The Larger Lessons Of The Danish Cartoon Crisis
It`s The Immigration, Stupid
The international extent of
Muslim mob violence over the Danish cartoons of the
Prophet Mohammed can distract from its roots:
Muslim immigration into Denmark.
When a reporter for the
Jyllands-Posten newspaper discovered that Danish
illustrators were refusing the innocent job of drawing
the pictures for a Danish children`s book on the
history of Islam because of a
fear (quite reasonable, as we now see) of violent
retribution by Muslims living in Denmark, the
newspaper`s cultural editor, Flemming Rose, became
interested in a
the topic of self-censorship within the Danish media.
As an experiment, he invited 40 illustrators to draw
pictures of Mohammed. Twelve complied.
Publication of the Danish Dozen
last September set off the usual outrage. But the true
ratcheting up was due to
a delegation of Muslim imams living in Denmark. They
took a junket to the Middle East with a portfolio that
included, not just the
twelve cartoons, but three more offensive
fabrications. As
Michelle Malkin has reported, one of the pictures
these "Danish" imams flogged as
supposedly a Jyllands-Posten cartoon
of the Prophet with the face of a pig (an
unclean animal in Islam) was actually a forgery
based on a
newsphoto from a French pig-calling contest that had nothing to do with Islam.
The Relative Courage of the Danish Government
Was No Accident
By informing Muslims that Danish
newspapers are free to print what they want, the
government of Denmark has shown more backbone than we
are accustomed to seeing in European governments. In
contrast, last week the
Swedish government shut down a
private website for posting a mild drawing chiding
Muslims for lack of introspection.
[Vdare.com note:
This article about the censorship says that the
website belongs to the Swedish Democrats, considered by
Sweden`s media to be a "far-right" party. The
Swedish Democrat website
sverigedemokraterna.se seems to be down, and so is
sd-kuriren.info, which in English would be "Swedish
Democrat-Courier" but
sverigedemokraterna.net is still up, and here`s
their political program in English. Not
"far-right" by American standards—the Swedes would
consider many
centrist Democrats "far-right."]
The Danish politicians` moral fiber was not a fluke.
Since 2001, Denmark has had a coalition government
dependent upon the support of the immigration
restrictionist
Danish People`s Party. In the 2005 election, it won
24 of the 179 parliamentary seats, making it the
third largest party. The DPP website staunchly
states:
"Denmark is not an immigrant-country and has never been
so. Therefore, we will not accept a transformation to a
multiethnic society."
In return for DPP support,
Denmark`s government has sharply reduced immigration.
This has had salutary psychological effects. As I`ve
long pointed out, politicians` normal
terror of the immigrant vote is seldom based on its
current size, which is usually limited, but on its
seemingly limitless future expansion. Merely bringing
the rate of immigration under control changes the
political psychology immediately. Defying political
correctness no longer seems quite so unthinkable to
politicians.
Surprise! Multiculturalism Means…Multiple
Cultures
Guess what? Danes and Muslims don`t
agree on the basics of social organization and don`t
want to live under the same rules. That shouldn`t be a
severe problem. It`s what separate countries are for.
But due to
mass immigration, it is in fact becoming a huge
stumbling block.
To know them is not necessarily to love them
One of the dominant myths of our
age is that any hostility among people is caused by a
lack of mutual familiarity. Of course, it`s reassuring
to think that anybody who doesn`t like you just doesn`t
know you well enough. But you may be just kidding
yourself.
Unfortunately, this form of
self-delusion is the reigning mindset among Western
ruling classes.
For example, last year the
Supreme Court outlawed the state of California`s
prudent practice of segregating inmates by race during
the first 60 days of their prison terms while checking
if they had tendencies toward racist violence. Sandra
Day O`Connor
wrote for the majority that this entirely
reasonable attempt to prevent felons from
maiming and raping fellow prisoners of other races
might "breed further hostility among prisoners and
reinforce
racial and ethnic divisions."
Last week, after
race riots broke out between Mexicans and black
gang members in the unsegregated LA County jails,
Sheriff Lee Baca pleaded with the ACLU to let him
separate the races permanently. .But the
ACLU was unsympathetic. Ideology 1. Facts 0.
