1.         Introduction: A Personal Note

I have been reading Francis Parker Yockey’s ‘The Enemy of Europe’ (written in 1948, revised in 1953) off and on for ten years now, along with his ‘Imperium’ (1948). In that time, I have taken the message of the books to heart to such an extent that I have thoroughly internalised them. Both books are, to me, like the multiplication table, and once learned, are never forgotten.

If I were to recommend two books to any nationalist, it would be these two. Why? Because, more or less, they encompass all the developments in Western nationalist thought since the war. In them, you can find racialism (with an amusing chapter in ‘Imperium’ on the “problem” of the ‘American Negro’); hostility towards non-white immigration; Holocaust Revisionism (‘Imperium’ has, to my knowledge, the first instance of Revisionism in print); probably some of the earliest accounts of the Morgenthau Plan and other atrocities perpetrated by the Allies and Soviets against the Germans, in the aftermath of WWII; anti-Semitism; denunciations of the Roosevelt regimé; a revisionism applied to the American Civil War, with sympathies for the South; endorsements of, for white people, marriage and large families; reasoned arguments, from a nationalist perspective, against Freudianism, Marxism, Darwinism and neoliberalism; reflections on the American national character and American history; and Pan-Europeanism, mixed with vitriol against EU liberal democratic politicians.

Something that stands out, of course, is the neofascist character of the work (‘Imperium’ is dedicated to ‘The Hero of the Second World War’, i.e., Adolf Hitler) and it goes without saying that Yockey is a fanatic partisan of both German National Socialism and Italian Fascism. What makes Yockey’s work ‘neofascism’ (as opposed to the ‘old’ fascism of the 1930s and 1940s) is his new approach to political theory. He more or less jettisons the theory of Hitler’s, Rosenberg’s and Mussolini’s writings, and creates a new ideology, returning to the ideas of the two great Weimar-era German intellectuals, Oswald Spengler and Carl Schmitt. (Spengler voted for the NSDAP in 1933, but came under attack from NSDAP intellectuals and was censored. A similar fate befell Carl Schmitt, who joined the NSDAP in 1933 and helped craft the emergency ‘enabling act’ following the Reichstag fire; unfortunately, he, too, fell foul of the NSDAP intellectuals and was forced to retire from politics). The result is a kind of political revisionism: this is the ‘revised Hitler’ (in the same way European Marxists would ‘revise Marx’ in the 1950s and 1960s). I am almost tempted to call Yockey’s position ‘Post-Nazism’.

The result is a clean slate. Yockey is not a “National Socialist” in the sense that Savitri Devi and George Lincoln Rockwell are; what he has achieved, intellectually, is a new synthesis. In that respect, his work resembles that of Julius Evola, another fascist sympathiser who forged a new synthesis, not out of Spengler, but out of the occult doctrine of Traditionalism.

Yockey’s work suffers from one major defect: it is, on many points, badly out of date. Dying in 1960, he never lived to see the great cultural, demographic, political and technological developments of the 1960s and 1970s. Evola, at least, had the advantage of living until 1973, and was well up-to-date with the cultural changes of the time, making frequent (disparaging) references to the hippie and beatnik cults in his later writings. Is Yockeyism, and the basic strategy outlined in ‘Enemy of Europe’, relevant to today’s political situation? This is the question that this article will explore.

2.         Yockey and the American Jew

As readers of Yockey will know, Yockey takes from his mentor, Spengler, the idea that the world civilisations are ‘Cultures’ – organisms which are born, live and die. Cultures go through changes comparable to the seasons: hence, the (white) Western Culture has gone through a spring, summer, autumn and is now, according to Spengler, going through a winter. Democracy and liberalism is going into decline, and shortly will be abolished. The West will be united into an empire, or ‘Imperium’, under the authoritarian rule of ‘Caesars’, who, to judge by Spengler’s writings, are dictators who, while being populist, have, at the same time, contempt for the masses. After the period of the ‘Caesars’ and ‘Imperium’, the West will go into a terminal decline over the next few hundred years. We will see the rise of a ‘second religiousness’; that is, Westerners will become absorbed in religion again (for the first time since the medieval period). But this will not be a return to the Christianity of old, rather, an interest in (what appears to be) a trashy occultism and New Age-ism. Finally, the West, with its greatest political, intellectual and cultural achievements behind it, will go the way of all things, and will join the ranks of the ‘dead’ civilisations – including the (once great) Cultures of ancient India, China, Rome and Greece, Babylon, and the Middle East. The final chapter in the history of the West will be written, Western history will come to an end. Westerners will become ‘fellahin’ – that is, what is left over after a great Culture has passed away.

