Hanson Live On France via Hewitt

[Annie]

http://www.radioblogger.com/#001140

Victor Davis Hanson on Muslim violence in France and Europe.

HH: I'm now joined by Victor Davis Hanson, military historian extraordinaire, and you can read him every Friday at National Review Online. Victor, good to have you back on the program.

VDH: Glad to be here, Hugh.

HH: You passed through Paris recently. When?

VDH: Yesterday.

HH: And did you get a sense of crisis as you walked around De gaulle Airport?

VDH: I did. I've never been through more security. It was...I think I had to show my passport on five different occasions.

HH: Did you go into the city at all, or was this just a change of planes?

VDH: No. I was on the way from Lisbon, so we flew over it in the morning, and then we landed. And I stayed two or three hours at the airport.

HH: What is your assessment of the significance of what is underway, the Francefada, or the intifada in France as we speak?

VDH: Well, there's two messages. One, that we in America can see where an unassimilated un-integrated a population goes, and where that leads to, it leads to a sort of an apartheid. And two, we can see what happens with an EU that can't create real economic growth, and has high stagnant unemployment of 10%. And three, this is I think a little bit more controversial, that we can see what happens to a society that doesn't ask the immigrant to integrate, and the immigrant doesn't feel that he has to integrate, or to learn the language, or learn the traditions of the West. So you have this Orwellian situation when thousands of people are rioting, you want to say let me get this straight. You do not want to go back to the country, an hour or two away by air, that you praise in the abstract, but you surely want to stay in a country that you want to burn down to the concrete. It doesn't make any sense, other than this strong, psychological urges of envy, jealousy, wanting something you can't have. Then, besides all that landscape, you get the impression there's something very wrong in Europe that has high unemployement and generous joblessness benefits, so that it allows people not really to have to go look for a job, because there isn't any, but to stay home and sort of nurse these wounds, with enough money to survive.

HH: Now Victor Davis Hanson, you've studied ancient civilizations, you've studied modern civilizations. When radicalization occurs, and you start having this economic dislocation, and these sorts of riots, does this provide fertile ground for the Islamist to go in and proselytize, and recruit?

VDH: Absolutely. So what's going to happen if you have a hundred thousand of these youths, there's going to be a small cohort. Who knows how many? One, two, three percent. But given the aggregate number of protesters is so large, you may find a hundred or two hundred or three hundred that will want to take this one step further. And if you're already now shooting and burning cars, what's to stop you? You've crossed that barrier, so what's to stop you from blowing up somebody in a...and it'll all depend on the reaction of the French police and the French government. If they can put this down and show that there's zero tolerance for this, then they can reverse the course a little bit. If they appease it, and try to find so-called root causes, which are there, but nevertheless, during a riot, you don't want talk about them.

HH: What's interesting is Chirac and de Villipin have not done anything significant like calling out the army. They are so far from zero tolerance. It's more like 95% tolerance.

VDH: Yeah. I was reading a lot of French papers, you know, when I was in Europe the last three weeks, and I think I would...I guess I would sum it up as just absolute bafflement. It's almost as if don't these people know that in the abstract, we help Hamas? Don't we know that we appease the Arab world? And why in the world since we are so pro-Arab, would they care whether they have a job in Paris or not? We are beyond criticism, because we're against the United States, and here they are attacking us, of all people.

HH: What took you to Europe, Victor? Were you there meeting with government officials? Or was this just leisure?

VDH: I met some, but I was mostly lecturing on some lecture tours on the ancient world.

HH: Are they aware of their demographic time bomb?

VDH: Oh, yeah. I just talked to an official in the Portuguese government. Absolutely. Whether it's...they're absolutely aware of it, and they're absolutely aware that it leads nowhere, because what it does is for the menial type of jobs that are necessary, it brings in immigrants, and yet those immigrants are not going to be assimilated. And then, we have all these stereotypes about Americans from Europe, and they dont...we're overweight, we're rude. You go to Europe, all of these people are smoking more than we are, they have smaller homes than we do, or they pay more for gas. They're ruder in line, and it's just...it's just a very different society than what the blue states on our coasts idolize.

HH: What's the consequence for American of this violence?

