history – Page 54

VJMP Reads: Anders Breivik’s Manifesto VII

This reading carries on from here.

In this section (c. pages 426-573), Breivik discusses “Modern Jihad”, or how adherents of the Islamic religion fight for supremacy in the modern world. Opening with a quote of Surah 9 verse 5, in which Muslims are admonished to “kill the unbelievers wherever you find them”, this section details the existing Jihads carried out by Muslims against non-Muslims.

In his characteristic way, Breivik exhaustively catalogues the crimes committed by Muslims against non-Muslims. No offence, not even ones as prosaic as common assault, is too minor to be listed here. This is enough to give the impression that Islam is at war with every other culture that it shares a border with.

To some extent, Breivik has a point here. There are very few peaceful borders between Muslim-controlled areas and non-Muslim controlled ones, and prospects for there being more are very slim.

However, one glaring point is missed: if Islam is so ruthlessly aggressive when it comes to purging non-Muslims from Muslim lands, why are there still non-Muslims there? Nazi Germany managed to exterminate the vast bulk of European Jewry in fewer than six years of trying – how can it be that non-Muslim communities still exist in Muslim lands after what we are told has been 1,300 years of relentless extirpation?

Breivik mentions that one-sixth of the population of Egypt are Christians still. This seems like an extraordinarily high proportion for a group that has suffered 1,300 years of ethnic cleansing. The Native American population of the USA, the Aboriginal population of Australia and the Maori population of New Zealand are all much lower than this – and they were displaced over 400 years or less, meaning that the Christian exterminations of unwanted populations has been an order of magnitude more efficient and aggressive than those carried out by Muslims.

Moreover, the exhaustive list of Muslim crimes against non-Muslims is not compared to the list of non-Muslim crimes against non-Muslims, so there is no reference point against which to decide whether this list has any import. 800 Americans are shot dead by other Americans every single month – a monthly list of crimes much longer than the Muslim crimes detailed by Breivik in this document. And this is with a population one-fifth of the size of the Muslim world.

To some extent, Breivik is playing on the infamous persecution mania of Christians who see enemies everywhere and a never-ending infernal plot to drive them from the world in order to conquer it in the name of Satan. Ironically, although Breivik correctly points out that Muslims always try to cast themselves as the victims in order to gain sympathy, he does the exact same thing in this document.

There are many ways in which Breivik’s discontent with the current European situation is a consequence of the failure of European leaders. He correctly points out that part of the reason why Europeans are losing rights to increased security measures is because of the Islamic presence in Europe – had Europe never let the Muslims in, they never would have lost the freedoms that have been taken from them in the fight against extremism.

What needs to be done in response is clear. According to Breivik the terms of victory are “the total banishment of traditional Islam from a specific country. Widespread emigration/deportation and large scale conversion of Muslims in the country.”

This is necessary because “An objective analysis can never reach the conclusion that Islam is peaceful, tolerant and consistent with human rights.” Here, Breivik re-emphasises the point that Islam has never undergone a reformation of any kind. What Westerners foolishly call “moderate Muslims” are simply Muslims who are not particularly religious.

This section ends with a frightening question: “How was it possible that Immanuel Kant, who lived in a German state without liberal democracy, could criticise basic aspects of religion in the 18th century, while in the West of the 21st century there are social and legal consequences for criticising other religions and cultures?”

Have we really gone backwards since the Enlightenment?

Can You Hear The Echoes Of The 1920s On Our Streets?

The 1920s were a tumultuous time in the Western World. Rebuilding from the carnage of World War One, Westerners – especially Europeans – found themselves unable to decide on a peaceful way forward, and this absence of agreement expressed itself violently in the streets. This essay examines whether or not we’re looking at a repeat.

The German defeat in World War One saw a revolution that swept away the monarchy of Wilhelm II, replacing it with a fragile democracy known as the Weimar Republic. The well-founded fear of those who wanted peace in Central Europe was of a civil war between the socialist forces that had inspired the revolution and the reactionary conservatives representing those who held power and wealth under the Second Reich.

