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Finnquisition

European countries moving in totalitarian direction

17.05.2008. Thus begins an article in The Brussels Journal: There's a free speech trial going on in Finland, […] Here's what's happened: Mikko Ellilä is a blogger, who posted a rant on his blog about Africans and African immigration in Finland and elsewhere. (Excuse me for using the word rant – if you're a conservative you always hear that everything you've written is either a rant or a screed, but in this case it's more or less appropriate.)

The awful majesty of the Finnish legal machine is coming after him for a blog post.

State Prosecutor Mika Illman: The text under discussion, "Society Consists of People", has been published on the Internet. In the text, Africans are slandered and insulted. It includes material that is prohibited in section 11 of the penal code and that should therefore not be disseminated. I demand that the text be removed from the Internet. It is indisputable that the text has been disseminated as described in the penal code. What is in dispute is whether the statements included in the text are illegal. This case is not about freedom of opinion. Mr Ellilä is free to hold any opinions that he wishes. However, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights prohibits abusing these rights. Freedom of speech may not be misused.

Note that the business about the "International Covenant"(a UN document which the United States has signed but not ratified) is usually a censor's way of saying that even if his country had free speech, international law would force him to crush dissidents with whatever local legal machinery is available. A cease-and-desist order, for example, could prevent a journalist from writing at all. (Mark Steyn actually expects this: "My career in Canada will be formally ended next month.")

The questioning at Mikko Ellilä’s trial contains exchanges like this:

Illman: You write, "For the Africans, looting, rape, nepotism, corruption, clan warfare, superstition and impulsive homicide are business as usual". What is this claim based on?

Ellilä: On well-known facts. There are a lot of dictators and wars in Africa. There was a genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s due to intertribal conflicts between the Hutus and the Tutsis. Apart from the Darfur crisis in Sudan, there was also a civil war in Sudan between the Arab Muslim government in the north and the black Christians and other non-Muslims in the south. In Congo, the dictators Mobutu Sese Seko and Laurent Kabila killed millions of people. In Zimbabwe, the dictator Robert Mugabe has killed hundreds of thousands of people. Idi Amin, the dictator of Uganda, killed hundreds of thousands of people. I could go on and on about this. Don't you ever read the newspapers or watch the news on TV?

Good question. Worth asking in any discussion of immigration – are the newcomers fleeing the problems of their home country, or are they bringing them with them? Read the entire article in The Brussels Journal.

HonestThinking comments: The following statement strikes me as unwise:"For the Africans, looting, rape, nepotism, corruption, clan warfare, superstition and impulsive homicide are business as usual". Writers who are critical of the multicultural project, and/or concerned about the challenges involved in trying to create multiracial societies, should, in my opinion, be very careful to avoid 'over-generalizations' like this, or unnecessarily hurtful language in general.

Even so, this report from Finland is very troubling. It seems to confirm a pattern of ever more draconian measures being employed to prevent inconvenient truths from being freely disseminated in society, and it is yet another sign that Europe in particular, and the entire West in general, is moving in a totalitarian direction. As I have said many times before, when the truth can no longer be tolerated (because we are pursuing utopian dreams) we will necessarily be headed for major problems.

The above is probably just an early sign of what is to come. Today they take those who use inappropriate language, tomorrow they will take those who simply tell the truth, no matter how moderate and appropriate their language.

Crime on the increase in Oslo, Norway

Observations from Bruce Bawer

16.05.2008. The following is quoted from Bruce Bawer (hyperlinks in original): During the nine years and two weeks that I've lived in Oslo, I've seen the city change significantly -- for the worse. I don't remember exactly when it started reminding me of New York in the 1970s and 80s, but by now the resemblance is undeniable. Burglary, rape, gay-bashing, mugging, graffiti, vandalism: you name it, we've got it in spades, and it's still on the rise. Public stabbings and gang fights have become routine. Forget for a moment the Muslim youth gangs that are responsible for a wildly disproportionate number of the crimes here: it's now impossible to walk in broad daylight down Karl Johans Gate, the grand ceremonial thoroughfare that was once the kingdom's pride, without being accosted by aggressive gypsy beggars who want your money (they've been bussed in from Rumania specifically for this purpose) and by equally aggressive drug addicts (some of who are asking for handouts, others of whom are dealing). At night, this unsavory crew is replaced by an even pushier brigade of Nigerian prostitutes, some of whom will follow you for a block or more, repeatedly (and often belligerently) demanding that you avail yourself of their services. So insistent are they that it doesn't even help to scream: "I'm gay!" Even the pre-Giuliani Times Square area was safer and more congenial.

The statistics are dire. Last month came news that the rate of reported crimes in Oslo is now four times that of New York; last week it emerged that Oslo's rape figures reached an all-time high in 2007; today it was reported that over 99 percent of street robberies in the city go unsolved. To any unblinkered individual who lives here, these statistics are no surprise. Yet civic authorities, faced with the steady erosion of law and order, exude indifference and ineffectuality. Alas, as illustrated by the vile comments made last October to a Muslim audience in Oslo by the head of Norway's security police -- who, as recounted by Rita Karlsen, bent over backwards to praise Muslims and decouple Islam from terrorism while maligning America and depicting ordinary Norwegians as ignorant, potentially violent anti-Muslim bigots -- Norwegian cops are hobbled by the same mindless multiculturalism that infects their counterparts elsewhere in the West.

HonestThinking comments: Bawer made the these comments on 29 April. Less than two weeks later at least nine (!) Norwegian women were, during a single weekend, in public and 'safe' places in a popular part of central Oslo, in broad daylight (at least in some cases), attacked and bullied by a group of some ten to twelve Somali boys of around 13 - 14 years of age. The boys tore most of the clothes off of the women, grasped their breasts and genitalia, and in some cases forced them to the ground. The following reports were published by Dagbladet: De dro opp kjolen og tok meg i skrittet ("They pulled up my skirt and grasped my vulva") and Det var guttehender overalt på kroppen min ("There were boys' hands all over my body")

At least some of the boys were later captured by the police who, in responce to the boys' actions, are apparently willing to take drastic measures such as talking to their parents and teachers.

