“And you, hypocrite lecteur,
What makes you so superior?”
-Louis Simpson, from There You Are
I find it so very telling that whenever a majority of the population show their support for a cause or a personality the media and the Left disagree with or disapprove of, that support is deprecated as populism–as though populism (read the penchants of the majority) were some coveted evil bandied about by the banausic and non-elites of Western democracies; as though the wishes of the majority were become worthy of contempt precisely at the moment those wishes might empower that majority. Whatever happened to “We the people”? I believe it is high time that the wishes of the majority took precedence over the parochial and selfish interests of political bureaucrats, and especially now that the majority have made it known–or rather, are making it known– that they’ve quite had enough of the multiculturalism experiment and are more than tired of having the debilities of Islam obtruded into their choice of television and radio narrative every day. Enough already.
The first definition of the word populist in the Penguin dictionary is “A member of a political party claiming to represent ordinary people.” The second is “Someone who has or cultivates an appeal to ordinary people.” Is this not also the definition of every politician that ever ran for office? The popularity of Donald Trump is denigrated by the Left and the media as an evil populism simply because he is bold enough to bring to light the fact that the religion of Islam has become a problem for the Western world and because the majority of the citizens of that Western world are extremely concerned about this problem. Shouldn’t this particular vein of populism be an issue that all politicians, if they are truly concerned about the future of their country as an abiding democracy, whether Democrat or Republican, attend to with their full and undivided attention?
Michael Harrington wrote in 1962 that, “The millions who are poor in the United States tend to become increasingly invisible….It takes an effort of the intellect and will even to see them.” The same can be said of those millions who refuse to endure the contorted concept of multiculturalism, an insalubrious idea the Western media and political elite have turned into a populism of their very own. These millions have become not only increasingly invisible, but their voice, when it is heard, if at all, is maligned and emasculated back into the silent and stifled existence from whence it struggles to egress. To publicly contend that all religions are not equal, or more precisely, that Islam and the Muslim are become a relatively dangerous and obtrusive element within Western democracies, is to proceed against the current of this particular populism, an adventure that can arouse the ire of both journalist and politician alike. But even more disconcerting, it appears that soon, and very soon, such an intellectual venture will bring down upon oneself the wrath and weight of the state.
Many Western journalists (but not all), who have always asserted themselves as guardians of “freedom of the press” have now become shamelessly censorious of nakedly obvious truths, especially those truths concerning the egregious behavior of Muslim religious. And the state, whose duties include what the common citizens of every Western democracy have always assumed is a defense against encroachment of foreign influence and discriminatory cultures, is fast becoming a peremptory and imperviable purveyor of foreign influence and discriminatory cultures. Samuel P. Huntington warned that, “The survival of the West depends on Americans reaffirming their Western identity and Westerners accepting their civilization as unique not universal and uniting to renew and preserve it against challenges from non-Western societies.”
In his book Mass Hate, Neil Kressel remarks about the people of Germany during the Holocaust, “…some historians, particularly those of a psychoanalytic bent, have crawled deeper into the psyche of the German people and attempted to stake out the contours of what might be described as a collective national pathology.” I believe that within the psyche of the worldwide Muslim Ummah there exists a collective imperialist pathology, and it’s based on Islam’s promised and prescribed universal Caliphate. And just like Adolf Hitler’s genocidal dream of a thousand year Reich, this pathology is anti-Jewish to the core. This is the most dangerous populism on the planet. Right up there with the populism that today invokes the power of the state upon anyone who refuses to swallow the multiculturalism pill and the immeasurably convoluted notion that all religions are equally deserving of our respect. Innocent people–men, women, and children–are being murdered every day in the name of Islam, and yet our condemnation of these horrors and the savages who commit them is labeled as a worthless and simplistic populism. To the real Islamophobes, the journalists and politicians afraid of offending the more dangerous adherents of Islam, I say, “And you, hypocrite lecteur, what makes you so superior?”

