Fjordman's latest essay, posted at Gates of Vienna begins with a disclaimer that he is an 'equal opportunity critic' of both the Left and the Right
I sometimes am criticized for being too focused on the left-wing of the political spectrum and ignoring the problems caused by right-wing parties. First of all, the line of separation between what constitutes “Left” and ''Right'' in politics now tends to become blurred. And second of all, only a fool believes that everybody on one side is always right, and everybody on the other side is always wrong.
...although he goes on to make a case against the Left as the main architect of the disaster befalling the West:
So yes, there is a component of decadence, materialism, hedonism and nihilism without any specific ideological agenda at work here. But still, even if I try to be as objective as possible, it is difficult to avoid seeing that a disproportionate amount of our problems come from political left-wingers and that elements of it are indeed ideological. Besides, it is sometimes difficult to define where decadence ends and cultural Marxism begins. The Marxist-inspired ''revolution'' of the 1960s and 70s, which both at the time and in hindsight has been viewed as a watershed in Western history, was staged by people who had enjoyed unprecedented economic growth throughout their entire lives.
I can see no connection between Islamic terrorism and poverty, but maybe there is a connection between wealth and politically correct nonsense. ''
Fjordman then quotes Eric Hoffer in The True Believer as saying that
There is perhaps no more reliable indicator of a society’s ripeness for a mass movement than the prevalence of unrelieved boredom. In almost all the descriptions of the periods preceding the rise of mass movements there is reference to vast ennui; and in their earliest stages mass movements are more likely to find sympathizers and support among the bored than among the exploited and oppressed.''
Maybe Hoffer has something there; he was a common-sense thinker, an autodidact, and thus free of much of the groupthink which characterizes the intelligentsia and the academic ghetto.
It may be, though, that even those affluent people are busy making a buck and paying the bills, but somehow in our society I think many feel some kind of spiritual hunger, caught up as we are in the mundane, material issues. I think there is a sense of aimlessness and ennui for many people. In the past, people had much deeper roots in place, family, religious belief, and tradition. Nowadays, many people are seeking novelty and excitement, and to people like this, 'diversity' and multiculturalism are a needed sensation to awaken dulled sensibilities. Many modern Westerners are jaded, and thus titillated by the extreme, (as witness our fondness for 'extreme' sports, extreme entertainment via shocking reality shows and movies) the outre, and the exotic.
I've often said that the current American craze for highly spiced, 'hot' foods indicates a jaded palate and burned-out taste buds that require hot spices to stimulate. 'Diversity' seems to serve the same function; diversity is to our society what spicy exotic foods are to our taste buds. Those who find American culture 'bland' 'vanilla' and 'white-bread' crave the diverse and exotic. Many of the jaded leftists are diversity junkies, and the same is true of many Republicans who think all this multiculturalism is wonderful because 'now we have all these great restaurants.'
Mass movements such as old-style Leftism, with its boring meetings and manifestos, might have limited appeal to average Americans, but today's leftism has found a formula which appeals to many of the lost souls, the jaded nihilists, and the sensation-seekers. They can reinvent themselves as faux-ethnic peoples (notice how many young white leftists affect 'dreadlocks', or kaffiyehs, or ethnic garb and tribal tattoos and piercings.) And even the more sophisticated limo lefties practice some of these affectations to 'show solidarity' with the wretched of the earth. Back in the 60s this was called 'radical chic', and it is still in evidence among the affluent left. Many of the leftists among the intellectual set dabble in exotic religions like Richard Gere and his Buddhism. Many of them dabble in 'New Age'-y practices which mesh nicely with leftist, globalist politics, believing in a unified world government and the erasure of borders. According to most of these people, nationalism and national identity are anachronism, fossils from an unenlightened age of barbarism, and they must be purged to make way for the 'New World' utopia, soon to be ushered in by enlightened humankind.
Fjordman alludes to this desire to remake the world:
Moreover, the very idea that it is ok to stage massive and risky social experiments involving millions of people is one that was passed on from Marxism to Multiculturalism. As Friedrich von Hayek warned: ''We must shed the illusion that we can deliberately 'create the future of mankind.' This is the final conclusion of the forty years which I have now devoted to the study of these problems.''
Both the political lefties and the post-Christian secular or New Age Westerners are intent on 'creating the future of mankind.' There is kind of a convergence of goals there. We tend to blame the political left when many of the people working toward these goals consider themselves non-political; some want to remake the world along the lines of their spiritual beliefs, which just happen to coincide with the leftist 'borderless world' scenario.
So, as Fjordman reminds us, we have big business interests working to destroy the old order of things in the name of power and profits, forming an unnatural and unholy alliance with the Left, political and cultural. The fact that these wide-ranging groups are arrayed against the traditional order of things makes them formidable, and when you add Islamic zeal to the mix, we can see that the situation is volatile.
Fjordman adds
In short: You know you live in a Western country when the media is cheering for your enemies, when your schools and universities teach your children that your civilization is evil and when your politicians think it’s a sign of ''extremism'' if you want to protect your nation's borders.''
That about sums it up.