Political correctness ruining society

Modern life is bedevilled by political correctness, says author

02.05.2008. "Mutual respect and understanding and recognition of our common humanity cannot be nurtured in isolation. And in our relationships we are bedevilled by the cult of political correctness."

She added: "If in speaking to minorities we have to weigh every word in advance in case inadvertently we give offence, how can we be at ease with each other, how celebrate our common humanity, our shared anxieties and aspirations, both for ourselves and for those whom we love?" It would be "unfortunate" if the police became "enamoured" of political correctness, which she described as "a pernicious if risible authoritarian attempt at linguistic and social control". Read the full story in The Telegraph.

Israel 60 years

The Western disease has reached Israel as well

02.05.2008 (updated 03.05.2008). Excerpts from an article by Melanie Phillips in The Spectator: Ben-Gurion would today be surprised to find, for example, that Israel is regarded as illegally occupying the West Bank (and until 2005, Gaza). Along with modern Israel, this was part of the territory of Palestine within which in 1922 the League of Nations gave Britain the task of re-establishing the Jewish national home because of the unique claim by the Jews — the only people for whom it had ever been their nation state, hundreds of years before the Arabs invaded it. In other words, far from being ‘Palestinian land’, the Jews are entitled to claim it under international law, which also gives it the right to hold on to it in self-defence. Yet ‘progressive’ opinion not only denies both law and history but demands (as do the Palestinians) the ethnic cleansing of every last Jewish settler from a putative Palestinian state (just as half Israel’s population was created by Jews driven out of their ancient homes in Arab lands). So much for anti-racism.

The denial and inversion of such facts has singled out Israel for vilification applied to no other country. Scapegoated for crimes of which it is in fact the victim, Israel has become the Jew of the Western world. This is a victory for the Arabs in the new type of war in which they are engaged. Asymmetric warfare, whose principal battlefield is the mind, uses ostensibly powerless people (the Palestinians) who are in fact backed by powerful state actors (Iran). Such an inversion of strong and weak and the systematic use of deception are vital to the principal strategic goal of asymmetric warfare: to confuse and demoralise its victims and suborn world opinion to its cause. Even Israel itself has weakened under this. For it has an intelligentsia which is no longer confident of the nation’s right to its own Jewish identity. This has created a dangerous vacuum. In Israeli universities, revisionist historians have told corrosive lies about their country’s history, portraying it as having been born in sin. In the schools, children have not been taught Jewish history and parrot Arab disinformation instead.

The country’s sense of national purpose has been further weakened by the 2006 Lebanon war, which punctured public belief in Israel’s military invincibility, and by the ongoing crisis of political leadership caused by a political system which is endemically corrupt and excludes the brightest and the best from public office.

The result of all this is that at present, both the Israeli Left and Right are consumed by a morbid despair. The Left thinks Israel is doomed to war in perpetuity because there is no prospect of a Palestinian state — which it remains convinced is the prerequisite for peace, despite this being contrary to all history, evidence and logic. The Right, on the other hand, thinks that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is Israel’s Chamberlain, about to declare peace in our time by giving away half of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights and thus delivering Israel to the wolves of Arab annihilation. But both are surely missing the bigger picture.

[...]

Indeed, much of the responsibility for these six decades of conflict lie with a Western world which, from 1921 onwards, has chosen to appease Arab violence while shedding crocodile tears over its Jewish victims. But the future of Israel is the future of the West. If the front line in Israel were to go down, the West would be next. Given its current internal appeasement of Islamism, however, the West may go down anyway. At least Israel knows it has to fight to survive. As a result, in 60 years’ time it will still be there. Can the same be said for Britain or Europe?

See full article in The Spectator.

HonestThinking comments: Britain and Europe are in serious trouble, and will, unless they change their ways, probably cease to exist as Western political entities some time in this century. Dramatic or even chaotic changes could very well take place less than 60 years from now, if we continue along a path of non-sustainable demographic development. Given the unfortunate fact that Israel is seriously stricken by the Western disease, too, I am less confident than Phillips that it will survive the next 60 years. Dishonest thinking is a suicide pill.

Whites not allowed

Antiracism is a false and hypocritical ideology

28.04.2008. Here's a brief but revealing article by Elizabeth Wright: In a column in the New Pittsburgh Courier, black columnist William Reaves once asked, "Can any progress be made without settling the concerns of white people who want to insure a future for their white posterity?" Reaves asked his question back in 1998, emphasizing those blacks and whites who were "uncomfortable" about sorting out the actual reasons for what he called "the true motivation for white supremacy."

He then described events from one of the conferences sponsored that year by Bill Clinton's President's Advisory Board on Race, where the white Robert Hoy, an audience observer, took the initiative, from a floor microphone, to point out that no one on the discussion panels were speaking for white people. This conference, billed as an "honest discussion on race" and part of a year-long symposium, turned out to be just another assembly for the airing of minority grievances, and was completely controlled by activist blacks and their white partisans.

Reaves claimed that the whole year-long forum was "conspicuously lacking one thing, the opinions of white people." Since Hoy had followed the formal rules of the meeting, and was perfectly polite in his presentation, Reaves asked, "Why did Hoy get escorted out of the President's forum on race, given that the Constitution is generally interpreted to allow for free speech?" He called the ouster of Hoy "sadly predictable."

Do you think that those blacks who today are calling for an "open discussion on race" have any more intention to allow for honesty on all sides than they did ten years ago? If Reaves did not know it before, he learned that day that whites are not allowed in on the dialogue. They're just expected to be window dressing – listen and make nice. And, most of all, be ready to go along with whatever demands emanate from the camp of the coloreds – from more quota-driven policies, to more intrusions into other people's lives, to another Federal holiday for a black hero.

Elizabeth Wright is an African-American writer and editor of the Issues & Views Magazine and blog. The above article appeared in Global Politician.