Communist agitation, inspired by the Russian Revolution of 1917, was eventually put down by an alliance between the ruling Social Democratic Party of Germany and right-wing paramilitaries known as the Freikorps, and peace finally reigned.

But it wasn’t to last.

The severe economic problems of the 1920s, coupled with a sense of humiliation at the restrictions imposed on Germany by the victorious Allies, alongside continued communist agitation and growing nationalist sentiment, meant that chaos would soon usurp the shaky peace.

The far left didn’t like the Weimar Republic because they considered it to be holding back a communist revolution, and the far right didn’t like it because they preferred the authoritarianism that existed under the previous monarchy.

This state of affairs is very similar to what faces the West today.

Just like 1920s Weimar, the streets are again filling with far-left and far-right extremists who want to fight each other

Communist agitators have made a significant impact on Western society in recent years. They have successfully destroyed belief in tradition, resulting in plummeting birthrates, mass immigration that has changed the make-up of Western nations forever, and widespread and righteous anti-white racism.

Nationalist agitators have also made significant strides recently, most notably with the election of Donald Trump to the American Presidency. Many Trump supporters are shameless authoritarians, and much of the appeal of this authoritarianism lies in the belief that they are protecting the West from degeneracy.

The surge in both groups of extremists has led to increasing levels of street violence in America, most notably at the ‘Battle of Berkeley’ and then last weekend in Charlottesville. A sense of unfinished business lingers over both of these incidents, and after a fatal terrorist attack in Charlottesville the desire for revenge is a factor predicting further bloodshed.

What is the most foreboding is that Antifa is growing in strength because of rhetoric about the need to resist Nazism, and the far-right is growing in strength because of rhetoric about the need to resist Communism.

The echoes of the 1920s come from the fact that both sides are correct in their basic fears of the other side. Both sides are growing in strength because of sharply increasing dissatisfaction with the idea of liberal democracy, in a very similar way to how increasing dissatisfaction with the Weimar Republic led to widespread street violence.

The left opposes liberal democracy because it wants to shut down free speech and free expression. The Communists believe that they need to control the narrative in order to bring about revolution, and this demands that even scientists like Richard Dawkins be denied the right to speak at a university.

The right opposes liberal democracy because it wants to shut down the free movement of people. The Nazis believe that the West is sinking into chaos, anarchy and degeneracy, and only by rallying around authoritarian figures can a sufficient degree of order be imposed upon society.

Both of these sides, therefore, have grounds to eschew dialogue and democracy in favour of raw assertions of power in the streets.

Also foreboding is the belief, shared by many commentators, that the economic hardships of the Weimar Era laid the foundations for massive German discontent with the idea of democracy, which paved the way for extremists like Adolf Hitler.

The West has not really recovered from the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. Employment prospects are poor all across the West, with the dream of owing your own home now out of reach for most young Westerners, and working-class resentment at the amount of money spent on refugees risks growing into further discontent.

Perhaps all of this is building towards another climactic struggle.

Whatever Happened to The Polynesian Takeover of New Zealand Rugby?

At the turn of the century, many commentators believed that a total Polynesian takeover of the All Blacks was inevitable – what happened?

The All Blacks team for this Saturday’s Bledisloe Cup clash against the Wallabies has been named. A curious aspect of the teamsheet is that it is one of the whitest All Blacks teams named in decades. This means that a lot of the race-panic rhetoric at the turn of the century turned out to be grossly misguided, and this article looks at why.

In the opening years of this century, the All Blacks back row was made up of the “Great Wall of Samoa” in Jerry Collins, Chris Masoe and Rodney So’oialo, with the Tongan-born Sione Lauaki playing a part-time role. All three of these players typified the “big hit” culture of Polynesian rugby, and they earned the “Great Wall” epithet from their uncompromising defensive style.

