Whoa! Seem Mark Staiyn has a huge internet presence! I typed a toss-off post linking the right-wing's hysterics over "Islamo-fascism" with the eugenics-mirroring drivel from armchair-warrior, full-time racist Mark Stain, and my references to his book were picked up by some program his website: "Staiyn Online" as "reader of the day" (quoting me as saying his book was a piece of shit, written while he pissed in his pants) and I got hundreds of hits to my blog.
(I guess I was steered wrong. It's "Stein," not "Stain." A blog critic of his said it rhymed with "stain.")
Anyway, I don't mind the occasional debate, but I'm not a full-time internet presence, and I can't spend hours a day arguing with people. Especially not now. So that's why I've been writing Staiyn (or when lazy "Stain") and will continue to do so for the remainder of this post. I don't need the hits, especially from the sort of people who treat a pathetic toad like Staiyn seriously.
But, I am going to reply to one of my visitors from that day who I didn't have the time to address then:
Suppose Europe's Middle Eastern immigrants started converting to Christianity - or Buddhism, or even atheism, for that matter. They all decide to abandon any desire to require their whole society to live under Sharia law.
Who really cares? It's not going to happen for a number of reasons. (I harbour hopes that in time, Muslims, like all religious people, will realize that their hocus-pocus stories are limiting delusions and embrace agnosticism or atheism, but that's certainly not going to happen when scum like Staiyn and his ilk besiege their cultures and place them under direct attack.)
I just realized something. Rod Blaine's described his little thought experiment, his speculative fantasy, as a "reality-based test." Normally, I'd give something like that a pass, but Blaine, and my other anonymous adversary, and one "Mark," were all quite sticklers about words and terms, and you've got to credit their shamelessness given their own sloppy use of language.
But taking Blaine's hypothetical seriously on its own terms, it's still pointless because all the Muslims in Europe aren't Wahhabist fundamentalists. Rather than reading Staiyn's garbage, Blaine would do well to read Haroon Siddiqui's Being Muslim. There are many kinds of Muslims, and Islam isn't necessarily a guide-book to violent obscurantism. Staiyn's contention: That Europe is being swamped by an Islamic sleeper civilization, taking advantage of European socialist softies, multiculturalist morons, pooping out babies who will democratically bring about the end of Western Civilization, is grounded on the erroneous (and racist) notion that this diverse group of people all think the same way, and are all dedicated to our destruction. This is how Blaine himself has described Staiyn's thesis you'll notice:
"They all decide to abandon any desire to require their whole society to live under Sharia law."
Staiyn, and Blaine, and others on the right-wing (I guess, and I don't really care to explore the pointless nuances of their confused political beliefs) are essentially saying that Staiyn is not a "racist," but a "culturalist" (by which they mean "cultural chauvinist" or "bigot") which is a fine distinction that I don't really care to take seriously. It's no doubt also a lie. ("Oh, thwap, there you go tarring your opponents with a broad brush again, lazily blah, blah, blah." To which I reply "Fuck off and go cry to your mothers. Assholes.") Because there's simply no important difference between blasting "sand-niggers" to pieces in the thousands because you think their culture is degenerate and that they're universally afflicted with "violent" tendencies towards martyrdom, and blasting them to pieces in the thousands because you think they're sub-human "crazed" animals.
All of this nonsense is of being "out-bred" is ridiculous anyway.
One of my favourite condemnations of Staiyn comes from Brian Cloughley, a former soldier and a genuine human being, on Mark Staiyn
So Steyn proudly and fatuously writes that he is a "Warmonger Still Fighting". Against whom have you fought, Steyn? You have never heard a shot fired in anger you septic fart. If you had, you would not be so lip-smacking about bloodshed. (You have never had to go to a house to tell a friend that she was a widow, have you, you little monster? You have never heard the sound of bullets whipping by your ear. It is frightening, Steyn. Really frightening, I assure you, but you will never know how frightening it is because you encourage and relish war while staying safe at home.) And your comment that atrocities "happen along the way" is worthy of an apologist for the holocaust.
In its racism and paranoia are part of a pattern of hysterical right-wing thought, another exhibit being the laughable Gates of Vienna
Staiyn's book is apparently a joke from start to finish, One reviewer:
If you were going to give it the knocks it deserves, maybe you should have looked at the math (shoddy), the evidence (anecdotal) and the style (journalistic, does not translate well to monograph length).
