Sixteen Volts

Jussi Halla-Aho has come back from his holiday, and has written another long essay that I would like to translate here. Jussi Halla-Aho clearly is the Finnish Lawrence Auster. Or perhaps Lawrence Auster is the American Jussi Halla-Aho. Either way, the new essay is well worth reading, so let me provide a service to the English-speaking world by translating it here.

About the Middle East, Congo and European misunderstandings

The scrap between Israel and the Arabs has been quite bloody for the past few weeks. This despite the strong condemnation from the international community: Erkki Tuomioja, the foreign minister of Finland, which happens to be the current chair of the European Union, has, for example, strongly condemned the atrocities by all participants and demanded the conflict to end. The foreign ministers of the EU argued about whether the Union should demand "an end to hostilities" or "a ceasefire". Britain, Germany and Netherlands opposed demanding a ceasefire, Britain apparently because of George W., Germany because of the holocaust and Netherlands because of Anne Frank.

Meanwhile, the Democratic (heh) Republic of Congo has had its first democratic elections in 40 years. The spearhead of democracy is president Joseph Kabila who, due to the fact that he inherited his title from his father who originally took it in a revolution, clearly has a mandate for this. These elections are supervised by about twenty thousand Pakistani UN soldiers, plus 800 soldiers from the EU deeply entrenched behind sandbags in the airport of the capital city.

The observers are so far cautiously optimistic, but they remind us that these elections do not guarantee that democracy will permanently come to Congo.

Surprisingly many people believe that you could achieve genuine peace in the Middle East simply by having the international community express its shock often enough and by having the UN write treaties for both Abraham and Ahmed to sign, and that there really could be a democracy in Congo by having the UN and EU run elections for the people of Congo and execute interventions correctly. The flip side of this belief is a steady faith on that if there won't be a peace in the Middle East, this is due to what George W. Bush and his underlings did or didn't do, and if democracy fails to grow permanent roots in Congo, this was because the operation executed by UN and EU was incorrect. These beliefs are a natural part of the worldview in which the Arab/negro are separated from prosperity only by the outside world (which is here an euphemism for the white west). The outside world always carries the ultimate responsibility, either because it does something that was wrong, or because it doesn't do something that would have been right.

There has never been peace in the Middle East between Jews and Arabs. The direct reason for the current invasion was that the Arabs kidnapped an Israeli soldier, plus the fact that Arabs have continuously fired rockets into Israeli border towns. In the paradigm of Erkki Tuomioja and other Europeans, the real reason for this conflict, the one that forces the Arabs to fire their rockets, is the misery and frustration that the Israelis maintain in the Palestinian territory. Because you have to be careful when you criticize Israel, the real culprit often turns out to be George W. who refuses to pressure Israel.

The idea that Arab terrorism in the Middle East is due to the undeniably merciless operations of Israelis is worth considering, just like the idea that the current misery of black Americans is due to the past injustices such as slavery. But just like the victims of the past atrocities of slavery (such as the Chinese and the Koreans), wars of annihilation (e.g. Germans), genocide (e.g. Jews) and racist oppression (e.g. the Irish) who later climbed out of the hole tend to invalidate the official explanation for the black ghetto misery, the same way the historical perspective eat away the credibility of the official explanation for the need to fire rockets. During the existence of Israel the Arab nations have twice attacked it with their armies with an explicit goal of annihilating Israel. Can you explain away these attacks simply with the actions of Israelis? Or does the simple explanation that the God of the Arabs has promised the Jewish lands for the Arabs suffice, so that the Arabs are not interested in peace with Israel, but only in peace without Israel? This explanation is supported not only by history, but also what imams and other Muslim leaders currently preach not only in the Middle East, but now also here in the West due to the increased cultural enrichment the need to import workers.

