Exile's Return

The call for "female equality" is, ultimately, simply a marketing device used to double the consumption of products such as cigarettes, red whiskey, and denim trousers.

— Malcolm Cowley

Review of "Der Untergang der islamischen Welt: Eine Prognose"

Der Untergang der islamischen Welt: Eine Prognose by Hamed Abdel-Samad
Reviewed by Wolfgang Günter Lerch, translated by JLH, and reprinted from the Gates of Vienna blog.

Where does the hate of the Islamic world for the West come from? Is it from the false policy of the Americans, the unfortunate Iraq war, the fighting in Afghanistan, or the unsolved Palestine problem?

The German political scientist Hamed Abdel-Samad, himself a Muslim and from Egypt, has an answer which will not make most Muslims happy: In Islam, he sees a declining culture which is, so to speak, striking out blindly before it dies.

But how can you say that? Is Islam not the only religion that is growing, and not just because of demographic developments? For instance, does it not attract many in Africa who do not (any longer) practice other religions? Isn’t it Islam that gives an impression of aggressive strength which makes many people afraid?

In his book The Decline of the Islamic World: A Prognosis, the author comes to a completely different conclusion. The title was a conscious choice. When he first came to Germany, Abdel-Samad read Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West. At first, the opinions he had brought from home about the “decadent” West were confirmed in this classic of cultural philosophy. Spengler’s elitist, alabaster-like language was hard to understand, so he put the book aside. When he picked it up again later — intellectually better prepared for it — it became clear to him that Spengler’s analysis applied perfectly to the condition of his own Islamic culture.

Abdel-Samad is following a line of criticism of radical Islam already marked out by the Pakistani dissident Ibn Warraq, now living in the West, and/or Abdelwahhab Meddeb, the Tunisian-French author. All in all, though, he is milder than his predecessors, advocates for an Islam without sharia and jihad.


He sees the Islamic world as an uncreative culture which today does not offer humanity a single innovation. In contrast to the first three centuries of its history, when it enthusiastically absorbed everything foreign and created a society that was intellectually creative, and developed a religious pluralism that accepted individualistic, even hedonistic life styles, Islam is now in a state of cultural regression. Invocation of the golden age of Islam — strengthened by the consciousness of superiority that is inculcated in every Muslim — contrasts with the permanent sense of being offended, and with the collective complexes resulting from being outstripped by the West — the European-American culture. One of the outré chapter titles in his book is “I am Muslim, so I am offended.” According to Abdel-Samad, the radicalization that is called Islam today is not a new phenomenon, but a reappearance of constantly recurring waves of religious-theological rigidity which find fertile ground in an unenlightened, authoritarian image of God and an authoritarian exercise of power in religion and politics. Obedience, not individual thought, is the first duty of the faithful. For men as for women — but far more for women — sacrifice is the entire Islamic culture — petrified in intellectual barrenness.

The miseries of the present are lamented, but blamed on conspiracies of the West. Modernization means buying what the West has created, but rejecting the scientific, secular way of thinking that made it possible. Egyptian schoolbooks evaluated by the author speak volumes about the reflexive search for a scapegoat in the outside world. In justification for this attitude and in complete ignorance of the intellectual processes that have taken place in Europe since the Renaissance is the claim that Muslims are just taking back what they had once given to Western culture. The author does not deny the negative effects of Western (to be sure also Ottoman) imperialism on the Arabs, but notes that they are only too prone to self-exoneration.

Abdel-Samad’s prognosis is grim. If the Islamic world does not reform, it threatens to disintegrate, to do away with itself. After petroleum, no one will be interested in it anymore unless it finds its own way out of its self-inflicted weakness: which is the cult centering on authority and obedience, and rooted ultimately in an untouchable divine law. It extends from the concept of God, through the patriarchal family and the restrictive but mostly hypocritical sexual morality, all the way to the state and its leadership.

Critics will accuse this author of one-sidedness and generalizing. He polarizes, and that is intentional. In fact , he says nothing about the Islam of the Sufis, who shaped this culture over centuries, and little about the rationalistic traditions and reform movements. Then, too, the world of Islamic states, between Morocco, Turkey and Malaysia, should be differentially evaluated in many respects. But a sore point has been touched. It pains many Muslims and will make some indignant. And the West is on friendly terms with countries in which this “Islamic system” is carried out almost to perfection.

The Worst Tattoo EVER!

The People vs. the Money Power

"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks."

— John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton,
1st Baron Acton

The best legal advice you will ever get.

