Similarities

I am not saying that the points I am going to make are very politically significant or have any great value in terms of good and evil. At best they are an indication of how the Republican Party of the US deals with particular situations.

Has anyone noticed how hugely similar Henry Kissinger and Condoleeza Rice are? In 1968 and in 2000, a Republican candidate wins an election. He is ferociously hated by the Democrats and the left, and is widely suspected of having stolen the election; certainly his opponents will never believe anything else. His posture is populist and he speaks as the opponent of the West and East Coast "elites". While his first election had been disputed, his second is a cakewalk: he trounces a candidate who is the expression of that "elitist" hard-left mentality which he denounces.

In both cases, the Republican populist invites a person with no political background, but plenty of academic prestige, to be his national security adviser; and in both cases, this academic is promoted to Secretary of State in his second administration. In both cases, these are people whose intellectual abilities demand respect even from opponents, and whose stature in the administration quickly comes to seem unique. (A joke going around in the Nixon year said, "Do you realize that if Kissinger died now, Nixon would become President?" And Dr.Rice is still being held forward, in spite of her repeated and vehement denials, as the likeliest Republican candidate at the next elections.) Kissinger is a German Jewish refugee who to this day speaks English with the thickest of German accents, and Rice is an African-American woman and quite likely a lesbian. That is, each of them, in their turn, had a background which was by his or her time wholly respectable, but which had just enough of perceived difference and of memories of prejudice, discrimination, and even violence, to draw attention to themselves in the largely WASP world of the Republican Party. Kissinger had escaped Hitler as a young Jewish man, and Rice, as a child, survived a Ku Klux Klan bomb outrage that killed four of her girl friends. So you might say that they both could be held to show that there were no locked gates in the Republican party for people of merit and distinction. Finally, they both have a whiff of that European culture that the Anglo-Saxons both fear and over-rate; Kissinger with his German professor's stance, attitude and accent, and Rice with her classical music training and foreign languages (and enough chic to get by in Paris and Milan).

As I said, I do not think that this has any enormous amount of meaning. But it is interesting.

How to sell your soul and your country and get nothing in return

There used to be a nasty little joke going around about the more prejudiced sections of the English public: "Heard the last about (whatever war was going on at the time)? Italy has surrendered just in case." I do not seem to hear it any more; probably because people have learned better than to say it in my presence.

However, yesterday, it happened for real. Only it did not happen in Italy. It happened in Norway.

A few months ago, a Danish writer looking for an illustrator for a book on the life of Mohammed met with a problem: three professional illustrators in succession turned him down cold. The reason? They were afraid for their lives. Apparently word had got around the Danish artistic community that anyone who dared draw a likeness of the Prophet was liable to be murdered by some of his more committed followers.

A conservative news magazine called Jyllands-Posten heard the story and was furious. At its appeal, twelve cartoonists sprang forward and presented their own ideas of a likeness of Islam's founder. And the trouble began.

Denmark, like every other country in western Europe, has a Muslim minority, which, like all Muslim minorities, tends to overrate both its rights and its power. (The largest immigrant minority in Italy, for instance, in spite of our closeness to the Muslims world, is not Islam but the Eastern Orthodox churches.) Some violence, and a great many threats of violence, took place. Jyllands-Posten stood firm, stating in curt and admirably civilized words its own right of self-expression. The government was called upon to do something, and the Danish Prime Minister gave the dignified and courageous answer that the right to give orders to the Press is a right that a democratic head of government neither has nor wishes to have.

Muslim anger grew. How DARED this tiny little infidel country claim the right to draw pictures of the Prophet if they wished? That was an assault upon all the Muslims of the world! The nastiest kind of political fishermen started plunging hooks and sinkers in very muddy waters; and as the twelve original cartoons might not have been deemed outrageous enough (in fact, most of them were nothing more than drawings of conventional bearded Arabs in white clothes, only a minority being even humorous, let alone insulting), three more, truly outrageous ones, sprung up from nowhere, to whip the fanatical masses of the Muslim world into further fury. People who had never heard of Denmark in their lives were mustered in the streets to scream their hatred at the peaceful little country. The UN performed its usual blame-Abel-and-praise-Cain act. A boycott of Danish produce was called, and the Danish business community grew uneasy, begging the government to forget all this nonsense about dignity and freedom of expression - there were serious issues at stake here - money! (Thus the capitalists fulfilled once again their vocation of cowards, quislings and traitors at every time and in every country.)

(The episode of the three apocryphal cartoons I find particularly significant; not only because it is evidence of the deceit and propaganda on which Islamistic politics live, but also because it may have some psychological relevance. For a Muslim, consciously, the notion of drawing the Prophet in a truly vile and revolting guise would be something of the ultimate horror, even of suicide. And yet, one has to wonder whether the people who secretly produced these obscenities were not only fulfilling their propaganda duties, but letting loose those elements of inner revolt and suppression which are also visible in their incredibly short fuse and ease of hatred and violence.)

The Danish government, in spite of the occasional meaningless courtesy, did not give in. They behaved, in all and for all, as I would wish any free country's leadership to act. And then, yesterday, the Norwegian government, which had nothing to do with the affair at all, published this obscenity:

I am sorry that the publication of a few cartoons in the Norwegian paper Magazinet has caused unrest among Muslims. I fully understand that these drawings are seen to give offence by Muslims worldwide. Islam is a spiritual reference point for a large part of the world. Your faith has the right to be respected by us.
The cartoons in the Christian paper Magazinet are not constructive in building the bridges which are necessary between people with different religious and ethnic backgrounds. Instead they contribute to suspicion and unnecessary conflict.

Let it be clear that the Norwegian government condemns every expression or act which expresses contempt for people on the basis of their religion or ethnic origin. Norway has always supported the fight of the UN against religious intolerance and racism, and believes that this fight is important in order to avoid suspicion and conflict. Tolerance, mutual respect and dialogue are the basis values of Norwegian society and of our foreign policy.

Freedom of expression is one of the pillars of Norwegian society. This includes tolerance for opinions that not everyone shares. At the same time our laws and our international obligations enforce restrictions for incitement to hatred or hateful expressions.

To compare this kind of vileness to Vidkun Quisling is to do the most famous of all collaborators an injustice. Quisling was never abject before his Nazi masters, and did not try to make "freedom of expression" mean the opposite of what it does. The current Norwegian government is abject with a depth and thoroughness hitherto unknown in Europe.

Two of my online friends are a Norwegian and a Muslim. They are both very dear to me. I regret having to publish this, and I have been silent both about the trash that now "govern" Norway, and about my view of Islam, in order not to give pain. But there are times when to be silent is to fail in your duty, and this seems to me one of those.

I ask everyone who reads this to reprint it in their LJ or place a link.