Wednesday, December 14, 2005
The Euro left is fundamentally unserious
Via Instapundit comes this must read essay calling Euros to account for their appalling lack of moral perspective - a failing which recent calls to excoriate Arnold Schwartzenegger while renaming a stadium for murderer Stanley Williams is drawing into bold relief:
Read the whole thing here: http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2005/12/true-character-of-european-left.html
I do not think that anti-Americanism is the sole reflexive motivator behind European intransigence here. Perhaps it explained the opposition to the presence of a US nuclear umbrella, during the cold war. But the real issue, which seems to be hard-wired into European cultural DNA, is antipathy towards Jews.
It explains the perverse editorials in European newspapers. It explains their kneejerk sympathies for Hamas and Hezbollah and the kleptocracy of Yassir Arafat. It explains their electing a known terrorist and prolific murderer of Jews as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. It explains their willingness to tolerate an intransigent Arab minority in their midst while continuing to burn synagogues and drive French Jews from their homeland to Canada.
Sympathy towards Muslim extremism is accepted as progressivism, while Zionism in any form is excoriated.
Euros are genuinely horrified by the holocaust and the ghosts that live within them - but not so much that they embrace their Jewish minority. Antisemitism remains an underground river in Europe.
And when push comes to shove, I'm not so sure they regard the Holocaust as so horrible a thing. If they did, they would not have been so opposed to toppling the architects of Anfal, nor would they have tolerated the sack of Srebrenica or the Serbian rape camps on European soil, nor so adamantly opposed US efforts to meaningfully put a stop to them.
The number of Europeans murdered by Islamists in the last ten years still numbers in the hundreds. Meanwhile, the number of native Europeans murdered by Zionists still, to my knowledge, hovers around zero.
The numbers don't lie here.
But the Euros do, if only to themselves.
Splash, out
Jason
The countries which the European Left makes a passionate cause of defending – from the Palestinian Authority to Iran and Syria, not to mention Cuba, China and multiple other historic Communist regimes –- routinely imprison and/or execute people without any due process, for reasons ranging from criticism of the Government to adultery and homosexuality. None of that sparks “outrage among Europeans,” because none of that provides an opportunity to depict the United States as the world’s real evil. As a result, the European Left is uninterested in it.
Read the whole thing here: http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2005/12/true-character-of-european-left.html
I do not think that anti-Americanism is the sole reflexive motivator behind European intransigence here. Perhaps it explained the opposition to the presence of a US nuclear umbrella, during the cold war. But the real issue, which seems to be hard-wired into European cultural DNA, is antipathy towards Jews.
It explains the perverse editorials in European newspapers. It explains their kneejerk sympathies for Hamas and Hezbollah and the kleptocracy of Yassir Arafat. It explains their electing a known terrorist and prolific murderer of Jews as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. It explains their willingness to tolerate an intransigent Arab minority in their midst while continuing to burn synagogues and drive French Jews from their homeland to Canada.
Sympathy towards Muslim extremism is accepted as progressivism, while Zionism in any form is excoriated.
Euros are genuinely horrified by the holocaust and the ghosts that live within them - but not so much that they embrace their Jewish minority. Antisemitism remains an underground river in Europe.
And when push comes to shove, I'm not so sure they regard the Holocaust as so horrible a thing. If they did, they would not have been so opposed to toppling the architects of Anfal, nor would they have tolerated the sack of Srebrenica or the Serbian rape camps on European soil, nor so adamantly opposed US efforts to meaningfully put a stop to them.
The number of Europeans murdered by Islamists in the last ten years still numbers in the hundreds. Meanwhile, the number of native Europeans murdered by Zionists still, to my knowledge, hovers around zero.
The numbers don't lie here.
But the Euros do, if only to themselves.
Splash, out
Jason
Comments:
Maybe, but I kind of wonder if the anti-Israeli sentiment derives from anti-Americanism. If America strongly backed the Arabs against Israel, would the Eurotrash still hate Israel as much?
# posted by 
: 6:06 PM
: 6:06 PM
I wonder how much the automatic European antipathy towards the US derives from their own internal histories. For literally the last thousand years, European nations have been at war, generally with the weaker forming coalitions and alliances to tear down or balance out the stronger. Now that Europe is "united" I suspect that much of their intrangience is based on a desire to counter-balance and pull down the predominence of the US within world affairs.
In this sense it may be less ideological opposition and more based on their own kneejerk experience within the European context. Whomever is the biggest single threat needs to be balanced off. They don't need the US to balance off Russia any more. Unchecked, the US is a threat.
Throw in the usual European post-colonial arrogance and you have a ready recipe for opposition no matter what occurs.
If the US was to pull out of Iraq today you can bet that within a few moments of the pull-out, the US would be garnering the blame for the subsequent civil disorder and chaos...
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In this sense it may be less ideological opposition and more based on their own kneejerk experience within the European context. Whomever is the biggest single threat needs to be balanced off. They don't need the US to balance off Russia any more. Unchecked, the US is a threat.
Throw in the usual European post-colonial arrogance and you have a ready recipe for opposition no matter what occurs.
If the US was to pull out of Iraq today you can bet that within a few moments of the pull-out, the US would be garnering the blame for the subsequent civil disorder and chaos...
