ShrinkWrapped: On Europe and Genocide

Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 1:18:07 pm PST

Here’s an excellent post at Shrinkwrapped on the psychological malfunctions that lead to articles like the Gates of Vienna genocide porn piece: ShrinkWrapped: On Europe and Genocide.

The author of the GoV piece exhibits all the signs of a regressive response to anxiety. He posits Islam as an existential threat to Europe and from that first assumption, several other assumptions and their attendant conclusions follow. A second assumption is that Europe has specific cultural and ethnic attributes that must be preserved at all costs. He then assumes Europe has no ability to defend itself culturally or demographically. From there, he assumes that only by removing the alien from within its midst can Europe be saved. Every step can be defended (though I do not think even the first step is certain by any means) and those who follow the logic will be left with no alternatives to genocide. This should frighten all who care about Europe, or the world, for that matter. We have already seen repeatedly since the middle of the last century that such thinking can and has led to disaster for millions.

Genocide offers an imagined simple solution for often intractable problems. If only all the Jews could be cleansed from Europe in the 1940s, or Palestine today, the indigenous population could happily continue to follow their own true path to nirvana. If only the old guard could be cleansed in Cambodia, the new, communist man could arise and create a worker’s paradise. If only the troublesome Kurds could be erased, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq could have been the wonderful, peaceful place imagined by Michael Moore. Genocide may have “worked” at one time in human history, but just as trepaning and bleeding with leeches is no longer considered state of the art medical treatment, genocide is no longer considered an acceptable solution to the problems it purports to address.

Read the whole thing...