After October 7th, the West will never be the same.
The good thing about the West is that we are (still) afforded the privilege of choice: to fight for our democratic and moral superiority, or to allow it to evaporate.
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October 7th dramatically changed the West, but not for the reasons you think.
If you study history, you quickly realize that it is events like these — seemingly random, far away, siloed, inconsequential — that empower extremists and create a domino effect for years to come.
That said, it is not as if the West was in great shape before October 7th. Western cities, for one thing, become increasingly “progressive.” And with that, more Muslim. One German recently told me that the city center of his hometown is like being in Baghdad. As in the capital of Iraq.
“When I was an extremist Islamist fundamentalist, I would only vote left,” said one Muslim. “Why is that? I saw them as very stupid. I would fear the conservatives because they come with principle. That’s not someone they can brainwash. But the Left, I know they have no values and no principles to begin with. I dare you to find one Islamic extremist that votes for Donald Trump.”1
“They give their vote to the leftist who wants to run around in Pride parades. Islamic extremists are against gays and homosexuals and transgenders, but they want the Left to go and get busy with that. They want them to go speak about the climate, go speak about abortion, go kill yourselves, go do that,” he added.
What is the fundamentalist and jihadi agenda for the West? The future of the West “has to be Muslim,” this Muslim man said. “This is the correct religion. This is the religion that all of humanity needs to be a part of Islam. And we will not stop until it enters every home.”
I get it, though, many Muslims are peaceful, law-abiding, society-contributing, non-proselytizing, West-appreciating folks. But there is a second side to this coin: Many are not.
October 7th has emboldened the not so peaceful, not so law-abiding, not so society-contributing, not so non-proselytizing, and not so West-appreciating Muslims and their progressive “friends” — all of whom are more interested in burning down the West than in, for instance, promoting decent policies or “justice” for “Palestine.”
In San Francisco a few days ago, for example, “pro-Palestinian” activists marched through the streets and spray-painted “death to Israel and the U.S. of America” on nearby stores. Yet most reasonable people, because they are reasonable, cannot believe that the goal of the far Left is to end the West.
During the last few months, we have seen the escalation of “activist” messaging go from relatively reasonable criticism about Israel, to both implicit and explicit calls for the complete annihilation of the Jewish state. Incitement, violent rhetoric, and rallying for attacks on Jews are not just coming from the far Right, as they historically have. They are now the bread and butter of the far Left.
According to these leftists’ calculus, when 44,000-plus terror attacks are committed in nearly 70 countries since 9/11 — exclusively by Islamic extremists — not a single Muslim is to blame. But when Israel retaliates against Hamas in Gaza and, in doing so, regrettably kills innocent people, all Jews across the world are to blame.
As such, London is now the most antisemitic metropolis in the West. It is not only hostile towards Jews, but also towards the British. When even Big Ben and a statue of Winston Churchill are not out of bounds, nobody can feel safe. And San Francisco, Paris, Amsterdam, New York City, Johannesburg, Sydney, Toronto, and Chicago are not far behind.
Of course, the space between antisemitism and moral confusion is a little hard to detect. We know why a person cannot distinguish between collateral damage in a necessary, existential war and deliberate acts of genocidal sadism that are celebrated as a religious sacrament by a death cult. The far Left (also known as “progressives”) has become a Marxist, communist dumpster fire that is equally dangerous compared to psychopathic autocrats with a far-Right base.
For those in the crowd who cannot hear criticism of the progressive-infested Biden administration because it triggers thoughts of Donald Trump being president again, I understand. But the solution is not to vote “anti-Trump” while simultaneously keeping quiet about or turning a blind eye to the far-Left insurgency in the Democratic party — which, oh by the way, Biden is enabling.
As the famous leftist talk show host John Stewart recently said: “The stakes of this election don’t make Donald Trump’s opponent less subject to scrutiny. It actually makes him more subject to scrutiny.”2
To add insult to injury, internet companies — such as Facebook, Instagram, Google, TikTok, and OpenAI (which have the largest, most immediately accessible audiences) — are increasingly run by far-Left folks who habitually inject their treacherous politics and dogmas into these products.
This means that millions of people every day are being coopted and indoctrinated, many without real awareness, via a self-fulfilling flywheel that is increasingly strengthened and reinforced by always-on, autonomous algorithms.
