Diary of Defeat, December 2024

DEPOSING ASSAD WAS MORE THAN A REGIME CHANGE.  The cautious euphoria over the departure of Bashar al-Assad from Syria hides something of greater significance.  Assad was the last of the Baathist dictators who in principle were a  toxic mix of secular Arab nationalism and Eastern Bloc-style socialism opposed to fundamentalist Islam. 

Baathism, its ideological pretensions notwithstanding, lacked the inherent perceived legitimacy of Arab monarchies which were thus able to provide their peoples with a sufficient dose of freedom — freedom which, in turn, allowed for a measure of civil society that the Baathist regimes lacked.  However, under their rule, ethnic and religious minorities were protected from the excesses of Islamic fundamentalism.  Not any more.

Baathism has a perilous history.  Founded in Syria in the 1940s it took two irreconcilable forms which took control in Syria and Iraq.  It had organisations throughout the Middle East/North African states but only achieved power in Egypt, Syria and Iraq. 

Nasser was a Baathist ruling Egypt until he was replaced by Sadat who moved away from Baathist principles towards Islamism in exchange for its support.  But his peace treaty with Israel was too much for the Islamists, who assassinated him in 1981.  The increasing power of Islamists peaked with the Arab Spring in 2011 and the popular election of the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate Mohamed Morsi.  His autocratic excesses led to a revolt with the Islamists quashed and a more moderate president, Abdel Fatah el-Sisi, elected with 96% of the vote.  However, Egypt is said to have returned to authoritarianism since then. 

Gaddafi ruled Libya following his success in a coup d’état against King Idris in 1969.  While claiming no party affiliation, he transformed Libya into a new socialist republic and support for Arab unity with Egypt and Syria.  He also advocated for sharia law and Islamic values, though their incompatibility with modern economic and social relations meant they were not enforced.  His increasing eccentricity, corruption and an autocratic personality cult funded by oil revenues, he was killed in 2011 by military rebels who formed during the Arab Spring.  While Islamic fundamentalism does not have a strong hold in Libya, its increasing influence has created a morality police crack-down, enforcing Islamic principles.  Extremist groups, once in fear of Gaddafi, are now strengthening their foothold.  In general, Libya’s governance is under severe stress.

Syria’s tyrant Assad has been now been deposed by Islamists albeit presenting a moderate façade.  It seems inevitable that a steady increase in Islamist influence will see a greater application of Koranic principles in both government and civil society.  Its effects from throughout the Middle East makes a Syrian move to fundamentalism very likely.

From an Islamic conquest perspective, eleven of the 21 Mediterranean states are Muslim majority, with a population percentage of 61%.  All of them are increasing in Islamic population and militancy.  Don't place bets on Syria being a moderate exception.  

Trump Deserved His 2024 Victory

Criticism of the appeal of the Right as a pull factor, ex nihilo, comes with no consideration given to push factors that emanate from the extreme Left.  Until the Left becomes aware that its utopian vision is destroying civilisation step by step, it will continue to erode its traditional constituency of the working class.  Ordinary people don’t want to have ordinary hopes dashed, or their identity devalued by an isolated elite, whether it be national, cultural, racial, religious, occupational, political or sexual.  The extraordinary sums spent on non-citizens entering Western countries illegally could have been used for health, education and welfare of its tax-paying citizens – the primary obligation of the Hobbesian social contract.  Instead, people see housing, child-rearing and a comfortable retirement as being out of reach.  Younger ones may not be aware of the detrimental changes brought about by neo-liberal economics, but with the Left beholden to the Professional-Managerial Class, they’re not seeing changes that should be core to the Left’s traditional obligation to working people.  Nor that the polarisation of society comes from the Fourth Estate’s binary realignment of ‘balance’, now meaning presenting the media’s view, and its opposite.  And that social media captures these two perspectives forcing those bereft of introspection into one echo chamber or the other.   

Few seem aware of the 80-year peace dividend, that weakens civilisation through the feminisation of society with the predominance of personal feelings over societal balance and rationality.  Or that the Left's support for one of the most traditional and conservative agencies in the world, primitive culture (now deceptively called 'indigenous') is contrary to its 'progressive' ideology.  Fewer still, particularly among the educated, understand the Left and Islam’s use of each other as mutual stalking horses to impose their radical prescriptions on a society rendered defenceless by their joint control of the narrative, with captivation and stupefaction.  Or, for that matter, the changes the Left has to make to its doctrines as Islam becomes more powerful.  Gramsci’s long march has endowed the PMC with epistocratic and meritocratic contempt for the non-aligned, and the Left with its seditious enterprise.   

