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Blogs by Erik Hare
Reductio ad Extremis 8/10/2008 4:33:30 PM
The show opened like so many I’ve seen before. “This is the face of Muslim extremism, a man who grew up right here in Britain just as the Tube Bombers had.” I was only watching the show on CNN to see if it covered any new ground, but it didn’t. It was the same old crap and I switched it off.
Does that make me an apologist for the extremists who want to kill us? Not at all. I look at the litany of crimes that have been planned and executed against the West, and three words come to mind: “The Turner Diaries”. I think everyone has completely missed the point of the danger that we face and what it means to the world we created.
The Turner Diaries is a book that was published long ago, and I confess I’ve only read part of it. It’s just not very well written, but the subject matter is dynamite. It tells the story of a military government that has secretly taken over California, and then openly works to expand their reach. A group of patriots bands together and stop them.
This novel was the inspiration for people that include Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. When I was a kid, I got a copy of The Turner Diaries through a friend who associated with the American Nazi Party (and whose betrayal of our friendship features prominently in one of my most sickening memoir stories). I also talked about this with a friend and neighbor Larry who joined the youth KKK. His reasoning was that the powers that really run things were using multiculturalism to force people who hate each other into the same space, thus degrading their ability to unite and respond. This makes them more pliable and ripe for domination.
Sound like Black Helicopter stuff? Sure is. But it’s not hard to find someone who at least believes some of these stories – tales of a government out to divide and conquer a proud and free people. Through McVeigh, they are the ones who struck first.
Fast forward a few years to 9/11, when Moslems with the most contact with the West were the ones who committed the atrocities. Then go to the Tube Bombers, who all grew up in the UK. The people who are striking us are, to a person, those who have walked among us. They are the ones who are most likely to believe that Democracy, as we know it, is only an illusion. They will tell you that there is only one hope for people to unite against the real imperial threat, though their stories as to what we need to rally around (race, religion) might vary.
Anyone who thinks the terrorist threat is all about Islam is utterly missing the point – and needs to pay far less attention to what they see on teevee. This isn’t about a religion, it’s about a world that has far exceeded anyone’s ability to understand how things happen. The idea of Freedom in this world often seems so abstract that it has to be a delusion, a fantasy that has been fed to us. I don’t buy that line myself, but I can see how people get to that point.
Why are there various forms of extremism? Because they appear to give reasonable answers to people. They propose solutions that, on the face of them, make more sense than a consumer culture where people voluntarily submit to the winds of economic fancy to stay even with the relentless demand for stuff. Takes some violence to get to that stage? Well, the ruling imperialists create wars in places like Iraq, so violence is just part of the game. Think down this road for a short while, and giving up your own life to strike back might seem rather noble and just.
I don’t buy any of it, of course, but I don’t believe in what we have now, either. I wish everyone on both sides of this divide would just wake up long enough to realize how ridiculous it all is. But they won’t. We always have our nooze people to whip things up and show how it’s all about Islam. Why do we buy that fairy tale? Because the alternative is understanding our own culpability. You see, everyone has their own dangerous fairy tales, including the mainstream. That’s the real problem.
