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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Hugh Fitzgerald: I’m With the “Ignorant Masses” – What About You?

Jul 1, 2016 3:25 pm By Hugh Fitzgerald

James Traub

In the pages of Foreign Policy (a publication as “elite’ as all get-out), James Traub argues, with a stab at comic cliché reversal, that in the Western world “it’s time for the elites to rise up against the ignorant masses.” For it is those “ignorant masses” that voted for Brexit against the advice of their economic betters, and it is those “masses” who have been blindly, even viciously, “nationalistic.” In Traub’s lexicon, this signifies that those masses want to limit the migrant invasions, which means not just Polish plumbers taking jobs away from the English in Upper Chippenham or hawthorn-hedged Little Gribbling, as some news accounts would have you believe, but also, and much more worrisome, the influx of Muslims who have been arriving, without so much as a by-your-leave, all over the E.U., causing distress and mounting fear that is bound to grow as Muslim numbers increase.

If the Polish plumbers are resented because they take jobs away from the natives, part of the resentment of Muslims is because so many don’t take any jobs at all, preferring to batten on the West’s generous benefits. And the “ignorant masses” are the people who actually have to live with these new arrivals, bear the brunt of the Muslim presence in their schools and hospitals, on their subways and buses, at community pools and playgrounds, while the “elites,” cushioned by money, and their own smug complacency, not only refuse to recognize the effect of this Muslim invasion, but mock their fellow countrymen for worrying so much about Islam.

James Traub should be putting his faith not in those who today pass for an “elite” (today’s “elite” in the Western world is defined less by intellect than by wealth), but, rather, in an imagined earlier “elite,” consisting of those in America and Europe who wrote most perceptively about Islam. For Islam is what is haunting Europe, filling so many with dread, even if they are made to feel that it is unseemly or wrong to express such feelings, and that explains the success of the so-called “right-wing” or “populist” movements and parties in Europe, as these reflect and express the fears of those whom Traub — and today’s “elites’ — so unsympathetically describe as the “ignorant masses.”

The prime American candidate for membership in that imagined “elite” would surely be the redoubtable John Quincy Adams. (And Traub, it should be noted, knows a lot about J. Q. Adams, having just published a biography of Old Man Eloquent.) For Adams was not only the son of a President, but a President himself, the most learned of all of our Presidents before or since, outshining even Jefferson. He was also a deep student of Islam. It is instructive, and salutary, to be reminded of what John Quincy Adams wrote about that faith.

No one in the early American Republic was favorably impressed with Islam. The views of American leaders were derived from their experiences in attempting to suppress the Barbary Pirates, and in negotiating with Muslim emissaries from the North African states under Ottoman suzerainty. President John Adams, for example, had extensive dealings with the North African Muslims, including treaty-making with, and then treaty-breaking by, the Bey of Tripoli, that led him inexorably to a negative view of Muslims and Islam. In the Treaty of Tripoli he stated that “the United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims,” which merely meant that the young Republic had nothing a priori against Islam. Apologists for Islam like to quote that statement, failing to note that it was merely pro forma, and in any case Adams came to regret it. But his son John Quincy Adams, though he lacked his father’s immediate experience with Muslims, had studied both the ideology of Islam and the history of Islamic conquest, and wrote more knowledgeably about Islam than any other American of note.

J. Q. Adams succinctly described the duty of Jihad thus:

The precept of the Koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God. The vanquished may purchase their lives, by the payment of tribute; the victorious may be appeased by a false and delusive promise of peace; and the faithful follower of the prophet, may submit to the imperious necessities of defeat: but the command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective. The commands of the prophet may be performed alike, by fraud, or by force.

And Adams recognized the misogynistic aspect — the “violence and lust” — of Islam in similar unflinching terms:

In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar [i.e., Muhammad], the Egyptian […..] Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST.- TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE…. Between these two religions [Christianity and Islam], thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant … While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men.

J. Q. Adams stood virtually alone as an American student of Islam. After the Barbary Pirates episode, few Americans paid attention to Islam until late in the 20th century.