Is nationalism good for you?

Tried and true brainwashing illusions re-evaluated

28.04.2008. Excerpts from an article (plus follow-up postings) in Foreign Policy by Gustavo de la Casas: Think of “nationalism,” and you might think of a country brainwashed to hate its neighbors. You might imagine thousands of people sacrificing themselves for a power-hungry dictator. You wouldn’t be alone. Albert Einstein himself called nationalism “an infantile disease, the measles of mankind.”

Political scientists blame it for civil wars and territorial ambitions, from Rwanda and Yugoslavia to Nazi Germany and Napoleonic France. Many economists view it as an irrational distraction from free-market principles, impeding growth and promoting corruption across the developing world. When war broke out in the past, nationalism was often automatically assumed to be a party to the crime, either as a tool that would allow leaders to seduce the masses into fighting, or as fuel that stoked popular outrage. There is no denying it: nationalism has got a bad name.

But this negative publicity confuses what is more often than not an innocuous sentiment. Nationalism is a feeling of unity with a group beyond one’s immediate family and friends. In and of itself, it is not conducive to disastrous wars. The bad rap on nationalism relies almost exclusively on cherry-picked exceptions. These conclusions were drawn without considering the far-more-common cases in which nationalism was not the root of some evil. Moreover, many previous studies on the causes of war lacked one key component: an adequate measure of nationalism. Absent this measure, it is impossible to tell if the brand of nationalism of, say, the Axis powers was more intense than others in the years leading up to 1939. Yet, scholars are quick to blame nationalism for a host of ills.

[...]

What do Charles de Gaulle, Pope John Paul II, and Arthur C. Clarke have in common? They all openly knocked nationalism. But their VIP status doesn't make them right. A quick reality check reveals that they deeply misunderstood the virtues of nationalism.

Charles de Gaulle (French president, general, and writer, 1890–1970:
"Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first."

Reality check: De Gaulle is splitting hairs. Nationalism and patriotism are the same thing: a love for one's nation. If nationalism or patriotism turns hateful, it is because it mixes with something else, such as lack of a free press, or a threatened elite. That happened in early 1990s Rwanda, where the ruling party used "hate radio" to monopolize political discourse and convince Hutus that their national survival required the killing of Tutsis. But de Gaulle's thinking blinds us to these dangerous combinations. Instead of assuming good and bad forms of nationalism have totally different DNA, we should consider the possible corrupting factors that could send any nation down a destructive path.

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005):
"Pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressiveness that spares no one. The challenge that is already with us is the temptation to accept as true freedom what in reality is only a new form of slavery."

Reality check: The late pope dreamed of people "liberated" from nationalism. But why should a kinship with your fellow citizens, as long as you respect others, be such a bad thing? On the contrary, imagine what a perfectly "free" society would look like—one filled with individualists who care not about their country, family ties, or global society as a whole. (In fact, these "freed" people would also eschew organized religion and future holy fathers.) In other words, a completely "free" society is no society at all. Given the uncertain alternatives, I'd rather stay with nations.

Thorstein Veblen (Norwegian-American economist who cofounded the institutional economics movement, 1857–1929):
"Born in iniquity and conceived in sin, the spirit of nationalism has never ceased to bend human institutions to the service of dissension and distress."

Reality check: The bestial origins of nationalism offended Veblen's refined mind. And perhaps rightfully so; nationalism doesn't thrive on elegant calculations, but on our animal instincts to form packs. But being primitive does not make something ineffective. Nationalism merely makes us look after our own—especially when the chips are down and people are tempted to leave others behind. The next time your country faces a grave threat, you'd better hope your fellow citizens have nationalism in their hearts.

Arthur C. Clarke (British science fiction writer, 1917–):
"It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars."

Reality check: Clarke reflects the naive hope that technology will trump human nature. But it is human nature that guides technology. After all, it was only a great contest between two nations—the space race—that gave us Sputnik, the Apollo program, and other inspiration for Clarke's novels.

Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi (Libyan leader, 1942–):
"Nations whose nationalism is destroyed are subject to ruin."

Reality check: Sad but true. Of all the prominent figures in this list, only the dictator of an oil-dependent country understands the value of nationalism. But it wasn't always this way. Before becoming a superpower, the United States was a nation whose leaders appreciated nationalism. For instance, President Theodore Roosevelt famously declared that "love of country is an elemental virtue, like love of home." We owe it to ourselves to discard intellectual biases and harness the power of this neglected social resource.

(Gustavo de las Casas is a doctoral student in international relations at Columbia University. Thanks to document.no for the tip about this FP article.)

Britons fear race violence

UK in a death spiral - the Tony Blair legacy

20.04.2008. Almost two-thirds of people in Britain fear race relations are so poor tensions are likely to spill over into violence, a BBC poll has suggested. See also additional comments in The Brussels Journal.

HonestThinking comments: The situation in the UK is currently such that tensions are steadily growing along language, cultural, religious, ethnic, and racial fault lines. Unless these developments are reversed and the said tensions decrease to acceptable levels, the British government will gradually have to employ more and more totalitarian measures, such as limiting the freedom of speech, in order to prevent the situation from exploding. However, since the UK is basically pursuing a utopian dream, denying the reality of human nature, all such efforts are sooner or later bound to fail. The looming disaster can only be avoided if the Britons come to their senses and face the truth; the current developments are simply not sustainable, and their country is in dire straits indeed.