All of this sounds somewhat gloomy, but to Yockey, it was not. Yockey believed in the historical inevitability of ‘Imperium’ in the West as much as the Marxist believed in the historical inevitability of socialism. One of Yockey’s innovations was that he saw the correlation between the rise of fascism, in the 1920s and 1930s, and the rise of Caesarism predicted by Spengler. On that basis, the defeat of fascism in WWII was but a temporary setback. Even though liberal democracy had been restored to Europe, through American force of arms, and communism imposed on the Eastern half, both ideologies would wither on the vine. Yockey predicted that the fascist ‘Caesars’ would reappear, because Spengler’s theory predicted it.

So what was the cause of fascism’s defeat in WWII? American intervention on the Allied side, brought about by what Yockey calls Culture Distortion (another one of his additions to Spenglerian theory). When one Culture imposes itself upon another, it  distorts it, bends it out of shape, politically, economically, culturally and every other way. In the case of America, it is the Jews – who belong to the Middle Eastern, Semitic Culture (called ‘Magian’ by Spengler) and which includes Islam and Coptic Christianity – who are the Culture Distorters. Yockey writes:

America must now be counted among the enemies of Europe, since ethically and politically it is dominated by the Culture-alien Jewish entity of Church-State-Nation-Society-Race. Just how this domination came about is of less concern to Europe than the fact of it. The objective events of world-history since 1933 [when the Jewish-dominated Roosevelt administration came to power] show that in not one instance has America pursued an American nationalist policy, but exclusively a policy in the interests of the Jewish entity…

The Jewish entity is a Cultural form-world of its own stamp, and can therefore never be assimilated by the Western Culture.

In this period of history, America and Jewry form a Symbiosis. The head of the organism is the Jewish entity, the body is America. [Yockey, The Enemy of Europe, in the chapter 'The Outer Enemies of Europe'.]

Yockey writes, penetratingly, that in America, ‘For political purposes, the “elite” is the Jewish entity, which enjoys a monopoly of power in all matters but is especially conspicuous in the direction of foreign affairs’. [Ibid, 'The Concert of Bolshevism']. When one looks at the dominating influence of the Israel lobby in Washington, D.C., and the authority accorded to the neoconservatives in the Bush Jr. years, this is especially true. This is all par of the course for most nationalists in the West, who understand the idea of Jewish influence in America thoroughly (and a few non-nationalists in America are beginning to understand it as well, especially in relation to the Israel lobby). The question most nationalists will ask of Yockey, however, is whether or not white Americans will resist that Jewish influence. Yockey thinks not:

For practical political purposes, the “White America” which still existed in strength in the 1920s has today ceased to exist. Whether that submerged spirit will rise again in some remote future is unforeseeable. In any case, Europe cannot allow itself the luxury of dreaming that a revolution in America by the pro-European elements will lead to Europe’s Liberation. [Ibid, 'Introductory Note'].

The sad truth is that white Americans are too thoroughly demoralised by Culture-Distortion and multiracialist propaganda to see American Jewry as an enemy:

The [Jewish] Washington regime’s leading internal thesis – which has not changed since 1933 – is that Americans must be “tolerant” of the alien elements (which now number roughly 50% of the population), since, after all, these aliens are “brothers”. “Brotherhood” is glorified on all public occasions, by all public officials, is taught in the schools and preached in the churches, which have been coordinated into the master-plan of the Culturally-alien Washington regime. Newspapers, books, magazines, radio, television, films – all vomit forth the same “Brotherhood”. The “Brotherhood” propaganda is a ghastly caricature of the Christian idea of the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man, but there is no religious intent to the propaganda. Its sole purpose is to destroy whatever exclusiveness, national feelings, or racial instincts may still remain in the American population after twenty years of national leprosy. The result of the “tolerance” and “brotherhood” campaign is that the alien enjoy a superior position in America – he can demand to be “tolerated”. The American can demand nothing. The tragic fact is that the attenuation of the national instincts has proceeded so far that one cannot envisage how a Nationalist Revolution would even be possibile in America. [Ibid.]

