“Why are you angry and your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted?" (Gen. 4:6)
"But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short." (Rev. 12:12)For a lot of people the Norwegian massacre came as a surprise. That a tall blond Norwegian man could ruthlessly and savagely murder 77 of his own countrymen, most of which were children or adolescents, was shocking enough. But even more controversy was raised over the fact that he is a Christian.
Christians were busy distancing themselves from Breivik, but almost everywhere in the "free world" without any of the soul-searching demanded of Muslims in the age of Islamic terror. In fact, pundits and preachers and politicians of the Western cross, cannot help expressing some level of sympathy - not for the murderer, but for his message and the sentiments that boiled beneath it: White supremacy.
We are entering the age of Western terrorism, and not just state terrorism and state sponsored terrorism carried out by the overwhelming military apparatus and clandestine organizations of NATO. Police shooting and brutality is on the rise in USA, and as always the trend hits African-Americans and Hispanics dysproportionally.
Or, perhaps it is more correct to say proportionally, because the social injustice accurately depicts the proportions of white rage.
There are two main reasons for the white rage, aside from the obvious financial crisis of 2008 and subsequent recession. They are both dates: 2016 and 2050.
By 2016 China will have grown into the dominant economy on the planet. Most Americans already consider the throne lost. In Europe we know that "whatever's over there will soon be over here", and Europeans feel somewhat naked at the thought of losing the protective wings of the Great Eagle.
The Fears Behind White Rage
Even worse for fans of PNAC (Project for a New American Century), by 2050 BRIC - Brazil, Russia, India and China - will have become the four dominant economies on planet. Not even natural disasters on a common scale can prevent that. The only conceivable wild card in the game is world war.
The American right is ranting and railing, because it knows its time is short. It is centuries of white Anglo-Saxon dominance lost, circling the drain in ever narrower gyres, as George Carlin famously put it.
Furthermore, by 2050 the Hispanic population in USA will be tripled, and the "all white" population will be reduced to "minority" status.
WASP hegemony over the Americas is challenged, and white people who are seeing it coming are faced with the choice to either embrace the non-racist and anti-racist creed USA formally hails - or go all out Nazi.
A lot of people in Europe and America are currently turning towards Nazism. I don't mean fascism in the abstract sense or as a curse word or obscenity, but Nazism in the "nuke 'em till they glow" and "white supremacy" kind of way.
There is nothing like a financial crisis with subsequent recession and skyhigh unemployment rates to peel off the the thin veneer of civilization and reveal the beast inside.
This decade is dedicated to extreme right entitlement attitudes, mixed with homicidal rage and nostalgic longing back to a glorious day of tribal autonomy and heterogenic harmony - a condition that unfortunately never existed, but shines so much more brightly in the imagination as it is a complete fiction, as reality-adequate as a paperback Harlequin.
Blaming Diversity for the Crime of a One-Track-Mind
It was evident with hurricane Katrina how little white America cares for its colored people. Nobody dares to say so, but it's obvious some powerful people saw that as an opportunity to decimate a bit of that pesky demographic imbalance in the country.
After the recent London riots the papers and the Internet forums were flooded with resentful messages, many of which were racist in nature, and violently aggressive in a way that would have called for deletion and prosecution procedures if they had been "the other way around" or directed at Israeli, Jews or Zionists.
British historian David Starkey carried wood for the bonfires of race conflict by stating that the cause for the riots was black culture, saying that "the whites have become black." That's the racist version of the "no good Scotsman" argument - if white people do evil, they do so enticed by the black.
Next up famous comedian John Cleese, who seems to have become a reactionary pundit in his old age: "London is no longer an English city", he says, lamenting the good ol' days when faces in the streets resembled his own.
The comedian was praised by the libertarian UK Independence Party and the far right English Defense League for his valor and for basically saying what a lot of Englishmen are thinking. No doubt about the latter, but the question is if it really takes courage in this day and age to clamor against multi-culturalism.
There's virtually no Parliament in Europe without extreme right representation, and it is not one year ago German chancellor Merkel stated: "Multiculturalism is failed".
Characteristically, it wasn't Europe's take on multiculturalism that had failed, but the entire project. The very idea of diversity has grown increasingly repulsive over the past two decades.
Not a word about the nearly total allergy to color in the majority of white communities and how it produces compulsory self-segregation and actually gives immigrants and minorities better chances of making it if they "gang up" - while hyper-assimilation can be a very very lonely path, if you're not quite ready to say the magic word, which is "Islamism".