"...any lawyer worth his salt will tell the suspect in no uncertain terms to make no statement to the police under any circumstances."

– Supreme Court Justice,
Robert H. Jackson

Separated at Birth?

Kelly cartoons in the Onion

















Pauley the Patriot cartoons at Renew America

One More Reason to Close the Borders

"It’s just obvious you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state."

— Milton Friedman

Just As True Now As In 2004

Grandstanding leaders never deliver, their fury mounts and mounts, and nevertheless they turn out every two years to return their right-wing heroes to office for a second, a third, a twentieth try. The trick never ages; the illusion never wears off. Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation. Vote to get government off our backs; receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meatpacking. Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization. Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated then ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs are rewarded in a manner beyond imagining.
— Thomas Frank
"What's the Matter With Kansas"

What is Fascism (part twelve)

"Fascism is best defined as a revolutionary form of nationalism, one that sets out to be a political, social and ethical revolution, welding the ‘people’ into a dynamic national community under new elites infused with heroic values. The core myth that inspires this project is that only a populist, trans-class movement of purifying, cathartic national rebirth (palingenesis) can stem the tide of decadence”

— Roger Griffin, Nature of Fascism, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991, p. xi

Class War?

Anytime someone mentions the unfairness of absolutely untrammeled capitalism, they are accused of class warfare. Well, these figures show that American wages are down about 10% since 1972, and the rest of the article shows that figures for net worth and family income are just as bad if not worse. So — if the working class has taken that bad a beating in the last third of a century, and worker productivity is up some 200% since 1980, then just who is fighting a class war?

Spengler's Civilization Model

Nice chart of Spengler's civilization model adapted from Der Untergang des Abendlandes.

What is Fascism? (part eleven)

In his book "The Faces of Contemporary Russian Nationalism" (Princeton University Press, 1984) Hoover Institute fellow, John B. Dunlop, argues that contemporary Russian National Bolshevism (of the Limonov / Dugin variety) is actually a variety of fascism. Here then are his "eight distinguishing marks of National Bolshevism" presented not as a definition of National Bolshevism, but rather as a check-list of how these particular strains of National Bolshevism have perhaps veered off into fascism.

To summarize, the distinguishing marks of the National Bolshevik variant of contemporary Russian nationalism may be described as:

1. a neo-pagan, militaristic cult of strength and invincibility of the Russian people;
2. a militant and aggressive stance toward Russia's perceived internal an external enemies;
3. a strong anti-Western orientation, at times linked to a belief in a "Jewish-Masonic conspiracy";
4. an awareness of the country's serious demographic and social problems but a lack of angst concerning the future, a "can do mentality;
5. a tendency to advocate racial purity and to disapprove of marriages between Russians and representatives of other nationalities
6. adherence to a "single stream" view of Russian history
7. a non-religious but not anti-religious posture; and
8. a cult of discipline and of heroic vitalism.

I Reccomend This Film!

Food Inc. clearly shows how government policies have turned our food supply over to a hand-full of agribusiness conglomerates, turned our yeoman farmers into serfs, destroyed the meat-packer's union, and made an un-healthy diet the norm.

This is one more example, of which there are many, of why this capitalist system has got to go!

What is Fascism? (part ten)

Jonah Goldberg, in his book Liberal Fascism, offers this definition:

“Fascism is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good.

It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the ‘problem’ and therefore defined as the enemy. I will argue that contemporary American liberalism embodies all of these aspects of fascism.”

What is Fascism? (part nine)

Leon Trotsky addressed the nature of fascism in a letter to an English comrade, November 15 1931, which was subsequently re-printed in The Militant, January 16, 1932:

What is fascism? The name originated in Italy. Were all the forms of counter-revolutionary dictatorship fascist or not (That is to say, prior to the advent of fascism in Italy)?

The former dictatorship in Spain of Primo de Rivera, 1923-30, is called a fascist dictatorship by the Comintern. Is this correct or not? We believe that it is incorrect.

The fascist movement in Italy was a spontaneous movement of large masses, with new leaders from the rank and file. It is a plebian movement in origin, directed and financed by big capitalist powers. It issued forth from the petty bourgeoisie, the slum proletariat, and even to a certain extent from the proletarian masses; Mussolini, a former socialist, is a "self-made" man arising from this movement.

Primo de Rivera was an aristocrat. He occupied a high military and bureaucratic post and was chief governor of Catalonia. he accomplished his overthrow with the aid of state and military forces. The dictatorships of Spain and Italy are two totally different forms of dictatorship. It is necessary to distinguish between them. Mussolini had difficulty in reconciling many old military institutions with the fascist militia. This problem did not exist for Primo de Rivera.

