The Antifa warriors of the Berkeley riots are right: this is war. But just like it is with the Muslims, the gauntlets are thrown down without anybody willing to pick them up. When Stefan Molyneux commented on the riots the following day, he finished it, all choked up, with the following:
“Maybe tonight is the sign. Maybe it has happened. Maybe the time – I don’t even want to say it – maybe the time for arguments is passed. Maybe this battle has moved beyond words. Perhaps my job is over. Perhaps I failed, or the world is failed, perhaps I am done. For ten years I’ve been saying: not an argument! Tonight, perhaps it has been made clear: there are no more arguments to be made.”
Unlike some of his listeners, I took this as a call to arms. I took it as a suggestion that perhaps, it is time to hit back. The news of the Quebec mosque shooting appeared to be an indication that the war is here. Somebody started shooting back. This is not a civil war yet, but skirmishes are already happening all over Europe.
The mob war
I am saying for years now, and I am not alone saying it, that the greatest problem with Islam is not what it does today in the lands that it controls or even in the western world that it tries to conquer, but the strife it may bring to us in the future. Islam is a festering wound on Western civilisation. The longer we put off confronting the cultural problems it represents, the bloodier the conflicts will be. The Soldiers of Odin, the English Defence League, Génération Identitaire or Magyar Gárda are a direct response to the problems created by multiculturalism, immigration and identity politics. The EDL is a response to the sharia patrols. They all feel, rightfully, that the authorities are not there to restore order. Vigilantes tend to take over only when the legitimate authorities are not doing their job enforcing the laws and protecting the people. Watching the riots in Europe, the obvious question was why these riots are not sufficient reasons to immediately expel the rioters? Why aren’t the criminals immediately kicked out? Watching the riots at Berkeley, the obvious question was why are they allowed to do that? Why are the rioters not in jail, why are they not held financially responsible for the damage they caused? Why were they not ALL tased and hosed, rounded up and hog tied? Why were they not investigated? Their agitators, organizers and financiers identified? The answer is just as obvious as the questions are: because those who could have stopped the atrocities did not want to. The police were ordered to stand down. The police in Sweden were ordered to cover up the identity of criminals. The Mayor of Cologne, Germany ordered the cover up of the sexual assaults. The similarities in the handling of these conflicts all over the developed world are not coincidental. The riots at Berkeley or the cover ups of the migrant crimes and problems are only symptoms of much more fundamental conflicts. It is all about the two visions of reality. The conflict between socialism and free market capitalism, collectivism and individualism, oppression and freedom. The problem with socialism, as Margaret Thatcher noted, is that sooner or later you run out of other people’s money. The second problem of socialism, as evidenced by the demographics of all Western style democracies, is that you also run out of people. Socialists tried to get around these problems by borrowing the money from the future and importing the people from other cultures. While socialism is (and proven to be) unviable, socialists have one thing their opponents lack: the “will to power” as defined in Paul Johnson’s Modern Times. Conservatives and Libertarians just want to be left alone; socialist want to control everything and everybody, especially those disagreeing with them. The socialist utopia, just like the Muslim Caliphate, can only be realized through the absolute submission of everything and everybody to its will (Rousseau’s ‘volonté général’ or sharia). Socialists, just like Muslims, will do absolutely ANYTHING to gain, increase and hold onto their power. Whining, lying, cheating, bitching, rioting, revolting all the way to bloody terrorism. Just like with Muslims, you can never negotiate with socialists in good faith as they see any concession as a step forward to their ultimate goal. They would never concede anything willingly. Under Obama, socialists were on the roll. In the EU, socialists were on the roll. Since Reagan and Thatcher, this is the first time that they were forced to take a step back, after gaining a lot of power in the last two decades. They completely took over academia and their influence in the media and entertainment industries is overwhelming:
And this is how it changed over the past four decades:
The vehemence of the opposition to Trump is the result of the shock over the change of direction. Its manifestations are beyond revolting.
The media war
The media war is going on several levels, from the seediest of web sites to the most ‘respectable’ publications; from the most questionable of alternative media to the Oscars and the super bowl ads. These are recent covers of two leading publications:
Trump, the insurgent terrorist, attacking the established order of socialism in America. The media and the political left are projecting their own worst vices onto Trump and his administration. It is the left, and it has always been the left that is racists. It is the left, and it has always been the left that is divisive and confrontational. It is the left, and it has always been the left that is violent and aggressive. It is the left, and it has always been the left that is rigidly ideological and refuses participation in facts and evidence based policy discussions. The media has tremendous power. Now even businesses are lining up to get into the business of politics using the media: Retailers dropping the Ivanka Trump clothing lines and expressing political opinions in Super Bowl ads. We cannot expect the mainstream media to change. We can only hope that they will fade into irrelevance. Until that happens, the war will go on.
The culture war
The Berkeley riots were over matters of culture. Well, I may be giving the rioters too much credit. They were rioting because they had an opportunity and a good-enough sounding excuse to do so. The Antifa, Occupy and BLM left is not articulate enough to express anything beyond their feelings and those feelings are now hurt. We have a few generations of university graduates brainwashed into the toxic ideologies of cultural Marxism and the oppressive absolutism of postmodernist relativism. The left cannot tolerate free speech because they always lose the argument. They don’t have the facts, they don’t have the arguments. As Milo put it in this interview: “…for thirty years the left has been able to bully people into silence by name-calling and they’ve forgotten how to argue.” We cannot expect Academia to change, but we can hope that reality wakes them up. If government money would be taken away from them (as Trump suggested that may happen), if they would be forced to provide real value, the indoctrination may get toned down. Until that happens, the war will go on.
The political war
The vehemence of the political opposition in Washington is unprecedented. The democrats in the US and the socialists of Europe are in a fight for their very existence. They clearly understand that if they lose the identity groups, if they lose the ethnic vote, if they lose the dependent class, they will have nothing left. They lost the intellectual argument a long time ago. The socialists are getting exposed, their tactics are uncovered, their motivations are laid bare. Socialists of all colours made promises they cannot keep. They borrowed from future generations. They crippled civil society, destroyed the nuclear family and indoctrinated generations into worshiping the state. They are in a trap. They cannot win without a revolution. They cannot tone down their rhetoric, which is the only thing that keeps them alive at this point. They will play out every dirty trick in their arsenal. They will stall, sabotage and attack any action that will try to roll back the gains they made in the past two decades. The only other option is to admit defeat. We cannot expect them to change. The war will go on. The edges of this soft war of political ideologies are getting sharper. The evidence of the failure of anything socialist is becoming increasingly obvious just as the cries demanding to double down on the idea are getting louder. I wish I could say that we are at a tipping point with a chance of moving toward freedom, but I don’t want to jinx it.