Anti-Islamism is like a magic stone, like a universal key that opens many doors; ranting and railing about it is a pathway to many a secret society and to employment in prominent think tanks.
Reject the Killer, but Not His Crusade
If all this took place in any other country or culture there'd be severe warnings from the West. In fact, we would reassess their reliability as investment objects over developments like these, and possibly even bar them from prestigious supranatural organizations.
The Christian West is suffering from a vast and growing blind spot to its own errors and to the deep rooted racist seed that triggered two subsequent world wars, a feat no other culture or religious sect can "brag."
Whether it be Communism, Fascism, Anti-semitism or Zionism, these are all ideologies originated in xenophobic Europe. Muslims, for instance, never murdered 6 million Jews. It simply didn't happen in Arabia. It happened in Europe.
As for USA it is a nation accounting for 42% of the world's military budget and an army six times larger than its nearest competitor, and the world's leading arms dealer as well as the world's greatest polluter.
Destructivity is as much in the veines of white Christian culture as in any other race or culture on Earth. Even the most hot-headed Islamic extremists are complete amateurs in this game.
Which leads us back to Anders Behring Breivik and his many supporters. I am not talking about the fans that send him mail, or the lovesick pigeons proposing to the "blonde bestie". I am talking about all those who distance themselves from his murderous act, but are not too eager to renounce his cause.
Western Terrorism - Hardly Something New
In fact, preachers and pundits and politicians have been swift to "utilize" Breivik's terrorism, explaining it almost as an act of desperation and claiming it is how white people - atheist and Christian alike - respond to the extreme pressure of "multiculturalism."
But hold on, wait, the West invented multiculturalism. It wasn't a trick by starving Africans and exhausted Chinese factory workers. The "strangers" were a "byproduct" of global imperialism, and they were brought - slaves as well as freeman - to produce the very wealth Western civilization presents as exhibit A in their case for Western supremacy.
The dismantling of the British empire, the end of overt imperialism and the racialization of Western socities - including the segregation and self-segregation evident today - are all systemic byproducts of a certain pattern of policies towards the world.
The wounds are self-inflicted, and the consequences unavoidable. But now that the table is turning, as it always did in history, and as it always will, the sleek polish of civilization needs only a few scratches, and the inherently barbaric nature of all human races is revealed to also possess the Western mind.
All cultures had their human sacrifices. The illusion that Rome was nobler and less atrocious than the Phoenicians or the Celts is dying, a thousand years after its formal expiration date. The idea of an enlightened race, a "white man's burden" and benign empire is finally ready to be buried.
Most notably in the thick irony that the West is now going through a process of "talibanization". I use the term reluctantly and only in this context, because it is like so many other concepts coined by Western orientalists to make religious, cultural and political radicalization an Asian invention.
It's like those historians still using the term "Oriental despots", neglecting the fact that all ancient civilizations were despotic, and that the Occidental regimes until very recently were no less despotic. In Europe the fascist dictator Franco ruled until 1975, and Belarus remains a dictatorship in spite of the "velvet revolution."
Europe and America both have seen campaigns of "homegrown terrorism", long before the Taliban were promoted as a boogie-man through the complacent and servile Western press: You have the IRA, the ETA, the JDL, the PKK, the UNA-bomber and the abortion clinic bombings.
Already in 1991 the European papers cleared their frontpages with "second coming" size fonts reporting "the return of the 1930s" as Western extremists curb stomped and fire-bombed Islamic immigrants in Europe following the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the unification of Germany.
Immigrants have lived in this environment for decades. They have been ghettoized, marginalized from the work forces, heckled in the press and attacked in the streets. This is a part of the story of racial segregation and parallel socities in Europe.
Sweden, the iconic country of IKEA, environmentalism and welfarism, has a strong white supremacist power base. In two instances snipers have been targeting immigrants in Malmö. Denmark is one of the world's leading publishers of Neo-Nazi material, books and booklets and CDs with racially incendiary music, and it is a country where 83 percent according to a 1997 survey conducted by EU are "somewhat racist".
Denmark also has 100 percent skin code in every night club in the country. The most right wing parts of the population has been caught out using racist code to avoid hiring immigrants or to make sure they get a white cab criver.
If the West Plunges Further, God Help Us All
Still, until recently the West could reasonably claim some level of moral high ground when comes to civil liberties and human rights. Perhaps it is even fair to say it still can, even if the argument is growing increasingly weak, considering preemptive strikes, torture and Big Brother society.
Let's just say there there is a battle for the heart and soul of the West, and that human rights is a concept that still makes some sense to some people.