Yockey concludes:

So long as America was dominated by men of stocks from Culture-European soil, America was a European colony, even though sometimes vocally rebellious. But the America that has been distorted by the Revolution of 1933 is lost to Europe. Let no European dream of help or cooperation from that quarter. [Ibid.]

Yockey was, in regard to American “brotherhood” propaganda, prescient. America was still very much a white country when he wrote the above, and the US Army in WWII was an ethnically-homogenous, racially-segregated army. Churchill and Roosevelt themselves were of a racist bent. But Yockey managed to see the existing tendencies in American society – tendencies towards multiracialism and “brotherhood” – in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and already pronounced those tendencies to be dominant.

3.         Yockey’s answer

Yockey’s ‘Enemy-’ covers, within its short number of pages, a great many topics. But the main thrust of it is to outline a strategy for European nationalists. Europe, at the time, was partioned by two Culturally-alien forces: the Soviet Union and the (Jewish by proxy) American. Nationalists, Yockey felt, had to choose between the two in the event of a Third World War. Old fascists, like Oswald Mosley and Leon Degrelle, counselled supporting the Americans in their newfound, post-war anti-communism. These men believed that America’s anti-communism was a belated recognition, by America, that the fascists had been right all along about the Soviet Union. Yockey, on the other hand, sthirf that European nationalists should relish a Soviet occupation of Western Europe in the event of a victory in the Third World War (which, like a good many intellectuals of that time, he believed was inevitable). His arguments were complex and many. Suffice to say, ‘Enemy-’ is one long propaganda pamphlet urging nationalists (particularly those of Germany’s Socialist Reich Party, for whom the book was written) to take a pro-Soviet line for strategic purposes. I will not spend any time analysing Yockey’s position here (and I think that Yockey, here, makes a very good case for it (after all, he was a lawyer)), for the reason that it is out of date. As we know, the West, particularly America, underwent an economic and political revival in the 1980s, while the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc floundered – becoming, politically and economically, as old and antiquated as their sub-standard military equipment. The result was that Yockey’s Third World War never happened, and America grabbed all of Germany, and Eastern Europe, without firing a shot. (One has to wonder if, had Yockey survived into the late 1970s, he would have adhered to his pro-Soviet thesis, had he seen the sclerotic state the USSR fell into in the time of Brezhnev).

Yockey’s notion of a judaised America – particularly in its foreign policy – is still valid, of course; in fact, one of the major political developments of the 2000s was that Israel became the sovereign nation in the Washington-Tel Aviv axis. Yockey writes, ‘Independence means being able to act alone… Sovereignty means being answerable to nobody except oneself’, and America, after Bush Jr., was unable to act without considering the interests of Israel first and foremost, and unable to formulate a clear course of action in political situations in which Israeli interests were not directly involved. But this is old news now. The entire world knows Israel is no good (a recent survey of 26,000 people placed Germany as the ‘most popular’ country in the world, and put Israel down near the bottom in terms of popularity, along with Pakistan and North Korea) and has a fairly good understanding of Middle East politics, including the dispossesion of Palestinian territory, etc.; it knows that the US is disproportionately concerned with Israeli interests, and that the US stands alone, amongst all the nations in the world, in this (the US was the sole country to veto a recent UN resolution branding the Israeli settlements as illegal). Some sectors of the educated, US, non-Jewish elite – such as Jimmy Carter, and Mearsheimer and Walt – even dare state this in print. In short, the world has, in 2011, to a large extent caught up with Yockey.

Where Yockey has really been overtaken in events is by the developments in the Western Culture itself, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s: the legalisation of homosexuality,  pornography and interracial marriage; women’s rights; desegregation; growing numbers of white children born out of wedlock; and, most significantly of all, the mass migration of non-whites to the West. Yockey would have been astounded by the demographic changes to the West in this regard, particularly in America. (Yockey called the presence of ‘Culturally alien’ immigrants ‘Culture Parasitism’. Culture Parasitism is what happens when large numbers of immigrants from another Culture (or even from a country which has not developed into a fully-fledged Culture, e.g., Russia) embed themselves in a Culture and start to divert vital resources away from it and towards themselves. Culture Parasitism only becomes Culture Distortion when the alien group actively starts to impose its mores upon the host society and bend its politics in an unnatural direction. Yockey would say that the mass Hispanic immigration to America is a case of Culture Parasitism, while the judaisation of American foreign policy is Culture Distortion). The fact that the Western élites, and the white Western layman, have internalised ‘brotherhood propaganda’, and now all sing the praises of non-white immigration, multiracialism, and race-mixing, would have perplexed him.

