Vineyard of the Saker blogspot has a trenchant analysis of the Hebdo hoax/psyop/terror theater, which makes several points I’ve made on this blog over the years:
1. Western fundamentalism over free-speech overlooks the injuries – very real injuries – speech can inflict.
2. Moral or psychic injuries are often worse than physical ones, as the Geneva Convention itself recognizes. Threats of torture and execution are treated as torture in and of themselves.
3. The loss of the sense of the sacred in the West does not entail its loss anywhere else.
4. Between the West as it is constituted today, as a post-Christian, aggressively atheistic and materialistic society, and the world of Islam, there can be no contest.
Ideas (and ideals) being more powerful than mere flesh, it is not the militarily stronger of the two cultures (the West) that will prevail. It is the side whose ideas are more passionately held. That would be the Muslim world.
5. If there is to be a Clash of Civilizations, the West is unlikely to win it.
The Saker:
“Any psychologist will explain to you that not only does moral pain exist, but it can be worse then physical pain. This is why some people confess to crimes (whether real or not) when they are told that their family members will be tortured next even though they themselves had found the internal courage not to yield to torture inflicted upon them. An idea can hurt more then physical pain.
The Geneva conventions specifically forbid mock executions even though all they inflict is fear (a form of moral pain).
In France, it is currently illegal to even question the official version of the so-called “Holocaust” precisely because doing so would cause moral pain to the very few actual “Holocaust survivors” still alive. This protection from moral pain even extends to the relatives and descendants of “Holocaust survivors” who were born already after the war and how never suffered from any ill-treatment themselves.
At the famous Nurenberg trial Julius Streicher was sentenced to death even though he never committed any other crime then “infecting the German mind with the virus of anti-Semitism“. He was, by the way, also viciously tortured before his execution. His crime? He was the founder and editor of a newspaper, Der Stürmer, a nasty racist propaganda paper whose name can be roughly translated as “The attacked” or “The stormer”. Apparently, hate speech can even get you the death penalty in the West.
The 8th Amendment of the US Constitution prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment” especially if it “degrading to human dignity”. Apparently, for the Founding Fathers human dignity was an extremely valuable and real thing which deserved to be protected.
Even in GITMO (hardly a bastion of civilization and human rights!) following the 2005 scandals about the desacration of the Quran, it was decided that the rules about the manipulation of the Quran (which had already existed in the past) would be strictly implemented. So even in waterboarding GITMO insulting the Prophet is considered beyond the norms of civilized behavior. Apparently not in Paris.
What about law defending against slander? Are they not here to protect people from the pain resulting from somebody else’s speech? Do we not care if somebody dear to us is insulted or ridiculed?
So who are we kidding here? Do I need to bring further examples to make my point everybody in the West already knows that caricatures like the one published by Charlie Hebdo really bring on real pain to Muslims. We are not talking about ruffled feathers or irritation, we are talking about real moral and psychological distress here, the kind which normally western civilizational and legal norms try to protect people form.
The truth which others dare not speak but which I will spell out for you here is simple: western elites have the same attitude towards Muslims as Victoria Nuland has for the EU: f**k them! That is the real message not only Charlie Hebdo but the entire teary circus around the Paris massacre sends to Muslims worldwide: bleep you, your religion and your Prophet, bleep you and your victims – thousands and even millions of your dead Muslims (Iraq anybody?!) are not worth 12 of our guys, and we get to limit your speech, but don’t you dare limit ours!
And if a Muslim dares to object, he is instantly reminded about “his” stonings, burkas, terrorist attacks, etc. with the inevitable punch line: Islam is in no position to give lessons to the civilized West……….
….Why not compare other forms of violence such as warfare or genocides. Here, even the worst of the worst Muslims (the Ottomans) compare very favorably with the Europeans, I am sorry if I offend the latter, but that is a fact. Though, of course, there have been plenty of examples of Muslim atrocities (by the Ottomans and the Persians in particular), but compared to what the West did to entire continents (African, North and South America) these are truly minor incidents. Of course, folks in the West are not too knowledgeable about all this, and the comforting narrative is that Europe was civilized, a heir to the Greek and Roman civilizations (a lie – post Frankish Europe re-discovered antiquity thanks to Muslims and Jews!) whereas the Muslims are just goat herders from the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. Comforting narrative for sure, but factually wrong. Muslims, however, are very much aware of this history and don’t like to be looked down by the very westerners which they see as rather brutish and always bloodthirsty.
