printI caught the late-night iteration of the Glenn Beck Show, in which he insinuated that Geert Wilders was of the “far right,” and that the European far right was fascist. See for yourself.
Defunct link:
Functioning one:
Glenn here is aping the thinking of the likes of Mark Steyn, Daniel Hannan, and other neoconservatives: all disavow any reclamation of national identity when done by Europeans. Neoconservatives are multiculturalists by default, by which is meant that, while fussing ceaselessly against official multiculturalism, neoconservatives motivate for that hollow concept of a propositional nation. Accordingly, and to quote from my upcoming book, a nation is nothing but a notion (the last is Buchanan’s turn of phrase), “a community of disparate peoples coalescing around an abstract, highly manipulable, state-sanctioned ideology. Democracy, for one.” There is nothing new about that.
See “Get With The Global Program, Gaul.”
Update I (March 9): Note please that the allusion above was to the neoconservative’s deracinated “thinking” Glenn has assimilated vis-a-vis nationhood and national identity. I do not know who said a good word about Wilders and how it was grounded philosophically, since the reader hereunder does not substantiate his assertion. However, it is one thing to defend Wilders’ right to free speech. That’s dead easy and doesn’t demand much mental effort. It is quite another to tackle Wilders’ refusal, in the name of Western tolerance, to prostrate his patriotism and his very survival—and the steps he wishes to take to that end.
Neoconservatives generally disavow, even mock, European reclamation of identity, with hackneyed, shallow assertions of American superiority: “Americans are so much better than they, as we ‘assimilate’ everyone into our [already dissolved] culture.” That would be a vintage neocon argument.
“Get With The Global Program, Gaul,” and other articles, has dealt with these nuanced neoconservative deceptions.
See what you think of Larry Auster’s dissection of Steyn. Read “Steyn calls for the destruction of Europe.” And here is the Auster Steyn archive. You really have to look beyond the Steyn pizazz and analyze what the man says.
Update II: The multiculturalims aspect: It exemplifies a seductively shallow aspect readers find appealing in the neoconservative’s argumentation arsenal.
Formulaically, they will finger multiculturalism and the newcomer’s failure to assimilate in a gamut of problems—from what they dub anti-Americanism to terrorism. Neoconservatives, however, resolutely resist dealing with the Putman findings, according to which racial and ethnic diversity mess with people’s minds—especially the host population—and makes them miserable and dysfunctional.
Update III (Mar. 10): I have updated the original, defunct YouTube embed with the functioning one provided by Robert. As Ms. West alleges here, Fox News removed the unreasoned Beck rant. Surprising to me is the surprise evinced by European rightists, and trackers of all things USA, at the denunciation of their positions by Chuckie Krauthammer and Bill Kristol. The latter—together with Hannan, Steyn, etc.—are completely congruent and consistent.
For the European Right “identity remains rooted in blood, soil and ancient shared memory”—that’s neoconservative Francis Fukuyama’s derisive description.
My readers are also having a hard time with the distinctions I’ve tried to draw so far.
BECK VS. BURKE. With respect to the Enlightenment and Schmidt’s comments: In Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke provides a “compelling presentation of historically-based conservatism.” Russell Kirk said about “Reflections” that it “burns with all the wrath and anguish of a prophet who saw the traditions of Christendom and the fabric of civil society dissolving before his eyes.” The Founders brought a lot of Burke to the republican table, but, for obvious reasons, our countrymen (Beck is representative) know and love Thomas Paine, who sympathized with the Jacobins and spat venom at Burke for his devastating critique of the blood-drenched, illiberal, irreligious French Revolution.
You can guess who it is that I prefer as a historical figure and social theorist. To quote my friend Paul Gottfried, it is not “the peripatetic troublemaker Paine.”
I find this a little odd, given that Mark Steyn has been defending Geert Wilders.
Distressing. I was hoping his conversion was complete, after the Nolan Chart episode on Feb. 26th. [Hyperlink?]
I am still waiting for someone to explain to me how taking a belief in limited government to its logical extreme results in a fascist government. It would seem to me that the logical end would be anarchy. The term “fascist” has long devolved into a meaningless smear, though. Still, shame on Glenn for acting as he did and continuing the silliness.
Ilana, are you sure you have the correct Steyn? (not that I have another suggestion)
I see nothing supporting multiculturism in his writing. If anything, it’s just the opposite.
[Not official multiculturalism, but the notion that if you fail to assimilate outsiders, you are not kosher. Has Steyn spoken about immigration vis-a-vis Islam?]
I think I undestand your point. No, he generally remains on the peripheral citing statistics and general assumptions on the projected results of mass immigrations of, and in particular, people from the traditional Islamic regions.
Still, an entertaining read though
A few items:
1. It isn’t that clear that Beck put a lot of thought into his statement.
2. Nevertheless, I’m uncomfortable over banning headscarves (or other “symbolic speech”) by individuals on the tenuous grounds of a symbolic connection with violence. This seems to have grown popular in a statist Europe which is flooded with militant (rioting) Moslems. Bans such as those constitute a slippery anti-libertarian slope that I do not think we are compelled to cross – at least not yet in 2010 America. I don’t even think Israel bans head scarves of its Islamic citizens and they are certainly security conscious. In fact, I doubt they want to get into peripheral symbolic fights when they have more important security considerations to worry over. Border/immigration control, of course, is an entirely different issue for both America and Israel.