But in Europe, given the long conflict between Islam and Christendom, many more wrote about Islam than in the United States. We might include in our imagined “elite” such Europeans as the political philosopher Montesquieu, who noted that “it is a misfortune to human nature, when religion is given by a conqueror. The Mahometan religion, which speaks only by the sword, acts still upon men with that destructive spirit with which it was founded.”

And the Scottish moral philosopher David Hume:

The admirers and followers of the Alcoran insist on the excellent moral precepts interspersed through that wild and absurd performance. But it is to be supposed, that the Arabic words, which correspond to the English, equity, justice, temperance, meekness, charity were such as, from the constant use of that tongue, must always be taken in a good sense; and it would have argued the greatest ignorance, not of morals, but of language, to have mentioned them with any epithets, besides those of applause and approbation. But would we know, whether the pretended prophet had really attained a just sentiment of morals? Let us attend to his narration; and we shall soon find, that he bestows praise on such instances of treachery, inhumanity, cruelty, revenge, bigotry, as are utterly incompatible with civilized society. No steady rule of right seems there to be attended to; and every action is blamed or praised, so far only as it is beneficial or hurtful to the true believers.

And Tocqueville, that keen social scientist:

I studied the Quran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself. (Letter to Arthur de Gobineau, Oct. 22, 1843)

And finally, Winston Churchill, as “elite” a voice as James Traub could conceivably want, whose observations about Islam as a young man remain shudderingly acute:

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.

Hume, Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Churchill, and John Quincy Adams constitute an “elite” of the intellect whose members, it should be clear from their piercing remarks on Islam, would today agree not with those who currently pass for our “elites” but, rather, with the people whom James Traub dismisses – agree, that is, that there is ample justification for the deep anxiety the masses feel about the place of Islam in Europe’s future. So which “elite” should we heed? That of today’s faceless Brussels bureaucrats, and the smug disembodied voices on the BBC, the members of the political and media establishments in Europe who for years have refused to acknowledge the nature of Islam, and continue to defame those who do as “islamophobes” and “far-right” and “racists,” or should we favor that other “elite” from the intelligent past whose members comprehended Islam all too well?

To my mind it is obvious which of those “elites” understood the meaning and menace of Islam, which means countenancing, and in Europe voting for, the “populist” parties that, James Traub tells us, only the “ignorant.masses” could possibly support.

What about you?

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Filed Under: Featured, journalistic bias, Useful idiots, willful ignorance Tagged With: Foreign Policy, James Traub


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Comments

  1. mortimer says

    Jul 1, 2016 at 3:37 pm

    2012 Interview of Renaud Camus with Le Nouvel Observateur

    « Pouvez-vous développer le concept de Grand Remplacement ?
    « Can you expand on the concept of the Great Remplacement ?

    -“Oh, it’s very simple: you have a people and almost in a wink, in one generation, you have in its place one or several other peoples. It’s the implementation in reality of what Brecht presented as a joke, to switch peoples. The Great Replacement, the change of peoples that alone permits the Great Deculturation, is the greatest phenomenon in French history for centuries, and likely in all its history.”

    Bertholdt Brecht:
    “I have learned that the government believes the people ‘has betrayed the confidence of the regime’ and ‘should work to regain the confidence of the authorities’. In that case, would it not be simpler for the government to dissolve the people and elect and another one?” — Bertolt Brecht, “La Solution”

    • Mockingjay says

      Jul 1, 2016 at 7:55 pm

      Wow – those are great quotes Mortimer, especially the Brecht one – the “elites” want ANOTHER people to rule over, instead of the one they have, a people compliant with what they perceive to be the truth.

      Describes exactly what’s going on in today’s “free” world.

      • citycat says

        Jul 2, 2016 at 4:10 am

        Absolutely, lies for truth, lies to hide truth, it’s has become very obvious just recently with regard to Brexit. The lies are becoming quite sick.

    • KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM says

      Jul 2, 2016 at 11:43 pm

      Good stuff, Morti!!