Third, there is a feature of modern western civilization which does set it apart from pretty much all others. The quasi-total absence of the sacred. For a modern, secular and educated person in the West there is very little which is truly sacred. In the past, wives and mothers still used to be sacred, and telling an Italian or Spaniard “cornuto” or “hijo de puta” could get you knifed. Nowadays a French rap group proudly calls itself “Nique Ta Mère“. Some will say this is progress, I suppose. In the USA, the flag is sacred. At least to some. And, apparently, for millions of people in France – free speech, including deliberately offending free speech, is sacred. Except when it is directed a Jews, in which case it can land you in jail. For most Muslims, the prophets are so sacred that every time they mention their name they add “sallallahu alayhi wasallam” (peace be upon him). Now, you don’t have to be a Muslim yourself or to approve of the Prophet to be capable of understanding that the Prophet Mohammed is truly dear and even sacred to Muslims. The fact that there is nothing sacred left in the West does not mean that the rest of the world has slouched down to a similar degree of degeneracy or that those who hold nothing for sacred have a license to impose their lack of anything sacred or their indifference on everybody else and offend them to their (sick) heart’s content…..
One more thing: some of you have expressed outrage at the fact that Sheikh Imran Hosein said that the biggest evil the world has ever seen will rule from Jerusalem. Clearly, the good Sheikh is a vicious anti-Semite, right?
(Sigh)
I wish that those who speak about the “Christian West” actually knew a little something of Christianity, especially of Christian eschatology. What the Sheikh was saying is in no way different from what the Church Fathers said, including that the Antichrist would rule over the world from Jerusalem. A 5min search on the Internet gave me these pretty decent sources:
http://biblelight.net/fathers-on-antichrist.htm
http://www.unitypublishing.com/prophecy/AntichristbySaints.htm
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/hippolytus-christ.html
Islamic eschatology is, by the way, remarkably similar to the traditional Christian one. A quick search under the term “Dajjal” yielded these sources:
http://www.islaam.org/al_mahdi/dajjaal.htm
http://islamqa.info/en/8806
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL60F84B368D3270FF
As for Sheikh Imran Hosein’s advice to the Muslims of France to leave while they can, it is fully in line with this admonition of Christ Himself who told his apostles “And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city.” (Matt 10:14-15). One does not have to agree with what the Sheikh says, but that is hardly a reason to call him crazy or anti-Semitic.….
Methinks that the western leaders are both too arrogant and too ignorant to face this reality and that they think that they can outsmart the devil on their own – hence the unleash the Takfiri demon against Muslim world and the Nazi demon against the Donbass. I say that with leaders like that the West has exactly *zero* chance to prevail. And considering that with each passing year the western leaders become even dumber, more arrogant, more pathetic and more clueless, I see no reason to believe that the West will win the “clash of civilizations” it itself created.
Now please don’t shoot the messenger.“
I generally agree with much of what you present except the part about lacking anything scared.
Personally I find freedom of speech and expression sacred. The fact that the French or Western Europe fails to apply that equally in regard Holocaust or Anti-Semetic speech does not change the principal.
In the same manner I hold sacred personal liberty and the non-aggression principle. The fact that the criminal entity that claims to rule over me (The United States Government in my case) commits acts that violate those beliefs does not in any way make them any less sacred to me or does it offend me any less when any other individual or group of people do the same.
There are those like me who fully understand the grotesque behavior of Western governments but also at the same time might find it a tad disgusting when other human beings are hung in the public square for the “crime” of being gay or making blasphemous statements against someone’s invisible friend in the sky. Yes, that too may offend someone somewhere but no has the right to go through life not being offended and certainly no one has the right to commit violence on another who has not attacked them. I personally do care what the word of anyone’s “god” has to say about that. It’s barbaric and belongs in the ash bin of history.
All that said I do not think that “The West” has brought on or planned a “clash of civilizations”. Rather I believe that the collaborative efforts of criminal governments and businesses from East AND West have set about to keep The Middle East in a state of continual chaos so as to not give rise to a regional economic competitor.
In other words the same shit would be going on elsewhere (and is if you take a look at Africa a continent that has felt the same destructive influences from BOTH Western and Middle Eastern influence-read Islam and Christianity) cause it is all about the oil so to speak.
Funny thing now that oil is the thing in Western Africa one finds that part of the world falling apart. Huh? Liberia, anyone? Nigeria?
Perhaps once people begin to think of ‘religion” as something that is about one’s PERSONAL relationship with their creator instead of obsessing about it in the form of the collective assertion of it on others, we as a species might just make a little progress. So when some dumbass French cartoonists DRAW PICTURES of unfunny, childish offensive things, much like the creators of South Park do every week, I’m a little less inclined to sympathize with those who chose to respond with VIOLENCE.