There are moderates, leftists, progressives, non-racists and even the occasional anti-racist, which is not the same thing.
What the rest of the world dreads, however, is a condition in which the Western Taliban may soon sit on the world's largest military apparatus, if it is not already the case. This military apparatus involves an arsenal of nuclear weapons.
What the rest of the world dreads is a culture so convinced of its own supremacy, morally and intellectually, that when it is reduced to second and, perhaps, along the way to third, fourth or fifth, it will go haywire globally, seeking pretext to use its military forces to simply destroy competition.
Who would be in a position to do anything about it? UN? ICC? Who does anything about it right now, as it is happening, with six open war theatres and millions killed, by bombing, by sanctions, and by God knows what clandestine operations?
What the rest of the world dreads is a civilization crumbling and, determined to drag everybody else along, takes another head-dive into rampant fascism, killing off the pesky colored people even within their own borders.
That potential is what Anders Behring Breivik saw. His action did not take place in a vacuum. He followed the debate. He took readings of the democratic temperature; he measured the extremist currents in his own neighbourhood, Europe.
He also saw what would have been obvious to everybody, if it wasn't for denial and white-washing of Western crimes - that the time is ripe for a Nazification. Breivik decided to capitalize on the currents that others have set in motion, and it is a sad testimony against the people of the West that so many have chosen to "blame it on multiculturalism."
It is not just a discouraging display of racism, but unintelligent, unimaginative, predictable.
And that is one of the saddest part of the crowd rushing to put blame at Islamic terrorism and reaffirm their devotion to the "war on terror", even before the identity of the bomber/shooter had been verified: It was so predictable.
Just as sad is the fact that after the first initial shock, the process of introspection was rapidly aborted in favor of the "lone madman theory".
The Western paradigm, after the collapse of Communism, no longer has the capacity of social criticism.
All it has left is a very simplistic system, where the offenses of other races are treated as indiciative of cultural-religious or racial traits, while excuses are sought for Caucasian crimes, which are presented with more detail, in a more humanized narrative and with psycho-social explanations.
A Culture With No Self-regulation
Socialism is being carved out incrementally by neo-liberal think tanks and pundits, and Christianity has long been dead, subservient to a materialistic and imperialistic order of thinking. And nobody, of course, listens to the Muslims.
What we are left with is a condition in which the West - intoxicated by "the victory of democracy and capitalism" - has lost almost all vital elements of self-correction.
This is most evident in the trend, where politicians and industrialists destabilize their own societies in the same way they have destabilized country after country around the world: Attacking unions, degrading public education, carving out social security and health care, and diminishing civil liberties.
All this serves to undermine civil society and, in turn, centralized government and the rule of law. The most fundamental error of political scientists in the Western schools of political thinking is to assume that the only condition worse than dictatorship is anarchy.
That's a superficial and purely theoretic way of thinking. It is dangerous, because it tempts the mind of the elite to think they are untouchable. After all, some level of anarchy can be contained by Draconian measures, while they hide away in their gated communities or on far off private islands.
In reality what happens can be witnessed in many developing countries, including Latin American societies like Mexico and countries in the former Eastern block. What happens in the developing world, when civil society is undermined, is an outflow of frustrated energy into either revolutionary activity or into organized crime.
In USA, due to the strict policing and the pervasiveness of the prison-industrial complex, social disparity is most likely to be funnelled into organized crime. That may cause a condition where even federal power is challenged from within by groups not too dissimilar from Zeta or MS13, except these gangs through recruitment of "ordinary citizens" will likely grow a brain.
There'll be people who study economics, political science and military strategy, and if they combine ruthlessness with intellect, they may become a serious threat to centralized power, corrupting police forces and secret intelligence bureaus, and targeting politicians and high ranking industrialists.
We almost do not need to mention forces like Blackwater, because mercenaries are for sale - that's in the definition.
The Systematic Undermining of Civil Society
If such a process is allowed to come to fruition, ironically, not even top ranking industrialists like the Koch Brothers will be safe - the irony is, of course, that they funded both the neo-con movement that set the world ablaze and the current Tea Party rebellion.
They say there are two things certain in life, death and taxes. But taxes are no longer certain, since the neo-liberals and super-rich libertarians can just put their money in tax havens or build their own island, where there are no laws requiring them to pay back to the society that made them great.
In fact, multinationals can just complain and threaten to take their industries abroad, and the governments have to put their IRS inspection on indefinite hold. That's how weakened centralized power is in the early days of 21st century.
