Sweden joins the ranks of nations committing suicide *UPDATE*

Charles Johnson of LGF periodically gets into spats with the people at Gates of Vienna because of their (possible?) ties to organizations that have the whiff of neo-Nazism about them.  As for me, I don’t know where the truth lies in those arguments.

I do know that Europe in the 20th (and, apparently, in the 21st) century has always been distressingly binary, not around the center (as America is, or used to be), but around the poles.  For example, we now look back on the British ruling class of the 1930s with incredible disdain, because so many supported Nazism.  What we forget is that they supported it because they feared Communism more.  They didn’t see a third way out of those two -isms.  Instead, they just picked what, at the time, seemed the least horrible.

I see the same thing occurring in Europe now, where many people, across myriad European countries, are appalled by and afraid of their governments’ (1) embrace of unhindered immigration; (2) hostility to their own national cultures; (3) pan-Europeanism (which destroys the long-time bonds holding people together within a nation); and (4) obesiance before radical Islam.  Faced with this top-down destruction of their own countries and cultures, people in the various European countries are seeking an alternative around which to rally — and neo-Nazism, with its focus on white, European culture is there, ready made.

The problem with this European habit of rallying around the extreme is that it muddies the waters.  People who have an accurate understanding of the situation, and are capable of analyzing correctly what’s going on, seem to soil themselves by embracing the most extreme solution, instead of simply pushing back against their own governments’ and elites’ stupidity.  Of course, given how deeply entrenched and broad-reaching the stupidity is, maybe the only possible push-back is to head as far away from the government position as possible straight into neo-Nazi land, so as to get a running start.  This is why all the alternatives in Europe begin to seem very frightening.

This is a very long intro to an important post that Fjordman wrote at Gates of Vienna regarding the rising tide of rape in Sweden.  Fjordman is not advocating a neo-Nazi solution.  He is, however, giving a solid analysis of the perfect storm:  a government that hates itself, aided and supported by women who hate men, all of whom are steeped in Marxist ideology, and all of whom give their full support to the concept that immigrants (read:  Muslim immigrants) can do no wrong.  To me, the following paragraph just about perfectly sums up the insanity that has taken over the once rock-solid Swedes:

The effect of radical Feminism is to treat all men as criminals, except those who really are criminals, who should receive soft treatment. All men are rapists, except those who actually are. They are victims of “society.” Despite the fact that Muslim immigration has triggered an unprecedented wave of anti-female violence, women still vote disproportionately for pro-immigration parties, and yell “racism” at men who suggest it’s not a good idea.

Fjordman is the boots on the ground — he’s giving a first-hand view of the same problems that Bruce Bawer and Mark Steyn discuss to such good effect in their books about Islam in Europe.

One really cannot blame the Islamists for doing what they’re doing in Europe.  Like the redoubtable George Washington Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, they’re not really doing anything wrong.  Instead, as Plunkett always said, “I seen my opportunity and I took it.”  The Islamists are using to good effect the fact that the nations of Europe are holding a knife to their own throats.  Indeed, the Islamists would be fools not to seize such a juicy opening.

More years ago than I care to count, when I was in high school and took my Achievement exam (that was the one with the written essay, wasn’t it?), I remember distinctly being asked to comment on Walt Kelly’s famouse “We have met the enemy and He is us” phrase.  Back then, unaware of the fact that Kelly created that phrase as a slap at capitalism (because it went on an earth day poster decrying the destruction of the forests), I muddled on about how we can be our own worst enemies, etc.  I wish I could revisit that essay now.  Kelly is right in a way he never knew:  the enemy is us because we are handing to our enemy, ready-made, the instrument of our destruction.  It is we — not the nuclear, not the hijacked plane, not the IED — we who are our enemy’s secret weapon.

Hat tip:  Danny Lemieux

UPDATE:  By the way, the increasingly loathsome Patrick Buchanan is another animal altogether.  Rather than observing today’s social ills, he is embarking on a course of historical revisionism aimed at whitewashing the Nazis.  This guy is, plain and simple, a neo-Nazi trying to revitialize a dangerous, grotesque and violent political ideology because he thinks it was a good thing in the past and got a bum rap.  Tell that to the 6 million.