I’m out.

Almost one year ago, in June of 2007, I posted an essay here entertaining the possibility of closing up shop.

At that time, I had only written about 30 essays, mostly dealing with what I take to be the insufficient appreciation on the part of Robert Spencer and Hugh Fitzgerald of the nature and dimensions of Politically Correct Multi-Culturalism (PC MC). At that time, I noted another problem with Jihad Watch:

The problem of where Jihad Watch stands with regard to the evil and danger of Islam, and with regard to directly subsidiary questions, such as: Is a reformation of Islam possible?

I added that I had not yet really touched on this particular problem.

Of course, since that time, I decided to keep on truckin’ and published another hundred or so essays. For many months, those essays continued to focus on the aforementioned misapprehension of PC MC on Jihad Watch. My readers know, however, that in the past month or so, my essays have begun to shift the focus to “the problem of where Jihad Watch stands with regard to the evil and danger of Islam”.

By now, I think I’ve analyzed all the important problems with Jihad Watch as thoroughly as they can be done. I will therefore leave Jihad Watch Watch standing, but no longer post new essays. A link to here exists on my other blog, The Hesperado, and will remain there, for anyone interested to read analyses that in my opinion will remain timely and important into the future. The Hesperado will remain active and will occupy my main blogging attention from now on, with a wider focus on PC MC itself and the Problem of Islam.

I will close by quoting the words of an observer (one “Adela G.”) I have only recently become aware of, whose remarks have been posted in the comments sections of Lawrence Auster’s site, View From the Right. There are two comments quoted below, one to do with the recent Koran-kissing incident, another to do with Spencer’s unfair treatment of Vlaams Belang and other so-called “white racist” parties in Europe. I quote these comments because of their singularly keen dressing down of Spencer which I could not have put better myself. I hope “Adela G.” writes more, not only about Spencer, but about the broader issues of the West and the problem of Islam.

The gentleman gives the floor, and the last word, to the lady:

_______________________

1)

Robert Spencer writes:

The possibility that Muslims worldwide might be incited to murderous rage because of an incident like this can never be discounted. Major General Hammond and his staff are trying to head that off. That's fine, but it also just plays into the mentality that to riot and kill because of something like this is a perfectly natural and rational reaction to it. At a certain point, someone is going to have to have the guts to stand up and say, "Wait a minute. The incident that set you off may indeed have been offensive, but your reaction is insane. If someone insults you, that is no justification to kill him or anyone else, or to destroy anything."

Spencer understands that what Muslims consider inflammatory might possibly incite them to worldwide murderous rage. Yet he goes on to say that to head off that possibility is to "play into the mentality that to riot and kill because of something like this is a perfectly natural and rational reaction to it." Where the heck did he get the "rational" bit from? I have never read anywhere that the homicidal acting out of Muslims who feel Islam has been insulted touches at any point on rationality. It is, however, perfectly natural within the context of Islam itself.

And that's precisely what Mr. Spencer does not seem to comprehend, for he goes on to write:

At a certain point, someone is going to have to have the guts to stand up and say, "Wait a minute. The incident that set you off may indeed have been offensive, but your reaction is insane. If someone insults you, that is no justification to kill him or anyone else, or to destroy anything."

Such a reaction is insane only to a non-Muslim. To many Muslims, mere insult is indeed justification for killing and destruction. Incredibly, Robert Spencer evidently believes that at some point, the application of reason to a matter of faith will somehow modify or reform the Muslim tendency to respond to insults with violence. Obviously, he expects those members of a non-Western faith and non-Western culture to be receptive to Western notions of civility and reason--why else stand up and proclaim that violence is an "insane" response to insult?

If he cannot see how "insane" it is for him to expect people acting as their faith dictates to cast it aside and replace it with alien notions of civility, then how can he expect Muslims to see how "insane" it is to respond to insults with violence? Presumably, he's the one with sane notions of reason and rationality on his side. Yet like every other Western liberal, he adheres to liberal tenets that are every bit as faith-based and irrational as Islam itself. Spencer himself shows that modern liberalism and Islam are both irrational ideologies, impervious to reason and resistant to, if not incapable of, change or "reform."

2)

Spencer writes:

Fjordman argues that the indigenous peoples of are being overwhelmed by an elite-driven attempt to render them minorities in their own countries, and that is a point well taken also. But there is cultural defense and then there is a white supremacism that is based on some idea of racial superiority and inferiority, and has via Hitler a historical link to genocide. They are not the same thing, and a distinction needs to be made between the two...

They are not only not the same thing, they are polar opposites. The first concerns whites becoming a minority in Europe, the second is basically a description of the Nazi policy of Lebensraum, genocide perpetrated by Germans againist other European whites. No distinction needs to be made between them, they are demonstrably different to anyone who can read.

I have read many of Fjordmann's essays and don't recall his ever advocating anything like the "white supremacism" to which Spencer repeatedly refers. Only a liberal would fear that a discussion of whites becoming a minority in Europe needs to be defended against suspicions of advocating neo-Nazism and genocide perpetrated by white supremacists.

Spencer must live in a very tortuous world, in which to criticize his refusal to draw logical conclusions from his own evidence is to aspire to a kind of world domination ("Austerism over the West"), and to worry about whites becoming the minority on an historically white continent is to veer uncomfortably near to advocating white supremacism and genocide. His assertion that "I am more interested in making common cause even with those with whom I do not agree on anything" is lofty, if nonsensical. I don't see how a person can make a common cause with people with whom he has nothing in common. And it certainly stands in contradiction to his equally lofty and nonsensical statement: "I am pronouncing no anathemas, although I repeat: I completely disavow and repudiate any neo-Nazi or white supremacist individual or group."

Unfortunately, his inability to speak plainly about the actual nature of the threats to the West limits his effectiveness as an ally in the fight to preserve it. His pussyfooting would be merely risible if anything less crucial were at stake. As it is, his name-calling and preemptive defensiveness are counterproductive and divisive.