And a few raps on the knuckles of certain EU knuckle-under-ers. Many links, plus photos, map, comments at source. Several comments also included below. --J. http://gatesofvienn <http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2008/07/tribute-to-italy.html> a.blogspot.com/2008/07/tribute-to-italy.html Wednesday, July 09, 2008 A Tribute to Italy by Baron Bodissey The Fjordman Report The noted blogger Fjordman is filing this report via Gates of Vienna. For a complete Fjordman blogography, see The Fjordman Files. There is also a multi-index listing here. Silvio BerlusconiIn 2008, after the center-right government of Silvio Berlusconi gained power in Italy, Spain’s vice-president Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega accused the Italians of racism. “The [Spanish] government rejects violence, racism and xenophobia, thus it does not agree with what is happening in Italy,†said Fernandez de la Vega. Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International warned that the new immigration restrictions were part of a worrying trend, and that Italian politicians were legitimizing the use of “racist language.†Later, the president of the city of Milan, Filippo Penati, proposed to fine Muslims who pray on the streets or sidewalks outside of the local mosque because they create obstacles for others. “For some time Italy has been the gateway of the Mediterranean, but this door now needs to be slammed shut because we have a duty to defend our citizens and guarantee their safety†said Italy’s Minister for Community Policies, Andrea Ronchi. “We shall punish illegal immigrants, irregular stays by foreigners who commit crimes on our territory. And this is our full right as a nation.†Is it? In the view of various “human rights†organizations, European countries do not have the right to defend our borders or citizens. That would violate the “human rights†of those who colonize our countries and harass our children in the streets of our cities. We have a duty to die, to dismantle our nations and applaud our own annihilation because we are white and thus have no legitimate reason to exist. We’re a big, fat and stupid cow to be milked by others. FEMIPAccording to a survey from April 2008 funded by the Facility for Euro-Mediterranean Investment and Partnership (FEMIP), the funds transferred from Europe to eight southern Mediterranean countries (Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey) represent between 2% and 20% of the gross domestic product of these countries. The incomes received by immigrants and then sent to their countries of origin are a resource on which the governments in the Arab and Muslim world are becoming increasingly dependant. The European Union wants this trend to continue and expand, and Muslims will intimidate anybody who challenges these pro-Arab policies. - - - - - - - - - In May 2008, Libya threatened “catastrophic repercussions to her relations with Italy†if Roberto Calderoli was once again appointed minister. The threat came from the son of leader Muammar Gheddafi, Saif El Islam, who thundered against the Northern League representative. As Minister of Reforms in 2006, reminded a note from the Rome office of the Libyan news agency, Calderoli in the course of a TV interview had showed a T-shirt “with offensive drawings against Islam†(one of the Danish Muhammad cartoons), a gesture which sparked protests with hundreds of angry demonstrators attacking the Italian consulate in the Libyan city of Bengasi. The final toll of the bitter clashes with the police forces which had been marshalled to protect the consulate was 11 dead and 35 wounded. It is highly revealing how, whenever a Western country appears to be serious about restricting mass immigration, human rights organizations, various international NGOs, UN and EU agencies as well as some national governments will make common cause with Muslims and immigrant groups in exerting pressure on this country to abandon its defenses in the name of “human rights, international law, tolerance and anti-racism.†I have my issues with Mr. Berlusconi, but whatever his other faults, he is not a dhimmi. His predecessor, the Socialist PM and former EUrocrat Romano Prodi, who was in the process of turning Italy into a leader of the Axis of Appeasement together with his Spanish Socialist colleague Zapatero, is a passionate cheerleader of Eurabia. Muslims see the distinction, too. In June 2008, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and prominent Italian journalist Magdi Allam, an Egyptian-born former Muslim who converted to Christianity in April 2008, were the targets of death threats posted on a popular Islamic website, said to be close to the Jihadist organization al-Qaeda. In an article in the Corriere della Sera, Allam stated that we cannot allow reality to be determined by the negators of Jihad, the