  2. Champ says

    Jul 1, 2016 at 3:43 pm

    And the “ignorant masses” are the people who actually have to live with these new arrivals, bear the brunt of the Muslim presence in their schools and hospitals, on their subways and buses, at community pools and playgrounds, while the “elites,” cushioned by money, and their own smug complacency, not only refuse to recognize the effect of this Muslim invasion, but mock their fellow countrymen for worrying so much about Islam.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Hear, hear!

  3. Jay Boo says

    Jul 1, 2016 at 3:47 pm

    The elite cannot defeat the truth even with clever contortions so the must rely heavily on the use of the ad hominem attack to grease the skids before offering their PC wisdom.

  4. mortimer says

    Jul 1, 2016 at 3:49 pm

    Western elites have chosen Muslims to be the ‘noble savages’ whom they import massively to deculturate Europe from its civilization based on freedom of expression. To do so, Muslims are ideal, because Sharia law requires a complete reversal and suppression of the European culture of freedom.

    Because Sharia bans any comment that detracts from the ‘honor’ of Islam or of Muslims (while allowing the slander of dirty kafirs), Muslims make the perfect wrecking crew for Western elites. Muslims can continue to wreck Western culture and remain free from criticism. Anyone who criticizes the wrecking crew is called a ‘racist’, even if the ‘wrecking’ jihadists are white European converts to Islam. Criticizing white Muslims is still somehow ‘racist’.

    The Leftards give Islam honorary status as ‘a race’, while Islam is in fact a supremacist, theocratic ideology.

    The Left’s conspiratorial agenda is revealed by their protection of jihad from criticism.

    • Alarmed Pig Farmer says

      Jul 1, 2016 at 5:33 pm

      Deculturate, I like it. And that’s an active verb nowadays, very much so.

  5. Ciudadano says

    Jul 1, 2016 at 3:51 pm

    Thomas Aquinas

    “[Mohammad] seduced the people by promises of carnal pleasure to which the concupiscence of the flesh goads us. His teaching also contained precepts that were in conformity with his promises, and he gave free rein to carnal pleasure.”

    “In all this, as is not unexpected, he was obeyed by carnal men, as for proofs of the truth of his doctrine, he brought forward only such as could be grasped by the natural ability of anyone with a very modest wisdom. Indeed, the truths that he taught he mingled with many fables and with doctrines of the greatest falsity.”

    “No wise men, men trained in things divine and human, believed in him from the beginning…. [those who believed him] were brutal men and desert wanderers, utterly ignorant of all divine teaching, through whose numbers Muhammad forced others to become his followers by the violence of his arms.”

    “Mohammad said that he was sent in the power of his arms, which are signs not lacking even to robbers and tyrants.”

    “Mohammed perverts almost all the testimonies of the Old and New Testaments by making them into fabrications of his own, as can be seen by anyone who examines his law.”

    “A shrewd decision on his part to forbid his followers to read the Old and New Testaments, lest these books convict him of falsity.”

    “It is thus clear that those who place any faith in his words believe foolishly,”

    http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/12/27/thomas-aquinas-distrusted-islam/

    • Nigel GFF says

      Jul 2, 2016 at 9:17 am

      “Mohammed perverts almost all the testimonies of the Old and New Testaments by making them into fabrications of his own, as can be seen by anyone who examines his law.”

      Thanks for the quote from Thomas Aquinas.
      My mum (RIP) used to call the whole of Islamic ‘doctrine’ half-baked, plagiarised nonsense. How pleasing to find that she was in good company.

  6. Anonymaus says

    Jul 1, 2016 at 4:00 pm

    This is very well written. Unfortunately I don’t think anybody is going to understand a word of it. Due to widespread lack of intellect amongst the general population.

  7. Wayne says

    Jul 1, 2016 at 4:03 pm

    If our government truly represented WE THE PEOPLE this would be a no brainer. The current administration wants to dilute the patriots and bring in “new Americans”. Consider the fact that eventually all these Progressive will be taken down by the vermin they allowed to infiltrate our society. Maybe they just can’t think beyond tomorrow.

