Drawing the lesson, they made the great turn to the long strategy of indirect approach. Western Europe and North America would be slowly isolated, cut off from the life-giving countryside, reduced finally to withering islands in an alien, swelling sea. They would, when the moment came for the direct strike, collapse at a few sharp blows." - James Burnham, The War We Are In
"Our society isn't a society anymore," wrote Anna Politkovskaya in her Russian Diary. "It is a collection of windowless, isolated concrete cells...." Russia has returned to the overt despotism of a counterintelligence regime, and the West has returned to Munich, to the ignominy of 1938, to appeasement and cowardly retreat. "I really feel as a Cassandra who speaks to the wind," wrote Oriana Fallaci in her Post-Script to The Force of Reason. "Sounding off at protest meetings has become virtually useless," wrote Politkovskaya, "mere preaching to the converted; those who share your views already know the situation, so why keep telling them about it?"
We have reached a point in history that cannot be otherwise. The centuries have run their course, and we are at the end of one civilization, not yet knowing whether another civilization, or a span of barbarism, is to follow. The dying civilization's ears and eyes are shut to courageous voices, like those of Fallaci and Politkovskaya. We pat ourselves on the back, pointing to our happiness and freedom. But if we are happy and free, then why are so many anti-depressants prescribed? And why are so many Westerners adopting totalitarian "ideals" (like those of extreme environmentalism, socialism and anti-Americanism)? One might ask why the Russians, supposedly freed from Communism, have willingly accepted a KGB dictatorship? Many reasons might be given, of course, and many excuses. The mass scale of modern society dwarfs the individual as it dehumanizes through automation and rationalization. It is easy to feel helpless. It is easy to give up. The machinery of modern life homogenizes the human mind, shrivels our independence as it carries our dignity into the swamp of indiscriminate equality. In the end we turn coward, buckle under, and blame America or Israel for the world's woes. We join the global totalitarian chorus - the wave of the future.
Pericles said: "The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom is courage." In that case, the rise of cowardice (and its cult of appeasement) signifies the decline of freedom. Ironically, it is a decline in the midst of plenty. The visionary of our day, who speaks truth to power, speaks to a particular kind of power; that is, to the corrupting power of the shopping mall regime and its comforting illusions. "People often tell me I am a pessimist," wrote Politkovskaya shortly before an assassin's bullet ended her life last year. "I see everything," she added, "and that is the whole problem." To see everything is to recognize that we live under the Big Lie. "I do not believe in the fraudulence of Moderate Islam," wrote Oriana Fallaci. "Islam is the Koran," she added. "Nothing but the Koran. And the Koran is the Mein Kampf of a religion which has always aimed to eliminate the others." Reading these words I cannot help admiring these courageous women and their readiness to tell the truth. It is against the martyred Politkovskaya, and against the persecuted Fallaci that we hear the affirmation and repetition of nonsense, enthroned and empowered, administrating and legislating on the basis of one falsehood after another. "Russia is not an enemy," said President George W. Bush last week. "There needs to be no military response because we're not at war with Russia. Russia is not a threat." This is spoken by the same U.S. leader who has characterized Islam as "a religion of peace." Failing to recognize and account for his real enemies, Bush tried to build democracy in Iraq, and now he has been discredited. His discreditable critics are tumbling over one another to take the helm. As Fallaci's explained: "the deaf remained deaf, the blind remained blind, and both of them ended up with bearing on their foreheads what in The Apocalypse I call The Brand of Shame and Infamy."
