A spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of fascism

A spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre not of communism, as Marx proclaimed in 1848, but of fascism or the far right. 

Spectre is the right word, for spectres are imaginary and the threat of fascism is imaginary, just as the threat of communism was in 1848

But, as in 1848, it's a fear of the people by their rulers.

In case you hadn't noticed, the left is nowadays terrified of the workers. Needlessly, as the workers are brainwashed too.

I do not think it is especially useful to call Islamists fascists as they are different in quite a few ways from Mussolini's movement, but if they are fascists then they are a fascist threat that is certainly not imaginary.

Steve Bannon may have been right when he said,

I think we are in a crisis of the underpinnings of capitalism and on top of that we’re now, I believe, at the beginning stages of a global war against Islamic fascism.

Bernard Lewis: Will the future see an Islamised Europe or a European Islam?

In 2010 the greatest historian of the Middle East, Bernard Lewis, predicted that by the end of the decade Iran would abandon political Islam, while Turks adopted some form of Islamist rule. The old man might yet be right.

He also said in 2010 that Muslims were making their third attempt to conquer Europe, an attempt which seemed to have a much better chance at success than the first two as it took the form of peaceful migration rather than military aggression.

“The only question remaining for us to answer regarding the future of Europe is will it be an Islamised Europe or a European Islam?"

I suspect that the country that poses the biggest danger to Christendom/Western Christian civilisation is not Iran or Turkey, and certainly not Russia or North Korea, but Saudi Arabia.

ISIS is a very big danger if we overreact to them, as the Americans overreacted to September 11th, and alienate many Muslims in Europe.

Macron will be President of France

French exit poll result:

Macron - 23%
Le Pen - 23%
Fillon - 19%
Melenchon - 19%

The Gaullist Fillon might have been a good President, despite the corruption allegations. Macron will do less well against Marine Le Pen than Fillon, so she will be happy to meet him in the second round. Nevertheless I am sure that Macron will be President.

He will be another Trudeau. Possibly another Hollande.

And bad news for Britain in the Brexit negotiations.

Why should Great Britain or America fight for the Sunnis?

Obviously, the USA and UK should never have invaded Iraq. They should have launched a short punitive expedition into Afghanistan in 2001, restored the monarchy and then allowed the Taliban to come back. Nation-building was always (a liberal) folly: Afghanistan and Iraq were not post-war Germany, as should have been clear.

But having broken it, as Colin Powell warned, the USA bought Iraq. Leaving it alone led to ISIS. So what is the solution?

I don't know. Unfortunately, the USA may now back the Israeli-Saudi-Sunni alliance against the Shia crescent (Iran, Syria, Hezbollah). I hope Mr. Trump resists this temptation.

Almost all the terrorist atrocities against Western Europe and the USA are committed by Sunnis, yet we are constantly told that Iran, which is fighting ISIS and Al Qaeda, is the great threat. Why? 

Will there always be an England, Europe or America, whatever the origin of their inhabitants?

But today, France’s most read and most discussed popular writers—novelists and political essayists—are conservatives of one stripe or another. They are not concerned, even slightly, with the issues that animate American “mainstream” think-tank conservatism—lowering taxes, cutting federal programs, or maintaining some kind of global military hegemony. Their focus is France’s national culture and its survival.

These words are from an article by Scott McConnell in the latest issue of The American Conservative called The Battle for France, which you should print off and read, whether or not you are interested in France. It is about the future, or lack of one, of Western/Christian civilisation. 

I came across it via Professor Tom Gallagher, the historian and commentator.

It contains a quite astonishing piece of information, which I had seen before.

Because the government does not publish statistics about race, some curious researchers have looked at the number of newborn babies screened for markers for sickle-cell anemia, a test given if both parents are of African, North African, or Sicilian origin. The figure has risen from 25 percent in 2005 to 39 percent in 2015. In the Greater Paris region it has risen from 54 percent to 73 percent.

Gentle reader, I don't suppose you have time or patience just now to read several brilliant articles about the effects on the West of mass immigration from the Third World. 