VDH: I think it's two-fold. I think it tells us that with our own un-policed borderd, and ten to fifteen million illegal aliens in the United States, that we can immigrate and assimilate them much better, because of our egalitarian, populist traditions, if we get serious. And we do not want to have a MECHA, ATZLAN, La Raza culture dividing us. That's one. And two, I think it should really bring a little sobriety about Europe. We've had this nostalgia, this idea that the Europeans have transcended all of our problems. In fact, economically, militarily, politically, socially, they're in a complete mess, and I got that the last three and half weeks.

HH: Now, you're a student of European history as well as ancient history, and Le Pen was the run-off loser to Chirac in the last French presidential election. He is an arch-right winger. Some people call him a fascist. He denies that. He has been relatively quiet. He was in Cypress last week, making some comments about this. What is the totalitarian, or the fascist temptation here? Do you worry about that as well?

VDH: I do, because the history, whether we look at the unworkable Weimar to Hitler, or whether we look at the Spanish revolution to Franco, or whatever radical swing we see in Europe, there's always this...because they are so far left, and when the left proves unworkable or chaotic, then the answer is always a man on a horse. So we have to watch this very carefully, because there will come out of the shadows a French politician to say look, I'll put a lid on all this. And the same way, if you look at the legislation that's been proposed in the Netherlands, that would never stand up in our U.S. Supreme Court. So while the American people were apologizing for the Patriot Act, to their left-wing European friends, they have not a clue that the legislation a lot of European parliaments is so far to the right of anything that we could imagine, such as deporting a naturalized citizen, without a hearing, as if an Arab-American were in the United States, and somebody accused him of terrorism, they just sent him back to Egypt. We could not do that.

HH: What do you mean by man on a horse? Explain to the audience, Victor Davis Hanson.

VDH: The idea that there will be somebody who will promise them to bring order, to bring back respect, to bring back reverence for tradition, and to get the economy, to get the society back on an even keel, in the European tradition. And that'll be quite unexpected by us, because we keep thinking that they're left-wing and post-modern, but we don't read their history. When they have a great susceptability toward aristocratic order and stability. And to be honest, right-wing dictators, they seem to prop up throughout European history.

HH: Last question for you, Victor Davis Hanson. You've spent a lot of time in Europe on campuses, and you know what's going on there now. If an American parent came up to you and said my son or daughter wants to go spend a semester, spring semester 2006, in Europe, what would you tell them?

VDH: I'd say go ahead. I think it's very good to learn these problems. I'd suggest maybe they go to somwhere like Portugal or Italy, that are more pro-American. Or even Holland or Denmark, and I'd be kind of...I'd be a little wary of sending them without proper guidance and instruction to France, or Germany, where they're going to be imbued with an anti-American hatred.

HH: Victor Davis Hanson, always a pleasure. Thank you, very much.

End of interview.

 

[William Joyce]

VDH is a weird mix of anti-immigrant sentiment and neoconnism, but he's mostly right here (I support the anti-immigration but not the neoconnism).

I say mostly --- he's dead wrong to say the U.S. is immune to what's happening in France. Just look at Katrina.

Multiculturalism, multiracialism, egalitarianism, open borders... all that crap is a bad, bad, and I say BAD idea, and now we have PROOF. It just doesn't work. It's tense and hostile when it's "good," and it's downright violent and explosive when it's bad. And, really, there is no debating this issue. It's over. Liberals lost, neocons lost, and even mainstream conservatives lost. It's increasingly apparent that traditional conservatives, paleocons, white nationalists, racial realists and others have the upper hand on these issues.

Excellent column on Paris by Fred Reed of The American Conservative:

http://www.fredoneverything.net/FOE_Frame_Column.htm

Has no one noticed that diversity doesn’t work? Putting together peoples with little in common begs for trouble, usually with success. It is the chief source of the world’s bloodshed and enmity.

Look around you. Start with Canada, where the Brits and French detest each other. Drop down to the USA, where black, white, and brown wait uneasily for no one is sure what; the lid is held on by Washington, which acts as a sort of federal Tito. There are Hindus and Moslems in India, Tamils and Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, blacks and whites in South Africa, Moslems and Buddhists in Thailand, Turks and Germans in Germany, Vietnamese and Montagnards in Vietnam, Moslems and animists in the Sudan, Jews and Moslems in Israel, Cambodians and Vietnamese in Cambodia, Protestants and Catholics in Ireland, Indians and Mexicans in Chiapas, Basques and Spaniards in Spain, Indians and Fijians in Fiji.

