Euro-Centric

"The government should dissolve the people and elect another one," quipped the Communist playwright Bertolt Brecht after the East German riots of 1953. For good or ill, the U.S. political elite seems to be acting on his advice.

~Peter Brimelow, 1992

As much misery as it caused, the German Democratic Republic never actually tried to displace the German people. The natives of Britain haven't been so lucky:   

One of the saddest stories I have ever read about the cultural effects of mass migration came from the Daily Mail of 25 March 2010. Written by Andrew Malone, "Slaughter of the Swans" related the plight of recession-struck Polish and Lithuanian migrant workers stranded in England without work, money or even shelter. Some of these have been compelled to camp out in makeshift shanties along the banks of the River Nene in the city of Peterborough, about 70 miles north of London. (There are similar camps elsewhere.)

I admire Poles and Lithuanians, and am sorry to see some of them reduced to this Third World mode of existence, at the tail end of one of Britain's coldest winters in decades. Secondly, I know this stretch of the River Nene well, and often walk my Jack Russells along the Nene's wide and lazy winding course, drawn by the splendour of Peterborough's cathedral past medieval church spires and thatched Barnack-stone cottages, along shaded, solitary paths below huge and ancient willows and between deep beds of sedge filled with the plashing of grebes and water voles - with swans processing magnificently midstream, the grandest of geese, their crisp wings curled to catch the breezes that propel them gently along to Peterborough -- but now often also to perdition.

War does not only occur on television in the remote North Caucasus. With Allah's will, the borders of military action will extend to cover the entire territory of Russia, and this year, great successes await us."

~Terrorist Umarov quoted by Gazeta.ru (my translation)

Today's suicide bombings at two of my hometown's busiest subway stations were not simply acts of Islamic terrorism. Rather, they were an attack on the European civilization. One need not side with North American neocon foreign policy or gloss over the Russian regional specifics to see the global dimensions of this escalating East-versus-West civilizations' clash.

In addition to the death toll and gruesome details, news reports everywhere emphasized the fact that one of the subway stations in questions, Lubianka, is the current FSB headquarters, and, thus, is a spit in the face of Russian counterterrorism, after Nord-Ost and after Beslan. Instead, I recalled that the Moscow subway system is one of the most beautiful examples of public architecture in the world. Its central (yes, Soviet-era) stations, rich in marble and mosaics with a variety of neoclassical references, are an aesthetic symbol of European culture.

"There is something very genuine, very great and very manlike to the Norse system. A kind of vacant hugeness, large awkward gianthood, characterizes the Norse system; enormous force, as yet altogether untutored, stalking helpless with large uncertain strides. Untamed thought; great, giantlike, enormous!"

I was pleased to see the essay by Stephen McNallen. While I don't believe in any deities, if I did, it would be in the gods of the Northmen.

My last name means "Northman" in Gaelic, so I suppose it's in my blood to some small extent. Even if I were of some other kind of extraction, there is something appealing about the old Norse gods that is missing from other mythological systems. Just as Carlyle said, the Norse gods seem giant, epic, and mighty. All the other kinds of gods I can think of either seem monstrous and sinister (Shintoism, Hinduism, Voodoo) denatured and pathetic (Greek gods, Buddism) or just sort of vague (Taoism, Animism). The gods of the Northmen are giant, honest and brave. They are worth emulating. They're often incredibly silly, but that makes them more endearing to me.

Connoisseurs of cliché will find much to relish in the works of Guardian journalist Joseph Harker.

It is fair to say that our Joseph is interested in race. Of the last 50 or so articles that he has written for the Guardian, around 48 (I fell asleep counting) are about race. And I would not be at all surprised to find fleeting references to race within the texts of the other articles.

His countless contributions to 'debate' include classics like "A voice for minorities" (bet no-one's thought of that before), "Labour has not eliminated racism" (just as well really, or Joe would need to find another topic), "What an all-black Cabinet could look like" (to be fair, it couldn't be worse that the one we have), and "The ordinary brilliance of black youths" (maybe they should be fast-tracked into the Cabinet).

He is also in a pother about the "whitewashing" of Mothers' Day, the non-diverse media, Trevor Phillips's problems, the "n-word," and even anti-racists (he is offended seeing white people arguing about "how offended they are by a bigot with hardly a black or Asian voice to be heard").

L. Paul Bremer, former head of the US Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, popped up for an interview recently. Bremer (His nickname "Jerry" is much too bland. Victorian custom might accord our hero the moniker of "Baghdad.") had nothing to say about the bang-up job he did in managing the occupation of Iraq from 2003-2004. But as a former ambassador to the Netherlands, he did elect to share his wisdom on the subject of Islam in Europe.

Bremer is a Neoconservative, in case his position in Baghdad didn't clue you in. As such, he purports to defend the heritage of the West while maintaining a worldview and positions that only work to undermine it.

An article on the BBC website on 9 March proved me to have been right in some precocious predictions, but it is not false modesty to say that I would much rather have been proved wrong.

Seven militant Muslims, originally 'asylum-seekers' from Yemen and Morocco (the Irish Times says differently) but now living legally in Ireland have been arrested on suspicion of plotting to murder a Swedish cartoonist called Lars Vilks, who in 2007 depicted Mohammed (I'll skip the now almost-obligatory "Prophet" prefix) with the body of a dog. According to the Gardaí, several of the suspects were in contact with Colleen Renee LaRose, America's "Jihad Jane". Five of these excitable, unintelligent types were arrested in Waterford and two in Cork, two places I once knew well.

Algiers has protested formally to Paris about a Front National election poster which shows France draped in the Algerian flag, with the menacing silhouettes of minarets and the slogan Non à l'Islamisme. Three 'anti-racism' groups have issued legal complaints, while one Kahled Lasbeur, lawyer for the Movement against Racism, blustered that there would be "riots, demonstrations and blood-letting" if the posters were not banned.

Less predictably, a Swiss advertising agency has stated that it will sue the FN because of similarities between the poster and the one they devised for the Swiss People's Party during that party's successful campaign to halt the construction of minarets in Switzerland.

"AnteBragd" was upset by my article on the illustrious M. Van Rompuy. His/her arguments are incorrect, illogical or just plain silly. They are worthy of a response, however, because millions of Europeans are being force-fed such platitudes every day - as relentlessly, in fact, as we are being force-fed les victimes du jour by The Morning Edition...

• "Just because a lot of the paleos repeatedly claims that the EU is some kind "prison of nations" and rally or mock it by calling it EUSSR does not make it so. It is not so, by the simple reason, that all member states has [sic!] chosen to become members."

"Chosen"? Just ask the Danes or the Irish. When the people of a state say "no" to membership, or to an ever-tighter Union once their country is inside the Lager, they will be subjected to relentless pressure by the ruling elite to change their mind and say "yes"; but if and when they do succumb - as the Irish did to Lisbon last year, having been subjected to a massive barrage of Brussels-endowed Agitprop - now, that decision is treated as irreversible. The Euro-elite treats "democracy" as the process of manufacturing ideologically desirable outcomes determined in advance of the ostensible decision. The failure to produce one equals the failure of democracy; ergo the process will be fine-tuned and reactivated until it performs as expected.

There are things not to like about the BNP, but they do enliven British political life. Ever since they started to emerge from the fringes a few years ago, partly through their own efforts and partly because immigration has become so unignorable (yet is still being almost ignored by mainstream politicians), they have afforded vast amusement to journalists bored by the Punch-and-Judy pantomime of “Labour” versus “Conservative”, with the “Liberal Democrats” in the role of the little dog that tries to run away with the sausages.

As David Cameron admitted in his New Year Speech to a largely unimpressed crowd of constituency activists:

Whether you’re Conservative or Labour or Liberal Democrat, you’re motivated by pretty much the same progressive aims.

Very true – and very boring. What joy then for jaded journos to find a new KK-kid on the block, a party which is a little rough around the edges and seems sometimes to delight in giving brand-new hostages to fortune to add to all the older ones – a party that can arouse gales of passionate (and sometimes snobbish) hatred and make “everyone” feel morally superior.