Still, I wanted to post links to another six 'must read' articles on the subject, which is almost the only important political issue of our days. You might want to bookmark this page or even print them off to read at your leisure. 

Like most nice people, I didn't give immigration from the Third World into Great Britain or Europe much thought until a few years ago. When a man I knew in MI6 tried to tell me about the dangers caused by Muslims in Europe I assumed he did so because he was a very rigorous Low Church Protestant. When Tom Gallagher told me about the late Oriana Fallaci and opened the subject of the 'Islamisation' of Europe with me I thought he was absurdly alarmist. I thought the same at first when Ruth Dudley Edwards talked about Islamisation.

Now, like everyone's, my views have changed, because the world has changed and we have all noticed. Despite the official propaganda. It is not that we become more extreme as we age, though we certainly become wiser and less inhibited. It's the world that has become more extreme.

The best comment on Brexit I've seen

I voted for the principle of national sovereignty and I expect to suffer for this choice. You do know there have been actual *wars* of independence, don't you? It will not be easily won. A lot of Remainers seem to be saying that they are *not* prepared to suffer for the principle of national sovereignty and that if we suffer just one jot of inconvenience or anxiety, we should have remained.

1O pieces of advice

I don't like work — no man does — but I like what is in work — the chance to find yourself. Joseph Conrad

What people said this weekend

Peter Hitchens‏Verified account @ClarkeMicah  15 seconds ago

Must sign off now. But amazed by liberal left. Donald Trump transformed in a night from fascist moron to hero. I still think he's an oaf.

Michael Caine, interviewed on Sky on Friday, explaining why he voted for Brexit,

It wasn’t about... racism, immigrants or anything, it was about freedom

[On the possibility that Britain might be less prosperous because of Brexit]

I'd rather be a poor master than a rich servant.

Politics is always chaotic. In politics, you’re always going into areas you’ve never been before, so you’re going to get lost and then you’re going to find your way. And then it’ll be all right.

Has Donald Trump been turned? Not necessarily

On Thursday night there were a lot of interesting news stories. 

A horrible story about the use of chemical weapons in Syria.17 suicide bombs had briefly opening the road out of Mosul, presumably allowing the leader of ISIS to escape. The story or non-story about Donald Trump's nefarious links to Vladimir Putin trundled on, now involving Carl Bernstein. 

When we woke up yesterday there was only one story. President Trump had bombed Syria because of the pictures he had seen of dead children, including 'beautiful babies'.

I feared and more than half-expected that Mr. Trump would be turned by the American foreign policy establishment. Now that danger is acute. Especially since Rex Tillerson said the day before that the US still wanted regime change in Syria.

Steve Bannon being shoved off the National Security Council was a worrying sign, as was the destruction of Mike Flynn by the FBI. Instead of a National Security Advisor who worried about Islam the USA has one who worries about Russia. 

Donald Trump has many good instincts and insights, which is why he is President, but a very short attention span. He has surrounded himself with a bunch of people, including James Mattis and Nikki Haley, who do not share any of his vision of the world, possibly because there are few experienced people in public life who do.

Steve Bannon is Mr. Trump's conscience and must be very beleaguered.

Mr. Trump could turn out to be another Republican president who cuts taxes for the rich and sends soldiers to kill and die in pointless wars in the Middle East. Ones from which Saudi Arabia and Israel benefit, rather than America. While taking in as many refugees as Obama did and doing not much more about illegal immigration.

But it does not have to be like that.

Christopher Caldwell Tells Us How to Think About Vladimir Putin

Christopher Caldwell is the most interesting journalist I read. Do read this talk he recently gave, gentle reader. 

'Yet if we were to use traditional measures for understanding leaders, which involve the defense of borders and national flourishing, Putin would count as the pre-eminent statesman of our time. On the world stage, who can vie with him? Only perhaps Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey.

Well happ'd on, brother-ranger of the brine!

A mixed bag of quotations today.



Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to think, and this they consider freedom. Oswald Spengler


A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire. Duc De La Rochefoucauld

Emil Cioran predicts the end of European civilisation

 

Vacillating instincts, corroded beliefs, obsessions, and anility: everywhere conquerors in retreat, rentiers of heroism confronting the young Alarics who lie in wait for Rome and Athens; everywhere paradoxes of the lymphatic. There was a time when salon sallies traversed whole countries, foiled stupidity or refined it. Europe, coquettish and intractable, was in the flower of her age; — decrepit today, Europe excites no one. Even so, certain barbarians await their chance to inherit the finery, impatient at her long agony.

The Romanian aphorist Emil Cioran, in Syllogismes d’Amerture (1952) - the English translation of the book is here. 

It's interesting that he said this before the Algerian War, when Algeria still constituted three departments of France.

Pessimism was to Cioran what daffodils were to Wordsworth or butlers to P.G. Wodehouse. Cioran even achieved the feat of being too pessimistic for Samuel Beckett. This broke up their friendship.

Carl Jung on good and evil

Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation with the shadow and the world of darkness. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.

Why I don't like International Women's Day

A week ago sunny weather arrived in time for Mărţişor. Time to walk
hatless and scarfless along Calea Victoriei in the spring
sunshine.

Romanians consider that spring starts on March 1 (Mărţişor) and men here
celebrate it by offering mărţişoare to women. A mărţişor is a trinket,
usually by peasants who come to Bucharest to sell them,
though some fortunate ladies receive expensive versions of mărţişoare
encrusted with gems.

If you failed to invite a lady for dinner on Mărţişor today you have a

second chance, because March 8th is International Women's Day. It is a day which, if it is noticed at all in the West, is marked by left-wingers and feminists. In Romania it is a very big thing but, after more than forty years of left-wing ideas and political correctness, it is simply about giving women presents and inviting them to dinner.

A very pleasant custom but, still, I dislike IWD because it is Marxist.

Chamberlain, Churchill and the End of Glory

If I am to manage to continue reading books I probably have to give up fiction. Having taken almost two years with 'War and Peace' (do read it if you haven't), I returned with relish to John Charmley's 'Churchill: the End of Glory'.

The book caused great controversy when it appeared 25 years ago because it portrayed Churchill in a new and unflattering light. It is sceptical about Chamberlain and Deladier's decision to go to war with Germany in 1939 and the British cabinet's decision not to find out the details of Hitler's peace overtures after the fall of France in 1940. Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax wanted to. Churchill, the new Prime Minister, and the Labour leader Attlee convinced the (all-party) war cabinet not to do so.

Having been lucky to evacuate the army from France in time and having ruled out negotiations, Churchill had no plan for defeating Germany nor any means of doing so.

As Professor Charmley points out:

The Americans were not about to enter the war in December 1941, as Churchill's despair in November showed. They came in because they were forced to, just as the Soviets had done; only the British and the French were mad enough to volunteer for war.

I followed 'Churchill: the End of Glory' with Professor Charmley's 'Chamberlain and the Lost Peace', which dissects the way in which England came to go to war.

Neville Chamberlain and Benito Mussolini at Munich, 19 September 1938

I recommend both books very highly.

They tell a very sad story about the end of British greatness.

I admire Churchill as a great Englishman, comparable with Nelson, Wellington and Dr Johnson. I have come to think, however, that Neville Chamberlain and Halifax were wiser statesmen.

Yet it was they, not Churchill, who took us to war.

The crucial decision that led to war was the decision to give a guarantee to Poland and, oddly, Romania. It was taken by Chamberlain in March 1939, under pressure from Halifax, after Germany seized the Czech lands.

Quotations for the weekend

That in woman which inspires respect and fundamentally fear is her nature, which is more ‘natural’ than that of man, her genuine, cunning, beast-of-prey suppleness, the tiger’s claws beneath the glove, the naivety of her egoism, her ineducability and inner savagery, and how incomprehensible, capacious and prowling her desires and virtues are. Nietzsche

Nanny's philosophy of life was to do what seemed like a good idea at the time, and do it as hard as possible. It had never let her down. Terry Pratchett 

