Europe’s heart begins to beat, its brain begins to think, its tongue begins to speak

Paul K. writes:

Here is a video of Austrian MP Evald Stadler denouncing the Turkish ambassador.

The speech is 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.

LA replies:

I’ve never seen anything like it. Stadler’s speech represents a return of sanity and moral health to the West! A Muslim murders and beheads a Catholic archbishop in Turkey, shouting “Allah is great,” and a Western politician declares in his country’s parliament, “A Muslim murdered and beheaded a Catholic archbishop in Turkey, shouting ‘Allah is great.’” Such plain speech would not be heard in America, where Muslim terrorists are no longer referred to as Muslim terrorists or even as Muslims. Stadler attacks the Turkish immigrants in Austria as unassimilable primitives who have been “sent here by Turkey” (no Pamela Geller-style “I love Muslims” for him), and attacks the Turkish ambassador for simultaneously demanding greater efforts by Austria to “integrate” the Turks and for traveling around Europe declaring integration “a crime against Islam and Turkishness.” Never before have I seen a Western politician identify the rhetorical tricks by which Muslim spokesmen seek to paralyze the minds of their intended infidel victims. And most of the Austrian parliament members were vigorously applauding Stadler’s remarks. Is this a dream?

In passing, I notice two negatives: the soulless sterility of the Austrian parliament chamber, similar to all legislative chambers in today’s Europe, which have been deliberately designed as a symbolic expression of the post-self governing, post-Christian, post-Western, post-human EU order; and the beginning of the YouTube video, with text on a black screen accompanied by jazz. This is the way every Woody Allen movie for the last 30 years has opened, and is inappropriate for this video.

- end of initial entry -

Thomas Fink writes from Germany:

This was a great speech.

I’m still not as euphoric regarding the situation in Europe, as your headline signals, however.

There is a second video, with the whole speech, unfortunately not translated, but also not with the funny music.

The Austrian MP Ewald Stadler is an interesting person: he is a traditional Catholic, opponent of the 2nd Vatican Council and an expert on Freemasonry. There is on You Tube a 14-part lecture by him about Freemasonry and its influence in Austria. He’s not a conspiracy theorist but an opponent of Freemasonry and its influence in all political parties (one reason for him to part with the late Jorg Haider and his Freedom Party was the growing influence of Masons in the Freedom Party). As I said, he is not a conspiracy theorist, he knows what he is talking about from experience. He sees the Masons as a powerful, influential group (and on that one can not disagree with, especially in terms of America?), which essentially stands for the project of liberalism, as it is defined by you, . And that brings me to the point I always circle around in my mails. Namely, that in the American tradition since the American Revolution there is residing a gnostic worm which must be removed in order to really successfully stop the project of liberalism. Is it true that every U.S. president was a Mason and if so, has this no meaning? I’m not a conspiracy theorist.

LA replies:

I’m not being euphoric at all. When I see a sign of health and life in the midst of the death and madness that is Europe, I applaud it. That doesn’t mean that Europe is saved. It means: “Look, Europe is not completely dead and lost. Here is an element of sanity and life. If Europe begins to move in the direction marked out in this speech, then Europe could save itself.”

Regarding Freemasonry, traditionalist Catholics are fixated on Freemasonry as the driving cause of liberalism and modernity. I think this is silly. However, if we think of Freemasonry as a way of speaking about liberalism, or as a synonym for liberalism, then the anti-Masonic critique can be seen as useful.

Part of the silliness of focusing on Freemasonry is that it suggests that there is this dark, secret conspiracy at work, and that this is what has led to the de-Christianization of the West, the growth of liberalism and leftism, and so much else. But you don’t need the supposition of some secret esoteric organization running things from behind a curtain. The beliefs of liberalism are out there for all to see. Liberalism is the ruling belief system of the modern world. There is nothing secret about it at all. So, in my view, traditionalist Catholics put themselves into an intellectual ghetto when they obsess on the Masons. But there is this common human trait, which I’ve also discussed in the context of American conservatives, of wanting to think that our problems are due to some dark evil force which is “over there,” having nothing to do with ourselves, and all we have to do is somehow banish that dark evil force and all will be will. This belief may be emotionally comforting, but it does nothing to help us understand and combat a belief system which is not “over there,” but “in here,” because it is shared by everyone in the modern world including ourselves.

Bjorn Larsen writes:

The gentleman seen clapping at 0:51 into the video is Hans Christian Strache, the leader of the FPO, who traveled to Israel this past weekend with other like-minded parliamentarians such as Dewinter and Stadtkewitz.

