Challenging Extremist Thought? Perish the Thought...

Belmont Club's ever-thoughtful Wretchard discusses at length today the dangerous paralysis of the European intelligentsia and its political class in the face of overwhelming Islamofascist provocations. One possible solution is confronting the Islamofascists in an intellectually-driven culture ware. But this is tough when the supposed custodians of Western culture would rather raise the white flag than defend their own way of life. Wretchard draws the following conclusion, which can hardly be comforting to the United States:

If developing "norms that challenge and expose extremist thought" are a prerequisite to challenging Islamic extremism then the road will be long and hard. Intellectual challenges to radical Islamism have largely been the effort of outcast intellectuals like Oriana Fallaci, Bat Y'eor, Hirsi Ali and others like them. They live in a shadow world, "scorned by the academic establishment for their politically incorrect views", as Bruce Bawer puts it; and literally on the run. Fallaci in fact, has been ordered to stand trial for "defaming Islam" in her native Italy. Hirsi Ali leads a precarious existence under round-the-clock protection from the Dutch government. On the other hand, as Bawer also notes, European intellectuals like Timothy Garton Ash who argue for submission, who say that "for this increasingly Muslim Europe to define itself against Islam would be ridiculous and suicidal" are free to move, speak and publish. Ash is a professor at "Oxford, where he directs the European Studies Centre, and is a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. He is considered a world-class expert on Europe and its future, and he refers frequently in his book to his participation in glamorous-sounding international conferences on weighty topics. In short, he is at the heart of the European academic elite". Islam's intellectual challengers live a fugitive existence while its defenders move in a celebrity world. If challenging Islamic extremism intellectually is a necessity then the enterprise has gotten off to a bad start.

This is where the Stalinist-Gramscian left has maneuvered us at the beginning of this new century. Having failed via mass-murder, subversion, proxy wars, and just plain old repression to conquer the world for a brutal socialist ideal, they've now managed to crawl into the philosophical, artistic, and judicial guts of the west and eviscerate the culture, like the parasites they are. This has left not only Europe but the U.S. as well in a highly vulnerable position. Those in positions of respect and authority as custodians of Western culture—largely in academia—are today almost universally either active or passive Marxist ideologues who'd far rather do away with the culture than preserve, protect, and defend it. And they've done a rather good job, too. Wretchard is worried about this and, in the passage above, mightily concerned that the bravest voices are outside the institutions and are thus difficult to hear since they lack access to educational, judicial, and communications apparatus.

It is hard to find a point in history where the entirety of the cultural and much of the judicial intelligentsia of entire continents has become uniformly negative, bitter, intellectually flaccid, and self-destructive, but that's what we're experiencing right now. It's not a pretty picture.

For a broader look at this, by all means surf over to Belmont Club. It's well worth your time.