But what have facts to do with foreign relations? It is much more entertaining to base policy on adolescent theories and see what happens.

When the anticipated melding fails and riots ensue, the response is to try to buy, or legislate, the impossible. Invariably the cry arises that the government hasn’t done enough for the indigent arrivals. We must spend more money on welfare, on schools, on special programs to raise the unraisable and mix the immiscible. It is our fault really. We need to change our outmoded attitudes, require classes on ethnic sensitivity, celebrate the culture of the new incompatibles. We will have National Islamic History Week, and children will make mosques from construction paper. That will fix everything.

Instead the problem gets worse. The majority population becomes angrier, but has no recourse. The government is against them. The immigrants can loot and burn, and nothing is likely to happen to them: Punishing their misbehavior would engender more violence, which the government wants to avoid at any cost. If the citizenry defend themselves, as for example by shooting arsonists, the government will put them in prison. Citizens have much to lose; the malefactors do not.

Ah, sweet sense.

 

[Annie]

VDH is a weird mix of anti-immigrant sentiment and neoconnism, but he's mostly right here (I support the anti-immigration but not the neoconnism).

I say mostly --- he's dead wrong to say the U.S. is immune to what's happening in France. Just look at Katrina.

Multiculturalism, multiracialim, egalitarianism, open borders... all that crap is a bad, bad, and I say BAD idea, and now we have PROOF. It just doesn't work. It's tense and hostile when it's "good," and it's downright violent and explosive when it's bad. And, really, there is no debating this issue. It's over. Liberals lost, neocons lost, and even mainstream conservatives lost. It's increasingly apparent that white nationalists, racial realists and others have the upper hand on these issues.

How does Katrina play into it WJ? Because of the stridency of the MSM that got the stories of the murder and mayhem wrong? The shooting at helos wrong?

That the 'world' criticized the US response, based on inaccurate reporting, we should change? Sorry, I disagree.

 

[William Joyce]

Way I see it, Katrina and Paris show what happens when minority groups cut loose. Be it a natural disaster or a police action, it takes a very small trigger to set off what the liberal media would call "the venting of frustrations." The rioting and looting are pushed along by the fact that the minorities have nothing to lose, and because they aren't part of the larger society, don't care a whit what happens to it. But they can't be made a part of the larger society because the various groups are simply too different and too incompatible. The best policy is not to mix groups willy-nilly out of a desire to be politically correct, but to keep groups separate. France never should have let in all those Muslims, Arabs and Africans. They weren't needed in the first place, and they only went there to sponge off welfare. And NOW the ninny neocons will have a very tough time arguing that "the black Africans are there in France to do the jobs the French won't do." Like, burn cars?

Good fences make good neighbors. Just ask the Israelis.

 

[Annie]

Way I see it, Katrina and Paris show what happens when minority groups cut loose. Be it a natural disaster or a police action, it takes a very small trigger to set off what the liberal media would call "the venting of frustrations." The rioting and looting are pushed along by the fact that the minorities have nothing to lose, and because they aren't part of the larger society, don't care a whit what happens to it. But they can't be made a part of the larger society because the various groups are simply too different and too incompatible. The best policy is not to mix groups willy-nilly out of a desire to be politically correct, but to keep groups separate. Good fences make good neighbors. Just ask the Israelis.

Again, I think you are missing what happened in NO. Looting, yes. Having been in a flood zone in 1987, will say that people do not have to be poor, black-or any other race, to take advantage of a situation. In our case, since it was an upper middleclass area, and certainly not a problem on Katrina scale, the national guard and police got a handle on the looting very quickly.

http://stevebaginski.com/flood87/

And the city/county had the wherewithal to deal with future problems, after they sued the municipality that caused the problem. They could not have proven their case, if they didn't have the $$ to do so. It's a vicious circle:

http://il.water.usgs.gov/proj/saltcreek/fihmc97.pdf

We are comparing apples and oranges here for sure. Yet, the criminals are ready to pounce and they don't just come from the 'poor and disenfranchised.'