The internet, of course, does not live in a silo; it drives people into Western streets who are “literally tripping over themselves in their eagerness to demonstrate that they cannot distinguish between those who intentionally kill babies, and those who inadvertently kill them, having taken great pains to avoid killing them, while defending themselves against the very people who have just intentionally tortured and killed innocent men, women, and yes, babies,” as philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris described it.3
“Whether you’re an antisemite or just an apologist for atrocity is probably immaterial,” added Harris. “The crucial point is that you are dangerously confused about the moral norms and political sympathies that make life in this world worth living.”
These antisemites and Muslim apologists then elect officials in the West, which pretend that they have a clue about deeply complex, historical geopolitic issues like the Israel-Hamas war. They make absurd, completely irrelevant statements and cute, nicely worded social media posts that effectively encourage their constituents to continue their pursuit of burning down the West.
Again, say what you want about Donald Trump’s propaganda, but the “progressive” propaganda coming out of Europe, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and the U.S. is equally deplorable and threatening.
In his 1993 essay, “Defining Deviancy Down,” the late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan explained what we are witnessing in the West today. He concluded that, as the amount of deviant behavior increases beyond the levels that society can “afford to recognize,” we have been redefining deviancy so as to exempt conduct we used to stigmatize, while also quietly raising the “normal” level in categories where behavior is abnormal by any earlier standard.4
The reasons behind this, he said, were altruism, opportunism, and denial — but the result was the same: an acceptance of mental pathology, broken families, and crime as a fact of life.
This sociological pathology is now pervasive, contributing to the “soft bigotry of low expectations” that forms part of modern identity politics in the West. And, as foreign policy becomes increasingly conflated with the culture wars, this pathology has now expanded beyond the West’s borders, to places like Israel and Gaza.
The result is that the application of “progressive” moral double-standards is becoming a key decision-making factor in international politics, including but not limited to the West’s handling of this Israel-Hamas war. We have produced a dialogue in which deviancy is grossly limited for Jews and Israel, and extraordinarily expansive for Arabs and Muslims.
Immediately, for instance, people essentially forgot that the most pronounced display of deviancy in this war was perpetrated by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists. Celebrations ensued, not only by Palestinians but also by many Arabs, Muslims, and their “friends” on Western educational campuses and in Western cities.
“Top university administrators displayed a shocking level of moral confusion in response,” wrote Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. “The three Women of the Ivies could not even take courage before Congress simply to say: ‘This is not who we are. We condemn this.’”5
The good thing about the West is that we are (still) afforded the privilege of choice: to fight for our democratic and moral superiority, or to allow it to evaporate by looking the other way, underrating these issues, or simply not caring enough to do anything about it.
If we do any of these evaporating-enabling things, we ought to at least acknowledge that every time the West lowers the standards of appeasing or enabling extremists on all sides, we are contributing to hammering the nails in its coffin.
This is also a strand of moral confusion. And, as Ayaan Hirsi Ali asserted, “it is dangerous — suicidally so.”
Wall Street Apes on X
“The Daily Show.” Comedy Central.
Harris, Sam. “Making Sense with Sam Harris.”
“Defining Deviancy Down.” The American Scholar. Vol. 62, No. 1 (Winter 1993), pp. 17-30.
“The West has a deviancy problem.” UnHerd.
This is a well done assessment. Everyone in the west should read this. Muslim hate of western values is real. If they don't kill us all first, they will outpopulate us with their staggering birthrate.
The Extremists (Right, Left and Islamist ) are using The West's Freedom to speak without fear, against The West itself. Lenin himself said that give a Capitalist enough rope and he will hang himself. The radical Islamists are simply copying this for themselves. But The West is not going to go down so easily. For a start, the Achilles Heal of the Left and the Islamists who copy them, is what is REALLY behind all anti-Western Ideology, namely their JEALOUSY of the very high standards of living and Freedom we enjoy in Europe, America and White Australasia. Religious Islam and Communism does not even come close. Even China is rich, but not free. Yes, the goal of the far Left is to end the West. This is also true of the (Accelerationist) Neo-Nazis, and the Islamists. Jealousy is the motive. To show this is to Win!