  8. Don McKellar says

    Jul 1, 2016 at 4:27 pm

    An impressive list of “elites” from history you draw up and their quotes on Islam reveal that they actually studied the thing and/or had to actually spend prolonged periods dealing with moslems. And therein lies the ENORMOUS difference between them and our modern “elites”. What we have today are a bunch of fools talking out of their asses when it comes to Islam. As you say at the beginning, these “elites” don’t have to deal with moslems at all if they don’t want to, and can hold tightly onto their fantasies, unlike the average middle class or working class citizen who doesn’t have that luxury. I often wonder what goes through their “elite” heads when it comes to moslems? Do they view them as a sort of Noble Savage?

    • Will Doohan says

      Jul 1, 2016 at 10:57 pm

      It’s not what goes thru their heads, it’s what is going into their bank accounts that has corrupted our leaders.

  9. Angemon says

    Jul 1, 2016 at 4:39 pm

    James Traub should be putting his faith not in those who today pass for an “elite” (today’s “elite” in the Western world is defined less by intellect than by wealth), but, rather, in an imagined earlier “elite,” consisting of those in America and Europe who wrote most perceptively about Islam.

    Yeah, but writing accurately about dead men doesn’t pay the bills – pandering to degenerates does.

  10. Wellington says

    Jul 1, 2016 at 5:24 pm

    The elites of old were very well educated and were also able to discern the difference between elitism and snobbery. True elitism is simply an acknowledgement that some people are superior to others in taste, sophistication and general knowledge and such an awareness does not result in looking down upon the common man or not realizing that said common man can still have many virtues such as moral intelligence and common sense. By contrast, snobbery, which is really what modern elites who are remarkably not well educated (though they think they are) have embraced, has given a bad name to elitism, thus being yet one more thing these faux elitists, actually snobs, have gotten wrong and ruined.

  11. Alarmed Pig Farmer says

    Jul 1, 2016 at 5:27 pm

    How is it that a president in the early 19th century understood Islam but now that is apparently not possible? I know, because John Quincy Adams *read* the Holy Ko-Ran, imagine that. The book is 200 pages long single in spaced Times New Roman font with half inch margins. That’s a short book, which means anybody with a spare evening could read it. What does Spencer call it, uh, willful ignorance I believe.

    So here we see that Spencer and Fitzgerald are the intellectual descendants of John Quincy Adams, Montesquieu, Hume and Churchill. Meanwhile, James Traub is the intellectual descendant of Karl Marx, who for his part was a fraud who cooked the books in the economic study underpinning Das Kapital.

  12. Oliver says

    Jul 1, 2016 at 5:30 pm

    The elites are assholes. (sorry for the bluntness.

    IT IS THE IGNORANT MASSES (here in the US, anyhow) who fought and won WW2. And would have in Viet Nam, except the “elites” made a mess of it. (Starting with Kennedy ordering the assassination of “the dragon woman” (I think madame Nu- not sure).

    The elites sit on their fat asses and pontificate -while never having had a real job in their lives.

    Back when George W Bush was Pres.– there was a youg Rep. gathering in (I think it was NYC). many of the attendees were asked what they thought of the invasion of Iraq. Almost all approved.

    Then asked, how many would join the military- and almost all said NO. THEY COULD MAKE A BETTER CONTRIBUTION BY BEING——- ( fill in the blanks).

    OK to start a war and support it, as long as your butt and those of your family and friends are safely away.

    THAT IS THE ELITES WAY.

    Screw them.

    • Alarmed Pig Farmer says

      Jul 1, 2016 at 5:39 pm

      The elites have a congenital dislike of the American military. For example, who in the news entertainment industry served? I’ve got my adding machine out, but it’s silent. It is a sad thing that the so-called elites control the media. But the Internet has put some chinks into that, go to Brietbart or PJMedia and read the comments section. Independence still lives in the minds of some.

  13. overman says

    Jul 1, 2016 at 5:43 pm

    Brilliant article and brilliant replies.