If taxes are no longer certain, however, death remains a constant in any foreseeable future. The second thing that is certain in this life is Irony. Death and Irony, they're the new buddies.
The irony is thick that it is the ruthlessness of capitalism that eventually destroys its ability to exist. Marx wrote about that, how free market eventually degrades into monopolies, and anti-trust legislation is the most apparent evidence of the need for regulation.
Not only is capitalism dysfunctional without regulation, but it has to beg for regulation in order to survive.
That dependency becomes even more apparent with the great bail-out of 2008. Suddenly everybody's on dole. Bankers, industrialists, everybody's out there rattling the tin cup.
But that's not even the thickest irony of the age: The thickest irony so far is that the West has been clamoring for "moderate Muslims" to "speak out against terror." Now that the tables are turning, every object on the table is also displaced.
That means that all of a sudden the world can reasonably call for moderate Christians and atheists in the West to speak out against the "crusaderism" of Anders Behring Breivik and his many sympathizers.
You Can't Outrun or Outfox Moral Equivalence
Just like in the case of Muslims in the neo-con decade most of us don't automatically hold all "Christians" or "Westerners" collectively responsible for this and similar atrocities. But isn't it just simply fair to say that if Muslims are made guilty by association, so should Christians or Westerners?
After all, it is in the Bible, Matthew 7:2:
"For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."So, having observed how the West did the tango for the past two decades, Westerners should brace themselves for two decades, where people who are growing increasingly empowered, increasingly enlightened and increasingly vocal, will put that principle into action.
For the moderates in the West, well, if you do speak out against Western atrocities, the global, multi-cultural and all-embracing community welcomes you. If you do not speak out, you may hear criticism for tacitly approving the extremism of the West.
I understand it is difficult for white people to understand that they can be feared as much as they fear other people, or even to accept that there is no discernable difference between their racism and racism in, say, Zimbabwe.
More than anything it is a generally higher income level, a higher level of education and a stronger civil society, including a more effective police force, that still secures some minority rights in the Anglo-Saxon hemisphere.
But historically, white fury has been the single most destructive force on planet, and no people has displaced other races on a wider scale and with more determination. There's even a term for it, and it's not "Islamic Khalifate", but "Manifest Destiny". To point that out is not anti-white racism, but a historical fact that most people who are not so fortunate to be born white live with in the back of their mind, every day of their lives.
Think back, please, to the last time you were "assaulted by reality", as the anti-Islamic neo-cons used to say, and how deeply it traumatized you, and how thoroughly it colored your emotional responses to news involving, say, terrorism or crimes perpetrated by immigrants - that is how many in the world now feel about Western supremacism and white fury on a daily basis.
As the African-American comedian, Chris Rock, once put it:
"I'm not afraid of Al Qaeda. I'm afraid of Al Cracker!"In a country where you can easily be shot or tazed or beat to death for "driving while black", that's a little more than rhetoric, and a lot more than comedy.
Now think about the families of the multitudes of victims in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Deep Rooted Aryanism
As for the new breed of "Spartans", who nostalgically long for a day when the streets were clean, the slaves respectful and imperialism unchallenged, the "Richard Lionhearts" and "Charles Martels" of the Information Age...
...let's just say it as it is: They are empowering men like Breivik with their words. They, the "Asa", the pure blood Aryans, fostered the Fenris Wolf and the Worm of Midgaard both and blames it on Loki.
They are behind EDL and all the other New Right extremist groups, just like they sat on the pews and endorsed KKK back in the days and, before that, European fascism.
The West is desperate, and the racist right more than anybody else. They have seen the writing on the wall. They are not going to get the world they wanted, and now they're mad as Hell..
The days of empire are numbered, and the future will provide far less white privilege than today. That is just the fact of the matter. So, tempers are running hot all around. There is murder in the airways. There is going to be blood.
But like God said to Cain, the would-be murderer in the first book of the Bible:
“Why are you angry and your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted?" (Gen. 4:6)Is there any of what is now befalling the rich and privileged West that isn't her own doing? Is any of it uncommon to history? Has not every civilization seen its rise, its golden age and its inevitable decline? Is that sufficient reason to be angry?
The verse is followed by this admonishment:
"But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”It is obvious from the context that the sin lurking at the door is murder. This is why St. Paul of Tarsus wrote, "He who hates his brother is a murderer". Seven times in the Tanakh the Hebrews were instructed not to "oppress the stranger in the land", a sin compared to exploitation of widows and orphans, and one sanctioned by the harshest of measures.