We can understand the recent phenomenon of mass Islamic migration to Europe, however, using Yockey’s framework. In Yockey’s view, Islam is part of the ‘Magian Culture’, which includes the Jews: ‘The Jewish entity comes from the Magian Culture and will always belong to it spiritually, that Magian Culture which during its life-span gave rise to the Arabian, Persian, Nestorian and Parsic peoples, among others’. [Ibid, 'The Definition of the Enemy'.] Yockey would regard the presence of 17 million Muslims in the EU member states as ‘Culture Parasitic’; but he would also see the potential for Culture Distortion as well.

How does this Islamic Culture Distortion make itself felt? In a sensationalist article for the British Daily Mail tabloid, a journalist identifies how Islamist groups fulfil their agenda by imposing their values, using coercion, on the communities around them:

But the Islamists seldom want to take control of the government machine; they have little interest in setting tax or energy policy. The influence they seek is cultural totalitarianism.

Bereft of sensible — let alone practical — solutions to the real ills that plague their societies, they aim to Islamise society from below…

The events in Tunisia are merely an echo of what has been happening in the region for a decade. In Yemen, Islamists have long since been busy raiding alleged brothels and campaigning against all other forms of what they denounce — wrongly — as imported western decadence.

In Bahrain, too, the Islamists have explicitly dedicated themselves to clamping down on prostitution and the sale of alcohol.

In Tunisia and Egypt, the Islamists have quickly ruled out running for the all-important presidency. They do not seek to lead a government, because with that power comes responsibility and accountability.

What they need is a government sufficiently biddable to allow them to impose their cultural tyranny — and to succeed, they don’t need majority support. All the Islamists require is to be louder, more forceful and better organised than their opponents. [Daily Mail, 'Sex, brothels and the REAL tyranny threatening the Arab world', 26/02/2011.]

These are penetrating comments. It is the ‘cultural totalitarianism’ which is making itself felt on the streets of Paris, Amsterdam, London, Stockholm and other European cities. Europe is caught between two pincers: while powerful Jewish groups in the upper political echelons of Europe advocate a NATO bombing of Iran, and demand more and more monuments to the Holocaust (itself a Jewish religious concept), from the street, radical Islamist groups, flourishing in the large, self-isolating and ethnically-cohesive Muslim diaspora communities, demand compulsory Islamisation, not only for their communities, but for the Western European host populations as well.

At last, however, the peoples of Europe are beginning to show signs of resistance, not in the militant manner that Yockey would have preferred, but through the electoral support for Far Right populist parties in Finland, Sweden, France, the Netherlands and Denmark. Likewise, in the US, the grass-roots movement against illegal Mestizo immigration is a positive development, and is the first popular American nativist movement that has appeared in many decades.

One flaw is that both the American and European tendencies frame their argument against immigration using liberal terms. The Americans claim to be not “racist”, just against people breaking the law; likewise, the Europeans will say that they are against Islam’s opposition to liberal democratic values and traditional European values of liberalism, tolerance, pluralism and women’s rights. But something is better than nothing, the question is whether or not it is all too late.

4.         The meaning of neofascism in the 21st century

After the Second World War, writes Yockey, ‘The opponents of the Hero [i.e., Hitler] of that War were still dominated by his compelling personality… Either they took up his ideas and declared them their own, or they continued to fight against him’ [Ibid, 'The American Occupation of Europe']. Continuing in that vein, he writes:

It was Cromwell who inspired generations of leaders long after his death and subsequent disgrace, not the later Stuarts who had caused his body to be dismembered by wild horses. It was Napoleon who inspired a whole century of leaders after him, not Louis XVIII, nor Metternich, nor Talleyrand. About 1840, Napoleon triumphed, he whose name one could praise in Europe twenty years before only at one’s peril. Napoleon’s Idea conquered the spiritual-political realm, his personality the Heroic realm. Who would reproach him now with the fact of the lost battles of Leipzig and Waterloo?

So it shall be with the Hero of the Second World War. He represented a new ethical type that will inspire and inwardly form all coming leaders of significance of the West. The bewailing of his “mistakes” after the Second World War was simply contemptible. Every journalist and every braggart knows bettter than the great man – they would not have made this mistake or that. Indeed, they would never have been in the place to do anything at all!

Heroism is and can never be wasted. So long as a men survive a Hero, they will be influenced by him and his legend… [Ibid, 'The Power Problems of the War'].