Hi Keith,
Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
I actually posted a response that was published but now seems to have vanished.
I’ll try to make my points again.
You suggest, interestingly, that the West does indeed hold something sacred – free speech.
Perhaps. Certainly, free speech is held to be inviolable in theory.
However, as you very well know, practice is a different thing. Today, in the West, one can lose one’s career for a multitude of “incorrect” expressions and opinions.
In some cases, one can be incarcerated for one’s non-pc opinion, as anti-Zionist writers and critics of homosexuality know.
Even apart from that, though, I tend to think that free speech in the West is not so much a political principle as it is an expression of a temperamental inability to conform to the demands of civility in large parts of the population. It is license, self-indulgence and malice, masquerading as expressive need.
So bah humbug is my response to your main point.
Point two. Hebdo is not about free speech at all, although the public has been gulled into thinking it is. Free speech is a political principle which circumscribes the government and prevents it from encroaching on its citizen’s rights.
Where did the government curtail Hebdo’s speech in any way?
Au contraire, it is busy curtailing the speech of critics of Hebdo, critics of globalization and the war on terror.
“Free speech” has nothing to say about the response of one citizen to another citizen’s speech. There is nothing in the doctrine of free speech that suggests it is a get-out-of-jail-free card that will let rash, intemperate, foolhardy provocation remain without consequences. The law cannot forestall human response. It can merely mop up after the fact with charges,convictions and incarcerations. The editors will stay dead.
As to the point about the barbarism of responding with physical violence to verbal attacks, that again is self-evident only to someone in the same moral and intellectual universe as you are. To someone occupying a different universe, it is not self-evident.
Consider a man whose 8 year daughter has been raped and murdered by a pedophile. Suppose the pedophile’s accomplices and associates were to follow him around where he could not escape them, shouting obscenities about his daughter, gloating over her rape, adding salacious images and details to their ravings, as well as threats…just suppose the father reacted one day by shooting his tormenters..tell me, is that a civilized or a barbaric response? And would a person who made no response at all, who took the abuse in silence, be more civilized or less?
There are many cultures and civilizations, including Europe in the Middle Ages, that would consider the father a barbarian if he did not kill his tormentors.
So Hebdo is as much a barbarian in the attackers’ eyes as the attackers are barbarians in yours.
Whose barbarism is more barbaric, and why?
In any case, all this is beside the point, since I don’t believe that the killing was committed by Islamicists at all, but by Western intelligence/secret services, as a staged false-flag operation.
That makes all this media outcry merely a form of brainwashing in the services of the globalist project….and the “civilization versus barbarism” trope another shop-worn meme fed to the limitless crowd of suckers that seems to constitute the reading public.
Lila,
My main point was directed at the vineyard of the saker blog article that was linked at the top of your post. The suggestion that “The West” has lost its sense of sacred. I use quotes with West because I think we can observe that the decay of morals and social norms knows no geographic boundaries. That and my point regarding my examples of speech and violence are precisely chosen to show the different perception that you reference at the end of your response. Here’s the difference: whether or not I find humor in, agree with, despise, or cringe at Hebdo’s “speech” I am not the one who chose or views as an acceptable response the use of violence. Play that card and you kinda lose all arguments.
I personally find that anyone who would need to invoke violence because someone insulted their faith is really very insecure about their own relationship with their religion and perhaps is seeking validation? Can’t say personally. The idea that someone could DRAW A PICTURE and drive me to murder is patently absurd which makes me think that some other goal or objective lies beneath their actions and that it is THEY who are lazily taking the easy way out or as you wrote (and I tried to cut and paste but I could not! argh! sorry I’m lazy) “is license, self-indulgence and malice…”.
And while I’m on that why is it that Mormons haven’t at the very least just kicked the shit out of Parker & Stone? In fact the response from THEIR religion being insulted, maligned, and ridiculed has been…crickets. Why is that?
As to the rape/tormenter example-yes, you selected a genuine pickle there BUT it was all predicated on an original actual act of violence. Just how far or not far are we willing to go re: offending someone’s religion or whatever when it comes to words? Is that not the same slope that has led us to the PC bullsheet that you not only describe but also I understand that you have experienced personally? While Hebdo mioght not have been well crafted satire or humor (I do not know or can judge as I have never read the rag) do we throw out the baby with the bath water on that subjective valuation? At what point then does well crafted, important satire as commentary get the boot? Hustler used to run stuff that was pretty base as far as commentary and satire go (Jerry Fallwell). Society SOMEHOW survived and gave birth to Stone and Parker who I referenced precisely for their blatantly offensive satire that I believe to be well needed.