deniers of Israel or the apologists for Palestinian terrorism. He warned against granting legitimacy to Al-Azhar in Egypt, the most prestigious institution for sharia and religious matters in the Sunni Islamic world: Let it be clearly understood, once and for all, that Al Azhar is a fortress of Muslim extremism and of Muslim terrorism. Let the Minister of the Interior send back to their countries of origin those Imams who are submissive adherents of this ideology. Let the Minister of Foreign Affairs clearly denounce the agreement of cooperation signed on June 15, 2005, between Al Azhar and five Italian universities, signed by Ambassador Antonio Badini with the rector of Al Azhar, Sheikh Ahmad al Tayyeb, who on April 4, 2002 said: ‘The solution to Israeli terror can be found in suicide attacks that will sow terror in the hearts of the enemies of Islam.’ Let everyone stop legitimizing the ideologues of the Muslim Brotherhood, beginning with Tariq Ramadan. Let the state, and local institutions, stop handing over the mosques to UCOII. The lesson we must all learn from the latest scandal emanating from the Grand Mosque of Rome, is that before accrediting any Muslim as an official interlocutor, it is necessary to make him subscribe to a declaration in which he publicly recognizes the right of Israel to exist and condemns unequivocally Palestinian terrorism. There are thus some encouraging signs of resistance in Italy. What is so special about this country? I have heard suggestions that political correctness and self-loathing is a “Protestant disease†and that Catholic countries are less prone to contracting it. I am willing to consider that possibility, but I haven’t seen any convincing evidence for it so far. In central Europe, there is growing (but still insufficient) popular resistance to Islamization in predominantly Catholic Austria, but more so in traditionally Protestant Switzerland, which has a history of decentralized power and an armed citizenry. I am not convinced that Catholic Belgium is healthier than Calvinist the Netherlands. Yes, the Dutch have until recently been notoriously politically correct and ardent supporters of Multiculturalism, but they have also produced individuals such as Theo van Gogh, Geert Wilders and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Dutch political elites are for the most part spineless appeasers or active collaborators, but the Belgian political elites are among the worst in the Western world. My impression of Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Croats and others is more favorable, but this is shared with their Orthodox cousins in the eastern half of Europe, who have become more resistant to Multiculturalism and cultural Marxism by living for so long under Communist rule. The former subjects of the Ottoman Empire in southeast Europe, the Serbs, the Greeks, the Bulgarians and for some time the Hungarians and the Romanians still have real memories of the horrors of Islam and have no intention of returning to it. Europe: DenmarkIn northern Europe, I cannot give a good explanation as to why Lutheran Denmark is significantly stronger than Lutheran Norway, Finland, and Sweden, culturally speaking closely related nations. I’ve even heard suggestions that Scandinavians are “genetically weak†and thus receptive to ideological nonsense. This suggestion fails to explain why the Norse people, genetically speaking almost identical to modern Scandinavians, were not particularly known for their meekness or self-loathing during the Viking Age, and again, it fails to explain the sometimes considerable differences among the Nordic nations today. I suspect one of the causes is that Denmark has enjoyed a healthier culture of debate and tolerance for public dissent than have Norway or Finland, with Sweden being a particularly nasty example of the long-term effects of ideological indoctrination and suppression of dissent. Although very far from being a paradise, tiny Denmark has a genuine debate about immigration that would be respectable for a much larger country. Britain is more than ten times as large, yet is currently one of the most pathetic nations of the Western world. Exactly why, I don’t know. Perhaps the Catholic Irish are more resistant than the British, but there are many reasons for this. It is possible that Britain has particularly treasonous political elites, but I do suspect that the British, the source of the first truly global lingua franca, suffer from a post-Imperial Stress Syndrome. I hope the Germans will wake up and smell the coffee; they have no obligation to surrender their country to alien and inferior cultures, but they may be too weighed down by their history to play a leading role in the European resistance just yet. Possibly the worst country in Europe, demographically and ideologically, is France, but this has more