The BBC reported that sales of books, in Britain last year, about Hitler and National Socialism made millions of pounds; in Germany, a Hitler exhibition in Berlin drew thousands . The fascination with German fascism, and Yockey’s ‘Hero’ and his army, in the West shows no signs of ending. In comparison, Roosevelt, Churchill and their armies don’t do as well. Books on the Luftwaffe, Hitler’s panzer aces and the Tiger tank fly off the shelves, while books on the US 1st Marine division, the T-34 tank and Britain’s mass-murdering Lancaster bombers just sit there (much to the chagrin of Jewry, one can be sure). All this is because Western audiences agree, unconsciously, with Yockey’s thesis, and see National Socialist Germany’s tragic rise and fall as one of the turning points in the history of the West. Just as Napoleon defined the 19th century, Hitler defined the 20th. In the minds of the Western public, there is a question, forcing its way up from the depths of the subconscious: ‘We are told that Normandy and V-E Day were great victories for the West and for humanity, but these same victories produced Obama, David Cameron, Sarkozy and Israel. But what if we were wrong?’.

What has happened is that the meaning of German fascism has changed. Contrary to the beliefs of Jewry, fascism’s primary aim was not to destroy European Jewry, but Soviet communism. But, of course, Soviet communism no longer exists. Now, Hitler and German National Socialism stand for something else in the minds of the public: “racism”. Hitler is, erroneously, portrayed as the most racist of all politicians – despite the fact that Churchill and Roosevelt, and their contemporaries in the Anglo-Saxon world, took a dim view of the moral and economic accomplishments of Negroes, for instance. Hitler, it is true, based his world-view on German racial purity; but his doctrines (if one reads his work carefully) were designed to prevent Germans from miscegenating with Jews. But, in the 21st century, after an avalanche of non-white immigration into Europe, the meaning of that racial world-view has changed. On the Left and Right, politicians, intellectuals, journalists, are all against “racism”, in whatever form it appears, and have altered history so as to make Hitler out to be not only the worst “racist” of all time, but the only “racist” politician of the past 100 years. When the racial question is thrust into the consciousness of the average European, every day, and that same question is rapidly becoming the most important for the West in the 21st century – then a hyper-”racist” historical figure is going to end up becoming more and more attractive, despite rote condemnations by the political establishment and the Jewish lobby.

Does this mean that neofascism, or ‘Authoritarian Prussian Socialism’, as Yockey calls it, is about to burst onto the political stage once again, jackboots, uniforms, flags and banners and all? Yes and no. There are groups with strong neofascist influences in Europe: the English Defence League in Britain (which is a kind of post-Mosley, neo-Blackshirt outfit) and Jobbik in Hungary. But, in the main, neofascism expresses itself on the level of an underground subculture. One can buy music, badges, posters, flags, banners, pennants, stickers, clothes. (Even some of the songs have been inspired by Yockey). But none of this is political – i.e., running in elections and competing with the liberal democrats for political power.

If nationalists do want to get in to actual politics, they have to (in Europe) vote for and work with the populist parties. Nationalists really have no other choice, because of what Kevin MacDonald calls the ‘abject terror’ that ‘most whites have of being associated with… National Socialism, anti-Semitism or racialist sentiments’ (MacDonald, ‘The Wilders Syndrome: Jews, Israel and the European Right’, at: http://www.alternativeright.com/main/the-magazine/the-wilders-syndrome/). For we nationalists, racialism, anti-Semitism, etc., is the very air we breathe; our movement tends to attract individualistic people who enjoy thumbing their noses at society’s conventions (and right now, multiracialism and Holocaustism are the conventions). But, because of our absorption with the nationalist underground subculture, we often tend to fail to notice that Yockey’s ‘Prussian ethical socialism’ is, to say the least, off-putting to many of the normal white Western people we want to attract. We nationalists are daredevils and subverters, while the mass of white people in the West are, passive, conformist, and cautious to the point of cowardice. There is no in-between. This is why the European electorate expresses its support only for the ‘safe’ nationalist Far Right parties, which say all the right things on the Jewish question (even to the extent of laying wreaths for the millions allegedly gassed at Auschwitz) and frame all their anti-immigration arguments in a liberal, deracinated way. Even then, you can be sure, the average Frenchman or Swede is very timid, and does not dare admit that he voted for the National Front, or the Swedish Democrats, respectively.