The rockets of Hezbollah belong to the same continuum that in the past was evidenced by the attacks of the states of Egypt, Jordan and Syria. The war between Arabs and Israel currently takes place by firing rockets from the backyards of kindergartens for the simple reason that the Arab countries do not dare to openly attack Israel as nations. In the bad (and the most likely) scenario, the conventional forces of Israel would smash the invading Arab armies into bits. In the worst-case scenario, the Arab armies would successfully march deep inside the Israeli borders, which would then continue with Israel annihilating Damascus, Amman, Cairo and Riad with nuclear weapons. The present-day covert war is the only real possibility for the Arabs, and the only psychologically satisfying one. Israel doesn't have a clear enemy or a well-defined battlefront, so it will have to tolerate the downpour of rockets. If it responds with the means that it has (e.g. helicopters and caterpillars), the Arab nations can run to the European intelligentsia and cry that they are being bullied.

I am honestly puzzled of what Israel is supposed to do. Tolerate the fact that its towns are bombarded with rockets from across the border? Is Israel (and by extension, George W.) automatically guilty simply for possessing more advanced weaponry than its opponents? Would it be more moral if Israel didn't use its military but instead distributed missiles among its people near the border so that they could shoot back?

Even if we accepted the idea that the Western nations are somehow responsible for the situation in the Middle East, I would like to know what EU or UN could even possibly do about this. Toothless proclamations and demands will only make it clear how toothless EU and UN are when they have to face these problems. Israel ignores them, because (a) it considers its cause to be just and (b) it knows that it has a unwavering friend in the United States, regardless of which party currently happens to rule it. Some people demand UN troops to be placed on the Israel-Lebanon border. What do you think these troops could do? They can't stop Hezbollah from acting, since (a) the EU and UN troops don't feel like dying for Israel and (b) according to the European doctrine, these troops must maintain a friendly relationship with the local population, which here happens to support Hezbollah. If Israel attacks with its tanks and helicopters, does anybody believe that the UN and EU troops will block the way in their Pasi troop transport vehicles and try to stop the Israelis by shooting at them? If some outside participant wants to do anything else in the Middle East conflict than just sit in a foxhole and write reports to Kofi Annan, he must choose a side and start a war either against Israel or against the Arab nations. Or both. Do you think/wish that EU or UN is ready for this?

The problem that the secular Western man has with the Middle East is that that he, for all his "tolerance" and progressive thinking, considers himself to be the ultimate measure of everything. He believes that everyone else thinks just like him. He can't accept the fact that there are motives in the world that he is unable to comprehend. He can't understand that there are people, millions of them, who actually believe in a cruel, omnipotent and solemn God; for whom the opponent is not a friend who became an enemy due to some misunderstanding, but a monster bred by Satan whose killing, mutilating and disgracing is the very reason and goal for their whole existence; who genuinely believe that the death in the battle against this monster guarantees them sex with virgins in paradise; for whom the idea of peace with a Jew or Christian is as absurd as the idea of peace with Satan would be to a fundamentalist Christian. The Western man doesn't want to understand this, because his whole worldview requires that in the end, everybody is equal. And since he is the measure of everything, specifically deep down everybody is just like him.

There has never been democracy in Africa that was ruled by Africans. This doesn't exclude the possibility of there having been plenty of elections run and financed by Europeans and plenty of countries whose official names have included the word "democratic". I mean that Africa has never seen a democracy in which the government in power would nicely step down after losing the elections and wish the winners well in the task of governing the nation, or in which the electoral battles didn't involve actually shedding blood. Africa has seen various kinds of dictatorships, but there has never been any form of democracy that anybody would have called a democrac had it been situated somewhere in Europe.

The European enthusiasm to sell parliamentary democracy to Africa is, in my opinion, based on various misunderstandings, for example, the one that peace, stability and prosperity somehow result from democracy. These do indeed correlate with democracy, just like dictatorships correlate with misery, but I would consider it to be more likely that democracy is one possible consequence of the mental attributes of certain cultures. These same attributes also lead to stability and peace most of the time. Which in turn result in relative prosperity. Stability and healthy government don't inherently require democracy. In the modern leftist rhetoric, "democracy" means all kinds of fun things such as equality and tolerance. In reality, democracy is simply a way to distribute legislative power. The legislative power (and the way it is distributed) matters only if there also exists a functioning executive branch (e.g. civil servants, police and military) that is subject and obedient to the legislative power. A "state" means that within a certain geographical area there exists a hierarchical structure of legislative, executive and judicial powers so that all three recognize each other and agree about the exact nature of their mutual relationship. Confusion is created by the fact that these days a "state" means any kind of judicial entity that is recognized by the international community, regardless of what this entity contains. In this sense, the Republic of Somalia is a "state".