3. I was amused by the final segment of the above Beck show link with the brat claiming his “RIGHT” to a free college education – e.g. the waiters, plumbers, janitors, and medical orderlies should be taxed to put him through his FREE dope-smoking college classes with aging Marxist hippie professors so he can then subsequently tax and regulate the uneducated.
Fox is now owned part and parcel by the Saudis, what can we expect but a clamp down; though in Fox’s case it’s no surprise anyway.
I believe you have greatly misinterpreted statements of Mark Steyn: he has been, from my reading, a steadfast supporter of Mr. Wilders or, at the least, a steadfast opponent of the Euros who wish to suppress free speech.
[Please read my post, properly.–IM]
Trying not to beat dead horse here but…
I think you should rethink the use of Auster as a reference in attempting to align the thinking of Steyn with Beck.
Auster apparently has a history of not being able to place commentary in a proper perspective when writing his rebuke of the author’s work.
http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2009/06/the_trouble_with_larry.html
[I’m familiar with Auster, have been attacked by him. This writer is also vaguely familiar with critical thinking; galvanizing correct perspectives irrespective of who advances them. My critique of neocons vis-a-vis Europe, I suspect, precedes Auster’s and affirms it. In future, provide an email, please.]
Ms. Mercer, when can we expect your new book?
People who are criticizing Ilana Mercer’s “misinterpretation” of Mark Steyn should click on her link and read Lawrence Auster’s collection of entries that analyze what Steyn actually says. They are hard-hitting and get to the ideological divide between those that want to defend an abstract concept like “freedom” and those that want to defend an actual people.
Steyn’s Feb. 2005 essay doesn’t ENSORSE Islamization:
“for Europe, unlike America, the war on terror is an internal affair, a matter of defusing large unassimilated radicalized Muslim immigrant populations before they provoke the inevitable resurgence of opportunist political movements feeding off old hatreds. Difficult trick to pull off, especially on a continent where the ruling elite feels it’s in the people’s best interest not to pay any attention to them… Europe is a smugly irritating but irrelevant backwater where the whole powder keg’s about to go up… Europe’s problems — its unaffordable social programs, its deathbed demographics, its dependence on immigration numbers that no stable nation (not even America in the Ellis Island era) has ever successfully absorbed — are all of Europe’s making. By some projections, the EU’s population will be 40 percent Muslim by 2025..”
The late Meir Kahane said that if Israel is to be a Jewish state, they need Jewish garbage collectors, not Arabs doing coolie work. Europe, Israel, and America think it is better to import Turks, Algerians, Philipinos, and Mexicans to empty bedpans and clean gutters rather than (a) eliminating the welfare state and (b) raising salaries so native citizens do the grunt work.
Beck doesn’t operate on principle. He’s learning, but his fundamental premises don’t rest on axioms. They are a mish-mash of ideas he’s picked up through life, like a diner at a smorgasbord. To me, that means he can’t be trusted much.
His Nolan chart episode was probably a response to the Alex Jones illustration on YouTube wherein Alex pointed out that Beck leans towards tyranny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3X5CtdVNeM
In fact, the whole show looked like he got the idea from this little video.
Sorry I don’t have a link to Beck’s episode, but I distinctly remember hearing him say during that show that he came out in favor of the Patriot Act because it had a sunset provision. (Of course the sunset provision has been removed. The idiot never considered what would happen when that power inevitably fell into the hands of communist fascists (after the fascist communists fall from favor)).
I don’t think I’ve ever read this Mark Steyn’s writing, so I don’t understand this preoccupation with Ilana’s casual mention in the lead. [Like Ann Coulter’s, his followers are blinded.] I do know that Glenn Beck did say that Mr. Wilders was a Fascist because according to Glenn Beck he is very popular in his home country. So I guess if you’re popular, you’re a fascist. Almost all countries in the world today are fascist, including the US. (Basically a country is fascist when the government controls business.) I think he meant that Mr. Wilders is a Nazi because the Nazis had a policy of ethnic cleansing as well as a Fascist style of government; however, being off the mark is standard for Mr. Beck. The so called history lesson he gave in the short sermon contained numerous errors. The largest joke of the whole program was where the Icelandic president stated he was going to pay the banks off with taxpayer’s money and Glenn didn’t call the president of Iceland a fascist. Mr. Wilders has promised to reduce taxes and Glenn calls him a fascist. Not all of the actors are in Hollywood.
P.S. — Ilana, the video you linked to above has been removed from the hosting site by Fox News for copyright violation.
Myron Pauli: Lawrence Auster and Ilana Mercer weren’t saying that Steyn approves of Islamic immigration per se , but rather his attitude was along the effect of saying “to hell with Europe, let the Muslims destroy these backstabbing weasels.” The article has a triumphalist tone, and many other neocons, angry at EU animosity towards the US, gloat at the coming fall of Europe. From the point of view of Lawrence Auster and Ilana Mercer, that attitude is wrong and must be condemned. America and Europe are on the same boat, even if the problems we are facing aren’t 100% identical.