So these are the two courses nationalists can take, the two possibilities: nationalists working at the ‘symbolic’ level, staying at the level of a subculture; or getting involved in political activism with the Far Right populist parties. I myself am sympathetic to both courses of action.

At the same time, by ditching Yockey’s ‘Authoritarian Prussian socialism’, we are giving up a potential source of strength. The problem the West faces, in the 21st century, is a lack of hard-heartedness. Many denizens of the Third World regard human life as cheap, but understand, at the same time, that Westerners are the biggest humanists in the world. An immigrant only has to say the magic word, ‘Asylum’, and be admitted to Europe with all the attendant rights and privileges. The countries of Europe are only now, after the Tunisian immigrant crisis, beginning to harden their hearts and say ‘No’. But it will take a great deal more to prevent the coming influx of immigrants, illegal and legal, and expel the ones already there.

Ironically, the West may not have the will any more – I say ironic, because, in the eyes of the Marxists, and many in the Third World itself, white Europeans are history’s worst exploiters and murderers, with hands stained in the blood of the coloured peoples.

The truth is that the Anglo-Saxon nations committed terrible cruelties – against their fellow whites, the Germans, in the aftermath of WWII. Today’s concentration camps in Europe for illegal immigrants are a luxury version of Eisenhower’s camps for German POWs, which killed hundreds of thousands through starvation and exposure. It is as though the Anglo-Saxons expended used up all their capacity for cruelty and violence in that period, and afterwards, cannot summon up even a fraction of it, just when they need it most (particularly Britain). (Actually, the Anglo-Saxons did commit atrocities after the war, but not with the clean conscience they had while maltreating the Germans).

Which brings us back to Yockey. His ideology is a martial one, and an intolerant one. The image the public has of Hitler is that of a hard man and a warrior – a warrior-king. (We only have to look at our history to see, to what extent, the West idolises warrior-kings: Napoleon, Bismarck, King Arthur, Charlemagne…). The West sees the “white supremacist”, “Neo-Nazi” and “Anti-Semite” as a fearsome creature, who places himself outside the pale and is prepared to sacrifice his career, his comforts, and even his life, for his beliefs, and as someone who is, above all, prepared to fight. This image – regardless of whether or not it is true – is a source of power and strength, especially so now that we whites now live in a West which would be, in Yockey’s view, soft, cowardly, and effeminate. (In contrast, Israel and the radical Muslims daily commit acts of ferocious violence against their political opponents). We are faced, in the 21st century, with a typical Yockeyist alternative: to fight, or not to fight, in order to defend the West against the threat from without.

Controversy regarding Muslim dress standards has again arisen in Europe.  With Europe’s significant and growing Muslim population, we could probably expect this issue to become more and more prevalent. 

 In a similar vein to the proposal to ban head-scarves in France, Gianluca Buonanno, the mayor of Varallo Sesia has banned the burkini, a ‘cover-all’ swimsuit which allows strict Muslims to bathe while keeping the rather strict standards of modesty, that their interpretation of this religion requires.

http://www.news.com.au/travel/story/0,28318,25955595-5014090,00.html

As predictable as always, such an issue has caught the attention of both the Politically Correct liberal left, ever keen to display their tolerance to the world, and others who see this as minorities encroaching on their freedoms.  Gianluca Buonanno states

“We don’t have to be tolerant all the time, imagine a Western woman bathing in a bikini in a Muslim country. The consequences could be decapitation, prison or deportation. We are merely prohibiting the use of the burkini.”

For many commenters on the news.com.au site, their comments reflect this sentiment.  A double standard? Are we in the West overly tolerant?  The PC brigade has little to say on the issue.  They largely state that a woman should be free to wear what they like.  They are actually right, in a superficial sense.  In the Western world, we have come a long way since ‘cover-all’ swimwear was required, though strict remnants remain, such as the Amish; a historical curiosity to the Western world, rather than an emerging phenomenon. 

Theocracy is not part of the governmental process, with the modern Western world slowly following the example of the USA, a new nation created specifically keeping the oppressive Christian churches separate from the state and keeping their power under control and one that does not define the nation.

