Half a century ago, as a child, I moved to New York from behind the Iron Curtain. (Translation for American youngsters: the land behind the Iron Curtain was a collection of police states ruled by the Soviet Union, which is what we used to call communist Russia when it pretended not to be an expansionist empire.) It was a wonderful time in America, where my generation enjoyed the luxury of believing that the threat of communism was a silly bit of paranoid propaganda. The McCarthy era was long over and forgotten, antisemitism was a thing of the past, and nobody had time to remember how many of the black listed just happened to have been Jews.
I was ecstatic to find myself in such a free society and I fit in immediately. Except...occasionally, when I mentioned in passing to my free-thinking friends that, actually, it wasn't completely crazy to worry about the Soviet threat, where, as it happened, school children were indeed taught that communism was destined to spread to the whole world.
I soon learned to turn a blind eye to my own worries.
It is sobering to realize now how many warnings we all learned to ignore. Life becomes too heavy when every warning must be heeded. If we want to understand how a society can be gently herded to disaster, we might remember that our need for optimism and hope is so powerful that it can blind us to the most glaring forms of evidence.
Appreciate your insights Monica. I’ve visited Russia and East Berlin and been to the museums and parks where the people try to place their experiences in context, the broken Brezhnev statutes, the Stasi surveillance techniques. The terrible irony is that our conceived of as free societies have been hijacked by sick psychopaths seeking total control.
Ayaan, it’s so great to have you here on Substack! You have always been a voice for what is decent, true and best in people. Your commitments and purpose are a fit for this place. In any case Substack is more than technology; it is incubation and sustenance for people engaged in finding or making the path forward.
The challenge of restoration must include institution building. You make that goal clear above. But it also must include the invention of new language for describing the world and the future, a language that calls forth what is best and highest in human beings, and that speaks to both rising and passing generations. The best example most Americans have of such an invention – in living memory for some - is probably the visionary and aspirational poetry of the civil rights movement. It is confusing to call it poetry, because it's not about poems, but poetry it is. Its next incarnation will come forth if we work and strive and listen to bring it forth. This is one of the places where that can begin to happen. As I wrote above, Substack is more than just technology. It’s one place where people who continue to love the world in spite of everything can strive to remember and say what the world can still become.
This is, to quote Saddam Hussein, going to be “The Mother of All Battles”. The silence that met Saddam’s behaviour is a solid example of the rot that has run through western institutions for decades. He was far from unique in terms of murderous Middle East despots. But there were events that could and should have pulled down the walls of western moral relativism. Nothing happened. On 16 March 1988, Saddam’s forces annihilated the civilian population of the Kurdish town of Halabja with air-dropped chemical weapons, all of them banned under international law. Tens of thousands died from the effects. The Western intellectual reaction? Nothing.
This may seem a long time ago to some, but it is one of the many monuments to academic and intellectual decay that should shame the West.
Fast forward 35 years. A heavily armed mob of murderers devastate a group of civilian settlements within the internationally recognised borders of the democratic nation-state of Israel. They deliberately resort to acts of the most obscene depravity on their unarmed victims. Women are gang-raped, their breasts are sliced off whilst they are still conscious and they are then despatched by gunshots into their vaginas. I suspect that the ensuing silence from western feminists over these unspeakable atrocities is well known to anyone likely to be reading this post. But one statistic perhaps illustrates the point best. Four weeks after the massacre, only four “women’s studies” departments across North America had issued statements condemning the attack.
This is what western societies face. The righteous of the modern left are nothing of the sort. They are merciless partisans who have a perverse, romantic infatuation with violence if it can be placed in a “revolutionary” framework. Their supposed concerns for the less fortunate in society are insincere, serving only as a form of moral lever to entrench their power. And they are coming for all of us.
There seem to be few, if any grounds for optimism in the short to medium term. In the long term, the left’s relentless vilification of family structure together with its abomination of traditional heterosexual relationships has already placed western societies in a demographic nosedive. Western societies are quite literally about to die out.
Whether the replacement societies from South Asia and Africa can steer clear of the lethal Western intellectual virus remains to be seen. One can only hope.