to do with the destruction of its traditional, Catholic identity than with anything else. The French Revolution made France into a culturally wounded nation, and the legacy of French rule in North Africa and Syria has left the French with the illusion that they “understand†Arabs and Muslims, and now want to use them as a tool to prevent France’s long-term decline into irrelevance as a Great Power. Sadly, the French also try to export their self-destructive ideological stupidity to other countries through the European Union. Oriana FallaciCatholic Portugal and Spain have not yet emerged as the bulwarks against Islamization they probably should be, considering their history. I am particularly disappointed with the Spanish. Out of all the larger countries in Western Europe, Italy currently ranks as the healthiest one, if we ignore the appallingly low birth rates it shares with the rest of Europe. Why Italians are more resistant to colonization through mass immigration is uncertain, but they are. Maybe it’s the legacy of the great writer Oriana Fallaci, who during the final years of her life did more to wake people up to the Islamic threat than almost any other individual in the entire Western world. Or maybe it’s simply because the Italians, in contrast to so many other Westerners, still love and appreciate their own culture and have no intention of surrendering it to anybody. It is inconceivable to write European history from the Roman Empire until today and leave out the massive Italian contributions. Those visiting Rome will be struck by the immense visual power of its buildings, paintings and cultural monuments, stretching back hundreds and in many cases thousands of years. The long-term survival of these invaluable monuments, a treasure that belongs to all of mankind, is directly threatened by Muslim immigration. Hugh Fitzgerald of Jihad Watch likes to say that a single Italian city such as Venice or Florence contains more great works of art and architecture than has been produced in the entire Islamic world during almost 1400 years. Even their critics will not deny that Italians have a love for art and design, for food, wine, and sports and for enjoying life. After reading about the history of science and technology, my impression is that their contributions to commerce and science, too, are more important than we in northern Europe often give them credit for. It has become custom to attribute the rebirth of Western science to the legacy of “Arabic and Islamic science,†whatever that is. Yet the Renaissance did not take place in Spain or Portugal, which certainly had access to Arab writings, but in northern Italy, which also had extensive contacts with the Byzantine Empire. Likewise, it is common to attribute the major breakthroughs in Western Europe to the surpluses generated by “colonialism.†However, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Germans outperformed the French and often the British in technological ingenuity and industrial output, despite the fact that the latter ruled much of the world whereas the Germans had only marginal and insignificant colonies. In southern Europe, Italians, in my view, outperformed the Spanish in science despite the fact that the latter held extensive colonies for centuries whereas the Italians did not. The commercial revolution which created the seeds for Western capitalism took place in the Italian city-states, not in the more centralized and bureaucratic Spanish state. Both Italians and non-Italians often make jokes about Italian bureaucracy or lack of such. Italy is definitely a less “efficient,†in the meaning of “bureaucratically organized,†country than, say, Britain or Sweden, but these are hardly nations to emulate today. Contemporary Britain makes George Orwell’s 1984 look tame, and Sweden is a country where native girls get gang raped by immigrants on a regular basis, yet where the natives cannot criticize this or even talk about it because that might sound racist. Throughout much of the Western world, the state-sponsored bureaucracy is no longer there to look after our individual or national interests; it is there to force us to surrender our countries to hostile aliens in the name of dangerous, utopian ideologies promoted by unaccountable transnational organs which do not have our interests in mind. In this situation, reluctance to allow faceless bureaucrats to run your life is a blessing, not a curse, and the ingrained Italian distrust of bureaucrats is probably one of the reasons why Italy is among the leading European nations in resisting unilateral cultural surrender. Italy is by no means immune to the problems affecting everybody else in the Western world, but her odds are better than those of several other countries. Through contact with Italians, I get the impression of a country whose national heart is still beating, a