    “And finally, Winston Churchill, as “elite” a voice as James Traub could conceivably want, whose observations about Islam as a young man remain shudderingly acute”

    Churchill’s grandson also warned about lslam:

    “Winston S. Churchill –
    Winston Spencer-Churchill (October 10, 1940 – March 2, 2010), generally known as Winston Churchill, was a British politician, and a grandson of former Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill.
    At its most extreme, authoritarianism is exemplified by the isms of the 20th Century — Communism, Fascism and Nazism. The Fascists and Nazis were responsible for the deaths of more than 30 million human beings, while more than 50 million are estimated to have been murdered by Stalin and the Russian Communists, while Mao-Tse-Tung and the Chinese Communists are believed to have accounted for some 80 million.
    But today a new challenge — another ism — confronts us, and that is the challenge of Islamic fundamentalism. Extremist Islam has declared war on the rest of the world, as evidenced by their ruthless attacks across the globe — overwhelmingly targeted at innocent civilians. Beside the outrage of 9/11, the bombings in Madrid, in Bali, in London and, most recently, in Jordan come to mind.
    Those who have declared jihad against the West, and Western values, such as freedom of speech, are doing all in their power to mobilize against us the large Muslim communities living in our midst… Unbelievably, Washington is urging Europe to admit Turkey to the EU. Were that to happen, the Muslim population of Europe would skyrocket to 100 million — an act, in my view, of consummate folly. Already Judeo-Christian Europe is under siege from a tidal wave of Islamic immigration. The admission of Turkey would hasten its demise… Intriguingly, the dangers of extremist Islam were foreseen by Winston Churchill all of 85 years ago, as I discovered to my amazement, while compiling my most recent book NEVER GIVE IN! The Best of Winston Churchill’s Speeches.
    Churchill is, of course, well-known for his gift of prescience and, specifically, for being the first to warn of the menace of Hitler and Nazism as early as 1932, and of the Soviet threat in his famous Iron Curtain speech in 1946 in Fulton, Mo. But how many know that he also warned the world of the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism? I certainly did not!”

    And from the wit of Voltaire:

    “Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion and free trade.

    ‘But that a camel-merchant [Muhammad] should stir up insurrection in his village; that in league with some miserable followers he persuades them that he talks with the angel Gabriel; that he boasts of having been carried to heaven, where he received in part this unintelligible book, each page of which makes common sense shudder; that, to pay homage to this book, he delivers his country to iron and flame; that he cuts the throats of fathers and kidnaps daughters; that he gives to the defeated the choice of his religion or death: this is assuredly nothing any man can excuse, at least if he was not born a Turk, or if superstition has not extinguished all natural light in him’.”

    • common sense says

      Jul 1, 2016 at 7:11 pm

      Overman, great stuff man!- I could cry, sadness just overwhelms me reading this article and the historical significance of all these comments. We will bounce back.

  14. Luke Andrews says

    Jul 1, 2016 at 6:11 pm

    Two facts for the elite:

    1. Insofar as the masses are ignorant, it’s probably because the elites have cut funding from the school budget and also made an effort to dumb down the curriculum. That’s certainly the case in America, where many schools have ceased teaching civics or even history.

    2. The reason you guys (the elite) think Muslims are just swell is that the only ones you hang with are totally assimilated, upper-class and upper middle-class Muslims: the higher one rises socioeconomically, the more likely it is that one’s culture will be that of the cosmopolitans.

  15. overman says

    Jul 1, 2016 at 6:14 pm

    Even Patton criticized lslam:

    “George Smith Patton, Jr. (1885 – 1945 AD) was a United States Army officer most famous for his leadership commanding corps and armies as a general in World War II.

    ‘To me it seems certain that the fatalistic teachings of Muhammad and the utter degradation of women is the outstanding cause for the arrested development of the Arab. He is exactly as he was around the year 700, while we have kept on developing'”.

  16. Oliver says

    Jul 1, 2016 at 6:18 pm

    Elites are also why the Rep. establishment doesn’t like Mr. Trump.