Even if you don't believe in God or even in religion, which is not entirely the same matter, it is obvious from our political and cultural context, that murder "lurks at the door." In fact, murder has knocked down the door, assembled children in the guise of a police uniform, and butchered them with hollow point ammunition.
In comparison Hurricane Irene, the most recent onslaught from Mother Nature, only claimed about 40 victims. Hurricane Anders claimed almost the double. What's next?
The Challenge to Master Unrecognized Racism
The task at hand today for all responsible citizens and officials in the West is to govern according to the very principles of good governance the West has laid out for everybody else. It has been a long fall from a high place. There's a lot of work to be done, and it is easy to give up, to lose heart, to lose courage, or to abandon conscience for the sake of primitive tribal myths.
The fact of the matter is that trends have begun, and patterns are forming, none of which are to the benefit of any man. The promising development in Germany in the 1930s seemed justified and reasonable to many, given the threat from Communism. Nazi Germany could even claim great scientific and artistic and economic accomplishment, and they were lauded by other politicians as an example or order and productivity.
Still, the grandiose mannerisms and the hysteria only led to a devastating world war and the utter destruction of Germany's infrastructure. Collapse lies at the end of hatred, for both perpetrator and victim. A lot of the problems we are facing today, namely the Middle East Conflict, are offsprings of imperialism and of the European born Holocaust.
It's the violence in our midst and in our hearts returning to visit us in a hundred new forms, the sins of the fathers not properly dealt with, and history buried under the spin of politics.
If Europe and America is ready to take another tumble down the road of great fury, so be it. We only die once. Given the conjuncture, the demographics and the economic projections, there is little reason to beg and plead with the Western powers.
However arrogantly they may pose, recovering from the current condition is in their own interest. It is not a question of idealism, but more like a warning, an advice, a call for a drowning man to stop struggling against those who try to save him, and instead begin to save himself.
The numbers are unmistakeable. The question is and will remain: How will you manage your relative decline?
Reconciliation is Now, not Later
Nobody fears more than the one who is guilty. It is a consistent trait that people are never more contemptuous than towards people they have wronged. Behind the fear of the West lies the understanding of a political structure in which others have paid for the progress of Europe, America and Australia.
Such a knowledge automatically triggers fear of a backlash, of revenge, and it serves as an subconscious incitement to maintain oppression. It can, to a large extent, explain why America's interest in Africa only rose when China began investing in Africa in its famous oil-for-infrastructure policy.
China has never invaded or oppressed Africa, Latin America or the Middle East, which is why they can safely expand their development programme and foster amiable political and economic relationships with these regions.
Europe and America have a collective conscience tained by centuries of fierce oppression, and with this lingering in the back of the minds of its citizenry and policy makers, the assymmetric dependency - in spite of and aside for all charity - remains politically expedient: "Beggar thy neighbour", so he does not grow rich and powerful enough to avenge himself.
Notably, however, China has not declared war on United Kingdom for the humiliation and destruction incurred by the Opium Wars. Neither has India demanded compensation. For the developing worlds life is not about their relationship with white Anglo-Saxons, believe it or not. It is not a race for recognition. It is a race for survival, and a struggle to build up durable infrastructure.
A civilized world will be ready to forgive whatever historical grievances they may have endured, even if it may never forget. It will seek to embrace a balanced perspective, also acknowledging the unquestionable contributions to science and philosophy produced by the Occident.
But reconciliation is now, not later. As much as the West should expect anti-Western sentiments to diminish proportional to its investment in real development, the warning remains urgent:
If the privileged West in its panic over loss of supremacy, loss of safety and loss of privileges, chooses to go into a hysterical frenzy, scapegoating others wholesale for troubles that are entirely created by its own policies, the rest of the world will respond in kind, and all progress will be lost.
In that case a gradual reduction may be replaced by a grandiose collapse, the self-fulfilling prophetic doom outlined in myths like the Biblical Apocalypse and the Norse mythology of Ragnarok.
Civilization as we know it, in spite of all alarmism, has not yet fallen. We do see the potential already now. We do see devils lurking in the dark, and all sorts of "hateful birds" crying on the airwaves.
But there is still time. Only if we in the West believe ourselves to be gods, along the lines of the Aryan belief in Valhalla, the Death of the Gods becomes inevitable - our hubris produces the moral justification as well as the fault lines of enmity that empowers forces of destruction.
As the US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said:
"If we try to build some kind of Central Asian Valhalla we will fail."Or, as another Western prophet, Clint Eastwood, once put it:
"A man should know his limitations."