And I like the Meir Kahane quotation you provided. [I did? Where?] His observation is right on the money. 🙂
Diana West has a copy of the video on her site.
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx
Larry Auster links one article written by Mark Steyn in an apparent fit of exasperation. Against this, Steyn has alerted more people to the dangers of the Islamization of Europe than perhaps any other commentator, and certainly more than this Auster chap.
As regards the “multiculturalims aspect”, the complaint that America is a written republic founded on ideas, rather than blood-and-soil loyalties is one with a very long pedigree, none of it laudatory, and none of it part of the Enlightenment.
Ilana, do you have any comments on Murray Rothbard’s praise of Paine and condemnation of Burke?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard90.html
“I did? Where?”
That comment was addressed to Myron Pauli. My apologies for the confusion.
Burke was a member of the Whig party, not of the Tory Royalists. [For sure, and he supported the American Revolution] Blood and soil traditionalists are of the tradition of the Church-and-King mob that drove Priestly from England, and of the accusers of Dreyfus. And the accusation that America lacked that type of organic, natural bonds belongs with the fascist tradition of the early twentieth century, and the postmodern left of the early twenty-first.
Hugo, “Blood and Soil Traditionalists” go back to the beginning of mankind. Lumping us with Church-and-King mobs, fascists, and the post-modern Left is a bit unfair, I would think.
It’s true that blood and soil traditionalists have undergone ugly deviations, it is true, but those instances need to be isolated and condemned. Pride and celebration of shared identity through heritage is not something that must be ugly.
John McNeill: I think Kahane said it in a October 1972 Playboy interview – about Israel needing Jewish janitors, etc…. – not able to verify that on line.
Quite. The revolutionaries and liberals were for it, and the conservatives were against it, precisely because it was a matter of, as it were, intelligent design, instead of organic development.
John, one isn’t entitled to rewrite history. The denunciations of Dreyfuss and his defenders were that they were, yes, deracinated. That they were examples of the luftmensch. The rootless cosmopolitan.
You’re quite right that the blood and soil mentality has existed throughout mankind’s history. A brief glance at that history shows its effects. I’m currently resident in England and I have far more in common with immigrants who come from Hindu and Sikh cultures than with native yobs face down in the gutter.
I am second to none in my admiration the magnificent heritage of Western civilization. And it is my knowledge of that that leads me to oppose the blood-and-soil (mud) traditionalists. The glory of the West has always been its veneration of reason, its universalism, and its self-criticism. I’ll refer you Ibn Warraq’s Defending the West for further proof. The veneration of an unchosen, unalterable heritage over consciously chosen values is a mark of the Oriental Despot, not the Graeco-Roman tradition.
“The denunciations of Dreyfuss and his defenders were that they were, yes, deracinated. That they were examples of the luftmensch. The rootless cosmopolitan.”
My apologies, but I’m really unclear as to what you’re getting at. Just because Dreyfus was unfairly accused means that all blood and soil traditionalism must be tossed out the window? That seems like a rather bold jump.
“I’m currently resident in England and I have far more in common with immigrants who come from Hindu and Sikh cultures than with native yobs face down in the gutter.”
That’s lovely, but I don’t know how the native yobs feel about losing their country. Yes, they may not be the paladins of “Western Civilization”, but I don’t really see why they are thus damned to lose a nation that has belonged to their ancestors for tens of thousands of years just because Hindu and Sikh immigrants can speak and conduct themselves better.
“I’ll refer you Ibn Warraq’s Defending the West for further proof.”
Haven’t read it, but I’ll look for a copy at the library.
“The glory of the West has always been its veneration of reason, its universalism, and its self-criticism.”
Why do you think the “West” is so universal? Do you think that through mass immigration, free trade, and overthrowing regimes that Western Civilization will prevail even if the historic populations that built this very civilization fade into oblivion? What evidence do you see of this?
“The veneration of an unchosen, unalterable heritage over consciously chosen values is a mark of the Oriental Despot, not the Graeco-Roman tradition.”
Well the ancient Greeks and Romans no longer exist as peoples, so I’m not sure if the Greco-Roman tradition when it comes to nationalism is such a good model to pursue. At any rate, most European peoples never embraced “universalism”, so I don’t think the “Greco-Roman” tradition has been the orthodox practice of the West until the 1960’s. In other words, blood and soil traditionalism has been the mark of the West for much longer than universalism. Incidentally, ever since we embraced universalism, we’re now dealing with population replacements and other problems. Kind of make me think that universalism isn’t that great of a belief when put into practice.
“ever since we embraced universalism, we’re now dealing with population replacements and other problems.” JHN MCNEILL; HUGO and I both are watching the world of science, especially space science disappear unless a homogeneous country like Japan or China picks it up. We were headed for the stars in 1970, before we embraced ‘universalism’ remember. For that matter, I won’t gloat with Mr. Beck and company after Europe becomes another Middle East anymore than I would when and if the US becomes the northernmost South American Country.
Sorry John.