people still in touch with their roots and believing that their cultural survival is desirable, which is no mean feat given the suicidal state of our civilization in this age. When observing Italy, I see sickness but also life; and where there is life, there is hope. Something tells me that the story of Italy as a vibrant heartland of European civilization still contains more chapters to be written. If we are lucky, her struggle for survival and rebirth can inspire others far beyond her borders. ............................................... COMMENTS: Blogger Zenster said... Let it be clearly understood, once and for all, that Al Azhar is a fortress of Muslim extremism and of Muslim terrorism. Halla-frickin'-leujah. At last someone with the ostiones to identify Islam's doctrinal seat of power for what it is, a cesspit of extremism and terrorism. Let the Minister of the Interior send back to their countries of origin those Imams who are submissive adherents of this ideology. Let the Minister of Foreign Affairs clearly denounce the agreement of cooperation signed on June 15, 2005, between Al Azhar and five Italian universities, signed by Ambassador Antonio Badini with the rector of Al Azhar, Sheikh Ahmad al Tayyeb, who on April 4, 2002 said: ‘The solution to Israeli terror can be found in suicide attacks that will sow terror in the hearts of the enemies of Islam.’ The profound hypocrisy of how Muslims continue referring to Israel's counter-jihad as "terror" or "terrorism" is emblematic of Islam's total moral inversion. Let everyone stop legitimizing the ideologues of the Muslim Brotherhood, beginning with Tariq Ramadan. It's about time a larger effort was made to out this mouthpiece for Islamic jihad. There's a good reason why Ramadan is #14 on my Top 40 Terrorist Hitlist™. Let the state, and local institutions, stop handing over the mosques to UCOII. The lesson we must all learn from the latest scandal emanating from the Grand Mosque of Rome, is that before accrediting any Muslim as an official interlocutor, it is necessary to make him subscribe to a declaration in which he publicly recognizes the right of Israel to exist and condemns unequivocally Palestinian terrorism. Good as it sounds, it won't make any difference unless there are harsh penalties for violating that same declaration. Taqiyya must be recognized for the ultimate ethical and moral crime that it is and used to tar Islam for all time. The long-term survival of these invaluable monuments, a treasure that belongs to all of mankind, is directly threatened by Muslim immigration. Considering how many of the Vatican's treasures were stolen from other countries or paid for with the loot of conquistadors, such a notion has merit. The only problem being that the instant you include Muslims as communal owners of said art, they will assume the right to destroy it as they see fit. So, no, these cultural treasures DO NOT belong to all mankind. Islam has no right to them and never will. Hugh Fitzgerald of Jihad Watch likes to say that a single Italian city such as Venice or Florence contains more great works of art and architecture than has been produced in the entire Islamic world during almost 1400 years. Without ever having seen Hugh's expression of this idea, it is one that I have advanced many times here at GoV. It is one reason why I am unwilling to see a single major Western metropolis annihilated, even if every Muslim must perish in order to avoid it. Quite frankly, throughout its entire history, Islam has brought little else to the table but constant bloodshed and human misery on an unparalleled scale. While I would rather see Islam disappear with all Muslims left behind intact, I have few illusions about what it will take to make Islam go extinct. And you can rest assured that Islam's total extinction is a top priority for whatever part of this world wants to survive. Muslims have guaranteed this, regardless of what the West wants or does not want. Italy is by no means immune to the problems affecting everybody else in the Western world, but her odds are better than those of several other countries. Just the fact that Italy's head of state could utter the above quotations places the Italians far ahead of any Americans who continue to swallow George Bush's "Religion of Peace" treason. 