Dr Johnson, equality and friendship

.....MRS. KNOWLES. 'I cannot agree with him, that friendship is not a Christian virtue.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Madam, strictly speaking, he is right. All friendship is preferring the interest of a friend, to the neglect, or, perhaps, against the interest of others; so that an old Greek said, "He that has FRIENDS has NO FRIEND." Now Christianity recommends universal benevolence, to consider all men as our brethren, which is contrary to the virtue of friendship, as described by the ancient philosophers. Surely, Madam, your sect must approve of this; for, you call all men FRIENDS.' MRS. KNOWLES. 'We are commanded to do good to all men, "but especially to them who are of the household of Faith."' JOHNSON. 'Well, Madam. The household of Faith is wide enough.' MRS. KNOWLES. 'But, Doctor, our Saviour had twelve Apostles, yet there was ONE whom he LOVED. John was called "the disciple whom JESUS loved."' JOHNSON. (with eyes sparkling benignantly,) 'Very well, indeed, Madam. You have said very well.' BOSWELL. 'A fine application. Pray, Sir, had you ever thought of it?' JOHNSON. 'I had not, Sir.'

Immediately before this passage, a favourite of mine, Boswell had said this. (I am not convinced that Dr. Johnson, who had enormous respect for women, genuinely agrees with Boswell here. His 'probably not' may have been politeness.)

MRS. KNOWLES. 'Well, I hope that in another world the sexes will be equal.' BOSWELL. 'That is being too ambitious, Madam. WE might as well desire to be equal with the angels. We shall all, I hope, be happy in a future state, but we must not expect to be all happy in the same degree. It is enough if we be happy according to our several capacities. A worthy carman will get to heaven as well as Sir Isaac Newton. Yet, though equally good, they will not have the same degrees of happiness.' JOHNSON. 'Probably not.'BOSWELL. 'YOU should like his book, Mrs. Knowles, as it maintains, as you FRIENDS do, that courage is not a Christian virtue.' MRS. KNOWLES. 'Well, I hope that in another world the sexes will be equal.' BOSWELL. 'That is being too ambitious, Madam. WE might as well desire to be equal with the angels. We shall all, I hope, be happy in a future state, but we must not expect to be all happy in the same degree. It is enough if we be happy according to our several capacities. A worthy carman will get to heaven as well as Sir Isaac Newton. Yet, though equally good, they will not have the same degrees of happiness.' JOHNSON. 'Probably not.'

The best and worst US presidents of all time

My article on the three worst US Presidents (George W. Bush, Lincoln and Wilson were my choices) seems rather topical now that Donald Trump is president.

It is of course far too early to form a tentative judgment on President Trump after four weeks. He is promising in some ways, though certainly worrying in others. Never say never but it is hard to imagine that he will be as disastrous as George W. Bush.

Barack Obama was very mediocre, of course. Instead of being a mixed-race Ike who brought his country together and forgave whites for their history of racism, he was deliberately divisive. He used wedge issues like homosexual marriage and transgender people using the ladies to divide Republicans and conquer. 

Still, he was not outstandingly bad. Under him the economy improved and he to some extent kept his country out of wars. His biggest legacy, regardless of what you think of it, is creating the conditions in which President Trump won the White House.

The worst president was Lincoln. If you doubt that, try this mental exercise.

Sapphire Jubilee: H.M. Queen Elizabeth II has reigned for 65 years

Today H.M. Queen Elizabeth II has reigned for 65 years, the longest reign in British history and longer by a few months even than the reign of King James VIII and III, better known to history as the Old Pretender.

God save the Queen!

The news from Romania

I started this blog to write about Romania but other things happened instead. Recently Donald Trump happened.

I even failed to blog about the new Social Democrat (PSD) government that took power, in coalition with a small party, the misnamed Liberal Democrats, at the end of last year.

Now Romania is second item on the BBC World Service news, above Trump’s visa policy.

Readers who follow Romanian politics know what to think. For those who don’t, but are interested, I’ll fill you in.

Romania, like all her post-Communist neighbours, has been a by-word for corruption. But for the last three years Romania has become famous as a country where corruption is being tackled very effectively and in the most remarkable way.

The success of the Romanian anti-corruption drive is not just cleansing the Augean stables here. It is an example to the rest of the region. People in nearby countries look in astonishment at what is happening.

And now it is all about to end.