The movement in Germany is analogous mostly to the Italian. It is a mass movement, with its leaders employing a great deal of socialist demagogy. This is necessary for the creation of the mass movement.

The genuine basis (for fascism) is the petty bourgeoisie. In italy, it has a very large base -- the petty bourgeoisie of the towns and cities, and the peasantry. In Germany, likewise, there is a large base for fascism....

It may be said, and this is true to a certain extent, that the new middle class, the functionaries of the state, the private administrators, etc., can constitute such a base. But this is a new question that must be analyzed....

In order to be capable of foreseeing anything with regard to fascism, it is necessary to have a definition of that idea. What is fascism? What are its base, its form, and its characteristics? How will its development take place? It is necessary to proceed in a scientific and Marxian manner.

What is Fascism? (part eight)

John Thomas Flynn (1882–1964) was an outspoken critic of the Roosevelt administration's domestic and foreign policy decisions, opposing both the New Deal and the Second World War. The Ludwig von Mises Institute posted his definition of Fascism (taken from his book "As We Go Marching") on their web site. These are its chief points:

As we survey the whole scene in Italy, therefore, we may now name all the essential ingredients of fascism. It is a form of social organization

1. In which the government acknowledges no restraint upon its powers — totalitarianism
2. In which this unrestrained government is managed by a dictator — the leadership principle
3. In which the government is organized to operate the capitalist system and enable it to function — under an immense bureaucracy
4. In which the economic society is organized on the syndicalist model, that is by producing groups formed into craft and professional categories under supervision of the state
5. In which the government and the syndicalist organizations operate the capitalist society on the planned, autarchical principle
6. In which the government holds itself responsible to provide the nation with adequate purchasing power by public spending and borrowing
7. In which militarism is used as a conscious mechanism of government spending, and
8. In which imperialism is included as a policy inevitably flowing from militarism as well as other elements of fascism.

Wherever you find a nation using all of these devices you will know that this is a fascist nation. In proportion as any nation uses most of them you may assume it is tending in the direction of fascism.

What is Fascism? (part seven)

Ernst Nolte, in his seminal "Fascism In Its Epoch" (English version, "Three Faces of Fascism," Holt Rinehart and Winston, NY, 1965) opens with a "First Definition" of Fascism that he then spends the rest of the book refining and elaborating.

First Definition

Superficial though it may be, this survey of the phenomenon and its interpretations to date enables us to arrive at a preliminary definition which will serve as a guide and at the same time be subjected to study and demonstration within the analysis.

Neither anti-parliamentarianism nor anti-Semitism is a suitable criterion for the concept of fascism. It would be equally imprecise to define fascism as anti-communism, but it would be obviously misleading to use a definition which did not adequately stress, or even entirely omitted, this basic criterion. Nevertheless, the identifying conception must also be taken into account. Hence the following suggests itself:

Fascism is anti-Marxism which seeks to destroy the enemy by the evolvement of a radically opposed and yet related ideology and by the use of almost identical and yet typically modified methods, always, however, within the unyielding framework of national self-assertion and autonomy

[Footnote: In its isolated form the definition lays no claim to originality. The basic paradox is already contained in the term "conservative revolution." Gustav Adolf Rein, in Bonapartismus und Faschismus (Göttingen, 1960), describes fascism as counter-revolution on the soil of revolution. The definition comes to life only within the framework of the study as a whole.]

This definition implies that without Marxism there is no fascism, that fascism is at the same time closer to and further from communism than is liberal anti-communism, that it necessarily shows at least an inclination toward a radical ideology, that fascism should never be said to exist in the absence of at least the rudiments of an organization and propaganda compatible to those of Marxism. It enables us to understand the extent to which there can be stages of fascism: according to the evolution of the ideology and the predominance of one of its two chief components, the pseudo-socialist or the elite — that is, race — element; according to the degree of determination in, and the more or less universal nature of, the will to destruction; and according to the energy of execution. The decisive factors, however, are starting point and direction, for this concept is a "teleological" one, and even the most marked differentiation of stages does not do away with the unity of its essential nature.

Finally, this definition enables us to make concrete distinctions and identifications: neither the Pan-Germans nor Stoecker's Christian Socialists come under it; on the other hand, there is no reason to maintain that every opponent of Hitler in his party or in the other groups of the extreme Right was a non-fascist.