When an African state (or a "state") takes a short break from its chronic civil war, Western people immediately swoop in to organize elections. Both sides of the civil war smile for the cameras: yes yes, democracy, very good. Their idea of "democracy" just happens to be a little bit different from ours, because they don't have the tradition of democracy that was built by a long experience. For them, "democracy" is something that was imported from abroad in an airplane, the same kind of vague concept that ultimately means nothing as "Eastern philosophy" is for an European. And just like an European says that he is fascinated by "Eastern philosophy" to look intelligent, the African gunman says "democracy very good" because this brings him cash from New York and Brussels. Africans also understand democracy differently from us because the African revolutionary leaders who studied in Moscow and DDR learned that "democracy" means officer's headgear and weapons given as uncompensated help from one comrade to another. In other words, that before the "Democratic Revolution" they used sticks and stones to beat up their neighbours, and after the "Democratic Revolution" they can continue the slaughter with MiGs and Kalashnikovs.

For the reasons listed above, Africans don't necessarily see the benefits and blessings of democracy the same way as we do. When the Europeans start organizing elections for them, the private armies run by the candidates start terrorizing the village population, and after the votes have been counted, the losing side claims that the election was rigged and proclaims that the area that it controls is now independent, or alternatively continues the civil war the same way that it went on before. After which the progressive crowd in the West blames UN, EU or the United States for organizing the elections all wrong and not giving them enough support.

What if the only thing that UN, EU and the USA did wrong was trying to take the idea of Western democracy that took centuries to develop to its present form, and send it to a culture in which the idea of losing gracefully or peace without victory and total subjugation of the enemy is incomprehensible, and to an area that completely lacks the hiearchical machinery of functional government? In other words, to an area that lacks even the rudimentary necessities for democracy. What if all sides of the conflict see the elections only as a tool to reach their goal of gaining absolute power? What if the participants don't really see any point in democracy and elections unless they result in them getting this absolute power? In this case, it would only be natural that the losing side shrugs off the democratic experiment as a failure and continues to pursue its goals with other means. What if the African idea of an optimal result is not, unlike here in the West, that all people who reside within the national borders would have a good life on average, but instead consider the situation in which me and my friends and relatives get to rule the roost wearing a military uniform and shining medals to be optimal? This isn't really even a far-fetched idea because the whole notion of Africa has historically been based on small tribal communities that each have their own interests. Present-day African states are artificial patchworks whose facade tries to hide an ethnic mishmash. With no solidarity or sense of belonging together, there is no common interest either for anybody to advance at the cost for themselves and their pals. Which in turn reminds me of the question of what will happen to the European sense of common interest in nations that are ethnically fragmenting and in which the different groups have nothing that they feel they have in common.

What our attitudes towards the recent events in Congo and the Middle East have in common is something that one could call the Great European Misunderstanding. In our own cultural sphere were are used to the idea that when parents beat up their kids or a husband beats up his wife, or when somebody commits crimes, there is some kind of aberration behind this (broken childhood, alcoholism, mental illness) that can be intervened and resolved. We are also used to the idea that when two people argue or fight, usually it is because somebody misunderstood what the other said or did or what his motives were. Discussion and outside moderation can usually lead to a some kind of state of mutual understanding and this way end the conflict.

In a Western society the conflicts have traditionally been resolvable to the satisfaction of all participants at least in theory, because in a culturally homogeneous environment everybody shares a common view of what is right and what is wrong. We Europeans just are the way we are. We can laugh at ourselves and admit having made mistakes. We don't have a culture of losing face,

Of course, "losing face" must here be understood very differently from what this concept means in Asia. The essay "The World's Most Toxic Value System" by Steve Dutch explains why.

and the one who loses an argument is not put in a corner with no exit other than violence available. Because we happen to be this way, we usually have a peaceful and a stable and therefore a prosperous society. Because we are doing so well, we have become arrogant and imagine that everybody else is the same as we are. We believe that when somewhere there is a conflict, war or other atrocities, this is just because of misunderstandings that can be corrected with guidance and advice.