7/09/2008 3:06 PM ............................................... Blogger Avery Bullard said... I'll take a wild stab at this. >From what I've read and heard about Italians they are very locally orientated ('oriented' to Americans). Maybe the extreme localism and particularism that prevented Italians from being broken down and nationalised (read: homogenised) by the Italian state has innoculated them to globalist memes. It shouldn't be surprising that in countries where the particular local and regional cultures gave way to a general national conformism that acceptance of globalism would simply be the next step. 7/09/2008 5:25 PM ............................................... Blogger Whiskey said... Italians have been bedeviled by local ties, as Avery Bullard says, localism, and family-orientation, friendship networks, at best patronage and at worst, organized crime, that has retarded the development of an efficient state, and provided alternative civic organizations (often impromptu kin-networks). It's likely the presence of these alternative organizations and networks to the state ones determine how resistant a nation is to PC and Multiculturalism and being told what to do by elites determined to bring lots of cheap Muslim immigrants to lower labor costs. Denmark, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Eastern Europe (a requirement under Communism) seem to have robust alternative networks to that of the state. Britain, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Finland, etc. seem to have localism, and local-oriented social organizations crowded out. Britain is instructive -- two World Wars seem to have erased all the private, charitable and social organizations that existed there before 1914. It's striking to read of Victorian literature detailing all these charitable and private organizations, including nanny placement organizations, merchant seamen, bricklayers associations, mutual benevolent societies, etc. that seem to have been swept up by total mobilization in the two wars. That Britain, post-Franco Spain, the Scandinavian nations excepting Denmark, etc. had generally good government (Dalrymple's observation of Britain vs. Italy) led to the crowding out of private networks and no social brakes on government captured by elites. France? I don't know. I think the countryside French love being French, French food, French culture, and have no desire to give it up, or apologize for anything. But the elites are a different matter, and have for the most part post De Gaulle ran a relatively efficient government that more recently crowded out private networks. I will admit, I like French culture, cuisine (for the most part), art, and of course, wine. As I do the Italians. 7/09/2008 6:20 PM ............................................... Blogger claudia said... I agree with Whiskey's comment. We Italians always complain about our bureaucracy and state organization, but their inability to control the country is a blessing in many ways. I always believed that. There are places in Italy that are difficult to be reached not only by trains or airplanes, but even by car. And, of course, isolation helps create new organizational structures (the Church, criminal groups, family "tribes"). In some popular neighborhoods in Rome, where violence and abuse by immigrants reached a high level, groups of Italian citizens, connected somehow with criminal groups, organized raids against these immigrants. After these raids, I heard popular Romans comment "Oh, now they (the immigrants dealing with criminal activities) don't dare lift up their heads any more". The same happened and is still happening in Naples with gypsies. I would like to add other two aspects that, in my opinion, are somehow helping Italy to survive to Islamization of Europe. The first one is that Italy has also a big immigration from Eastern countries (especially Romania, Ukraine and Russia): these people are mostly good people who simply want a better life and they have a strong sense of belonging to Europe, of belonging to a higher civilization. They don't want to come to Italy to change its traditions or culture but they are eager to adapt and to defend this new culture that they mostly like. And they are traditionally - and for historical reasons - very anti-Islamic. And this helps a lot. Last but not least, the Papacy. Even if we mostly lost our Catholic faith, Italy is still a country full of religious groups and organizations. Many of these are blindly pro-appeasement, but there are many other that keep our soul and traditions alive (traditional songs, Rosary prayed in Latin, monasteries and convents having a new "renaissance", etc). In particular, Pope Benedict XVI. He is a great German intellectual, a man who loves Italy more than we Italians do (Magdi Allam is another example of a non-Italian who loves Italy more than Italians do) and who is "fighting" a personal battle to re-conquer the soul of this beloved country. If he and we succeed to recover our soul - which is deeply Catholic - we can save ourselves and, perhaps, help Europe. In fact, even if in the last 40 years we forgot it, we are now starting to realize that if Italy produced all that incredible culture it was because we were imbued of Catholicism (even those artists who were not religious were still imbued with Catholic humanism) and of its fascinating vision of man. Dante docet. 