Instantly subscription worthy insights that should be spread far and wide. I’ve long been a fan of your work from Infidel onwards and expect nothing less than this penetrating perspective from a person of your intelligence. A particular shield you possess is that the mandarins of woke lived experience can hardly gainsay your life story. May “Western Civilization” awaken before it’s too late. Ironically I just read a Yahoo post from the Spectator by Zoe Strimpel imploring folks to stand and fight these subversives who have foolishly thrown in their lot with radical Islamists, but will likely be thrown off buildings if the madcap mullah from Tehran succeed. Looking forward to further reading and discussion Peace (when all can agree on the terms) PoetKen Jones
I believe I know. I believe Richard Feynman explained the biggest obstacle to progress worldwide, almost 50 years ago during his 1974 Caltech commencement speech. The 50th anniversary is coming up, June 14. On this day I will be explaining this in detail during a livestream event launching a non-profit called Uniting The Cults. For now I'll summarize.
Feynman dedicated his entire speech for one purpose. And our livestream will be a continuation of his speech. He explained the pseudo-scientific methods ("cult behaviors") that even physics departments exhibit, which is the least harmful of all the cult behaviors. We will explain the worst ones. Nations with apostasy laws. Nations treating whistleblowers as traitors. Corporations using fake science for propaganda and harsh NDAs to silence dissenters. Parents using the united front concept and so many other things in the same vein. They're trying to discourage disobedience by sabotaging truth-seeking. They don't want us to talk, and that is what we must do!
Join us on June 14th 2024 12PM CST for our livestream event. Signup for email updates and reminders at www.UnitingTheCults.com.
Having just listened to your podcast with Ben Shapiro I went to sub stack to read more about you. This article reflects your discussion accurately. I am a recent devotee of podcasting, and listen to Ben Shapiro, Dave, Reuben, Joe, Rogan, Megan Kelly, Jordan Peterson, and Charlie Kirk. I hope to see you on their shows soon.
I was especially blown away by your description of your journey to Christ. Prior to describing it, you mentioned that older Christians lament losing their connection to the church. Having become sober two years ago, my faith in salvation should be a given. Yet I find myself increasingly believing that it is no longer possible. I feel hopeful that you have insight to help me
Half a century ago, as a child, I moved to New York from behind the Iron Curtain. (Translation for American youngsters: the land behind the Iron Curtain was a collection of police states ruled by the Soviet Union, which is what we used to call communist Russia when it pretended not to be an expansionist empire.) It was a wonderful time in America, where my generation enjoyed the luxury of believing that the threat of communism was a silly bit of paranoid propaganda. The McCarthy era was long over and forgotten, antisemitism was a thing of the past, and nobody had time to remember how many of the black listed just happened to have been Jews.
I was ecstatic to find myself in such a free society and I fit in immediately. Except...occasionally, when I mentioned in passing to my free-thinking friends that, actually, it wasn't completely crazy to worry about the Soviet threat, where, as it happened, school children were indeed taught that communism was destined to spread to the whole world.
I soon learned to turn a blind eye to my own worries.
It is sobering to realize now how many warnings we all learned to ignore. Life becomes too heavy when every warning must be heeded. If we want to understand how a society can be gently herded to disaster, we might remember that our need for optimism and hope is so powerful that it can blind us to the most glaring forms of evidence.
Appreciate your insights Monica. I’ve visited Russia and East Berlin and been to the museums and parks where the people try to place their experiences in context, the broken Brezhnev statutes, the Stasi surveillance techniques. The terrible irony is that our conceived of as free societies have been hijacked by sick psychopaths seeking total control.
Ayaan, it’s so great to have you here on Substack! You have always been a voice for what is decent, true and best in people. Your commitments and purpose are a fit for this place. In any case Substack is more than technology; it is incubation and sustenance for people engaged in finding or making the path forward.
The challenge of restoration must include institution building. You make that goal clear above. But it also must include the invention of new language for describing the world and the future, a language that calls forth what is best and highest in human beings, and that speaks to both rising and passing generations. The best example most Americans have of such an invention – in living memory for some - is probably the visionary and aspirational poetry of the civil rights movement. It is confusing to call it poetry, because it's not about poems, but poetry it is. Its next incarnation will come forth if we work and strive and listen to bring it forth. This is one of the places where that can begin to happen. As I wrote above, Substack is more than just technology. It’s one place where people who continue to love the world in spite of everything can strive to remember and say what the world can still become.