Right-wingers like to pat themselves on the back for both standing alongside Israel (albeit from continents away) as it brutalizes the Palestinians in the occupied territories (again, because they're eager late-comers to anti-anti-Semitism) and for their opposition to Islamic fundamentalism. It never dawns on them to note that the supporter of the worst dictatorships in the Middle East is the United States of America. It never dawns on them that the regime that rules the country that espouses the most fundamentalist wahhabism is Saudi Arabia, which is a government protected by the United States of America. The United States props-up and protects the source of their greatest nightmares.
The half-wits are being had, and they're totally unaware of it. They're enthusiastic dupes.
Furthermore, and finally, if you check out this review, you'll see that Staiyn is very much a racist fuckwad.
But number-crunching and mockery are not a sufficient response; it is hard to comment on Steyn's work without noting its raw racism. Throughout his work he uses openly racialized language, albeit with a post-ironic smirk. He talks about "the Yellow Peril" and "gooks". He notes nostalgically that "in the old days, the white man settled the Indian [sic] territory" whereas now the savages are settling us. He describes as "correct" a friend who talks about "beturbanned prophet-monkeys." Of course, Steyn denies this is connected to race, writing, "To agitate about what proportion of the population is "white" is grotesque and inappropriate. But it's not about race; it's about culture."
Yet it quickly becomes clear that for him, culture is merely a thinly veiled homologue for race - and then the mask slips entirely. He writes: "Those who pooh-pooh the the United States' comparatively robust demographics say they reflect nothing more than the fecundity of Hispanic immigration... In fact, white women in America still breed at a greater rate - 1.85 or so - than white women in Europe or Canda." So after saying it is "grotesque" to count out "white" babies, he does just that. "White" is not a culture; it is a skin colour, and there Steyn is, relieved that more babies have his pigmentation than the brown and black varieties.
It's difficult today for racists to come right out and say that they're believers in the genetic superiority of one group over another. Or to call for mandatory sterilization of lesser breeds. Not "politically correct" they'd whine. But occasionally, even with our hero, Staiyn, the mask slips. And his strident defenders end up looking like the biggest morons and chumps and exposed Klansmen in the world.
You know, by the logic of these people, I could demand that they eat my shit, or else they'll never know whether my claims that it's delicious are false or not. To which challenge they'd probably say: "Who cares if I'll never be able to prove that? Why must I feel compelled to accept your challenge and go along with it?" Which is precisely my feelings about having to read a moron like Mark Staiyn. It's simply not worth it and not necessary.
"Racist, eugen[ic]ist", eh? Let's put thwap's criticisms to a reality-based test.
Suppose Europe's Middle Eastern immigrants started converting to Christianity - or Buddhism, or even atheism, for that matter. They all decide to abandon any desire to require their whole society to live under Sharia law.
How do you think Steyn and his supporters would take that?
Let's try another thought-experiment, shall we.
Suppose a lot of white-skinned Europeans convert to Islam. Not just the mild Brunei/ Indonesian/ Malaysian version, either, but Saudi-style Wahhabism. And they put it into practice.
Women are banned from driving, indeed from most professions. They are left with no options but to get pregnant and have lots of children. Lots of little pink-cheeked Nordic babies who believe strongly - strongly enough to "kill and die for" their belief - that Sharia Law is the will of God and that everyone in the world must submit to it, willingly or not.
Surely Steyn and the Steynians would cheer that, right? I mean, they're racists, and these are not brown people but light-skinned Europeans?
A few moments' reflection will show that thwap has completely missed the point, and made a fool of himself over the Internet, as a lot of Steyn's critics do.
There are plenty of legitimate grounds to refute Steynians, but pretending that they care two figs about a baby's race or skin colour - as opposed to whether a baby is going to grow up being taught that liberal democracy runs the state, or Sharia Law - is missing the point.
Second-grade-standard analysis like this blog's shows how the Left has grown altogether too lazy intellectually - much easier to throw the "racist" tag at conservatives and libertarians, rather than analysing dissecting what they actually believe. The current Obama/ Clinton implosion shows where this leads to. You don't win supporters by thwacking the crap out of a straw enemy.