not always be obvious, but they are there, and they are growing in number.

The death of a civilization does not come only when sand dunes drift in over the rubble of a once-proud city. The end is not necessarily marked by an invasion of barbarian hordes, or the burning and looting of our homes and businesses.

A civilization can also die from within, when it forgets the core values that once made it great, when it stops believing in its own fundamental tenets.

The disappearance of civilizational self-confidence in Europe can perhaps be traced back to the unimaginable and pointless slaughter of the First World War, or to the Holocaust and other horrors of the Second World War, or to the ravages of seventy years of Communism, or to a societal enervation imposed on the continent by the socialist welfare state—or some combination of all of these.

Whatever the reason, European civilizational self-confidence is all but gone. This is why Multiculturalism has become the dominant ideology in Europe. This is why Europeans have imported millions of unassimilable foreigners. This is why we abase ourselves to the newcomers and accede to their every demand.

Islam is a threat to Europe because the heart of European civilization has already gone cold. If it were still beating, Islam would be of no more concern than it was a century ago, and millions of Muslim immigrants would not be among us.

Those of us who still love our civilization and what it stands for are on the front lines of a new war. People such as Geert Wilders and myself are on trial for speaking out in defense of our liberties and our democracy. Others have been silenced through intimidation, ostracism, and the threat of destitution.

The oligarchs who control the European Union are determined that there shall be no dissenting with their program of abolishing the peoples of Europe and replacing them with another.

This war is a quiet one. It does not involve guns and bombs and tanks and fighter jets. No corpses litter the battlefield.

But it is just as real, and at least as important as any previous war fought on European soil. On its success or failure depends the nature of the civilization that will reside in Europe over the next century—if, indeed, there will be any successor civilization at all.

And Israel is on the front lines of the very same war. Israel is surrounded by the barbarism and backwardness and destitution that awaits us all if we continue to surrender to the evil forces that would destroy Western Civilization. We have only to look at what has happened to Lebanon over the last fifty years to see the future that awaits a modern “multicultural” Europe.

And we only have to look a few kilometers to the south of this spot to see what Israel would be like if it were not inhabited by the Jews. A satellite photograph of the Gaza Strip reveals something telling: when you move a bit south from Ashkelon, or a bit west from Sderot, the rich and productive landscape of Israel abruptly ends and the vast wasteland of Gaza begins. This wasteland extends further south into Egypt, east into Jordan, and north into Lebanon.

Israel is an oasis of civilization in a desert of barbarism.

This is why Israel is so important to the struggle against the Great Jihad. Anyone who is committed to resisting Islamization will find in Israel a natural ally.

This is not a matter of Left and Right. Sharia has no respect for any of our political parties. It does not recognize the very foundation on which our diverse political structures rest.

Make no mistake about it: the fight against sharia is a fight to save civilization itself.

To discover the future of Europe and Israel if the door is not closed against expansionist Islam, examine what remains of Zoroastrian Persia, or Buddhist Afghanistan, or Christian Syria.

This is what awaits us if we do not act now. Our great civilization will be replaced by poverty and despotism and degradation.

Our civilization is ours to reclaim if we only have the will to do it.

Our moment has come.

Thank you.

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Paul K. writes:

The speech is excellent. The only line I wonder about is this: “We clearly distance ourselves from all right-wing or left-wing extremists and all xenophobic movements.” What are “xenophobic movements”? Isn’t the concept of xenophobia comparable to that of homophobia in that it is simply an accusation that liberals hurl at their opponents?

In this connection, here is a video of an Austrian MP addressing the Turkish ambassador.

It’s remarkable in its directness and it represents every nightmare for liberals rolled into one: a politician from a Western democracy bluntly making a case against Muslims in Western societies, and in an Austrian accent. To liberals, this is Hitler all over again. However, liberals don’t accept the fact that a speech like this is not some spontaneous eruption of “hate,” but an understandable reaction to the policies they keep ramming through against the will of the people. These policies will either result in the obliteration of their own societies or will awaken a rage borne of self-preservation that might be very destructive in its expression.

December 7

James P. writes:

For all that Sabaditsch-Wolff decries the presence of “millions of unassimilable foreigners” in Europe, she is not greatly different from the American “proposition nation” liberals. She says Western Civilization—including Europe, North America, Israel, and presumably Australia and New Zealand—is based on Judeo-Christian traditions, culture, values, and freedoms. That is so, but Western Civilization is also based on nation-states with specific ethnic and racial identities. After all, that’s where the “Western” in Western Civilization comes from—it is a politically correct formulation for “White European Civilization” that allows one to refer collectively to Europe, North America, Israel, Australia, and New Zealand. Yet she specifically distances herself from the “xenophobes” and “extremists” who presumably would wish to maintain the ethnic and racial identities of the nations of Europe.

If Europe imported several hundred million Chinese people who were smart, hard-working, and law-abiding, and who agreed to respect European traditions, culture, values, and freedoms, then Europe would no longer be Europe. Europe would also no longer be part of “Western Civilization”—it would be a new thing, and possibly a pleasant and civilized place to live, but it would no longer be “Western”. The same logic applies to the United States. If we stopped importing unassimilable Latinos and started importing East Asians and South Asians, then the United States would no longer be the nation it once was. If the USA is not merely an idea but also an ethnic and racial state, then this new policy would be just as problematic, for different reasons, than the existing immigration policy.

The nations of Europe—and the United States, Canada, Israel, Australia, and New Zealand—are not merely ideas. They are also peoples. If these nations bring in the “right” non-white immigrants instead of Muslims and Latinos, then they are still committing suicide, though perhaps less quickly and unpleasantly.

LA replies:

I think you’re reading more into her statement than is warranted. She is not speaking the language of “propositional nation,” which reduces the U.S. and perhaps other nations to nothing but propositions. Nowhere does she call the nations of Europe “ideas.” She speaks of Western civilization as a concrete entity. The fact that she doesn’t mention the white race does not make her a propositional nation-ist.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 05, 2010 08:44 PM | Send