Now women are free to choose their clothing, as to what suits them best, and what is most comfortable.  Perhaps the women walking around Friday nights in stilettos and short skirts during blustery winter weather have not made the most intelligent choice, but the choice nevertheless is there.  Much in the same way political activists may want to freely adopt the ‘black block’ look because they desire to remain anonymous.  There is no religious or cultural requirement to cover up excessively, to wear clothing which has no room to breath or ventilation in hot days or to hides one visage.  One is free to choose appropriate attire in public, free from having to bend to irrational superstitions, religion and the wishes of theocrats.  Granted one cannot choose to wear nothing, or clothing functionally close to nothing, nevertheless, the freedom is there. 

The superficial similarities of the burkini to those worn by divers and the Australian Olympic swimming team are also pointed out, often as a rather desperate means of normalising the burkini and make one believe that it is really no different.  However one would then have to ignore the vast difference in being able to choose cover-all swimwear for practicality, and one being used because no other is permitted.  The issue is further complicated by Muslims who do not believe the religion forces such clothing requirements and that a ban on the burkini is a direct attack on Islam in general.

The dress requirements are debatable as the Koran does not specifically prescribe any particular garments, though does command:

“They shall not reveal any parts of their bodies, except that which is necessary.” (verse 31 of sura 24). 

It’s interpretation is open to abuse, something common to all religions.  The interpretation however reflects the morality of the people, perhaps even more than morality is a reflection of the teachings of the Koran, with people taking from holy texts that which supports their moral world-view, and ignoring that which doesn’t.  A corollary can be seen with various Christian denominations, with various denominations using a pre-existing moral compass to determine which scriptures to accept, which to reject, and how to interpret that which is open to subjective interpretation.  The stricter Islamic denominations would be influenced more by an existing cultural view, than the Koran itself.  As with all three of the Abrahamic monotheistic faiths, the religious teachings and cultural adaptation of them are intertwined and inseperable.

Our western values respects individual choice on what clothes they wear, a choice which is made by and large, free from theocracy, from cultural coercion and from potential retribution.  This is in stark contrast to some of the more extreme Muslim nations, where such expressions of freedom would involve corporal punishment, or even worse.

However, the multiculturalists preaching tolerance are missing one vital point.  Do many of the women who wear the burkini, or the burqa really HAVE A CHOICE??  While they might mention correctly, that women are free to choose appropriate clothing, the statement completely overlooks the important point, that these women aren’t necessarily free to exercise such choice!  There are some Muslim women, who through respect for their religion, culture and relatives, might choose to wear such clothing, such as the hijab though they could prefer not to.  But this wouldn’t represent all Muslim women.  It certainly wouldn’t be representative of women living under strict Muslim theocracies, who must wear body covering clothing revealing only the eyes, under threat of corporal punishment for disobeying this edict.  Does a woman who walks the streets of Melbourne or Sydney in a ‘black ninja outfit’ also have this choice?  Is she free to wake up on a warm balmy morning and think “Sod it, it’s a warm day today,  I think I will wear shorts and a T-Shirt”.  Is she free to decide to walk around in public, and allow people to see her face, to see her facial expressions, her distress, joy or troubles?  Is she really free to make a decision to enjoy the cool breezes at the end of a warm day, and make true face to face contact with people outside of her house?  Not only this, the clothing must impede movement and make certain physical activities more troublesome.  There is much debate amongst Muslims as to whether such clothing is necessary, with a large number believing it unnecessary.

Our laws don’t prohibit this, but are we really supposed to believe that her husband or father or other male relatives would be perfectly OK with this?  Are we supposed to believe that religious upbringing and inculcation of beliefs doesn’t result in coercion?  Instead, it’s made out as if this is purely free choice, made without coercion, without indoctrination, made rationally and for the benefit of the individual making the decision.  We are led to believe that we are oppressive, in taking freedom away by banning clothing which has become symbolic of oppression of women.  Some liberals will even try to argue there are no “Australian” or “Western” values.  A position of such stupendous ignorance, that it is almost impossible to conceive how one could entertain such beliefs without being completely oblivious of British and European history.

For those who seek to fight any perceived ‘racism’ to fuel their own moral righteousness, in order to promote their belaboured viewpoint, twist this issue into one of a woman’s ‘right’ to wear the burkini, thereby distorting the issue at hand, from one of allowing foreign and oppressive cultures in which to practice ideals contrary to western ideals within our nation. They, by sleight of hand, turn it into the WEST imposing dress standards on others.  This trickery makes those who oppose misogynistic practices appear to be the ‘bigots’!  The real issue is far from this.  However many have not recognised this, and even Mr Buonanno uses the simplistic double standard argument, though perhaps he framed his argument in a manner which might be more acceptable to liberalism.