Good comment Chris You've given me some ideas for my own poetry
This is, to quote Saddam Hussein, going to be “The Mother of All Battles”. The silence that met Saddam’s behaviour is a solid example of the rot that has run through western institutions for decades. He was far from unique in terms of murderous Middle East despots. But there were events that could and should have pulled down the walls of western moral relativism. Nothing happened. On 16 March 1988, Saddam’s forces annihilated the civilian population of the Kurdish town of Halabja with air-dropped chemical weapons, all of them banned under international law. Tens of thousands died from the effects. The Western intellectual reaction? Nothing.
This may seem a long time ago to some, but it is one of the many monuments to academic and intellectual decay that should shame the West.
Fast forward 35 years. A heavily armed mob of murderers devastate a group of civilian settlements within the internationally recognised borders of the democratic nation-state of Israel. They deliberately resort to acts of the most obscene depravity on their unarmed victims. Women are gang-raped, their breasts are sliced off whilst they are still conscious and they are then despatched by gunshots into their vaginas. I suspect that the ensuing silence from western feminists over these unspeakable atrocities is well known to anyone likely to be reading this post. But one statistic perhaps illustrates the point best. Four weeks after the massacre, only four “women’s studies” departments across North America had issued statements condemning the attack.
This is what western societies face. The righteous of the modern left are nothing of the sort. They are merciless partisans who have a perverse, romantic infatuation with violence if it can be placed in a “revolutionary” framework. Their supposed concerns for the less fortunate in society are insincere, serving only as a form of moral lever to entrench their power. And they are coming for all of us.
There seem to be few, if any grounds for optimism in the short to medium term. In the long term, the left’s relentless vilification of family structure together with its abomination of traditional heterosexual relationships has already placed western societies in a demographic nosedive. Western societies are quite literally about to die out.
Whether the replacement societies from South Asia and Africa can steer clear of the lethal Western intellectual virus remains to be seen. One can only hope.
Instantly subscription worthy insights that should be spread far and wide. I’ve long been a fan of your work from Infidel onwards and expect nothing less than this penetrating perspective from a person of your intelligence. A particular shield you possess is that the mandarins of woke lived experience can hardly gainsay your life story. May “Western Civilization” awaken before it’s too late. Ironically I just read a Yahoo post from the Spectator by Zoe Strimpel imploring folks to stand and fight these subversives who have foolishly thrown in their lot with radical Islamists, but will likely be thrown off buildings if the madcap mullah from Tehran succeed. Looking forward to further reading and discussion Peace (when all can agree on the terms) PoetKen Jones
Looking forward to this new platform. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is like a breath of fresh air.
Ayaan, what is the antidote?
I believe I know. I believe Richard Feynman explained the biggest obstacle to progress worldwide, almost 50 years ago during his 1974 Caltech commencement speech. The 50th anniversary is coming up, June 14. On this day I will be explaining this in detail during a livestream event launching a non-profit called Uniting The Cults. For now I'll summarize.
Feynman dedicated his entire speech for one purpose. And our livestream will be a continuation of his speech. He explained the pseudo-scientific methods ("cult behaviors") that even physics departments exhibit, which is the least harmful of all the cult behaviors. We will explain the worst ones. Nations with apostasy laws. Nations treating whistleblowers as traitors. Corporations using fake science for propaganda and harsh NDAs to silence dissenters. Parents using the united front concept and so many other things in the same vein. They're trying to discourage disobedience by sabotaging truth-seeking. They don't want us to talk, and that is what we must do!
Join us on June 14th 2024 12PM CST for our livestream event. Signup for email updates and reminders at www.UnitingTheCults.com.
💘 Be water my friends 💘
Having just listened to your podcast with Ben Shapiro I went to sub stack to read more about you. This article reflects your discussion accurately. I am a recent devotee of podcasting, and listen to Ben Shapiro, Dave, Reuben, Joe, Rogan, Megan Kelly, Jordan Peterson, and Charlie Kirk. I hope to see you on their shows soon.
I was especially blown away by your description of your journey to Christ. Prior to describing it, you mentioned that older Christians lament losing their connection to the church. Having become sober two years ago, my faith in salvation should be a given. Yet I find myself increasingly believing that it is no longer possible. I feel hopeful that you have insight to help me