Another example of this elite
hallucination came in the conclusion of New York
Times reporter Craig S. Smith`s jaw-droppingly naive
article on the Danish Dozen:
"But
whether [Flemming Rose`s] exercise had achieved his
stated goal—of forcing citizens to think about their
submission to someone else`s taboos—it was clear that it
had helped extremists on both sides who would keep
Europe and the Muslim world from understanding each
other." [Adding
Newsprint to the Fire, February 5, 2006]
Uh, Craig, actually this exercise
has enabled Europeans and Muslims to understand each
other much better.
They just don`t agree.
A more pressing question than
whether or not Muslims understand Western values (long
answer: no) is: do elite Westerners still understand
Western liberties?
What this pathetic New York
Times article suggests is that Muslims understand
the new and improved Western values perfectly. They know
that the highest prize in the contemporary West is to be
considered an
official minority, which then gives you that
ultimate value: victim status.
Importing Muslims Seemed Like a Good Idea at
the Time, But…
Many Americans are currently
congratulating themselves for their brilliance in
choosing to locate the U.S. north of a huge supply of
unskilled Latin Americans,
rather than north of a huge supply of unskilled
Muslims, like those idiot Europeans.
But it ain`t over till the
fat…whatever. Forty years ago when Europe opened the
floodgates to Muslim workers, Islam looked like a spent
force. Similarly,
anti-white populism seemed like a relic of the past
in Latin America just 15 years ago, but today it`s the
hottest trend once again. And it may well spill over
into
Hispanic communities in the U.S.—which would give us
no end of trouble.
The point is that we don`t know
which groups will become actively aggrieved when. So it
pays to be prudent and limit immigration carefully.
Sending Muslims Home Is a Better Idea Now
Many European countries already
have underfunded programs to pay immigrants to leave.
It`s time for them to
get serious about a push-pull program to persuade
a large number of Muslims to
exit Europe.
Diversity and Freedom of Expression Conflict
Although VDARE.COM has run
scores of articles under the title "Diversity vs.
Freedom" over the years, almost nobody else has gotten
the message….yet.
Self-Censorship Is Bad Even When Muslims
Aren`t Involved
It`s wonderful that the Danish
Cartoon Crisis is causing some people in the West to
wake up to the problem of self-censorship.
Yet the truth is that the Islamic
taboo on visually depicting the Prophet is one of the
least onerous forms
Western media self-censorship. Did you ever feel a
desperate urge to see an artist`s conception of
Mohammed`s face?
Me, neither.
I could list any number of examples
of major topics that VDARE.COM covers while the Main
Stream Media won`t.
But let me remind you of just one:
the 2002 book
IQ and the Wealth of Nations by
Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen.
The
content is irresistible—it synthesizes the best
information available from 168 published academic
studies to come up with estimates of the average IQ of
81 countries. Further, the book delivers perhaps the
most important finding in the history of developmental
economics: national average IQ and GDP per capita
correlate at the extraordinarily high level of r = 0.73.
Obviously, this book would be
valuable for international investors and aid agencies.
Lynn and Vanhanen`s suggestion that lack of
micronutrient fortification of staple foods is costing
Third World countries crucial IQ points was
recently endorsed by the government of Ghana.
It also has crucial political
implications. For example, back before the Iraq invasion
in 2003, physicist Gregory Cochran repeatedly pointed
out that Iraq (average IQ = 87 according to Lynn and
Vanhanen) didn`t have
enough smart engineers to make nuclear weapons with
the
limited amount of money available to the regime. He
turned out to be right.
In contrast to Cochran`s insight,
our intelligence services weren`t allowed by the
reigning mindset to consider Iraq`s average IQ.
Yet, over the last four years,
mention of this book`s existence has only once
appeared in a newspaper or magazine widely distributed
in the United States.
And, hilariously, that was when
The Economist fell
hook, line, and sinker for the ludicrous
Blue States Have Higher IQs than Red States Hoax in
2004. The magazine attributed the wholly phony data to
IQ and the Wealth of Nations!
Lynn now has a sequel out,
Racial Differences in Intelligence. It summarizes
600 different IQ studies by racial group. I haven`t seen
it yet, but Jason Malloy has provided a
13,000 word review on GNXP.com.
VDARE.COM will be covering it—but
don`t expect to see any mention in the Main Stream
Media.
[Steve Sailer [email
him] is founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute and
movie critic for
The American Conservative.
His website
www.iSteve.blogspot.com features his daily
blog.]