The Politically Correct Heirarchy

The fact that the Burqa which is a visible representation of Islamic control of women is neglected, is quite telling.  In the religious doctrine of leftist Political Correctness, there is a distinct hierarchy.  As they often have values which contradict each other, there is need of a hierarchy where some leftist causes take precedence over others.  This way when two leftist causes contradict, they just support the one higher up on the hierarchy.  For instance, the “ethnic discrimination” cause trumps both “sexism” and “environmentalism”.  So where a conflict of interest arises, such as the environmental damage done to Australia due to rapid population growth, the “left wing” simply consult their hierarchy and determine that their environmental causes must be ignored if the solution involves something they would jump on as ‘racist’, (such as a sensible immigration policy).  In this simplistic view ‘ethnicity’ and ‘religion’ are one and the same.

In this instance, ‘religious tolerance’ overrides ‘feminism’, as it’s higher on the hierarchy, therefore ‘tolerating’ the importation of misogynistic practices trumps women’s rights.  The rights of the women to enjoy the freedom that Western culture brings and liberation from irrational beliefs and theocracy don’t rate highly enough.  The ‘tolerance’ card trumps them, so quite ironically, we are asked to tolerate and condone behaviour which is contrary to our values.  Worse still, we are supposed to accept this as part of our culture and nation.  Should Australia decide to implement anti-blasphemy laws such as those the UN is proposing, it would make it law to tolerate practices.[1] This non-binding resolution titled “Combating the Defamation of Religion” was designed to address speech which criticises religion.  However religious groups wish to make this a binding resolution.  It seeks to combat defamation of religion and incitement to hatred, however defamation laws are often misused and can be used as a form of protection.  It further undermines free speech by making legitimate concerns and observations punishable.

Tolerance isn’t always a virtue.

Appeasing to Political Correctness breeds failure

Mr Buonanno’s comments didn’t address these issues, but rather seemed more like a low rent justification appearing to make a point against the Burkini, and therefore Islam, without addressing the real issue head on.  Mr Buonanno says

“The sight of a ‘masked woman’ could disturb small children, not to mention problems of hygiene”.

Perhaps this is true, but it doesn’t address the inevitable cultural regression that would occur in ‘tolerating’ cultural practices which contradict ours.  The fact children could be scared sounds like some kind of weak mask for a different underlying motivation.  It would be more honest to simply state there is a conflict between Islamic and Western values, and that being a European nation, by default the Western values should triumph.  Perhaps to take such a position is to be too politically incorrect, as it would be too exclusive, too Eurocentric.  But this watered down position is logically untenable.  Perhaps this is what Mr Buonanno really believes, but it is clear that attempts to avoid being politically incorrect can make ones position logically weak, by not stating the real, underlying issues.

The Nationalist Alternative Position

 It is not necessarily minorities who ‘impose’ their beliefs on we westerners which causes this division, but the tolerance of many of the vocal liberal minority who allow this assault on our culture and silence those who object.  While many, including the media, will frame the argument as one of whether a women should be ‘allowed’ to wear these clothes, this is completely beside the point.  The danger here comes from endorsing the establishment and propagation of cultural and religious practices which are clearly contrary to those which make Australia, the rest of the Anglo-sphere and Europe enviable societies.  Countries which ironically, many followers of Islam want to move to!

Women are not necessarily free to wear the Burqa/Burkini or not, they have little choice and it’s a requirement based on ungrounded centuries old beliefs.  It certainty wouldn’t be true that every case of a women wearing a Burqa in a western nation is purely of free will with no coercion or indoctrination involved.  To frame the argument as one of ‘choice’ is dishonest and misleading.  The real issue is not the dress, but the acceptance of a greater diversity of unenlightened religious practices into our society.  To accept this as part of our nation is to accept this as part of a modern western country, something that Australians, as well as the rest of Europe and European built nations must consider carefully.  Such double standards, where one culture within our nation is somehow exempt from the cultural norms of the rest of the nation can only lead to division and conflict and a degradation of our cultural conventions.

There is also the double standard of people being allowed to wear in certain places concealing clothing because of their religion, which other people from a different religion or ethnic group, would not be allowed to wear in such places.  It also completely goes against one of the main tenets of western thought and western society, the idea that one law, and one law only, applies to all citizens.

[1] http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=9b8e3a6d-795d-440f-a5de-6ff6e78c78d5