    Not mentioned by the media- when Mr. Trump was in college, HE WORKED AS A JANITOR IN A LOW INCOME HOUSING COMPLEX. (admitted- complex privately owned- largely or totally by his family, but still a low income housing project). And he therefore met and spoke to the people there.

    As a writer (a few months ago- disclosure- did not read the article) said, one of the reasons for Mr. Trump’s popularity is HE UNDERSTANDS THE ONE GROUP THAT IT IS OKAY TO BE PREJUDICED AGAINST- WHITE MIDDLE CLASS PEOPLE, ESPECIALLY MALES.

    The GOP elites (Mc Cain-wife worth $100,000,000+; Romney-Several hundred million; etc) like the country club set- and care about them- and only them. (Bush family in their also).

    The Dems-care about their country club set; and Muslims; blacks ( who they want to keep on the dole-so dependant for the handouts); Mexicans- (same reasons, basically).

    Screw the white middle class, that built this country; that fought its wars.

  17. common sense says

    Jul 1, 2016 at 6:21 pm

    Replacing the people replaces their culture. Got it. Islam is best suited for that task (other immigrants are usually Christian or share a similar code of ethics in some way) comprende senior.

    The corporate government doing grade A work on Europeans and fast on the heels of Americans.
    JQA nor WC could ever have even imagined what we are now living through.

    If a prediction was made by any of these great men that an attempt to install Islam would be perpetrated by a future POTUS what would they say? Absurd surly? Or knowing their deep understanding of Islam a prediction of that nature may very well be the only way Islam could take hold in the west.
    By permission they enter. And is a welcome watering down to further the control of today’s so called elite. Muslims sop us with stinky filth and barbaric lies while straining our economics and control the narrative of how they should be viewed. At the very least they are a primitive distraction that incites false information and endless, useless debates while the key to our destruction is handed to the worlds worst enemy.
    More bombs, bigger death tolls and subjugation of our rights will continue.  

    • Champ says

      Jul 1, 2016 at 6:39 pm

      Great comment, common sense! …btw, I love your moniker, since good ole fashioned common sense is in short supply when it comes to islam & company. I will *never* truly understand how things got here: where good is evil, and evil is good …

      But Isaiah warns:

      “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” — Isaiah 5:20

      Seems we are ‘right’ there!

      • common sense says

        Jul 1, 2016 at 7:01 pm

        Hey thanks Champ! Although at times I do reach. Be assured that I have learned a great deal of what I know right here from you and everyone else who have amazing insights. I- 5:20, 24 always a fave!

        • Champ says

          Jul 2, 2016 at 1:29 am

          Thank you, common sense! 🙂

  18. Emilie Green says

    Jul 1, 2016 at 6:30 pm

    Foreign Affairs has been pushing the New World Order tyranny since the CFR’s beginnings in the early 1920s. BTW, the CFR itself was born as a result of an Americanist-minded US Senate which rightly rejected the Treaty of Versailles which would have required the USA join the League of Nations.

    Consider Richard N Gardner’s 1974 Foreign Affairs article on going around national sovereignty:

    What Brexit has done is to give confidence to others, to open pathways to other countries where Result Leave has a much better chance of actually succeeding. And once we have one success, others will follow.

    The One-Worlders – the CFR here in the US, Chatham House/RIIA in the UK, Club of Rome, et alia – will continue their relentless pursuit of bringing the world to heel. It’s too lucrative for them to do otherwise.

    Their building blocks are already in place. The UN, the EU, the African Union, NAFTA (which is to be expanded into the North American Union, then the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas)), the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

    All of these unions have one purpose – to establish world government, first through these regional governmental arrangements, and second through the elimination of the sovereignty of each country. This method follows Richard Gardner’s 1974 blueprint from his CFR article, “The Hard Road to World Order.”

    Gardner had endorsed an “end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece…” This “functional approach to world order”, Gardner explained, would involve “inventing or adapting institutions of limited jurisdiction and selected membership to deal with specific problems on a case-by-case basis…”

    What we really, really need is an Amexit from the UN.

