Apocalypse now on the US blogosphere

Spectator, The, Dec 2, 2006 by Selbourne, David

There is a world, increasingly driven by unreason, in which voices in the wilderness denounce each other as 'traitors', cry out that 'all I want is no more Islam near me', or allege that Prince Charles is 'waiting in the wings to declare the UK a Muslim country the minute QEII dies'.

It is the world of the American blogosphere of the 'left' and 'right'; the world not of the lunatic fringe, though it may often seem so, but of vox pop. It is a world of which the 'MSM', or 'mainstream media', knows too little. Yet blog-site contributors' opinions, threats and predictions -- expressed in large volume on such sites as jihadwatch, littlegreenfootballs or Daily Kos -- merit increasing attention for what they reveal of the temper of our times.

Roughly speaking, the blogging 'right' is anti-Muslim (and not just anti-Islam), progun and apple pie, anti-'big government' and 'liberals' in DC, and generally proBritish, anti-European and pro-Israel; while the 'left' is anti-'extremist', anti-'racist', pro'human rights', anti-militarist, anti-US support for Israel and anti-corporate -- the last a position sometimes to be found on the 'right' also.

Above all, for most of this 'right', all-out war has been declared on 'the West' by Islam and its 'terrorists'. But for most of the 'left' and 'liberals', war is being imposed on parts of the Islamic world by the Americans, Israelis, and their rag-tag partners in geopolitical 'crime', and against whom Muslim 'radicals' must be expected to strike back.

The differences between these mutually hostile camps, judging by the blogosphere, are growing. Moreover, as Islam's political fortunes have advanced, irrationality in response to this advance has spread also, to 'right' and 'left'. Some of it provides light relief. To bloggers on the 'right', the 'left' are 'moonbats', Democrats are sell-out 'Dhimmicrats', Saddam Hussein is 'Sodom Insane' and the ACLU is the 'American Criminal Liberties Union'; the 'left' describes President Bush as everything from a 'traitor' to a 'boil on the public butt', and pro-Israel Christian evangelists as 'fundie nutjobs'.

Other judgements are more serious in their portents. A blog-poster declares that the 'left' and 'liberals' have 'done nothing but grovel at the feet of Islamofascists'; another that the entire American 'left' -- who are no better than 'tares in the midst of wheat' -- are 'killing this country'. For their parts, 'left' bloggers see the battles in Afghanistan and Iraq as 'useless', and the Bush 'regime' as having 'run amok'.

However, 'left' and 'right' share the perception that it is the other which is in command of the polity and of the 'MSM'. To the 'right', which considers itself 'pretty much shut out of our national corporate media', 'what could not be accomplished on the battlefield -- an American retreat from Iraq -- was instead achieved in American newsrooms'. To the 'left', a 'right-wing machine' which includes 'experts who have sold out to it' and 'hateful right-wing talkshows' rules the waves.

Paranoia and odium are on the increase.

In the blogosphere, the word 'fascist' is thus routinely used by the 'left' to describe the 'right' of all shades -- the White House, for example, is said to be 'gripped by a fascist power lust'. The 'right', whose spelling is less good, not only regards Islamists as 'facists' but also those on the 'left' whom it accuses of sympathising with America's foes.

But nothing can compare with the 'right's' abuse of 'Muzzies' in general. They are variously said to be 'dumber than dirt', 'godless savages', 'losers', even 'Koranimals'. As for Islam, or 'Islamania', it is (for example) a 'misogynistic genocidal cult' which allegedly worships a 'false pagan moon-rock god of death' and is 'eating at the insides of every nation until it is dead'.

Of course, there are distinguished precedents even for the bleakest and coarsest of these judgements. To Montesquieu in 1748, Islam's 'destructive spirit' spoke 'only by the sword'; to Schopenhauer in 1819, the Koran was a 'wretched book' in which he had 'not been able to discover one single idea of value'; to De Tocqueville in 1843, Islam was 'deadly', 'to be feared' and a 'form of decadence'.

Today, however, it is the sheer violence of emotion on blog-sites which is most striking. The true patriot would seize American 'appologists [sic] for Islam', 'hold them with their feet to the fire until they are screaming, and watch them squirm'; while a 'liberal' voice yells into the ether that those who have supported the war in Iraq 'should not be given a chance to breathe. Pound them into the ground until they never get back up, evil bastards!' In this unhinged world, now non-Muslim as well as Muslim, the counsels of action offered by 'right-wing' vox pop range from the near-despairing to the catastrophic. 'Go home and leave us alone', diaspora Muslims are told -- at the mildest -- 'and take your Western lapdogs with you'; or, 'Islamophobes need to get loud, very loud, ' says another, 'it's the only thing we can do now'. Here, the sense of foreboding is strong. Tougher is, 'We are the West. Let them know who is boss. If they don't like it, they can leave.' Higher up the scale comes, 'Let the military take over. I advocate a military coup.' At the apogee are nukes. 'Why should we restrain ourselves from nuking every Mohammedan hellhole that lacks a credible defense?', asks one; 'Nuke Mecca Now!', demands another.