Albert S. writes:

As a traditionalist Catholic, I freely admit my fixation on Freemasonry. I can assure you, however, that the belief in a “dark evil force” at work as a deus ex machina for the other side is anything but comforting. What is strangely comforting, however, is that you find this theory so little compelling. A high-octane intellect like yours is less likely to become derailed into “silliness” than most others, but an obstinate unwillingness to entertain the incredible sometimes fosters insalubrious effects regarding spiritual health / safety. I will promise to lay to heart your warning that we (traditional Catholics) risk sequestering ourselves into an intellectual ghetto, a grave condition to be most wary of, if you agree to dip your toe occasionally into the icy waters of the Masonic conspiracy and ask: … just what if?

Speaking only for myself, life would be much less troubling without all this concern over Freemasons. I hope you are right.

LA replies:

I can’t speak about Freemasonry in Europe, but in America, even if it were true that the Masons during the Revolutionary period and in the early years of the United States exerted some decisive influence in shaping the idea of America as a messiah nation that would transform humanity, that idea has long since passed into the general consciousness. Masons in America haven’t been importantly influential in ages and ages. So what good does it do—what new insights does it give us into liberalism, what intellectual tools does it give us to use against liberalism—to obsess about Masons? I have hung out with traditionalist Catholics and listened to them go on for hours about Masons. It struck me as having the same relevance and cogency as Southerners spending all their time and energy obsessing about Lincoln and Sherman and the Lost Cause; or, closer to the topic at hand, as certain conservatives who reduce the problem and the etiology of the left to the Frankfurt School. Among these respective groups, the words “the Masons,” or “the Frankfurt school” take on an almost liturgical quality, as though the mere repetition of the words brings the group into a commonly shared sacred truth.

In any case, even if the Left did originate out of Freemasonry, the form the left takes today is no longer Masonic; it’s a useless pre-occupation as far as I can see, which certain Catholics indulge in because they get some emotional satisfaction out of it, as a familiar theory which they all share and which provides them with a common “culture.”

Also, as I’ve argued in various contexts, but particularly in the area of the Islam problem (see my collection on “non-Islam theories of Islamic extremism”), most people are not intellectually curious. Once they have an explanation for a phenomenon that “works” for them or is familiar to them, they tend to repeat it endlessly, instead of trying to deepen their understanding with new insights coming from new angles.

As for the need for me to be more curious about Freemasonry, if the Freemasonry explanation for liberalism made some sense to me, then I would be more curious about it, but it doesn’t (at least it never has, it’s never “clicked” with me at all), so I’m not.

December 7

James P. writes:

You wrote,

A Muslim murders and beheads a Catholic archbishop in Turkey, shouting “Allah is great,” and a Western politician declares in his country’s parliament, “A Muslim murdered and beheaded a Catholic archbishop in Turkey, shouting ‘Allah is great.’”

The first time I’d heard of that archbishop being murdered was in the Stadler video. Can anyone doubt that if a Muslim Imam had been murdered in Europe by a Christian fanatic, the entire world would have been screaming in indignation?

Thomas Fink replies to LA:

I agree with you, that it is silly to focus on Masonry as a dark, secret conspiracy at work. By the way, Stadler also makes the point that Masonry is much more harmless and vulnerable than we imagine if we have this “dark, secret” picture in mind. But still it is of significance that there are many people in the West in high and in not so high positions in politics and in business who are involved in silly esoteric belief systems and also share similar views in regard of issues like abortion, emancipation, race, etc.

There seems also to be differences between Anglo Saxon Masonry and the Grand Orient of France which dominates on the continent and is much more political than the Anglo Saxon lodges. And I think it is this notion of “a dark, secret conspiracy at work” which prevents us from dealing with Masonry as a real force. They are people and sometimes very silly people. The involvement of the Grand Orient in almost all revolutionary movements on the continent is undeniable. Which doesn’t means the Grand Orient was the single and only cause of the revolutions. Sometimes the lodges were only used by the revolutionaries, for instance in the case of Bakunin. But still, there are official documents, correspondence etc. more than hundred years old which for instance read like a blueprint for the European Union. And when you read this, you can get a feeling why this people today cling to an impossible dream like the E.U.

I believe that one of the reasons Liberalism became the ruling system of the modern world is found in the activities of some lodges. This is not a conspiracy theory. Ideas have consequences. And Masonry played its part in the transformation of messianism and gnosticism into the austere doctrine of progress in the 18th century and beyond.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 06, 2010 01:15 AM | Send