Eternity RPC Board
12-22-2016, 07:08 PM
Update
![[Image: amMG17C.jpg?1]](http://i.imgur.com/amMG17C.jpg?1)
(Geert Wilders)
In the wake of the recent terrorist attack in Berlin, one can clearly see the modus operandi of the Populists. Recently, a Tunisian Jihadist hijacked a Polish truck and, as ISIS instructs its followers, turned it into a weapon by running over unsuspecting pedestrians. Needless to say, every sane person is disgusted by such actions.
But what was the response of Frauke Petry, the leader of the populist movement Alternative fur Deutschland? She said that the victims of the terrorist attack, were Angela Merkel's victims. She directly held Angela Merkel responsible for their deaths. In a similar fashion, Geert Wilders - leader of the Dutch populists - tweeted a photoshopped image of Angela Merkel covered in blood. Like Donald Trump, Wilders mainly communicates through Twitter. It was last year actually, during all those terrorist attacks in France, that Wilders already announced that -if- one day a terrorist attack were to take place in the Netherlands, the current prime minister would have the blood on his hands. In the same spirit, Donald Trump, during the US presidential campaign, more then once insinuated that Hillary Clinton cooperated with ISIS, or could at least be held responsible for their existence.
It is not populist to say that existing anti-terrorism polices are not working, and it is not populist to argue that politicians aren't doing enough or are being ineffective. What is populist, however, is to fuel suspicion and conspiracy theories that the political leaders are somehow responsible for such an evil thing as terrorist attacks. Normal politicians would blame the individual who committed the attrocities, and maybe the organization or the ideology that guided their actions. The populists do not make such distinctions. As I tried to explain earlier, they divide their world in ''the People'', or ''Us'', which is morally pure and unified, and the ''Us'' is being threatened/attacked/exploited/dominated/undermined by the Evil ''Other'', which can be pretty much anyone and everyone. The enemies of the People are always multifarious, and they are connected with each other through an enormous web of conspiracies. So the political class, which no longer belongs to ''Us'', is thus working ''against the People'', and is therefore morally complicit with the enemies that attack the People, such as terrorists. It reminds me of the logic that pervaded the USSR during Stalin's Great Purge. Bureaucrats, politicians, officers - anyone who had committed an error in the distant past was suddenly confronted with it and interrogated about it by the NKVD. If their explanations for their errors were not satisfactory, they were found guilty of being an accomplice to the Enemy which had ''infiltrated'' Soviet society - and found guilty of Sabotage or Wrecking, carrying a 25 year forced labor sentence in the Gulag.
If your worldview has become so Manichean to the point that one can almost only think in terms of friend or foe, ally or enemy, then human flaws and errors are quickly interpreted as crimes in themselves, for they at least aid the enemy. The politician, who relies entirely on the work of the security services, becomes equally guilty of the crime of terrorism as the terrorist himself. President Erdogan currently operates in the same fashion in Turkey: elected parliamentary deputies for the Kurdish HDP have been arrested by the orders of Erdogan for their failure to prevent Kurdish extremists from committing terrorist attacks. Their failure, in Erdogan's Manichean worldview, is equal to the crime itself. From there follows Erdogan's logic that all the people he currently has arrested are ''terrorists''. They may have committed no terrorist attacks, they may have no links to terrorist organizations and they might not even have terrorist sympathies. But they did not help to stop the terrorists, and thus they are guilty anyway. Guilty of being an Enemy of the Turkish People.
In the UK, similar rhetoric was being used by UKIP and Brexit supporters, who reasoned that opponents of Brexit thus ''support the EU'', which was reduced to a form of treason. Anti-Brexit was no longer accepted as a valid, legitimate political view by the British populists, it was decisively excluded from ''Us'', rendering it automatically an enemy, the enemy within. Such logic, which denies democratic pluralism - a key element of any democratic society, tragically led to the assassination of the British member of Parliament Jo Cox. She campaigned against Brexit and was stabbed to death by man who had become brainwashed with the idea that she was a danger to the country and would take Britain away from the British people. Before the US elections, when I still thought Clinton would win it - thanks to poor polling by the US media - I joked to my friends that if Clinton would win, she'd be assassinated by some brainwashed Trump-follower. Why? Because Trump had spent an entire year convincing his supporters that Clinton was a criminal, that she was ISIS, that she was ''evil'', that she would destroy the US, that she belonged in jail, etc. This has nothing to do with ''disagreeing'' anymore. These are all incitements to use violence against her. They serve to raise fears and resentment against her, in a way that demands vigilant action to be taken. If it were all true what Trump said about Clinton, we should all quickly murder this evil maniac of a Clinton. And I've seen plenty of interviews with Trump supporters at Trump rallies, dead seriously declaring that if Clinton would win the elections, they planned to ''take her out'', to protect their country. Realizing that it only takes one lunatic to actually do it, I did the math and concluded that Trump was preparing the ground for Clinton's assassination.
For the sake of fairness, it must be noted that it was Trump who faced the most serious assassination attempts. In the Netherlands too, it was in the end the populist (Pim Fortuyn) who was assassinated in 2002. This can in no small part be blamed on the political establishment that, desperate to stop the advance of a populist movement, resorts to demonization, portraying a Trump or a Pim Fortuyn as the next Hitler. And what do we do if we spot Hitler? We put a bullet between his eyes before it's too late.