billybob says
The media could do a much better job of exploring the issues without being liable to be branded “Islamophobes”. The people they serve deserve forthright and honest reporting, not an agenda to promote mindless PC. Here is an example of the kind of reporting that I would expect…
“Muslims Fail to Prove Islam is a Religion of Peace in Debate”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghr-JMq1VT0
Likely many of you have seen this great debate. In the audience were plenty of Muslims, as well as Muslims taking a full part in the debate, along with a very famous ex-Muslim – Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for whom I have the greatest respect and admiration.
This debate fully explores the issues with Muslims and non-Muslims side by side. It couldn’t have been done better. Let this be a model for the media in general.
Nimrod says
Members of the press want to keep their high paying jobs, and for the vast majority of them the only way to do that is to parrot the political-media complex state propaganda.
The truth is that the mass media in the west are really no more free than that of Russia or China. I suppose the only real difference is that smaller news services can exist without the threat of being sent to the gulag, which is why I said mass media, but it doesn’t help that much since most people will never hear from them.
In the west, “journalists” are sent to school to learn what is acceptable belief and how it is acceptable to frame things. If nothing else they learn this from example when they see how certain people conveniently don’t get hired for the school newspaper because they’re suspected of having unacceptable beliefs. No need to send anyone to the gulag, just cutting off their pay is sufficient and just the threat of such is enough to keep people in line.
Things like the bill of rights are insufficient to ensure a free press when you have mass media near monopolies. Informal patronage schemes can easily undermine press freedom because the press is much more centralized than it was ever supposed to be.
The Internet is helping some to alleviate this, but I’m not convinced that it will be enough because generally speaking the Internet will not force feed information to anyone the way tv will. On the Internet people must seek things out and most people won’t do that.
EYESOPEN says
Excellent post Nimrod.
dlbrand says
Well said, Nimrod.
guest says
Careful what you wish for regarding majorities: within a few decades islam might be the majority ideology in some EU countries. Without a human-rights based constitution, the majority might then want sharia law.
Rob says
Police nowhere to be seen in front of the Cologne railway station on NY Eve but out in their hundreds to attack the Pergida Rally a few nights later.
dlbrand says
Indeed.
Enough enough, enough.
Open the books–put the Islam of the books on trial; put the choice of the believer of that in those books to the same.
March Islam; parade it–Islam of the “prophet”: how he lived it, taught it, passed it on–naked, in all its “glory” through our streets. Show, in that parade, Islam in action, as in the “prophet” in action.
And let the fools among us embrace and praise that man’s every act and defend the “religion” he brought; and let the wise among us disdain and censure his acts of filth, hatred, and murder; and categorically, reject every speck of the faith system that man brought.
MH says
Here in Germany, where I live, the term “populism” is only used to attack the right. Nothing on the left is “populism”. Things on the left are occasionally critiqued, but never with that lable. Thus, the calls to prevent the contruction of a mosque are “populist”, but campaign posters by a mainstream political party proclaiming, “Tax Millionaires!” is not “populist.”
stevea54 says
Excellent essay by Michael Devolin. Plus, now I know what ‘banausic’ means.
Full marks.
eduardo odraude says
Michael Devolin,
Thank you for your enlightening article.
One comment. It is poor countejihad strategy for us to condemn multiculturalism wholesale. If the counterjihad is to have the broadest possible support, we should condemn only the suicidal kind of multiculturalism that would admit huge numbers of people even from cultures that seek to destroy multiculturalism and establish a monoculture (Islam). We should be explaining why Islam is a threat to multiculturalism, and that the counterjihad expresses an abhorrence of totalitarian monocultures. This would be a better basis for forging counterjihad consensus among liberals and conservatives, people of all skin colors, Hindus, Jews, Christians, and Buddhists. To reject multiculturalism wholesale can easily be read as a rejection of anyone who is not white and Christian (or if the reading is not quite that narrow, something not much broader).