Ordinary people are becoming aware of the effects of this and have voted accordingly.

Diary of Defeat

It seems to me that the West[1] is undergoing a transformational change the like of which it has never seen before.  It might compare with the Mughal conquests, Islam’s conquest of the Levant and North Africa, or the expansion of the USSR, with lower mortality.  It is a change wrought by ideologies[2], yet most Westerners seem insensitive to them, or acquiesce without demur.  In this journal I aim to act as witness to this unopposed revolution.

August 2024

A FRIEND EMAILED ME with a link to a tweet of a German Muslim stating that "when Muslims become the majority, we will take over Germany by force. German laws will be replaced by Sharia law.”  Well, that’s Islam’s goal so nothing new there.  Then my friend checked the Muslim population of Germany and had second thoughts, at 4% he considered “it's a bit premature for a revolution yet!”  Well, not really, as I replied:

It's better to describe Islamic conquest as incremental rather than revolutionary.  It's also better to consider the increase in Muslim population in the West in terms of proportional increase, rather than absolute.  A change in Muslim population from 4% to 5% is a 25% increase, after all.

Doctrinally, Muslims are expected to migrate in what's called hijrah.   Here's a definition.  Koran 4:100 - "Whoso migrateth for the cause of Allah will find much refuge and abundance in the earth, and whoso forsaketh his home, a fugitive unto Allah and His messenger, and death overtaketh him, his reward is then incumbent on Allah."  Muhammad said "The reward of deeds depends upon the intentions and every person will get the reward according to what he has intended. So whoever emigrated for worldly benefits or for a woman to marry, his emigration was for what he emigrated for."  Thus, migration redeems a Muslim's previous sins and increases his or her chances of entering paradise.  Martyrdom - dying while killing unbelievers in the name of Islam - guarantees this. 

Nasty British jihadist Anjem Choudary was a former spokesman for al-Muhajiroun, which is Arabic for The Emigrants (that's the 'haj' part of Muhajiroun).   Known as ALM or the Islamic Thinkers Society, it is proscribed as a terrorist group, and Choudary’s role as director led him to be convicted in July 2024 and sentenced to life imprisonment.  That is, spending the rest of his life converting other prisoners, by force if necessary, to Islam.

Statistically, Muslim populations grow much faster than total populations, meaning that at some time in the distant future Muslims will outnumber non-Muslims in the West, which is precisely what happened in the Middle East, formerly majority Christian.  I only have accurate figures for NZ, which are based on censuses.  For example, the average annual growth rate from 1976 (Muslim population 1,341) to 2018 (Muslim population 57,726) is 9.1%.  NZ's non-Muslim population growth for the same period is 0.91% per annum, meaning the rate of Muslim population growth over 42 years is 10.3 times that of non-Muslims.  Extrapolate that!  It's fair to assume other Western countries will see similar rates.  I'll update these figures once the 2023 census 'religious affiliation' stats are available. 

And it's not just migration that increases the Muslim population.  Conversion to Islam is extremely easy; leaving Islam incurs the death penalty - the deterrent effect of this should not be underestimated.  Conversion occurs for many reasons but the main ones are likely to be for purposes of marriage, or for an easier life in prison.  Other reasons include voluntary or spontaneous conversion, but I think an undeclared reason, acting as an explanation for the greater proportion of women converting, is that Islam is a very patriarchal way of life, in contrast to the increasingly feminised West.  It is also strongly rules-based (fatwas), rather than ethics-based, which suits people who think Western morality is too far out of kilter, or who feel the need for fixed rules to live by.

Demographically, the problem is a lot more serious.  One thing that Muslims have that no other religion, ideology or political system has is the ummah, the nationhood of Muslims.  This is extremely powerful, given that Muslims tend towards greater piety than Gloriavale, though do it in public.  We can see this in the way that UK Muslims, who tend to co-locate in electoral districts, had a powerful effect on this year's election, based on ant-Israel sentiment.  And that will get more significant as the proportion of Muslims increases. 

There is something called 'the percentage rule', which takes two forms.  First is a paper by Harvard polsci prof Erica Chenoweth saying that it only takes 3.5% activists in a population to effect a change.   Second is one which states that as the proportion of Muslims in the population rises, certain effects become noticeable.  Violence increases and Islam's supremacism takes control.

Then there's the tipping point. A research paper shows that when 10 per cent of a population are strongly committed to a viewpoint, the view rapidly becomes the majority.

Premature, you ask?  When does one start to oppose the inevitable?  Or does one accept capitulation, as many in the West seem happy to do?