    • Mark Swan says

      Jul 1, 2016 at 6:56 pm

      Emilie Green if You have not read this, you might appreaciate it.

      http://www.castlereport.us/u-s-must-leave-u-n/

      • Mark Swan says

        Jul 1, 2016 at 7:04 pm

        Sorry—got the wrong one—here it is

        http://www.conservativeusa.net/UN100ways.htm

    • Oliver says

      Jul 2, 2016 at 5:06 pm

      Back in the 1960’S – there was a group ( I do not know if still around) THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY. In New York City, they had numerous billboards GET THE U.N OUT OF THE US AND THE US OUT OF THE UN. (or perhaps the other way around-meaning the same).

      A shame that we are still there, and they (the Useless Nations) takes up nice land in Manhattan that could be a homeless shelter. (in the area where the elites live-so they should ahve it there).

  19. eduardo odraude says

    Jul 1, 2016 at 6:47 pm

    Valuable, elegant article.

  20. jewdog says

    Jul 1, 2016 at 6:53 pm

    Today’s elites are often aligned with the ignorant masses in the Muslim countries because they feel sorry for them, viewing them as victims of Western imperialism and racism. Yesterday’s elites had not yet discovered cultural masochism, thankfully, because if they had, the United States would still be Britain’s bitch.

  21. Will Doohan says

    Jul 1, 2016 at 11:08 pm

    The “masses” are not as ignorant as the elitists think they are.

  22. davej says

    Jul 2, 2016 at 2:07 am

    Close to a majority of Americans now live in substandard housing, collect EBT, shop at Walmart, have lots of cars and tiny dogs, are overweight, watch a lot of TV/movies/video games, are sports maniacs and/or religious nuts and have no idea of or interest in reality, the threat of Corporate takeover or the Menace of Islam.

    We are the sheep being lead astray (and to slaughter) by our own Government.

    And to think that many of the Founding Fathers saw the danger so clearly, voiced it and yet now at the dire juncture it is ignored and forgotten.

    A sad tale indeed.

    • Hindu American says

      Jul 2, 2016 at 8:17 am

      I agree.

      In other words, the western society and its cultural values are being “dumbed down”. Political correctness is the natural outcome of such behaviors where an average individual is unable to or not allowed to think in a rational manner, and is, therefore, afraid of losing his or her previleges (fear of being branded an islamophobe, for instance).

  23. cmdub says

    Jul 2, 2016 at 6:36 am

    Another great thinker weighs in:
    http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/12/27/thomas-aquinas-distrusted-islam/

  24. Hindu American says

    Jul 2, 2016 at 8:11 am

    Here are a few more quotes from folks that we would consider elites. I think the last quote from Younis Shaikh is the founding basis of majority of islamic terror acts that we see today.:

    Richard Dawkins (an atheist): “I regard Islam as one of the great evils in the world, and I fear that we have a very difficult struggle there…”

    William Ewart Gladstone (British PM in late 1800s): “Quran… an accursed book…. So long as there is this book there will be no peace in the world.”

    Will Durant (American writer): “The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.”

    John Quincy Adams: “The command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective… by fraud, or by force.”

    John Quincy Adams: “In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle.”

    Benjamin Franklin: “Nor can the Plundering of Infidels be in that sacred Book [the Quran] forbidden, since it is well known from it, that God has given the World, and all that it contains, to his faithful Mussulmen, who are to enjoy it of Right as fast as they conquer it.”

    Bertrand Russell (Philosopher): “Over a billion people believe in Allah without truly knowing what Allah supposedly stands for or what he really demands of them. And the minority that do understand continue to be Moslems because they have redefined their morality and ethics to fit within the teachings of Islam, which are floridly lacking in morality. They therefore redefine what is good and evil in order to fit their lives into what is preached by Islam, instead of examining Islam to see if it fits within the good life. Backwards thinking, imposed by a backward religion.”