As philosopher of science David N. Stamos put it in the introductory chapter of his excellent book «Evolution and the big questions: Sex, Race, Religion, and Other Matters» (italics in original, boldface and hyperlinks added):

Finally, there are political reasons for why many find the SSSM appealing and are immediately suspicious of, or will not even listen to, those who provide evolutionary perspectives on human nature. At the core of it all is political correctness, with its goal of a sensitive and fair society, especially with regard to groups that have suffered and continue to suffer discrimination and oppression. While among the general public there is a lot of division over the value of political correctness, with many thinking it has gone too far (just listen to call-in radio talk shows), in colleges and universities, especially in the humanities and social sciences, it has become quite a dominant force, even to the point of censorship (in many colleges and universities in the United States, for example, racial theorizing is not allowed). While the basic reasons for political correctness are just and laudable, much politically correct thinking is arguably unrealistic and a form of denial. Nowhere is this plainer than in the big questions where biology should be clearly relevant. Indeed, politically correct thinkers routinely give the impression that they could not care less about being biologically correct. If there is a conflict between political correctness and biology, then too bad for biology. What we shall see in coming chapters is that political correctness, when it shuts itself off from empirical evidence and argument or flies too easily to the SSSM, easily becomes its own worst enemy. To give a quick example, it can now be argued that the communist experiment failed, in country after country around the world, just as every commune experiment of hippies in the 1960s failed, not necessarily because evil or stupid people were behind the experiments, but because they had the wrong theory of human nature. How many other grand visions of human happiness are destined to fail because they have an erroneous concept of human nature?

«Evolution and the big questions: Sex, Race, Religion, and Other Matters» is a must-read for anyone interested in, well, the big questions.

Mother slams multiculturalism

Asian ‘racism’ led to a vicious attack that caused brain damage

15.04.2008. Excerpts from an article in Times Online: The mother of a 15-year-old boy left with brain damage by an Asian gang is blaming multi-culturalism for the way ethnic minorities get away with violent bullying in schools.

Liz Webster, 43, from Swindon, whose son Henry nearly died in the attack, believes a “culture of timidity” among teachers is stopping them clamping down on ethnic minority bullies because they fear accusations of racism. She also accuses teachers of failing to recognise that ethnic minorities can exhibit racism against whites.

Her son, who was a pupil at Ridgeway comprehensive, near Swindon, was set upon by a 16-strong Asian gang, smashed on the skull by repeated blows from a claw hammer and left for dead. Last week 13 of the gang were convicted of charges relating to the attack.

Before the assault little action appears to have been taken against the gang, despite incidents of persistent aggressive behaviour. In the immediate aftermath of the assault, neither the school’s headmaster, Steven Colledge, nor any of its 90 teachers visited the Webster family or even sent a get-well card.

HonestThinking comments: The dishonesty and hypocrisy surrounding the issue of racism is simply appalling.

Islam will conquer Rome and Europe

Hamas MP and Cleric Yunis Al-Astal in a Friday Sermon

15.04.2008. Following are excerpts from an address by Hamas MP and cleric Yunis Al-Astal, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on 11 April 2008 (quoted from Jihadwatch, emphasis added):

Yunis Al-Astal: Allah has chosen you for Himself and for His religion, so that you will serve as the engine pulling this nation to the phase of succession, security, and consolidation of power, and even to conquests thorough da'wa and military conquests of the capitals of the entire world. Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, just like Constantinople was, as was prophesized by our Prophet Muhammad. Today, Rome is the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital, which has declared its hostility to Islam, and has planted the brothers of apes and pigs in Palestine in order to prevent the reawakening of Islam – this capital of theirs will be an advanced post for the Islamic conquests, which will spread through Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas, and even Eastern Europe.

I believe that our children or our grandchildren will inherit our Jihad and our sacrifices, and Allah willing, the commanders of the conquest will come from among them. Today, we instill these good tidings in their souls, and by means of the mosques and the Koran books, and the history of our Prophets, his companions, and the great leaders, we prepare them for the mission of saving humanity from the hellfire on the brink of which they stand.

HonestThinking comments: The Jihadwatch article has the title We will conquer Rome, and then Eastern Europe and the Americas. This, however, is misleading. According to the above text, Yunis Al-Astal clearly intends to conquer not just Eastern Europe, but "Europe in its entirety".

I have no idea how influential Al-Astal is, but given that he is a Hamas MP and a cleric who gets to preach on Al-Aqsa TV, he does not appear to be entirely marginalized. People who claim that there is no effort on the part of Muslims to conquer the West, are either ignorant or dishonest. There are indeed such efforts going on; the questions is what proportion of Muslims, globally and in the West, are in support of them.

Daniel Pipes's articles Will Europe Resist Islamization? and Europe's Stark Options are well worth reading in this context.

Dangerous ideas

Pinker and Dawkins bashing political correctness

08.04.2008. The 2006 Edge Question — "What Is Your Dangerous Idea" — has now been published in book form in the US and the UK. The question was posed by Steven Pinker, who wrote:

The history of science is replete with discoveries that were considered socially, morally, or emotionally dangerous in their time; the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are the most obvious. What is your dangerous idea? An idea you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be true?

For the book version, Steven Pinker has written the Preface and Richard Dawkins wrote the Afterword. I am pleased to present both pieces below just in time for the start of the summer reading season. Edge is a conversation. The conversation continues.

Thus writes John Brockman in the opening paragraphs of an Edge article about Dangerous Ideas.

HonestThinking comments: The article is well worth reading in its entirety (the fact that it's not quite new anymore doesn't change its relevance the least), but I'd like to highlight the following paragraphs from Pinker's preface (italics in original, boldface added by me):

The conviction that honest opinions can be dangerous may even arise from a feature of human nature. Philip Tetlock and Alan Fiske have argued that certain human relationships are constituted on a basis of unshakeable convictions. We love our children and parents, are faithful to our spouses, stand by our friends, contribute to our communities, and are loyal to our coalitions not because we continually question and evaluate the merits of these commitments but because we feel them in our bones. A person who spends too much time pondering whether logic and fact really justify a commitment to one of these relationships is seen as just not "getting it." Decent people don't carefully weigh the advantages and disadvantages of selling their children or selling out their friends or their spouses or their colleagues or their country. They reject these possibilities outright; they "don't go there." So the taboo on questioning sacred values make sense in the context of personal relationships. It makes far less sense in the context of discovering how the world works or running a country.