7/09/2008 7:37 PM ............................................... Blogger IoshkaFutz said... I think Avery Bullard's wild stab is correct. Italy is many countries. A Milanese is closer to an Austrian than to a Sicilian, A torinese to a Frenchman than a Calabrese. When I go to my Roman caffé / bar at night and Neapolitans truckdrivers enter, I don't understand a word, or rather, just barely enough to know they are Italians. The rest could be Ancient Greek. They, the Neapolitans have their own musical genres, theater, and even cinema... all still thriving. They'll defend the legacy of the Borboni when Naples was a Capital city. They never really digested the Piedmontese invasion. The Romans instead have, also because when Rome became the Capital city and Mussolini brought cinema to Rome (he is responsible for cinecittà ) Turin was marginalized. It was Italy's great fortune to have many capital and in some cases "imperial" cities: Rome Turin, Milan, Venice, Naples, etc. Different kingdoms meant different and richly different cultures.... spread across a land with three seas and two mountain chains and a suny climate. Years ago I went around the country, accompanying my brother, a stand-up commedian. Emilia-Romagna is a officially a single region, yet the material that went great in Romagna, bombed in Emilia and had to be changed. Milan always did okay, Tuscany to this day is a mystery, and the South, more than a change, required a whole radically different mentality. A sort of mind warp. But even a breakdown by regions is not correct, as Avery says: she's locally oriented and each locale has its specialities (half of them blessedly based on pork and wine). This is the land of "campanilismo" local pride, parochialism. Allegiances are to family, friends and partners and the State comes in at around 27th place. There are no real American-style founding fathers to venerate. It's a mishmash: the torinese will be selling engines to BMW. Go down the boot and some people are sleeping with their donkeys. Brescia sells state of the art trash converters to the USA; go down a ways and trash is burning in the streets. With all these regions, every Italian is a "foreigner" the minute he steps out of his region. So making fun of people is almost like treating them like brothers. It's my pet theory that because of the laws governing pasta (overcook it and you're dead) Italians have a sense of "orthodoxy"... that things have to be "just so" or anyhow within certain bounds. A stew you can cook twenty minutes more, or twenty minutes less... but pasta has a low margin of error. If you want to see the impossible side of Italy, go to a Roman condominium meeting. My wife (German) and I attended one and gave up. 5 hours and absolutely no discernible sense, just loud voices, laughter, threats, insinuations, blackmail... and everybody kissing each other good night. I dreamt of Sweden where imaginably it's all done rationally in fifteen minutes and if there's a new gate to be installed, there's nobody calling a brother-in-law. If you want to see the heavenly side, go to the local bar-café (especially in Naples, but even here in Rome) and ask for something they can't possibly have, like juice of cactus with a dash of fig peel and truffles. Then enjoy the theater. You'll get an answer that will keep you laughing the rest of the day. Or just go to a small gas station and make fun of the guy's shirt, suggesting that he should dress better with all the money he's making from the oil price hikes. It's a joy to be told to go to hell, barefoot and row the boat with your grandmother's suitcases! A country of charlatans and comedians, which for a twenty year period, an ex-Socialist called a "popolo of poets, saints, heroes and navigators" in which everything that is beautiful, tasty, shiny, stylish is either 1st, 2nd or 3rd in the world (wine, cheeses, flower arrangements, furniture, hairstyles, shoes, jewelry, speedboats, lingerie) and where everything serious (pensions, schools, hospitals) rates much lower (though vastly improved over the years). The Italians are painfully aware of it and that is why if you want to be a successful TV comedian in this country, make fun of Italy and Italians, all of them, even the particular "race" in front of you. They'll love you. In the rest of the world the crowds line up, in Italy the lines crowd up. PC is only possible in those countries of "high and remote" personal dignity and sense of privacy. There is little "gravitas" here, except when absolutely, positively necessary... and then it reaches melodrammatic proportions. They keep trying to train the people to be more PC, but have gratefully been unsuccessful (possibly because the trainers only got the job through friends and brother-in-laws and so don't take it too seriously). One can understand why a Gramsci might've even made sense in Italy, why