    Sri Aurobindo (Indian rationalist): “You can live amicably with a religion whose principle is toleration. But how is it possible to live with a religion whose principle is ‘I will not tolerate’? You cannot build unity on such basis. Perhaps the only way of making the Mohammedans harmless is to make them lose their faith in their religion.”

    Sir William Muir (Scottish scholar of islam): “Some, indeed, dream of an Islam in the future, rationalised and regenerate. All this has been tried already, and has miserably failed. The Koran has so encrusted the religion in a hard unyielding casement of ordinances and social laws, that if the shell be broken the life is gone. A rationalistic Islam would be Islam no longer.”

    Dr. Younis Shaikh: “An extremely large percentage of Muslims in South Asia today are the progeny of forcible conversions and systematic rape campaigns by marauding Muslim invaders.”

    • Shmooviyet says

      Jul 2, 2016 at 8:50 pm

      @Hindu American:
      Thank you for your additions. This article and the brilliant set of comments are one of the best I’ve seen on JW. Once again from Mr. Fitzgerald.
      Muir’s writings on Islam, for example, are always worth re-reading.
      If only those leading the world to this bloody mess had the intelligence, fearlessness and honor of these past voices.

  25. CrossWare says

    Jul 2, 2016 at 12:38 pm

    A fellow commenter summed it up best the relationship between elite and Islam:
    “The globalists LOVE Islam. It’s everything they could possibly want in a false religion. They love its brutality, the way it viciously polices its own and crushes dissent from within. They love its dehumanization, how it turns its followers into little more than human ammunition, eager to be spent in the slaughter of infidels. They love its crushing of spirit, how it keeps entire populations ignorant of history and science while living in destitute poverty, convincing them that fighting the infidels is more important than civilian infrastructure. They love its real rape culture, the way it reduces women and girls to mere livestock, to be raped or beaten or killed or sold on a whim. But most of all, they love its system of unquestioning loyalty, how its followers wouldn’t dare think twice if their imams told them to butcher that person or blow up that kindergarten or beat their own daughter to death. This is why the demonic death cult of Islam has been chosen by the globalists as the official false religion of their new world order.” – cyberjacques

  26. TheBuffster says

    Jul 2, 2016 at 1:08 pm

    Brilliant work, Hugh. Thank you.

  27. Mark A says

    Jul 2, 2016 at 2:10 pm

    Great article Hugh Fitzgerald.

    JW,, keep these Hugh Fitzgerald articles coming.

  28. UriahB says

    Jul 3, 2016 at 8:57 am

    Yes and Oh Bomba Ah did remove the Churchill bust from his office. Cant have any infidels looking over your shoulder when writing claptrap pc speeches between sneaking smokes.

  29. dumbledoresarmy says

    Jul 5, 2016 at 10:07 am

    Re the ignorant masses.

    Jacques Ellul, the great French lay theologian and sociologist (and Righteous Gentile, and staunch Friend of Zion) made a life-long study of the phenomenon of Propaganda, a thing that he detested in all its forms.

    And he stated quite plainly – I am sorry I cannot give chapter and verse right now – that it was not the common uneducated or semi-educated man but the *intellectual* who is most vulnerable to being duped by propaganda. Because it is the intellectual who dutifully and earnestly reads the op eds and the editorials and watches the news and current affairs programs and earnestly absorbs all the articles and listens to the talking heads on the radio;, while the other bloke quietly ignores all that stuff, being much more interested in the sports page, the page 3 girl, and the car ads (or, if female, focuses on the shopping specials and the celebrity gossip).

    I think that Ellul’s insight, here, is rather nicely borne out by the broad demographics of the Brexit vote. The young, clever, educated people – that is, generally speaking, the intellectuals, the ones who have been targeted by and exposed to the full blast of two or three decades of propaganda (including a heavy dose of Islamopuffery into the bargain), voted to remain; but luckily there were enough of the other sort – whether the less-propagandised, or just cranky old codgers who have enough commonsense to learn from bitter experience – to outweigh them, just.

    I would also note that anyone familiar with the works of G K Chesterton would not have been surprised at all by what recently happened in the UK, nor will they be surprised by what might well happen in the USA.

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