Israel Insider has a new piece by Avi Davis, a freelance journalist based in LA on a topic we’ve treated at this blog before.
AWAITING THE NEW FALL OF ROME
By Avi DavisIn his work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the historian Edward Gibbon describes how a vacillating Roman Senate, with the army of the Barbarian Goths at its city gate, debated fretfully about the Roman Empire’s future. Apparently unknown to them, a civil rebellion, led by slaves and domestics, had erupted within the city walls, leading to anarchy. Days after the appearance of the enemy, the gates were opened from within and the Barbarians poured in to pillage Rome. Within a week, 1100 years of empire building had come to a close.
Sixteen hundred years after that epochal event, it should surprise no one that new barbarians threaten the safety and security of the continent Rome once controlled When the body of Ilan Halimi turned up last week on a railway track outside of Paris the group responsible was identified as the Barbarians. Yet these were not Goths, Huns or Vandals of ancient times, but Muslim criminals whose intent was clearly to commit a racial murder. The torture to which Halimi was subjected and the methods with which he was eventually dispatched should remind everyone in Europe of the original provenance of the term “barbarian” - that of men intent on destruction of centers of Western culture and civilization.
Historians are actually quick to point out that the “barbarians” didn’t want to destroy Rome, they wanted to take it over. The issue here is really a matter of distinctions, rather than opposing one gross generalization with another. While the leadership, the German generals, many of whom had fought for Rome, negotiated with Rome, they may have had in mind a desire to move in and take over without destroying. Of course, that hardly means that they didn’t destroy in taking over. In other words, there are often vast differences between intention, capacity, and the consequences of acting on intentions which one is incapable of carrying out. The military forces that the German leadership brought with them were not up to the demands of a culture which had made significant strides in pruning back the “plunder and distribute” mentality of tribal warrior societies. “Vandal” as an adjective, comes from the Vandals, whose troops were notorious for their “gratuitous” destruction.
Similarly, I think, one can argue that the more educated Islamist leaders, like Tariq Ramadan, anticipate not only taking over Europe, but keeping Europe as prosperous as it is today. For those from cultures that do not understand the nature of modern western society and its positive-sum dimensions, who still work from the plunder and distribute” paradigm, the world of modernity is only a variant on their own, and running the show once one has taken over should be no more difficult that the aftermath of a coup-d’état in a Muslim country. Cognitive egocentrism runs both ways.
The actions and justifications of the present day Barbarians, are of course, more than a match for their ancient predecessors. The brutal slaying of Halimi , a young French Jew of no particular importance, has opened the eyes of the European public to the dangers of the Muslim jihadist culture as no other act of terrorism or criminality has done until now. Tens of thousands protested the murder – recognized universally as an attack - not on just a Jew, but on France itself. Not even the brutal slaying of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh or the murder of the gay Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn has quite provided the same political impact. That is because in the wake of the recent French riots and the worldwide disturbances caused by the publication of the Danish cartoons, European politicians now recognize that radical Islamic sentiment is no longer confined to a few scattered sects, focused on anti-Semitic provocations, who can be tamed through dialogue and discussion. It rather represents an ideological pandemic spreading voraciously in European cities, which vouchsafes the notion that the murder of Jews, gays, conservatives, journalists, editors - and in fact anyone who is perceived as a barrier to Islam’s advance, entitles those with requisite religious belief to issue and execute death warrants. And further, that flimsy , ignorant responses and the cognitive dissonance of denial only fans these flames higher.
This may be a bit premature… wishful thinking. My sense, after spending a week there (and I’ll post on that this weekend), is that although people are waking up, some of them, like the proverbial ostrich, have lifted their head from the sand, noticed that they are between the tracks, and that the train is bearing down on them. “Nous sommes tétanisés,” said one of my friends. We are paralyzed. In my opinion, we’re still not at the stage of awareness and mobilization Davis had described above.
A word should certainly be offered to those secular humanists who still believe that amelioration of the economic plight of Islamic urban centers will substantially change the attitudes of the jihadists in their midst. This view not only ignores the historical pattern of the jihadist culture and motivation; it is a sop to the Islamists – clerics and leaders – who see such soft-pedaling as a weakness to be exploited. One must wonder at the blindness of European politicians who still believe that the fire bombings of synagogues, the murder and harassment of Jews or the torching of Jewish businesses are merely isolated examples of urban unrest, economic disenfranchisement or even latewnt anti-Semitism. They are, in fact blows, aimed against Western civilization. Imams and Islamic clerics throughout Europe have prophesied for years about the West’s imminent collapse. They do this while employing the liberal values of tolerance, openness and dialogue to protect their mosques while propagating hatred, racism and incitement to murder beneath the shield of freedom of speech.
Good description of dupes and demopaths. And the blindness of the elite is really deep-seated. The more I try and explain to my French friends and colleagues about the ways in which the anti-Zionism/Judeophobia are part of a larger pattern, the more they resist and tell me that I’m “communautariste” (partisan, not objective) and unfair to the Muslims, who just want a fair deal. I am more convinced than ever that the blindness Davis describes is a form of cultural AIDS, and anti-Zionism is how we get infected.
Most Western countries have not , as yet, recognized the profundity of the threat. But for some there is a growing measure of clarity. Last week Peter Costello, the Australian treasurer, made public his government’s opinion that those who do not subscribe to Australian values or deny the supremacy of Australian law over Islamic law should be denied both citizenship and the right to enter Australia. Costello went further, in an interview on television, in declaring that even Australian citizens who fail to pass this basic litmus test should be subject to deportation. The Australian government, particularly its feisty prime minister John Howard, have been well ahead of the rest of the world in legislating firm controls against incitement and racism emanating from their country’s mosques. But few Western leaders have been as forthright as Costello in recommending deportation as a measure against a country’s citizens for denying the basic values upon which their own societies are founded.
Meanwhile, time is running short for Europe. Without recognizing that an unbalanced emphasis on pluralism at the expense of security, will gradually erode the moral superstructure of liberal democracy, there will be thousands more Ilan Halimis – Jew and non-Jew alike - tortured in third floor apartments and dying on the streets of restive Islamic communities.
For that reason, no one should be deceived. Barbarism has returned to Europe. But this time the barbarians are not just outside the city, battering at the walls. They are inside it, with sufficient political clout and public sympathy to open the gates from within.
For further reflections on this topic, see Nidra Poller’s most recent article: Gang of Barbarians.