But what if Ahmed doesn't circumcize his daughter or blow up a subway train or rape the Swedish maiden Yrsa-Lotta or dress his wife in a sack just because nobody told him that doing so is wrong, or because colonialism, structural discrimination etc. has crippled him? What if he does this because he sternly believes that doing these things is right and favoured by God? What if he considers the demands that he should stop doing these things as perverted as we would consider the demands for starting to do these things? What if he doesn't consider these deeds as little cracks in his otherwise fine culture so that he could give them up to live in a multicultural society, but he considers them the very cornerstones of his identity? What if we and Ahmed hold polar opposite ideas of what aspects in Ahmed's culture and our culture can be sacrificed and which can't? (In fact, Ahmed himself says this quite clearly. The European progressive just doesn't want to listen to him.) What if the Africans give a finger to democracy and continue killing each other because for them, unlike us, a compromise is not a partial victory but a total loss?

I am not claiming that Muslims and Africans didn't want to live in peace and prosperity just like us. But I do claim that they, unlike us, have not realized what kind of thinking, approaches and behavioural patterns best make peace and prosperity possible. They can see no connection between their ways and their chronic misery, but they believe the latter results from them being victimized by the rampaging and pillaging Westerners. It's not wonder that they believe this, since this is exactly what the Western relativistic intelligentsia has been telling them. If Ahmed fires a few rockets and Israel responds by bombing the launchpad and its surroundings to atoms, this is not the fault of Ahmed who irrationally hates the Jews but it is the fault of EU, UN and George W. If an African starts a war after losing the election, the real culprit is not the African himself who is unable to compromise, but EU, UN and George W, who organized and supervised all wrong and paid too little.

The very problem is that the Western progressive doesn't consider a Muslim and African an adult who is capable of choices and self-improvement and therefore ultimately responsible for his actions and lot in life, but they consider him a powerless pinball in the great game of the white man. If a Muslim or an African screws up, the only reason why he could possibly do this is because the only entity in the universe who is capable of responsibility, the white male, has forced him to do this by something that he did or didn't do.

As a good read for the rest of the summer, I would like to recommend Mohammed Rasoel's (pseudonym) book "The Downfall of the Netherlands" from 1992. (Thanks to Embo for the link!) This book examines the Great European Misunderstanding and its inevitable results for the European society. Rasoel was naturally condemned for his "racist pamphlet whose only purpose is to spread hatred", and the print edition was taken away from the stores with a great pomp. This book includes interesting analysis of what the European tolerance and understanding look like from the point of view of Muslim immigrants. It is especially interesting because it was written 14 years ago, a time in which half of the youth in Amsterdam and Rotterdam were not yet Muslims. It is a long read because it is a whole book, but it's worth sacrificing one Sunday afternoon to read it.

One of the observations that Rasoel made is so good that it's worth mentioning separately. We all know that Quran (which, unlike the Bible, is not something that its believers would "interpret" and which would only "reflect the values of the time that it was written in", but an unchanging, eternal and binding Whole Truth) explicitly orders the faithful to kill, hate and enslave Christians and Jews and capture their women as loot. The Western man with his relativist thinking will now say that there are plenty of good things in Quran too. What if Ayatollah Khomeini had, in the middle of the Rushdie debacle, said: "Hey, why are you all unfairly after me? The world is full of writers who I did not condemn to death."

The same European misunderstandings, also from the Muslim point of view, are examined by a former Muslim, Patrick Sookhdeo, Ph.D. from the Great Britain. (Kudos for this link also to Embo!) Sookhdeo leads the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity and serves as an advisor to the military in security issues concerning Islam.

The great European cities will, during this century, receive a majority population that believes that everything that the Quran says is true. How does it help the European civilization if we note that Quran also contains some "good things", if it at the same time advocates killing, hating and enslaving infidels and raping their women? In the same way, connected to another aspect of multiculturalism, we could also ask how exactly one immigrant who genuinely advances the European civilization will neutralize the other nine who do not. The only relevant question in both Islam and the Third World immigrantion for us is the total net effect, not individual people or details.

Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen on Thursday, August 03, 2006 at 2:51 PM