The history of much of the last century was written in the blood of the victims of war, genocide, political upheaval and social unrest. One of the lessons of modern history – lost on most Americans, unfortunately – is that our circumstances can change literally overnight. Consider Beirut, Sarajevo, the Islamic mass murders at the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and lately - the riots in Greece, Spain, Italy and London. These events were all harbingers of an abrupt, irrevocable and often brutal change in peoples’ lives.
Consider a Jewish tailor living in Prague in the late 1930’s. He could scarcely have understood what was happening to him when he and his family were rounded up by the National Socialists and packed into a cattle car – they were told that they were being ‘relocated for their own safety’. But, that was World War 2, you say. So let’s move forward: in the early 1970s, and in the span of 72 hours, the Khmer Rouge emptied every major city in Cambodia and before they were done, they had slaughtered over a third of the country – more than a million people - over the next few years. But, that was during the Vietnam War years and in Asia, you object. Surely, you say, that’s over. But nothing could be further from the truth – as Goldhagen in Worse Than War points out, it never stopped; it only diminished in intensity. Most of us have forgotten Sarajevo, host of the 1984 Winter Olympics and formerly known as “the jewel of the Adriatic.” Sarajevo fell into a flame-shot hell of barbarism with a rapidity that stunned its inhabitants. The so-called ‘siege of Sarajevo’ earned the dubious distinction of being the longest such siege in modern times – it lasted almost 4 years. Modern high-rise buildings became death traps as services failed and snipers picked off anyone who tried to leave in search of food, water or something to burn for warmth. World War 2, again? No – the siege of Sarajevo took place from 1992 through 1996. But those were Serbs and Croats – we’re not like that, you say. But if you thought that we here in America have some special immunity to circumstances like those, you would be wrong. Those same cultural and inimical social outlooks that were responsible for the blood and slaughter are headed this way.
Here in America, the Watts and Rodney King riots, and hurricane Katrina serve as examples of just how quickly our own civil order can vanish. The recent ‘flash mob’ robbery/assault phenomenon - where groups of blacks make use of cell phone texting and social networks such as Twitter to organize and swarm retail establishments in order to overwhelm them and to loot them - are becoming increasingly bolder and more violent here in the good old USA. Lately, and in a more ominous turn of events, those same flash mobs have begun to target individual people for racially motivated robbery and assault. You can even see this on YouTube, where many of these incidents are published for ‘bragging rights’! Even though the flash rob-mob phenomenon has largely fallen off the media radar (and some might say that it is being deliberately suppressed), it hasn’t stopped. It just hasn’t been reported by a compliant media with an agenda. And with few exceptions, nobody’s going to jail for it.
The recent ‘Occupy’ movement with its shadowy organizational origins and even more ambiguous sources of funding are another harbinger of social unrest to come. Merely another situation under-reported and misrepresented by a media strangely uninterested in the whole story, but the sentiment of those participating is easy enough to discern: "Capitalism has taught us that no one is ever going to give us anything," said OSC spokesperson Mark Paschal. "You have to take it.'' His comments and many, many others like it have an old familiar ring:
"We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions."
It is almost word-for-word what is coming from the mouths of the OWS crowd, and you would find few among them who would disagree with it. In fact, you would find few among our intelligentsia, our artists, our journalists, even our preachers and pastors who would find fault with it. But it’s old news, as the quote comes from a speech made in May 1, 1927 by one of the true nemeses and monsters of the last century, one Adolf Hitler. Harbingers. Just where do you think this is coming from?
“It can’t happen here,” you say? Don’t bet on it. It already has. The “low level ethnic conflict,” of the flash mobs, the increasingly violent theater of the Occupy movement, and the systematic abrogation of the rule of law by the Obama regime are merely progressions along the way to something far, far worse.
But no matter. Everything will be just fine. Until the day that it isn't.
I guess so, but before you were talking about us being alone in a world threatened by Slavo-Teutonic or Scandinavian-Slavic and Pakistani-Peruvian axes, and that's something very different from what you're saying now.
Germany today, Norway and Sweden today, even Peru today don't make up great threats to world peace or to the United States. Sure, things can change, but things have already changed to the point where ideas about a permanent Viking or Teutonic or Hispanic character are questionable.
Those Vikings (after some mixing with the French) also became the Normans who contributed mightily to developing the British model. Indeed, the Vikings weren't so very different from the Anglo-Saxons who provide the another piece of British culture. Getting from the Vikings (or the Byzantines) to later Russian culture was a complicated process that wasn't pre-determined.
And to say as Quigley apparently does that Christianity somehow isn't a major factor in Spanish culture looks quite obtuse. Perhaps he isn't wrong about "more ancient Arabic personality traits" playing a role, but no society, our own included is entirely governed by the "Christian virtues." Hispanic Quigleys, and there were many, saw Northern Europeans as outriders, almost outsiders, of the Christian World just as much as Quigley does Southern Europeans.