he felt it was so important to take over the culture. Precisely because there was so damn much of it and oftentimes it WAS a problem. Even criminals have their own culture. Even curse words are cultural events, not short and snappy like in English, but real, long and delicious. And the leftwing was even successful at it for awhile, but always an "Italian" leftwing, a charlatan sieze-the-day leftwing, that eventually came up with a "third way" Prosciutto and Melone Communism. Well of course it was successful after the Fascists with all their "Believe, Obey, Fight!" and "The Duce is always Right!" "Books and Muskets!" posters dragged Italy into a war. I often look at Mussolini's declaration of war against the USA and Great Britain and wonder what some people see in Fascism. I look at the oceanic crowds, all reacting as one, performing celebrative gymnastic exercises, and all cheering even when their set-jaw fearless leader announced hostilities against two super-powers. "Our wonderful but woefully unprepared and not particularly combative mishmash of peoples are gonna fight America and GB!" Viva! Viva il Duce! Viva il Fascismo! "We'll be suffering hunger, and your children are gonna die!" Viva il Duce! And I always stop to look at war memorials. Usually there are a helluva lot of names for WWI (even in small towns), then much fewer for WW 2 and then about as many (especially up north) for those "lost in Russia". The fearless leader sent them in flimsy clothing to wage war against Russia. A beautiful thing the State, the State, the State! Actually if there's a moment of Italy that was truly magic it was the reconstruction period, approx. from 1948 to 68. More was done in that period and in a far saner and happier spirit (under the Christian Democrats, a party practically invented by Pope Paul VI, when he was simply "Don Battista") than under all the wild, eventually senseless and ultimately murderous enthusiasm whipped up by the Fascists (also through their ceaseless, non-stop, forever, ubiquitous, enough-already propaganda). It gets kinda scary when everything, all art, architecture, journalism.... right on down to the method of dating, has to be Fascistic. Not dating girls, but dating books and magazines. Along with the Christian calendar date, there was also the year of Mussolini's rise to power (in sexy and macho Roman numerals of course). But it's not that simple. The good that Mussolini did, the schools, technical universities, the minimal sense of the state, the city planning, the spread of industrialization, the swamp-clearing and self-sufficiency in food production, and the wonderful Fascistic style egalitarianism, no doubt helped Italy. The Italians were relieved for the end of the madness, but they had some discipline at last (some discipline) and now they could enjoy it to the happy beats of Glen Miller or Renato Carosone instead of all the "We will crack the kidneys of Greece" military marches. I think Fascism can work, like the National Guard can work in times of riot and upheaval, but for the rest it's an insult to intelligence. It was in Italy anyway. It became a farce, because Mussolini himself was a farce. Probably Balbo, the aviation hero, would have done a better job, but his plane crashed and some say he was done in by the Duce (as some say Castro was behind Che Guevara's elimination). Others say that the ideologue of Fascism, the philosopher, Giovanni Gentile was also done in by the Fascists themselves (or partisans, or Allied agents). As a "good" Fascist, he was calling for national reconciliation and so all sides had good reason to bump him off. So in conclusion there's no country like Italy. And if for any reason you think it's time for the national guard and you look admiringly at Italian Fascism, well you won't get it, not if you're in a cold, serious, 15 minute condominium meeting, reliable, Protestant country. You'll get something much more serious and most likely even more dangerous, though it depends on the strongman. Pre-war Mussolini hardly had anyone killed, just a few. Most of his political enemies were made to drink Castor Oil (so that they'd shit in their pants) and then were arrested, or banished or sent to do time in out-of-the-way places: islands, or small isolated towns in the South. Gramsci himself wrote his best (worst) stuff in a Fascist jail. And under Fascism, there WAS a modicum of intellectual freedom, but only in the Universities. Certainly there was more freedom than in present day Little Green Footballs. First God, (I know the invisible spaghetti monster is a drag) then the State. The National Guard is fine, but you don't want it led by someone who confuses himself with God more than necessary. 