Should we treat some ideas as dangerous? Let's exclude outright lies, deceptive propaganda, incendiary conspiracy theories from malevolent crackpots, and technological recipes for wanton destruction. Consider only ideas about the truth of empirical claims or the effectiveness of policies that, if they turned out to be true, would require a significant rethinking of our moral sensibilities. And consider ideas that, if they turn out to be false, could lead to harm if people believed them to be true. In either case, we don't know whether they are true or false a priori, so only by examining and debating them can we find out. Finally, let's assume that we're not talking about burning people at the stake or cutting out their tongues but about discouraging their research and giving their ideas as little publicity as possible.

There is a good case for exploring all ideas relevant to our current concerns, no matter where they lead. The very act of engaging in rational discourse presupposes a commitment to evaluating ideas on their intellectual warrant alone. Otherwise how could one even make the case that dangerous ideas should be discouraged, in the face of someone else arguing (as Dan Gilbert does in this volume) that the idea of discouraging ideas is itself morally dangerous? Should proponents of keeping dangerous ideas private then be forced to keep that idea private, because their opponents deem it to be dangerous? If not, why should the proponents' judgment about dangerousness and nondangerousness be granted a privilege they deny to others? The idea that ideas should be discouraged a priori is inherently self-refuting. Indeed, it is the ultimate arrogance, as it assumes that one can be so certain about the goodness and truth of one's own ideas that one is entitled to discourage other people's opinions from even being examined.

Also, it's hard to imagine any aspect of public life where ignorance or delusion is better than an awareness of the truth, even an unpleasant one. Only children and madmen engage in "magical thinking," the fallacy that good things can come true by believing in them or bad things will disappear by ignoring them or wishing them away. Rational adults want to know the truth, because any action based on false premises will not have the effects they desire. Worse, logicians tell us that a system of ideas containing a contradiction can be used to deduce any statement whatsoever, no matter how absurd. Since ideas are connected to other ideas, sometimes in circuitous and unpredictable ways, choosing to believe something that may not be true, or even maintaining walls of ignorance around some topic, can corrupt all of intellectual life, proliferating error far and wide. In our everyday lives, would we want to be lied to, or kept in the dark by paternalistic "protectors," when it comes to our health or finances or even the weather? In public life, imagine someone saying that we should not do research into global warming or energy shortages because if it found that they were serious the consequences for the economy would be extremely unpleasant. Today's leaders who tacitly take this position are rightly condemned by intellectually responsible people. But why should other unpleasant ideas be treated differently?

There is another argument against treating ideas as dangerous. Many of our moral and political policies are designed to pre-empt what we know to be the worst features of human nature. The checks and balances in a democracy, for instance, were invented in explicit recognition of the fact that human leaders will always be tempted to arrogate power to themselves. Likewise, our sensitivity to racism comes from an awareness that groups of humans, left to their own devices, are apt to discriminate and oppress other groups, often in ugly ways. History also tells us that a desire to enforce dogma and suppress heretics is a recurring human weakness, one that has led to recurring waves of gruesome oppression and violence. A recognition that there is a bit of Torquemada in everyone should make us wary of any attempt to enforce a consensus or demonize those who challenge it.

"Sunlight is the best disinfectant," according to Justice Louis Brandeis's famous case for freedom of thought and expression. If an idea really is false, only by examining it openly can we determine that it is false. At that point we will be in a better position to convince others that it is false than if we had let it fester in private, since our very avoidance of the issue serves as a tacit acknowledgment that it may be true. And if an idea is true, we had better accommodate our moral sensibilities to it, since no good can come from sanctifying a delusion. This might even be easier than the ideaphobes fear. The moral order did not collapse when the earth was shown not to be at the center of the solar system, and so it will survive other revisions of our understanding of how the world works.

See the entire Edge article about Dangerous Ideas.

Creating a European indigenous people’s movement

Preparing for the coming demographic tsunami

08.04.2008. Excerpts from a recent article by Fjordman at The Brussels Journal: An American friend of mine has proposed that native Europeans should create a European Indigenous People's Movement. I have hesitated with supporting this because it sounded a bit too extreme. However, in more and more European cities, the native population is being pushed out of their own neighborhoods by immigrant gangs. The natives receive little or no aid from their authorities, sometimes blatant hostility, when faced with immigrant violence. In an age where the global population increases with billions of people in a few decades, it is entirely plausible, indeed likely, that the West could soon become demographically overwhelmed. Not few of our intellectuals seem to derive pleasure from this thought.

HonestThinking comments: While I am not convinced Fjordman's emphasis on Islam is fully warranted (although it is certainly warranted to some degree), I think he is entirely right in pointing out that Europeans are becoming an endangered species, so to speak. His general approach has a lot in common with the one advocated in my own immigration manifesto.

Suicide of the West

The hypocrisy of asymmetry

08.04.2008. From The Brussels Journal: Why is no other solution ever discussed? Like discouraging frivolous abortions and lowering taxes so young people can afford to have families. Right now there’s a ludicrous situation that a young married couple is supporting someone else’s granny with their exorbitant taxes instead of being allowed to keep the money to have their own child!

And of course there’s the point that has been made many times on this site, that Mexicans are allowed to keep Mexico Mexican, Africans are allowed to favor blacks, China and Japan to keep their countries exclusively for their own race, but every country founded by European whites must import dissimilar immigrants to prove their non-racism to the point that they become minorities in their own lands. This is required of no one else. […]

The third world can and will overwhelm the European established countries with the connivance of leftists for whom racism is the unwillingness to commit cultural suicide.

The least racist cultures are being replaced by more racist cultures. In the coming world after Pax Americana has been destroyed, African blacks for example, can forget about any aid from the Chinese except arms with which to kill each other and to Muslims, they’re worthy only to be slaves.

Devastating demolition of the case for mass immigration

UK increasingly desperate for solutions to a developing crisis

06.04.2008. The following are excerpts from an article in Daily Mail by Sir Andrew Green (emphasis added): Why has the Government continued to pursue its immigration policy when it must have known that it was deeply flawed?