The back three was comprised of the “Flying Fijians” Joe Rokocoko and Sitiveni Sivivatu, with the rock-solid Mils Muliaina as the last line of defence. All three players were lightning-fast across the ground – a quality, we were told, deriving from the superior proportion of fast-twitch muscle fibers in the Polynesian genome. No white player was going to be able to compete, ever again.

The idea that the All Blacks front row would sooner or later be permanently Polynesian was taken for granted in many quarters. After all, the squat, solid build of the average Polynesian was considered the ideal build for a prop, and some considered it just a matter of time until the heavier build of the Polynesians won out.

The last bastion of white All Blacks was expected to be the second row, on account of that the Polynesian genome seldom produced men taller than 6’6″, which is realistically the minimum height necessary to succeed as an international lock. But even then, with players like Ross Filipo on the rise, it seemed as if the entire forward pack would follow the backs in becoming entirely Polynesian.

This piece from The Telegraph, penned in the year 2000 and titled ‘White players shying away from All Black future‘, is typical of the rhetoric of the turn of the century. John Morris, the headmaster of Auckland Grammar School, explained that white pupils at his school were abandoning rugby union and turning “to soccer, hockey or even rugby league where there is a better chance for the smaller lad.”

This seemed reasonable for white kids, who, going through puberty later than Polynesians, often found themselves as boys against men on the high school rugby fields. Many thought that white kids would all turn to cricket, essentially abandoning rugby to the Samoans, Fijians and Tongans.

John Matheson, editor of New Zealand Rugby magazine, even went as far as to state “It won’t be too long before there is not a white face in the All Black team.”

Fast forward 17 years, to this weekend’s Bledisloe Cup match, and those predictions could hardly have been more wrong.

The player with the most Polynesian blood in the All Blacks starting XV is the half-Samoan Reiko Ioane. Sonny Bill Williams, at centre, is next. He is at most half-Samoan, with a white mother and a father with a Welsh surname. All of the other All Blacks are white or Maori – and there is not a single Fijian or Tongan among them.

Two half-Samoans out of fifteen players means that less than 7% of the All Blacks are Polynesian by blood – a lower proportion than the amount of Polynesian blood in the New Zealand population as a whole, and barely greater than that of Black Caps. And even then, Ross Taylor is a far more established player in his team than either Ioane or Williams is in the All Blacks.

So what happened?

Explaining this outcome – and how the white ethnomasochists at the turn of the century got it so badly wrong – is not straightforward.

First, genetics plays a role, in ways that were understood by few 15 years ago. Polynesians may have a higher proportion of fast-twitch muscle fibers, and that may make them quick across the turf, but this simply means that white players have a higher proportion of slow-twitch muscle fibers. Because rugby union is fundamentally a game of possession, strength trumps speed in many cases, in particular when it comes to the contest for the ball.

Players of European descent have an advantage in the upper body over Polynesians, especially when it comes to grip strength and shoulder strength. When it comes to winning the ball, this advantage is decisive. This explains why the All Blacks forward pack this weekend will be entirely white, with the exception of the Maori hooker Codie Taylor (who nevertheless has plenty of European ancestry).

The second major explanation is geographical. If one looks at the birthplaces of the current All Blacks squad, one striking pattern leaps out: very few of them are born in the big cities.

The lifestyle of people in Kiwi big cities is following the trends established elsewhere in the West: big city people are rapidly getting fatter, lazier, more obese. This means that many more All Blacks are from the minor centres than before – and the population of the minor centres is almost exclusively white and Maori.

The third major factor is professionalism. At the turn of the century, rugby matches were often won by turns of individual brilliance, as they were in the amateur days.

The game has changed a lot since then. It is much more structured now, which means that there is less room for individual flair and more demand for highly-coached, error-free play, which shifts the advantage to the middle classes because they are far more able to pay for the necessary coaching. In doing so, the advantage also shifts away from the working-class Polynesians and back to the white people who occupy the vast bulk of the middle class.

