Deluded and Dangerous: Auster’s Insight Ten Years On

Christopher Hitchens was a sociable extrovert who worshiped Leon Trotsky and wrote with all the grace, delicacy and intelligence of a bomb-delivery by the neo-cons. Naturally enough, when he died in 2011 he was honoured around the world in the mainstream media. Larry Auster was a prickly introvert who converted to Christianity and wrote with clarity, vigour and insight. Naturally enough, when he died in 2013 he was ignored by the mainstream media. Hitchens devoted his life to the pursuit of fame; Auster devoted his to the pursuit of understanding. Both men found what they sought. This is Auster writing a decade ago on the roots of multi-culturalism and mass immigration:

Just the other week I was telling a secular, leftist Jew of my acquaintance, a man in his late sixties, about my idea that the only way to make ourselves safe from the specter of domestic Moslem terrorism is to deport all jihad-supporting Moslems from this country. He replied with emotion that if America deported Moslem fundamentalists, it would immediately start doing the same thing to Jews as well. “It’s frightening, it’s scary,” he said heatedly, as if the Jews were already on the verge of being rounded up. In the eyes of this normally phlegmatic and easy-going man, America is just a shout away from the mass persecution, detention, and even physical expulsion of Jews. Given the wildly overwrought suspicions that some Jews harbor about the American Christian majority who are in fact the Jews’ best friends in the world, it is not surprising that these Jews look at mass Third-World and Moslem immigration, not as a danger to themselves, but as the ultimate guarantor of their own safety, hoping that in a racially diversified, de-Christianized America, the waning majority culture will lack the power, even if it still has the desire, to persecute Jews. (Why Jews Welcome Muslims, Front Page Magazine, 22nd June, 2004)

Those “wildly overwrought suspicions” are not confined to the United States and have not diminished since 2004. An article has just been published at the British Spectator criticizing a comparison made by a Guardian journalist between George Orwell fighting in Spain in the 1930s and British citizens currently fighting in Syria:

For interestingly enough, just this morning footage has been released of these latter-day Orwells … appearing to torture and execute their fellow ‘rebels’ from the Free Syrian Army [FSA]. Footage includes a fellow ‘fighter’ being tied to a car tyre and hit repeatedly with an iron bar. The British jihadist says that this was done because the miscreant had ‘insulted his brothers.’ He says:

‘Some FSA are starting to feel they run things! This FSA scum never thought we wud jump out at them and pick them up after saying some abusive words to our brothers. Two then got ahead of themselves and swore at Allah, at this point there was no stopping us LOL [laugh out loud] although we where told to jus leave them.’

The Mail’s report continues:

‘The prisoner is heard protesting his innocence as he is apparently beaten across the legs with a metal bar, and is stamped on. He shouts that he is not a ‘kuffar’, a non-believer, and that he is a ‘mujahid’ – a Muslim fighter  – and begs them not to kill him.’

Elsewhere one of these noble young British ideologues posts a photo of three blindfolded prisoners alongside the words:

‘Got these criminals today. Insha’Allah [God willing] they will be killed tomorrow. Can’t wait for that feeling when u just killed some1′.

(British jihadists in Syria cannot be compared to George Orwell, The Spectator, 11th February 2014 – see also Mail article and comparison to Orwell at the Guardian)

Several of the comments express hostility at Muslim immigration at at the British political class that allowed it, particularly Tony Blair and Labour.

Zanzamander
These people and their progeny will remain a thorn in our backside for ever and ever. This is all down to our corrupt politicians, Blair and Labour in particular. Name me a single non-Muslim country that has a substantial Muslim population which is now not mired in communal discord.

Pootles
And yet we still allow into the UK thousands of people from the countries that are the source of such religious and cultural norms. They don’t come from EU countries, they come from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Somalia, Nigeria, and Arab nations. The government has not one single excuse for allowing this, the UK is not bound by any international agreement to take these people who become the hosts for the jihadi terrorists. A terrible thing has happened, and the UK, particularly England, will see civil war because of it.

