I shouldn’t keep doing this to myself – reading FtB is one of the top three causes of brain cancer (or so I’m lead to believe) – but it does at least furnish me with examples of spectacularly bad faith and bad thinking.
Case in point, this post by Myers in which he praises Glenn Greenwald for attacking Sam Harris. You get three guesses why, and the first two don’t count. It is because Sam Harris understands that Islam is a unique menace. What tickled me in particular was the following:
the kind of ideas espoused by Harris are harmful to the propagation of a diverse, world-wide, tolerant atheism … I am also peeved every time an atheist shouts that Islam is an existential threat, therefore we shouldn’t waste our time on trivial problems at home.
I will never cease to be amazed at the utter parochialism of the FtB crowd. I’m European. This is my home. Islam is a problem at home for me. But the good little dhimmi Myers thinks that people like me should be ignored, and, in fact, nothing but the parochial concerns of the comfortable US middle class left should be considered.
The reason I am particularly furious today is that it looks like the Spanish government is going to deport an ex-Muslim to Indonesia to face certain death. That actually matters far more to me then the pathetic whining over a Hawaiian shirt. As I have had cause to say to people like this before: “If you turn your back on me and mine, why should I not turn my back on you?”
This dhimmi atheism, which is happy to shout when it’s safe and clams up at the menace of Islam, isn’t just parochial, cowardly, insufferable and chauvinistic. It is actively dangerous. First of all, the conflation of criticism of Islam with racism and prejudice, as is done exactly by people like Myers and Greenwald, was what lead to no action being taken over the rape and exploitation of fourteen hundred girls in Rotherham. So it is people exactly like Myers and Greenwald who are responsible for a real rape culture.
Second, and I will keep banging on about this, it discredits the case for atheism and secularism. If this tendency becomes seen as synonymous with atheism, then people will turn elsewhere. If ‘atheists’ are seen as being loudmouths when it’s safe and as silent went it comes to the menace of Islam, it means that people will start to look elsewhere. The reason that Breivik decided to kill seventy-seven people was, in his own words, that he’d observed that the liberal mainstream would howl down anyone who just tried to argue their case, but caved completely when it came to the threat of physical violence. The Shiv Sena have noticed the same thing.
[UPDATE: Just to make this crystal clear, since I’m apparently being misread, the point is as follows: when the liberal mainstream advertises that it will cave at the very hint of violence, that provides an incentive to those willing to use violence. The Western left has built a perfect engine of excuses for homicidal fascism and have never bothered to ask itself – what happens on the day that other violent groups decide to make use of it.]
As I’ve noted before, Vladimir Putin is positioning himself as the protector of Greater Europe. His government is moving not just to ban the hijab, but significant sections of the Islamic canon too.
So dhimmi atheists are not just useful idiots for Islam – they are useful idiots for every illiberal force that will step into that vacuum.