(Geert Wilders)
In the wake of the recent terrorist attack in Berlin, one can clearly see the modus operandi of the Populists. Recently, a Tunisian Jihadist hijacked a Polish truck and, as ISIS instructs its followers, turned it into a weapon by running over unsuspecting pedestrians. Needless to say, every sane person is disgusted by such actions.
But what was the response of Frauke Petry, the leader of the populist movement Alternative fur Deutschland? She said that the victims of the terrorist attack, were Angela Merkel's victims. She directly held Angela Merkel responsible for their deaths. In a similar fashion, Geert Wilders - leader of the Dutch populists - tweeted a photoshopped image of Angela Merkel covered in blood. Like Donald Trump, Wilders mainly communicates through Twitter. It was last year actually, during all those terrorist attacks in France, that Wilders already announced that -if- one day a terrorist attack were to take place in the Netherlands, the current prime minister would have the blood on his hands. In the same spirit, Donald Trump, during the US presidential campaign, more then once insinuated that Hillary Clinton cooperated with ISIS, or could at least be held responsible for their existence.
It is not populist to say that existing anti-terrorism polices are not working, and it is not populist to argue that politicians aren't doing enough or are being ineffective. What is populist, however, is to fuel suspicion and conspiracy theories that the political leaders are somehow responsible for such an evil thing as terrorist attacks. Normal politicians would blame the individual who committed the attrocities, and maybe the organization or the ideology that guided their actions. The populists do not make such distinctions. As I tried to explain earlier, they divide their world in ''the People'', or ''Us'', which is morally pure and unified, and the ''Us'' is being threatened/attacked/exploited/dominated/undermined by the Evil ''Other'', which can be pretty much anyone and everyone. The enemies of the People are always multifarious, and they are connected with each other through an enormous web of conspiracies. So the political class, which no longer belongs to ''Us'', is thus working ''against the People'', and is therefore morally complicit with the enemies that attack the People, such as terrorists. It reminds me of the logic that pervaded the USSR during Stalin's Great Purge. Bureaucrats, politicians, officers - anyone who had committed an error in the distant past was suddenly confronted with it and interrogated about it by the NKVD. If their explanations for their errors were not satisfactory, they were found guilty of being an accomplice to the Enemy which had ''infiltrated'' Soviet society - and found guilty of Sabotage or Wrecking, carrying a 25 year forced labor sentence in the Gulag.
If your worldview has become so Manichean to the point that one can almost only think in terms of friend or foe, ally or enemy, then human flaws and errors are quickly interpreted as crimes in themselves, for they at least aid the enemy. The politician, who relies entirely on the work of the security services, becomes equally guilty of the crime of terrorism as the terrorist himself. President Erdogan currently operates in the same fashion in Turkey: elected parliamentary deputies for the Kurdish HDP have been arrested by the orders of Erdogan for their failure to prevent Kurdish extremists from committing terrorist attacks. Their failure, in Erdogan's Manichean worldview, is equal to the crime itself. From there follows Erdogan's logic that all the people he currently has arrested are ''terrorists''. They may have committed no terrorist attacks, they may have no links to terrorist organizations and they might not even have terrorist sympathies. But they did not help to stop the terrorists, and thus they are guilty anyway. Guilty of being an Enemy of the Turkish People.
In the UK, similar rhetoric was being used by UKIP and Brexit supporters, who reasoned that opponents of Brexit thus ''support the EU'', which was reduced to a form of treason. Anti-Brexit was no longer accepted as a valid, legitimate political view by the British populists, it was decisively excluded from ''Us'', rendering it automatically an enemy, the enemy within. Such logic, which denies democratic pluralism - a key element of any democratic society, tragically led to the assassination of the British member of Parliament Jo Cox. She campaigned against Brexit and was stabbed to death by man who had become brainwashed with the idea that she was a danger to the country and would take Britain away from the British people. Before the US elections, when I still thought Clinton would win it - thanks to poor polling by the US media - I joked to my friends that if Clinton would win, she'd be assassinated by some brainwashed Trump-follower. Why? Because Trump had spent an entire year convincing his supporters that Clinton was a criminal, that she was ISIS, that she was ''evil'', that she would destroy the US, that she belonged in jail, etc. This has nothing to do with ''disagreeing'' anymore. These are all incitements to use violence against her. They serve to raise fears and resentment against her, in a way that demands vigilant action to be taken. If it were all true what Trump said about Clinton, we should all quickly murder this evil maniac of a Clinton. And I've seen plenty of interviews with Trump supporters at Trump rallies, dead seriously declaring that if Clinton would win the elections, they planned to ''take her out'', to protect their country. Realizing that it only takes one lunatic to actually do it, I did the math and concluded that Trump was preparing the ground for Clinton's assassination.
For the sake of fairness, it must be noted that it was Trump who faced the most serious assassination attempts. In the Netherlands too, it was in the end the populist (Pim Fortuyn) who was assassinated in 2002. This can in no small part be blamed on the political establishment that, desperate to stop the advance of a populist movement, resorts to demonization, portraying a Trump or a Pim Fortuyn as the next Hitler. And what do we do if we spot Hitler? We put a bullet between his eyes before it's too late.