But I want to focus on the comment someone who appears to be a British Jew. Is he concerned about Muslims from Britain and their psychopathic behaviour in Syria? No, he’s concerned something else:

Stephen Rothbart
There are 1.5 million Muslims living in Israel. Some of them play for Israeli sports teams.
Of course, a few of them probably don’t like Israel, there are quite a few Brits who don’t like Britain, but to say all Muslims hate Israel is simply not true. …
I am not a fan of the Arab and Palestinian leaders, but please don’t assume all Arabs, Muslims etc have hate for Jews or Israelis.
Far more disturbing is the number of secular and Christian people who hate Israel and Jews, without religious motivation. (British jihadists in Syria cannot be compared to George Orwell and Laurie Lee)

So the gripes of Rothbart aren’t directed at Muslims. And yes, there is a lot of violent anti-Semitism in “secular and Christian” Europe. But very little of it is being committed by secularists or Christians. Instead, it’s being committed by Muslims whose presence on European soil is, we must assume, warmly welcomed by Mr. Rothbard. I’m sure that Larry Auster would have called these views both delusional and dangerous. Are they inspired by genuine respect for Islam? I don’t think so. I’d say they’re inspired by hatred and suspicion of Christianity. How deep that hatred and suspicion run can be seen here:

The statistics from the French equivalent of the Community Security Trust, the SPCJ [Service de Protection de la Communauté Juive], show an increase in antisemitic incidents from 389 in 2011 to 614 in 2012. But although the numbers are similar to those in the UK, incidents in France are far more likely to involve violence. In 2012 there were 102 violent attacks in France and 69 in the UK. One in four attacks in France involved a weapon. It was originally stated that in over three-quarters of the antisemitic incidents the perpetrators were reported as being of North African origin, however the SPCJ has now removed this statement from their report. (Exodus to the UK as French Jews escape antisemitism, The Jewish Chronicle, 21st February, 2013; my emphasis)

Faced with unpleasant facts about Muslim immigration into France, what did the SPCJ do? Censor them. Larry Auster understood this psychology, condemned it and did his best to persuade his fellow Jews out of it. Sadly for them, he failed. But it’s important to remember that this is how Jews think about non-White minorities when they are a minority themselves. When they’re the majority instead, their attitudes can become quite different:

52% of Israeli Jews agree: African migrants are ‘a cancer’

Fifty-two percent of Jewish Israelis identify with the statement by MK [Member of the Knesset, or Israeli parliament] Miri Regev last month [May 2012] that African migrants are “a cancer in the body” of the nation, and over a third condone anti-migrant violence, according to the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) Peace Index for May 2012. …

The degree of religiosity attested to by respondents also accounted for a large disparity in the findings, with 81.5% and 66% of self-described ultra-Orthodox and Orthodox, respectively, agreeing with Regev’s statement, as opposed to 38% of secular Israelis.

Only 19% of Arab respondents agreed that the migrants were “a cancer.”

The poll also found that 33.5 percent of Jews and 23 percent of Arabs identified with recent acts of violence against African migrants perpetrated by demonstrators and residents of South Tel Aviv. According to the IDI this was “very surprising, considering that most people do not tend to openly report sympathy for acts that are broadly condemned by society.”

The Peace Index also gauged respondents’ opinions of foreign workers from various countries and found that workers from Africa were a larger source of concern for Israeli Jews than were workers from other continents. Thus, while between 30 and 40 percent of Jewish respondents were moderately or greatly disturbed by the presence of non-African foreign workers, that figure climbed to 56.7 when it came to workers from Ghana and Nigeria and 65.2 for Sudanese and Eritrean job seekers.

The report termed the findings “troubling” and “surprising,” especially considering the fact that 79.5 percent of respondents said that “where they live there are only a few, very few, or no” refugees or migrant workers.

“This raises doubt about the often-heard claim that it is direct exposure or vulnerability that accounts for negative positions and feelings toward the presence of foreigners,” the report said. (52% of Israeli Jews agree: African migrants are ‘a cancer’, The Times of Israel, 7th June 2012)