Some ministers may have believed their own propaganda on multiculturalism. Others, notably Gordon Brown at the Treasury, were keen to see impressive economic growth figures (yes, Britain's GDP does improve with increased immigration but, as the committee itself pointed out, not income per head). And, of course, it helps to keep inflation down to have a ready supply of cheap labour from overseas.

Furthermore, the importation of skills covered up the Government's own failures over the education and training of Britain's workforce.

One has to ask, too, whether there could be a political aspect. Immigrant communities are predominantly Labour voters. If they had all been budding Conservatives, one wonders whether the situation would have been allowed to continue for so long.

There is one more question raised by this report. Where was our supposedly independent Civil Service while the Government's misleading claims were being repeatedly trotted out? Political aspects are not matters for the Civil Service, but it does seem to have been complicit in the output of misleading information over a period of some years.

Here, I think, one can detect the malign influence of political advisers who have undermined both the independence and the self-confidence of the Civil Service. In the past, it has not always paid to stand up to government ministers; it certainly doesn't pay to do so now.

Labour is malignant, not incompetent

More evidence that Labour really wants to destroy the UK

02.04.2008. The following are excerpts from a recent article by Simon Heffer in The Telegraph (emphasis added): Despite the sheen of reason that Gordon Brown and, before him, Tony Blair and their chums have sought to put on all they do, this Government has had dark motives from the start.

It has followed policies deliberately that have enabled it to pursue its own political agenda - and this has always been a deeply politically motivated government in the way that Lady Thatcher's was, and that John Major's wasn't - and irrespective of some of the dire consequences that might flow from those policies.

The element of deliberation and deliberateness in what Labour has done makes an accusation of incompetence, or carelessness, seem wide of the mark. Things were meant to be this way.

Labour has pursued policies, be they social or economic, for ideological reasons: and when they fail, as so many have, it has not been because of slipshod administration. It is because that was how things were always going to work out.

I mention this in the specific context of the House of Lords report on the benefits - or lack of them - of mass immigration. The theory applies, however, to much else, immediate or not. [...]

With one and a half million unemployed, perhaps the same again on nebulous "training schemes", and about three million on incapacity benefit - many of whom would, if asked, be fit for non-manual work - the idea that we have so small a pool of labour here that we must borrow from abroad is simply preposterous.

That does not stop Mr Byrne from saying the opposite. He must. He has to cover up for the deliberate decision taken at the time when Jack Straw was Home Secretary, and maintained (though he often protested to the contrary) by his successor, David Blunkett, that immigration controls should not be enforced.

Why was this decision taken? It was because of a doctrinally driven determination by the new Government in 1997 to destroy our national identity and to advance multiculturalism.

HonestThinking comments: Compare the above statements from The Telegraph with my own comment Mission accomplished?, written in June and July 2007.

The enduring power of ethnic nationalism

A stubborn phenomenon that PC cannot remove

09.03.2008. The following are excerpts from an article by Professor Jerry Z. Muller, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2008 (emphasis added):

Summary: Americans generally belittle the role of ethnic nationalism in politics. But in fact, it corresponds to some enduring propensities of the human spirit, it is galvanized by modernization, and in one form or another, it will drive global politics for generations to come. Once ethnic nationalism has captured the imagination of groups in a multiethnic society, ethnic disaggregation or partition is often the least bad answer.

[...]

As a result, some of the traditional contours of European politics have been upended. The left, for example, has tended to embrace immigration in the name of egalitarianism and multiculturalism. But if there is indeed a link between ethnic homogeneity and a population's willingness to support generous income-redistribution programs, the encouragement of a more heterogeneous society may end up undermining the left's broader political agenda. And some of Europe's libertarian cultural propensities have already clashed with the cultural illiberalism of some of the new immigrant communities. [...]

Contemporary social scientists who write about nationalism tend to stress the contingent elements of group identity -- the extent to which national consciousness is culturally and politically manufactured by ideologists and politicians. They regularly invoke Benedict Anderson's concept of "imagined communities," as if demonstrating that nationalism is constructed will rob the concept of its power. It is true, of course, that ethnonational identity is never as natural or ineluctable as nationalists claim. Yet it would be a mistake to think that because nationalism is partly constructed it is therefore fragile or infinitely malleable. Ethnonationalism was not a chance detour in European history: it corresponds to some enduring propensities of the human spirit that are heightened by the process of modern state creation, it is a crucial source of both solidarity and enmity, and in one form or another, it will remain for many generations to come. One can only profit from facing it directly.

HonestThinking comments: Long before the HonestThinking website was established in 2005, I have repeatedly pointed out that ethnicity is a very strong force in shaping of our loyalties and sense of belonging. For this I have received a lot of criticism, including accusations of racism. Even some who are strongly opposed to the multicultural ideology seem to think that this is the one topic that we need to avoid. I hope this article will cause some people to reconsider their position.

The day they betrayed British democracy

07.03.2008. Yesterday will go down in history as the day our politicians surrendered most of what was left of Britain's sovereignty and trusted the nation's future to a European superstate. It will also go down as one of the blackest ever for our democracy. Thus begins an article in Daily Mail.

White Europeans: An endangered species?

04.03.2008. Europe is a dying continent. I say this not as a criticism, but rather as a statement of fact. In Europe, an acute failure to produce the next generation has created a looming demographic crisis. Thus begins Trevor Wagener his article in Yale Daily News.

HonestThinking comments: Europe is in dire straits, and the question mark in Wagener's header seems more or less superfluous. We are indeed endangered, although we can perhaps still hope that there is hope.

White and working class ... the one ethnic group the BBC has ignored

04.03.2008. Over the past two decades, Britain has been through a revolution. The extent of the change, in both scale and speed, has probably been unique in the peacetime history of our country. Globalisation, mass immigration and economic upheaval have helped to transform the fabric of our nation. Thus begins BBC Head Of Independent Commissioning For Knowledge, Richard Klein, his article in Daily Mail.

HonestThinking comments: If it were not for patronizing remarks like the following, this would have been a good article:

In the modern world's rush to embrace diversity and globalisation, we cannot afford to ignore the voices of any section of society which feels bewildered by the pace of change.

