Will You Come Into The Court?

 

February 14, 2009  

 

“No man is a fit judge in his own case.” — Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

in re: Geert Wilders v. The Koran  

 

England recently denied entry to Geert Wilders, a Dutch parliament member. Wilders had twice been invited by a British lord to visit England and preside over a showing of Fitna, his short documentary movie illustrating his belief that Islam incites to violence. England’s refusal to allow Wilders to enter the country is capitulation: to intimidation, to lies, to totalitarianism.  

 

But refusing Wilders is also a mistaken policy in another sense — it evinces the belief that the intentions of total domination can be appeased. But that change of inclinations has never taken place; nay, on the contrary, we see time and again that appeasement accelerates the inclination to aggression. That is, the same old ancient mistake is being made once again: the mistake of believing there is no difference between the totalitarian world and the non-totalitarian world.  

 

But there is indeed a difference, and we will continue to ignore it at our peril. What works in the non-totalitarian world will not work in the totalitarian world. Appeasement in the non-totalitarian world can work at times, if there is a normal, healthy strand of self-interest that can be reached in the aggressor. But in dealing with a totalitarian movement, however, the aggressor has no normal self-interest that can be reached — they don’t live in the world we do, a totalitarian movement does not care about its immediate self-interest in terms of this world.  

 

Such a movement is only concerned about the perceived eternality of the ideology, its interpretation of history, that is, and about what can further that ideology. We are playing into their hands by not recognizing this — we assume, incorrectly, that they will respond to our cooperation with their own cooperation. They will not. To try to appeal to a normal self-interest in them is to assume they are non-totalitarian, and not steeped in ideology, an ideology that claims the world as its property. That appeal to a non-existent self-interest will fail because the totalitarian movement will seize upon the appeasement as yet another gain for the ideology.

 

We project onto them our own psychological state, that is, our desire for peace, and we project our own non-totalitarian version of personal interest. But appeasement cannot work — totalitarians don’t have any motives rooted in this world that can be reached! They want the world, in short, and will not settle for any compromise or meeting-of-the-minds — there will be no budging on their part since their goals are beyond any understandable state of consciousness. They have put an ideology above reality, to an unreachable degree.  

 

Finally, Wilders was right to fly into Heathrow, to make the British government go on record, publicly, as an uncomprehending foe of freedom.

 

Tony Downing