In summary, the breathless predictions of total Polynesian dominance of the top levels of New Zealand rugby turned out to be wrong. Rugby union is a fundamental part of Islander culture, this is true – but it’s a fundamental part of white Kiwi culture as well, and the Pakeha are not going to give the game up simply because they get smashed a lot in teenage years.

Predicting the racial makeup of the All Blacks in another 17 years is impossible. What can be said for certain is – as Sir Apirana Ngata believed – rugby union will continue to serve as the best of all cultural solutions for bringing out inter-racial harmony and co-operation in New Zealand, as it has done for over 120 years.

How Well Did The Economy Do Under John Key?

John Key: made New Zealand wealthier compared to other nations, but not by as much as Helen Clark did

This article starts with a very straightforward proposition: that the prosperity of an economy and of the people in that economy is primarily a question of GDP per capita. Given that, we can measure the increase in New Zealand prosperity (if any) under John Key’s tenure by looking at the change in GDP per capita during that time.

The figures that this article uses are taken from the International Monetary Database. Here we calculate GDP on a price purchasing parity basis because we are ultimately trying to measure the change in standard of living.

In 2009, the GDP per capita of New Zealand was USD30,572. This placed us 37th in the world, just behind Italy, Japan and Spain, and just ahead of Greece, South Korea and Israel.

In 2016, the GDP per capita of New Zealand was USD37,294. This placed us 35th in the world, just behind South Korea (who leapfrogged us), Japan and Finland, and just ahead of Italy and Spain (who we leapfrogged) and Israel.

This makes for an increase of 22% over 7 years, which is about 2.9% per year if calculated on a compounding basis.

2.9% over a seven-year period can rightly be considered a decent effort of national economic stewardship from Mr. Key. That level of growth is far from remarkable, but it was enough to move us past a Southern European level of wealth and close to a Far East Asian level.

By way of comparison, the GDP per capita of New Zealand in 2000 was USD21,807, which makes for a 40% increase over the nine years of Helen Clark and Michael Cullen. This works out to just over 3.7% per annum.

Measured that way, the performance of the John Key economy was markedly poorer than the Clark/Cullen economy. However, one has to take into account that Key inherited a global financial crisis, and so it’s worthwhile comparing New Zealand to other nations instead of looking at absolute growth.

In the year 2000, New Zealand was considerably less wealthy than Italy (which had a GDP per capita of USD28,602), Japan (USD26,850) and Spain (USD24,053). It was also less wealthy than Australia (USD28,801), Britain (USD26,425) and America (USD36,433).

By 2009, the GDP per capita of New Zealand had increased from 76% of that of Italy to 89%; from 81% of that of Japan to 92%; and from 91% of that of Spain to 96%. Against other Anglo nations, the GDP per capita of New Zealand had decreased from 76% of that of Australia to 75%; had increased from 83% to 87% of that of Britain; and increased from 60% to 65% of that of America.

This means that under the Fifth Labour Government, New Zealand improved its position strongly against comparable countries, with the exception of the booming Australia.

By 2016, the GDP per capita of New Zealand had increased from 89% to 101% of that of Italy; had decreased from 92% to 90% of that of Japan; and had increased from 96% to 102% of that of Spain. Against other Anglo nations, the GDP per capita of New Zealand had increased from 75% of that of Australia back up to 76%; had increased from 87% to 88% of that of Britain; and remained at 65% of that of America.

This tells us that under the Fifth National Government, New Zealand improved its position against the Southern European countries but stayed the same compared to other Anglo ones.

Ultimately, therefore, we can see that New Zealand’s economic standing in the world is marginally better, in relative terms, after the Key Administration. Apart from the decline of Italy, New Zealand didn’t really improve in relative wealth. This contrasts sharply with the years under Helen Clark, during which time New Zealand improved strongly.