I did not mean to imply that I thought the whole Hebdo affair was or is about “free speech” or expression. It’s taken that shape the same way people misuse the censorship and “discrimination” thing. I understand the concept of free speech and that it can only really be invoked when one is restricted from one’s expression by government. The problem with that is that it is government in most people’s minds that is charged with protecting one’s free speech. Slight conflict of interest there. I think I stated or alluded to the poor behavior of Western govs in regard speech when it doesn’t fit their world view. No Hebdo is about violence. And that really popular thing nowadays called tolerance. The real problem is our acceptance and even endorsement of violence rather than a lack of tolerance. We are numb to the use of violence. Murder is murder. I personally don’t care what one’s reason is. Does the 8 yr old’s father have a “right” to gun down HIS tormentors? No. Is it more or less civilized? Less. Can I see it through his eyes? Yes, Would I ever do such a thing? NO. We can always concoct scenarios and what if’s to challenge those things that should be moral absolutes. But at the end of it if we start to erode those absolutes we get what we see today. Theft is called “taxes”. Fraud is called “investment”. I think you wrote some stuff on that, no? (endearing tone of voice-sorry I don;t do sarc tags)
Either we as a species move away from violence and emotion, faith, fear – those 7 things some folks call sins, and a few other things that come to mind on that matter- we’re done.
And none of it is beside the point. I too have my suspicions that none of this is organic. Exactly where do the ISIS folks get their orange jump suits? Is their a big vendor right their in Iraq or Syria and they just decided to purchase a whole bunch wholesale? Are they leftover stock for Abu Gharib? And don’t get me started about the production qualities of these execution videos.
I’ll agree with the “civilization v barbarism” idea you state. ATMO this is about the same old stuff most everything is. Oil, money, specifically a pipeline and in the midst is some real centuries old tribal crap within Islam being stirred up by various factions from the world’s two other giant religious whack job fronts of Christianity (it’s all about the return of Jesus) and Judaism with their own prophecy fairy tale of some third temple garbage and everyone trying to secure their place in the much heralded afterlife with their make believe friend who lives in the sky and, of course, likes them better that all the rest of the other boys and girls who happen to live on Earth. This is easliy observed by the lack of reaction to the accepted barbarism of various client states most notably Saudi Arabia. Now here we actually do have an example of civilization vs barbarism. I return to my execution for homosexuality or adultry example. As much as one might find adultery to be immoral (personally I couldn’t care less) it lacks the requirements to be considered criminal much less qualifying one for execution. The idea that it is the exercise of one’s faith to follow such a code is ATMO just cover for the implementation of policy to keep people under tyranny through aggressive use of force and fear. And just for the record I’ll throw in the tangential argument of another similar hipocracy. If and African tribes performs a clitorectomy it’s barbaric. If a Jew performs a circumcision well, then that’s someone following their “religion”. Well, I’ll call bullshit on both. They are both barbarians and keep company with the like of honor killings in my book.
Just sayin’
Hi Keith,
Thanks again for very thoughtful, cogent reply.
Bah Humbug was not directed at you, but at the Charlies Hebdo circus.
YOU:
And while I’m on that why is it that Mormons haven’t at the very least just kicked the shit out of Parker & Stone? In fact the response from THEIR religion being insulted, maligned, and ridiculed has been…crickets. Why is that?
ME:
1. Yes, and Mormonism is shrinking, while Islam is expanding.
http://www.salamandersociety.com/foyer/attendance/
http://www.harunyahya.com/en/Articles/3400/islam-the-most-rapidly-expanding
A religion that doesn’t take its own ideas seriously tends not to be taken
seriously by outsiders.
2. Mormons are not being attacked physically through propaganda, war, and torture or in other existential ways (sanctions).
Islam is under constant attack from the West. Muslim/Arab villains have been a staple of Hollywood for half a century. The West itself considers the battlefield everywhere and social media a very powerful WEAPON. It cannot then blame the enemy for responding in a war-like manner, except that…
3. The enemy did NOT respond in that manner….it was A STAGED FALSE-FLAG.
If you consider all the staged provocations, the endless war, the constant vilification, and the difference in size, the differing existential threats, then Islam indeed is not that much more aggressive than the Mormons…although expanding much more, perhaps because it offers a viable alternative to the “West.”
That’s all I can say for now.
Cheers and many thanks for stopping by. I much appreciate it.