Courage and Betrayal – ConservativeNewsBriefing

Photo Credit:Leonardo da Vinci, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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Fear, hatred, and longing can occasionally make us act in ways that seem paradoxical on the surface, though logically connected in the depths of our minds — in the unconscious.

Image: Public domain.

Some enemies are so powerful and frightening that we cannot bear to think about them. In that case, we might find ourselves denying that they exist at all and put on a show of nonchalance. However, we may also take the self-deceiving absurdity further and assure ourselves that they are in fact our friends.

True enough, the ways of the human mind are mysterious. Occasionally, it goes to great lengths to obliterate awareness of the immediate and intolerable threat to its own existence. To the psychologist, this hardly qualifies as a sound “survival strategy”. What is more, it is morally unworthy of man.

Whatever detours we take to escape the truth of our own weakness, we are not altogether free to choose our enemies. That is an imagined privilege. Thus, some openly declare themselves our enemies while others fight us without going to the trouble of citing any specific reasons for their hostility.

In the political elite (e.g. politicians and bureaucrats in Brussels, London, and Washington), where self-deception is cultivated, they prefer the designated enemy from the “far right”; he is politically opportune as a bogus target, which they can attack for dramatic effect on social media, but without risk of personal harm. Largely fictitious as a threat to social order, he is a “safe” enemy, as it were. (For the record, it should be borne in mind that both real-life Nazis and their historical allies in the Middle East are sworn enemies of Judeo-Christian civilization.)

By contrast, the elite fails to address the two-headed enemy from the left and Islam, although this mighty anti-Western coalition on the plane of reality is the one that claims lives and threatens to transform society profoundly in the long term.

During the Cold War, there were Westerners who, without acting in collusion with the Bolshevik enemy, jumped to his defense, adopted his rhetoric, and vigorously argued for unilateral disarmament in the West (cf. camping protesters at Greenham Common). Terrified at the thought of nuclear apocalypse, they were willing to surrender unconditionally rather than defend themselves. If need be, they would give up their freedom in order to live on as slaves. To the enemy, of course, they were but “useful idiots”. In the eyes of their countrymen, they were considered, at best, “naïve”, at worst, “traitors”.

Nowadays, the public debate about immigration from overpopulated Third-World countries is swayed by NGOs who perceive (a) national borders as fundamentally “unjust”, (b) immigrants as sheer “enrichment” of the receiving society, whatever their numbers, and (c) cultural “diversity” as a social-moral ideal. An implied claim — the “relativist credo”, to be sure — is that all cultures are equally good in moral terms.

Accordingly, Western elites fail civilization and forbid citizens to criticize, let alone condemn, other cultures. This applies to one non-Christian religion in particular. If explicitly horrified by cruel Sharia rulings or the plight of Christian minorities in the Middle East, dissidents risk being accused of “Islamophobia” and convicted of “hate”.

Heavily infiltrated by Islamist-supremacists originating in a self-sustained diaspora, the West is renouncing the remnants of its Christian identity, recognizing the moral inadequacy of secularism, and facing its destiny as a culturally divided battleground; developments are virtually beyond the point of no return. This perspective corrupts the mind and feeds a ubiquitous fatalism.

As we are bound to acknowledge, violence works. An indispensable tool of political gangsterism (i.e. autocratism, totalitarianism), it has always worked — and always will. Likewise with the mere threat of violence. Because the West is losing ground to the rest of the world (e.g. the so-called “BRICS” countries), the norms of civilization have come under increasing pressure; its citizens are no longer protected from religious intolerance and barbarism in Europe itself.

The prospect of legal repercussions in Western courts is insufficient to deter the barbarians from attacking those who exercise their freedom of expression. That we are dealing with an implacable enemy whose outlook on life is the opposite of our own is evident from the unsettling statement that “Islamists love death as much as we love life”.

Throughout the twentieth century, the West hesitated to crack down on various revolutionary movements that arose as barbaric countercultures and grew strong in circles of society where maladaptive, antisocial, and law-breaking behavior, occasionally celebrated as “political protest”, was the norm.

Is it conceivable that civilization as founded in antiquity, though corrupted by secular relativism and affluence, has produced a pervasive mood of complacency, repressing memories of past survival struggles with tyranny, dulling our moral sense, and robbing us of courage in the face of evil?

It is striking that students at leading universities in the West profess totalitarian ideologies (i.e. Marxism, Islamism) and demand an immediate showdown with the humanist traditions that characterize civilized Western society under the rule of law. Previously, Western students and intellectuals colluded with communists in the Soviet Union, China, and Vietnam.

In our time, characterized by falling academic standards in the education system as a whole, the agenda of political activism seems rather to take the place of serious studies. Masked protesters with uncompromising slogans on their banners reveal a factual ignorance, a completely twisted world view, that harmonizes only too well with their urge to silence the opponent and resort to violence. Spoiled products of the affluent society, they are the barbarians in our midst, as thankless as they are wicked.

Ominously, distinguished scholars of the humanities are singled out for persecution by immature, ignorant, and hateful youths in a manner reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

As for political debates, the tumultuous scenes that recently (November 28, 2024) unfolded in the Oxford Union (declaring Israel to be an “apartheid state” by a majority vote) are a stain on the courage of academia to defend the worthy causes of freedom, justice, and truth. An ideologically biased Egyptian presided over the meeting which marks a historic low. Before the eyes of the world, the totalitarian alliance of Islamists and Marxists launched a wholesale attack on the only liberal democracy in the Middle East.

In the clash between the West and the Islamic world, Israel is analogous to an outpost under siege. Fighting an existential war, it bets everything to repel the enemies of civilization. What currently befalls that country will also reach Europe and the New World. Time will tell if we shall ever muster the same determination as the Israelis and avert danger. So far, we have mostly shown signs of weakness by giving in to calculating charges of military “disproportionality”, “genocide”, and “racism” made in the General Assembly of the U.N.

The fear of evil combined with the conviction that good will ultimately be defeated in the battle for the world can turn us into raving idiots unable to think clearly and defend ourselves. Melancholic fantasies may completely undermine our judgment, deprive us of the courage to live, and drive us to suicide (cf. Austrian author Stefan Zweig). As the church fathers showed us, even the strongest of faith can be gripped by doubt.

It begins with the courage to so much as mention our totalitarian enemies by name (i.e. fascism, Marxism, and Islamism). Only then can we fight them. We owe that to the civilization that gave rise to Greek philosopher Socrates, but also Roman orator Cicero. Not least, however, we owe it to Jesus, Son of God, who died on the cross for us.

What could be more appropriate in the given context than to quote one of the greatest playwrights in the West:

“Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.” — William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar