This is What a Politically Correct Mental Breakdown Over ISIS Looks Like
Posted on August 25, 2014
basil-fawlty-dont-mention-the-war-the-germans-450x230Front Page, By Daniel Greenfield:
I had to keep reading this to the end to be sure it wasn’t a parody. But this is what happens when someone in denial digs a deeper hole to deny in and then a deeper one under that.
It probably won’t surprise you too much to learn that the woman who wrote this came out of Berkeley. It may surprise you though that this appeared in The Telegraph.
We are not engaged in a religious war. This is not a confrontation between Islam and the West. To start from that premise is to place Isil (which should not be called by its presumptive title “Islamic State”) on precisely the ground it wishes to occupy.
If we acknowledge reality then the terrorists (who have nothing to do with Islam) will have won.
I remember how Churchill won WW2 by pretending that Hitler wasn’t running Germany, but was still painting ugly postcards. And who can forget his stirring words. “We will deny that they are on the beaches. We will deny that they are in the cities. We will deny that there is a Nazi Germany.”
As the voices of what the media calls “moderate Muslims” – who should actually just be described as “Muslims” – say repeatedly, the activities of these terrorist criminals hacking their way through northern Iraq have nothing to do with the Islamic faith.
Problem solved. No need to address reality. We’ll just pretend that ISIS isn’t what it is and that will make us feel better. What about all the hundreds of British Muslim settlers flocking to ISIS? Let’s pretend that they don’t exist.
So now that we’re insisting that it’s not a religious war because ISIS says it is… what is it then?
So it is more important than ever to say that this is not a struggle between “our values” and those of medieval fundamentalism, or Islamist extremism. The contest is not modern liberal democracy versus the Dark Ages. This is to impose meaning on what is, in truth, meaningless.
Ah it’s meaningless.
Just thousands and thousands of armed fighters who for no reason are conquering parts of the Middle East and then ruling it. There’s no meaning to it whatsoever.
Sure we could listen to their explanation as to what they’re doing… but that would be imposing meaning on the meaningless actions of a well organized army creating a meaningless new system that it insists on calling a Caliphate for some meaningless reason.
What a bunch of crazy nuts.
Indeed, it may be worse than counterproductive to deal with Isil as if it were a rational force with established roots and a comprehensible set of demands capable of political solution. Just as this is not about religion, it is also not about politics,
Great. So now it’s not about religion or politics. ISIS is like Seinfeld. It’s about nothing. It’s completely incomprehensible if we choose to pretend that it is.
Question for Janet Daley, does ISIS even exist? Maybe we should start pretending that we imagined all the beheadings.
There is not even anything particularly Middle Eastern in the Isil mode of operation.
Aside from the location, the tactics, the symbolism and the religion… not a thing.
In fact, the gratuitous violence and promiscuous mayhem of its onslaught resembles nothing so much as 19th-century European anarchism
Whew. I knew it was Europe’s fault somehow. ISIS isn’t Muslim. It’s a bunch of European 19th century anarchists. That explains everything.
The next obvious question: how do you fight a dream that is without identifiable substance or consistent objectives?
I guess you could stop pretending that it’s a unidentifiable dream without an objective. That would make it easier to deal with. The same advice goes for the rest of the media.
Or we can just pretend that it’s all a dream.
http://counterjihadreport.com/2014/08/25/this-is-what-a-politically-correct-mental-breakdown-over-isis-looks-like/