The whole world stands to be engulfed. The destruction, when it is unleashed, will be unprecedented. The totalitarians in Russia, China, Iran and the Arab world are preparing for war. Now that Bush's position is collapsing and the Party of Outright Appeasement has begun its reign, the enemies of freedom see their chance. Cowardice and stupidity have conspired, and the result is "opportunity." Western progress has finally given the totalitarian regimes a generation of "last men," about whom Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote: "The earth hath become small, and on it there hoppeth the last man who maketh everything small." The "last man" comes at the end, when civilization begins to die. And indeed, the Western democracies are dying. I am reminded of Titus Livius's description of Rome's descent into despotism as "the dark dawning of our modern day when we can neither endure our vices nor face the remedies needed to cure them." We congratulate ourselves on the interest-group demagogy that produces policy in the West, throwing up words like "democracy" and "freedom" when the reality of the situation is better described by words like "anarchy" and "licentiousness."
Oriana Fallaci referred scathingly to the West's "inanimate democracies" and "inertly democratic regimes." These, she said, were governed by the cowardice of the democratic mob. Under this system, nobody tells you to obey the party line. The men in leather jackets don't come for you in the middle of the night. They don't put you before a firing squad or employ torture to extract a confession. They don't violate your rights. You can even vote and run for office. But you will never be elected, followed or respected, because the instinct of a cowardly multitude finds comfort in calling you a "lunatic," an "outlaw," thereby condemning you to what Fallaci called a "Civic Death." She described this death as a condition in which nobody will listen to you, and even "those who think like you will desert you."
Everything can be stated, said Fallaci, "but the truth." We no longer have the courage to recognize and accept hard facts. Even those of us who know better are deserters. "Everything can be spread except the thinking which reveals the truth. Because the truth inspires fear. Because in reading or hearing the truth most people surrender to fear...." Oriana Fallaci sounded an alarm to all of Europe. The Muslims have crashed the gate and the citadel of the West is being overrun. But instead of Europe's intellectuals rallying to her passionate call, a famous Italian journalist said to her: "I can support you no longer." Fallaci asked him why, and he answered: "Because people don't talk to me anymore, don't invite me to dinner anymore."
Do we understand how this works? Fallaci calls it the wicked infection of a new "autochthonous facism." Its first germ-carriers are the presumed educators of the Western world. "The sordid and vile plague also propagates through newspapers, TV, Radio." She is talking about an intellectual or mental contagion, described over 100 years ago by Gustave Le Bon. "Mental contagion constitutes a psychological phenomenon of which the result is involuntary acceptance of certain opinions and beliefs," wrote Le Bon. It seems that emotions propagate themselves in the same way that bacteria and viruses propagate. If mankind's spiritual hygiene is poor, if cowardice and envy have made a kind of breeding ground, then ideological poisons and disinformation are encouraged to multiply. Furthermore, today's mass media is the perfect tool for spreading this contagion far and wide to a vulnerable and weakened culture. "The more the means of communication are multiplied," wrote Le Bon, "the more people's will is reached and infected."
The modern mass media tends to foster a mass-produced consciousness subject to the vagaries of fashion and wishful thinking. In fact, this mass consciousness, stupid and infantile in itself, has become the ruling principle of the West's "inert democracies." This is the fashion of the Last Man. Take a poll. Find the parade and get in front. The public is always "right," even though the public is a monstrous nullity. And since that nullity has become weak and soft, it is impossible to raise questions touching on civil defense, war mobilization, closing the borders, restricting trade, expelling Muslim aliens, placing Communists under surveillance or arresting seditious citizens. None of these measures are acceptable because each promises some harm to the general comfort and to the shopping mall regime.
The United States, like Europe, won't defend itself properly. We will not stockpile the necessary foodstuffs or build the necessary underground bunkers. We refuse to stop enemy aliens from moving across our borders. We refuse to see the truth of our situation. We turn our backs on the Cassandras of our day. "Many seem not to care," wrote Politkovskaya. She warned that the Soviet Union had returned to Russia. The old wickedness had returned. Has this registered on the West? With regard to the Islamic threat, Fallaci wrote to America: "Dear friends: it is immigration, not terrorism, [that is] the Trojan Horse which has penetrated the West and transformed Europe into Eurabia."
The honest man knows what follows. The coward warms himself on a bodyguard of lies.