Still, Klein's piece is pretty thought provoking. See also the article White Need Not Apply, by A. Millar in The Brussels Journal.

Biggest brain drain from UK in 50 years

The Tony Blair legacy

26.02.2008. Britain is experiencing the worst "brain drain" of any country as highly qualified professionals settle abroad, an authoritative international study showed yesterday. Record numbers of Britons are leaving - many of them doctors, teachers and engineers - in the biggest exodus for almost 50 years. See article in The Telegraph.

HonestThinking comments: There are of course other factors than just immigration behind the currently ongoing exodus of Britons, but judging from readers' comments to this article, the degradation of British society as a consequence of demographic processes is the one single factor that stands out. Tony Blair apparently set out to dismantle the British nation, and is now well on his way to succeeding.

Europe in the house of war

The Tony Blair legacy

16.02.2008. Excerpts from a recent article in The Asia Times (emphasis added): Violence is oozing through the cracks of European society like pus out of a broken scab. Just when liberal opinion congratulated itself that Europe had forsaken its violent past, the specter of civil violence has the continent terrified. That is the source of the uproar over a February 7 speech by Archbishop Rowan Williams, predicting the inevitable acceptance of Muslim sharia law in Great Britain.

Not since World War II has British opinion been provoked to the present level of outrage. Writing in the Times of London, the editor of the London Spectator, Matthew d'Ancona, quoted former British Conservative parliamentarian Enoch Powell's warning that concessions to alien cultures would cause "rivers of blood" to flow in the streets of England. Times columnist Minette Marin accuses the archbishop of treason. [...]

I had not intended to mention James J Sheehan's silly book on Europe's postwar conversion to pacifism, Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?, the object of many glowing reviews by soft-headed liberals, most recently by Geoffrey Wheatcroft in the February 8 New York Times. Sheehan admires modern Europe for abandoning war; it does not occur to him that Europe also has abandoned being European. Abysmal non-immigrant fertility rates condemn most of Europe's peoples to effective extinction during the next century or two. It deserves a one-word review by Homer Simpson, namely, "Doh." If there are to be no future generations, what soldier will lay down his life for them? The word "demographics" does not appear once in Sheehan's plodding account, which liberal reviewers praised as if it were a roadmap to the millennium.

Sheehan is woefully misguided. Europe may not have war, but it already has violence: its political authorities cringe and scurry and evade and lie in the face of actual or threatened violence by its Muslim communities. If its duly-constituted governments abandon their monopoly of violence to self-appointed religious leaders, the likelihood is that a river of blood will flow, just as Powell warned in 1968.

HonestThinking comments: If anyone deserves to be accused of treason, it is former prime minister Tony Blair who has ensured that the UK for the foreseeable future will have problems so serious it is not at all obvious it will ever recover, not the liberal Archbishop Rowan Williams who has been stupid enough to say in public what any idiot can see for him- or herself, namely that Sharia law is inevitable if the current developments continue.

Labour report backs all-black shortlists

14.02.2008. White candidates should be barred from standing for Parliament in up to eight constituencies in order to get more black and Asian MPs elected, says a controversial report commissioned by Labour's deputy leader, Harriet Harman.

Positive discrimination is illegal in the UK, but the report concludes that, without a change in the law allowing parties to impose all-black shortlists, it would take more than 75 years for Britain's ethnic make-up to be fairly reflected at Westminster. See article in The Observer.

HonestThinking comments: This story nicely illustrates another inconsistent aspect of the multicultural ideology. The multiculturalists are fond of saying that race and ethnicity are irrelevant; we are all just human beings. Why is it a problem then, if, in free and democratic elections, people choose to vote for white candidates? Why must the various races and ethnic groups have proportional numbers of representatives in parliaments and other democratically elected bodies if race and ethnicity are irrelevant phenomena?

The answer is obvious: race and ethnicity are not at all irrelevant, and never will be.

Democracy is dying in Sweden

Another Swedish horror story

07.02.2008. The Swedish Migration Board has demoted — and in practice fired — Asylum Assessment Manager Lennart Eriksson, 51, for voicing support for democracies such as Israel and the USA on his personal website. The Migration Board has not alleged that Eriksson’s personal beliefs have in any way affected the quality of his work, nor is it alleged that he has behaved in any way inappropriately while at work, acknowledging that he manages his website entirely in his own private time. It is for his political beliefs that he is being persecuted. Eriksson is a Conservative. Read the story at Gates of Vienna.

Racism bias in the media

24.01.2008. Racism is a bad thing. Right? Murder, robbery, rape, and violence that is racially motivated has a very negative impact on society, and is therefore always exposed and condemned by the media. Right?

Not quite. This is only true when the perpetrator is white. Less so when only non-white people are involved (e.g. asian on black crime), and hardly true at all when the victim is white. For some appalling examples of this kind of media bias, please see the following brief video (just text and photographs, no live pictures):

See discussion of the contents of this video e.g. at The Brussels Journal.

Full blooded anti-racism

The future of white people

14.01.2008. The readers are hereby invited to contemplate the following quote from Global Politician (emphasis added):

To feel and even think that the white race is inferior in every conceivable way is natural with regards to its history and current actions. Let the Western countries of the white race perish in blood and suffering. Long live the multicultural, racially mixed and classless ecological society! Long live anarchy!

You may think that these sentences were copied from some graffiti in one of the many Swedish suburbs long since taken over by non-European immigrants, or some other dubious source. Unfortunately, these hateful utterances are the words of a Swedish academic anti-racist by the name of Tobias Hübinette, partially confirmed by wikiquote, and fully confirmed and elaborated by Kurt Lundgren's blog. Hübinette published the above in the Swedish magazine Creol in 1996. Hübinette is known to have close links to the violent anti-racist organization Antifascistisk aktion. (NB: all links in this paragraph, except the first, point to Swedish sources).

