Journalist Karl du Fresne has written some insightful
articles into existential threats faced by New Zealand and the West,
particularly from the extreme Left. Given
that he is perhaps the only one to have done so in the New Zealand press makes
him outstanding, even though his subject matter is well-aired elsewhere. He is a couple of decades behind my own
thinking, but clearly on the right track and I hope that with a bit of
persuasion he will follow through on the predictable consequences of the trends
he writes about. I wrote this comment on
his blog essay The
long march of cultural Marxism, though the process of doing so is
restrictive. It will make better sense
here.
Dear Mr du
Fresne
You have
written an excellent article, one which aligns precisely with my own
observations.
It’s worth
following through on consequences of the issues you mention. For example,
questioning why neo-Marxists are so soft on the “infinitely more
controlling” Islam shows that there is indeed a form of consistency in
their ideology.
I would suggest
that Marxists are concerned about how society should be run once they have
achieved their goal of “the
forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.” Anarchists of various persuasions cannot be
relied upon because they have no history of societal management. Marxism can, has and does manage societies,
but its credibility is severely impugned by its failures and has antipathy in
the West in those terms.
On the
other hand, Islam has a 1,400-year reputation for managing all aspects of
society, albeit badly flawed in comparison with today’s Western civilisational
standards. It shares with Marxism a
communitarian interest. Its tribal origins means that its transcendent doctrine
of tawhid – that all people on earth
were born Muslim – works well with polarised and fragmented collectives without
affecting any identity as long as it is subservient to ‘Muslim’, submitting to
the will of Allah. However, Islam’s
essentialism will slowly erode sexual identities and preferences until its
purely normative standards prevail.
There is
copious evidence to show that neo-Marxists, and the Left in general, are
changing the West’s ethical orientation to match that of Islam. Fragmentation, relativism and Gramsci’s Long
March allows an increasing number of feminists to defend Islam’s treatment of women
along with Linda
Sarsour’s Islamic
form of feminism. The tolerance and incorporation of polygyny and sharia law
compliance in Western societies is a matter of record; concessions and pandering
to appease Muslim perceptions of victimhood – another Marxist trope – are daily
events, and are made to prevent a Muslim backlash. Witness Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s cancelled tour here
due to Australian Muslims’ threats.
Conflict regarding
Islam’s future role in societal management is controlled right now with
increasing calls for stricter blasphemy laws, foreign interference in domestic
politics such as Turkey’s in Germany, ‘Islamophobia’ and racism being used to
silence debate, and Marxist students and faculty members quashing any
intellectual discourse that challenges Islam’s role in the West.
A further issue
worth noting is academia’s ‘Islamic imaginary’, where it appears to have
created its own form of Islam which is at variance with Islamic praxis. This narrative focusses in particular on two
aspects, that Muslims are peaceful and integrate well with Western society, and
that Islam’s inherent violence and misogyny do not represent ‘true Islam’. It supports the three arms of Islamic
conquest, jihad (holy war) in, for
example, student advocacy for Hamas against Israel, hijra (migration) in the Left’s support for unconstrained migration
into the West, and dawah
(proselytising) in promoting ‘moderate’ Islam as beneficial. (Moderate Islam is a contradiction in terms,
but that’s another issue.) In this, it influences
media, local and national governance and education, and through this, the
national world view. It is hardly
surprising that Marxists go easy on Islam.
In the hegemonic conquest of the West, they’re both fighting for the
same goal, notwithstanding that the correlation between Islamism and fascism is
very high. What happens when Marxism’s
atheistic philosophy tries to get the upper hand over Islam’s fundamentalist
doctrines after the revolution doesn’t bear thinking about.
A few resources
that provide evidence for the Marxist / Islamist coalition can be found here:
·
The Left
and Jihad by Fred
Halliday, professor of international relations, covers Islam’s anti-imperialist
exegesis and a history of the relationship between jihadis, the Soviets, the
Left, and the West.
·
Fundamentally,
we’re useful idiots by Anthony Browne,
Europe Correspondent of The Times, who shows how the Left supports the
fascistic tendencies of Islam.
·
The
Postcolonial Rot Spreads Beyond Middle East Studies by Bruce Thornton, Research Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution
and a Professor of Classics and Humanities at the California State University,
who exposes Edward Said’s ‘baleful influence’ on Western Marxist academics.
Some resources showing the effects of
Marxism on universities, lecturers and students can be found here:
·
Faculty
Voter Registration in Economics, History, Journalism, Law, and Psychology. “We looked up 7,243
professors and found 3,623 to be registered Democratic and 314 Republican, for
an overall D:R ratio of 11.5:1. The D:R ratios for the five fields were:
Economics 4.5:1, History 33.5:1, Journalism/Communications 20.0:1, Law 8.6:1,
and Psychology 17.4:1. The results indicate that D:R ratios have increased
since 2004, and the age profile suggests that in the future they will be even
higher.”
·
New
Study Indicates Existence of Eight Conservative Social Psychologists, by Jonathan Haidt, Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York
University's Stern School of Business, who comments on diversity in social
psychology. “An academic field that
leans left (or right) can still function, as long as ideological claims or
politically motivated research is sure to be challenged. But when a field
goes from leaning left to being entirely on the left, the normal safeguards of
peer review and institutionalized disconfirmation break down. Research on
politically controversial topics becomes unreliable because politically
favoured conclusions receive less-than-normal scrutiny while politically
incorrect findings must scale mountains of motivated and hostile reasoning from
reviewers and editors.”
·
Jordan Peterson is the go-to
spokesman on the influence of Marxism on universities. References are ubiquitous.
There are precious few public figures and
journalists in New Zealand who display an understanding of what is going on
with the nation’s Weltanschauung at a deeper level, so I appreciate your input. Others fail spectacularly in their
understanding of history’s arc, as letters in response to your article
indicate. However, there are signs of
change, with opposition to destructive ‘progressive’ values, along with a
glimmer of understanding of what Western societies have to lose with the very
real threat of Islamic and Marxist development, if not actual conquest, getting
greater exposure. For myself, I enjoy
analysing its complexity and its trends, resulting in a huge range of
references and resources collected over forty years, even though it’s just a
part of my interest in conceptual thinking.
But it leaves me with no public voice except that which I publish on Dyspeptic Lucubrations.
For this reason, I value your ability to
promote a realistic perspective in the public domain. I hope you pursue this line of reasoning even
deeper, because there’s plenty to consider.
Yours sincerely
Chris Slater