7/09/2008 10:31 PM ............................................... Defiant Lion said... Excellent Fjordman, thank you. I think it boils down to this: The stronger the nationalist movement, the greater the chances of a nation surviving the threat posed by mass immigration. The stronger the socialist - i.e. marxist - movement, the greater the chances for a nation to be colonised. The biggest threat to a nation isn't Islam it is marxism and it is marxism that is destroying the west, not Islam. But why on earth is Amnesty International mouthing off about immigration and human rights? They were founded as an organisation to help prisoners of conscience. Seems like the marxists have taken over this NGO as well. 7/10/2008 4:51 AM [NOTE--Amnesty Int'l. has a long left-leaning history, to say the least. Their history is particularly strong on excoriating the U.S. and Israel for "human rights violations," while overlooking those of more brutal bent. See, for instance, http://www.discover <http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6185> thenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6185 --J.] ............................................... Sagunto said... @Fjordman, Another fine piece of work Fjodman (can't wait to get a taste of your upcoming essay at beer-history ;-) Though sometimes it seems that in passing, some statements about different nations tend towards somewhat of a "folkloramic" display, i.e.: [quote= FjM] "..I am not convinced that Catholic Belgium is healthier than Calvinist the Netherlands. Yes, the Dutch have until recently been notoriously politically correct and ardent supporters of Multiculturalism, but they have also produced individuals such as Theo van Gogh, Geert Wilders and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Dutch political elites are for the most part spineless appeasers or active collaborators, but the Belgian political elites are among the worst in the Western world.." Excuse me? "Calvinist" the Netherlands? Some calvinist activists (politicians, historians) have tried to paint that distorted picture in centuries past, for sure.. But here's some info, to refute this spurious claim, that apparently still seems to hold water abroad. The Dutch Roman Catholic minority after the protestant "reformation" was always substantial in the Northern Netherlands (today's Netherlands), i.e. about 30% and sometimes even more. Besides that, there always was a large group of people, who never took much interest in religion altogether. Anyway, presenting todays Netherlands as "Calvinist" or even "Protestant" is falsified by the facts (2006): - 27,0% Rooms-Katholiek, - 15,7% Protestant, - 1,0% overig christelijk, - 5,8% Moslim, - 2,3% overige religies, - 48,2% geen gezindte [No need for transl. I guess; the 48,2% reports "no religious affiliation"] 15,7% Protestant, i.e. the "calvinist" contingency is even smaller than this figure suggests, because protestantism consists of many different (some lutheran, i.e. not necessarily calvinist) denominations. Kind regs from Amsterdam, Sag. N.b.: As examples of "calvinist" Holland, it's a bit unfortunate that neither one of the individuals you mentioned has anything to do with calvinism: both Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Theo van Gogh subscribe(d) to atheïsm and Geert Wilders is a Roman Catholic (as was the late Pim Fortuyn). The prime political appeasers of Islam in the Netherlands are protestants: prime dhimmister Balkenende, minister of Justice Mr. Donner and the social-democrat and minister of Finance Mr. Bos. They are i.m.o. far from adequately described - or taken seriously enough - by calling them "spineless" appeasers. Apart from appeasers, they are, in quite an arrogant and dangerous way, convinced of their moral superiority like so many elitist social engineers, be it christian or social democrats, and they are utterly convinced they can use religion in their hubristic efforts to remake society into something more to their fancy, while picking up the desired votes of the Muslim clientele in the process. Meanwhile, they zealously mistake islam for (nothing but) a religion (that deserves "respect" like any other religion). I'd call their mindset: the terror of "good intentions". 7/10/2008 9:34 AM ............................................... Blogger Zenster said... <snip> What will we have, a society where Michelangelo's "David" would be sledgehammered into gravel or a culture that can withstand the onslaught of arrivists [sic] like Andre Serrano with his "Piss Christ" and Marcel Duchamp's idiotic "Fountain"? All this, even as the Louvre accepts a $20,500,000 donation from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal to establish an Islamic art wing when most Muslims would hurl their prized "Mona Lisa" onto a bonfire heaped with oils of the Old Masters. My mind is already made up. 7/10/2008 9:32 PM [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. 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