A toxic mix of malcontents

The iridescence of an unidentified fly (x8) catches our camera's eye as the tiny creature flits about a milkweed leaf in our volunteer weed garden in front of the fence at the edge of the yard. There is a place for spinelessness in this world -- check out the 10th Circus of the Spineless at Science and sensibility to see what we mean -- but our species are supposed to have backbones. Multicultural elites "gripped by self-loathing," in Amir Taheri's words, need not apply.

"This Islam is an ideology masquerading as a religious faith," writes Amir Taheri in a most enlightening Wall Street Journal commentary on the occasion of the first anniversary of the London bombings. "According to intelligence sources quoted by the British press, some 8,000 persons, all 'British born and bred Muslims,' are under investigation as 'al Qaeda sympathizers'":

Convinced that they can never agree on a common understanding of Islam, Muslim sects in Britain have sought unity based on a political program: Islam, in its broadest expression in Britain, is a political movement. It has adopted part of the anticapitalist discourse of communism, adding to it some anti-Semitic and anti-Christian themes of Nazism, and completing the mix with Third-Worldist lamentations against racism and imperialism.

A toxic mix of malcontents who find eager bedfellows amongst what Tamiri calls Britain's "multicultural elite gripped by self-loathing":

The overall structure of Islam in Britain resembles the Russian matryushka dolls in which smaller dolls nest within bigger ones. The 8,000 people under investigation represent the smallest, deadliest doll, which nests within a larger one represented by radical groups operating on the farthest edges of legality . . .

The fifth Islamic doll often finds a nest within a sixth, and bigger, one, that represents Britain's multicultural elite. That elite shares political Islam's triple-hatred of the West: hatred of Christianity, capitalism and democracy. Today some traditional anti-Christian, anticapitalist and antidemocratic forces in the West are seeking a second youth in the energy and passion of political Islam. In calling for Islam to be allocated a separate space in the name of multiculturalism, the anti-West elements of the elite hope to continue their old wars under a new flag.

It's Thanksgiving in July for this lucky ant finishing off the "breast meat" of a dead moth who happened to give up the ghost on a granite block in our above-mentioned weed garden. It's nature's way -- waste not, want not -- for one species to suck out the juices from the remains of another. 'Reminds us of what Islamists are doing to their fellow travelers in the mortally wounded left. The left's attempts -- again, in Taheri's words -- to seek "a second youth in the energy and passion of political Islam" resemble the vampire's attempts to remain undead by sucking blood from the living.

You'd be upset, too, had you awoken from dreams of glory and omnipotence only to find yourself on the wrong side of history. As Victor Davis Hanson -- blogged here -- wrote two years back re our own "cynical American reporters and played-out professors who laugh at the idea of civilization":

There is a great divide unfolding between the engine of history and the dumbfounded spectators who are apparently furious at what is going on before their eyes.

Of course these folks, deep in denial, would sooner believe their utopian dreams than their eyes.

Comments

[goomp]

The dream world of the elites, communism and socialism with a special place for them to lecture us peons on how to live has failed. This failure is unacceptable and leaves them ranting against free enterprise and free choice. They are doomed to live either in a free democratic society or under the rule of Islamic tyrants. I believe that they think the tyrants will have a place for them to rule over the destoyed democracies. Anything seems better to them than the triumph of freedom.

[igout]

Would you include plutocratic globalizers in this multicultural elite? I would. Strange bedfellows perhaps, but while the brie-&-Volvo left moons for the brotherhood of humanity, the high capitalists moon for the brotherhood of consumers.
Stalin did make one useful contribution here in coining the phrase "rootless cosmopolitans". It's worth bringing back, if we first scrape off its original anti-semitic intentions. Certainly, it paints the picture better than the pale lable "multicultural elite".

[Teresa]

Igout - I think I prefer the term "metrosexual elite". It has that properly wimpy flair which seems to encompass the movement.

I just heard an interview with Melanie Phillips who has written a book called Londonistan. It seems the problem is even worse over in London than it is here. It's remarkably scary how the left simply thinks if it ignores terrorism - specifically Islamic terrorism - it will go away.

[igout]

Teresa,

I think they think they can in effect declare themselves open cities and the islamic hordes will just pass them by.

True. Metrosexual elites isn't bad, but it just doesn't capture their profound lack of atttachment to what far better men and women have died for all as well as 'rootless cosmopolitans'.

[Scott]

Excellent analogy. The academic Left seems to regard almost any type of America hater prima facia as Germany's recruiting centers viewed 10 year old boys in the last days of WWII, i.e. so desperate for support of their mouldering cause that they have lowered their standards of admission to the point of removing them altogether and admitting unquestioningly persons they might have avoided in their earlier and saner years.