HonestThinking comments: Until recently I have been under the impression that Swedish academia is extremely intolerant of opinions that deviate from the mainstream. However, Hübinette's academic career appears to have continued unabated every since he published the above. Perhaps we are witnessing an instance of selective tolerance here; wishing for a few hundred millions of white people to "perish in blood and suffering" appears to be acceptable, while wishing for a few hundred millions of non-white people to "perish in blood and suffering" presumably would be slightly less so.

For more on the state of anti-racism in Sweden, please refer to the recent article Expo and the Islamophobes by Fjordman in Global Politician.

How Britain has destroyed itself

The Tony Blair legacy

13.01.2008. Excerpts from an edited extract from The Light's On At Signpost by George MacDonald Fraser (published by Harper Collins) in Daily Mail (emphasis added):

The philosophy of political correctness is now firmly entrenched over here, too, and at its core is a refusal to look the truth squarely in the face, unpalatable as it may be. Political correctness is about denial, usually in the weasel circumlocutory jargon which distorts and evades and seldom stands up to honest analysis. [... ]

The United Kingdom has begun to look more like a Third World country, shabby, littered, ugly, run down, without purpose or direction, misruled by a typical Third World government, corrupt, incompetent and undemocratic. [...]

We were freer by far 50 years ago - yes, even with conscription, censorship, direction of labour, rationing, and shortages of everything that nowadays is regarded as essential to enjoyment.

We still had liberty beyond modern understanding because we had other freedoms, the really important ones, that are denied to the youth of today.

We could say what we liked; they can't. We were not subject to the aggressive pressure of specialinterest minority groups; they are. We had no worries about race or sexual orientation; they have. We could, and did, differ from fashionable opinion with impunity, and would have laughed PC to scorn, had our society been weak and stupid enough to let it exist.

We had available to us an education system, public and private, that was the envy of the world. We had little reason to fear being mugged or raped (killed in war, maybe, but that was an acceptable hazard).

Our children could play in street and country in safety. We had few problems with bullies because society knew how to deal with bullying and was not afraid to punish it in ways that would send today's progressives into hysterics.

We did not know the stifling tyranny of a liberal establishment, determined to impose its views, and beginning to resemble George Orwell's Ministry of Truth.

Above all, we knew who we were and we lived in the knowledge that certain values and standards held true, and that our country, with all its faults and need for reforms, was sound at heart.

HonestThinking comments: What a refreshing article! I highly recommend that you read it in full. New readers are encouraged to compare MacDonald Fraser's message with that of my own comment last year on the rule of Tony Blair; Mission accomplished?.

Bishop warns of development in the UK

13.01.2008. In fewer than 50 years, Britain has changed from being a society with an acknowledged Christian basis to one which is increasingly described by politicians and the media as "multifaith". See article by Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali in The Telegraph.

Totalitarian tendencies in the UK

12.01.2008. From Gates of Vienna: I have said a number of times that what I do here would be illegal in some countries in Europe, and that a European citizen doing what I do can be arrested there.

Britain is such a country. Its recent laws concerning the incitement of racial and religious hatred have made illegal much of what is published in the Counterjihad blogosphere.

And now the first British blogger is about to face the Multicultural perp-walk. Lionheart is a well-known patriotic blogger in England, and is on our blogroll. He is currently outside the UK, and has been informed that he will be arrested for stirring up racial hatred as soon as he returns home. Se also A Rosetta Stone for Lionheart.

HonestThinking comments: Utopian politics will in the long run necessarily lead to totalitarian regimes, due to the need to suppress the truth. The developments within the EU are ominous, and I am not at all convinced the USA is far behind. The excellent and very recent article Peace is War: The Brainwashing and Oxymorons of Political Correctness, by Baron Bodissey (editor of GoV), hits the nail on the head, and very nicely illustrates the increasingly severe challenges faced by an increasingly weakened Western civilization.

The terrorist groupies among us

02.01.2008. As opposed to e.g. Daniel Pipes, Fjordman seems unwilling to see positive elements in Islam or among Muslims. This appears to be one of the few points of disagreements between him and me. Even so, I strongly recommend Fjordman's recent essay about important figures in popular culture acting as terrorist groupies.

• HonestThinking, English material, 2nd half of 2007
• HonestThinking, English material, 1st half of 2007
• HonestThinking, English material, 2nd half of 2006
• HonestThinking, English material, 1st half of 2006
• HonestThinking, English material, 2005.

HonestThinking is dedicated and committed to the art of thinking honestly. Yet honest thinking is not the same as true thinking, for it is possible to think honestly, but be mistaken. For the same reason, honest thinking is not identical with objective thinking either. Honest thinking is striving to get things right. This involves being truthful about whatever one publishes, but just as importantly, it involves an uncompromising dedication never to suppress relevant data, even when data collides with dearly held prejudices. Such an approach may sometimes cause hurtful revisions in one’s belief system. That’s what HonestThinking is all about! Read the entire manifesto.

Provoked or enthusiastic?

Please send e-mail to postmaster at honestThinking.org (replacing ' at ' with '@') if you would like to tip us about a web resource that we should link to, or if you wish to submit an article for publication here. Quality contributions are welcome from anyone.

The current European immigration and integration policy is profoundly disrespectful of both Muslims and Islam, because it is built on the tacit assumption that the Muslims will become like us. One claims to have respect for Islam and for Muslims, but one also expects Muslims to give up their orthodox faith when they come here. At the same time one is assuming that Islam will be reformed and modernized as soon as the Muslims become integrated and understand and appreciate how superior our Western culture is compared to their own. This is cultural shauvinism and arrogance indeed! The unspoken premise for this scenario is that Western socities are superior to Islam. Read more.

Human rights and democracy are under pressure. One threat comes from the Western world, in the form of lack of or dishonest thinking. There exists a peculiar Western "tolerance" which is so "tolerant" that it even tolerates totalitarian or anti-democratic ideologies. A tacit assumption underlying such an attitude is that all cultures, world views, and religions are really equally good. As a consequence of this assumption one is cut off from the possibility of critically examining the above mentioned ideologies. Read more.