Beware the Attrition Mill

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There is a type of machine called an attrition mill. It consists of two steel discs which rotate at high speed in opposite directions, crushing the grain or other substance being milled between them. In earlier posts, I have used the metaphor that our civilization is now caught in a gigantic attrition mill, with one disc being the Islamic terrorist enemy and the other disc being the “progressive” Left within our own societies.

Recently, David Solway wrote an important post on the Leftist-Islamist nexus. Solway’s post is more than a bit over the top, IMO: while it is certainly true that there are signficant parallels between modern “progressivism” on the one hand, and Naziism/Fascism on the other…and even stronger parallels between radical-militant Islam and Fascism…I don’t think it is helpful to use terms like “Fourth Reich.” Still, many of the concerns he raises are valid ones, such as the extent to which prestigious American universities “are actively colluding with Islamic foreign governments” in their aim to criminalize (a non-existent) “Islamophobia,” thus putting them “in direct opposition to the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protections.” Definitely read the whole thing.

For a current example of the kind of thing that Solway is talking about, see this post from Pam Geller.

6 thoughts on “Beware the Attrition Mill”

  1. Related: via Glenn Reynolds comes this informative and disturbing piece about European organizations supporting the current Gaza “flotilla” attempt: “Socialists have joined arms with Islamists in a “Red-Green Alliance” aimed at isolating and delegitimizing Israel.” See also this suggestion that much of the European support for the Palestinian cause is actually a “proxy war” against the United States.

  3. Wretchard noticed and explained this all at the original Belmont Club, 7 years ago:

    In practice the relation between militants, even in the European and American Left, is governed by threat and intimidation. It is unnoticeable to the outer fringes of the Movement but grows increasingly more severe as one approaches the “committed” core. Among sympathizers in the media, entertainment and academic industries, obedience is largely enforced by social pressure or economic sanction. Closer in the pretenses are dropped and operational rules prevail. At the Central Committee level, as David Horowitz knows, decisions are enforced under penalty of death. Mercy is shown, within the Marxist IRA, by whether your kneecap is blown out from the front or the back. The arrival of the Islamists in the West, like a new gang arriving in town, has changed the dynamic considerably. They are given a wide berth by the Left, not merely out of a shared hatred for America, but out of fear — pure operational fear. … The moribund Left knows who is boss and is selling the only thing they have remaining: access to media and cultural institutions, which suits the Islamofascists just fine. A division of labor has been established in which the Left provides the paralyzing injection on Western society leaving the jihadis a clear field within which to operate.

  4. It is a continuation of romanticism’s ongoing battle against the enlightenment: science, technology, and above all individualism. In the 19th and 20th centuries it found force in communist movements. Today it exists in more diverse forms, statism, various forms of socialism, so-called “multi-culturalism” (in practice cultural conservatism), and many forms of traditionalism throughout the world (including islamism).

  5. It’s not just the ‘left’ or what remains of the workers’ movement. I suppose you should consider also the position of the Catholic Church, which has a clear importance at least in the southwestern half of Europe, not to mention Poland or Croatia.
    Every single day comes an official statement from the Vatican in which they support the Islamic communities in their requests for new mosques, in which governments are blamed for the unfair treatment of mostly Islamic immigrants or in which an unknown ecumenism is invoked.
    Of course, the Holy See is seeking balance with the rights of the Christian communities in Near and Middle East, with their very survival, but I’m afraid the Vatican forgets to mention the – few, but still too many – Pakistani or Maghreb girls slaughtered by their fathers and brothers because they hang out with Western kids or refuse to wear an hijab.

    What I can say, as an European, is that I feel fear in the governments as in the Roman Church, as if everyone gives for granted that Europe is doomed: that a new Reconquista is coming. Still, I can’t accept a perspective like that. I still believe that Europe – not this Europe maybe, perhaps not this European Union, but the European people – can do its part to preserve itself, ourselves, and help out the Mediterranean on its journey to economic and socio-cultural progress.

    What scares me most it’s the growing protectionism and isolationism coming from the other side of the Atlantic. Perhaps, wrong military interventions have been made. Perhaps, different stategies could have been used in Afghanistan and Irak. Perhaps, other choices could have brought more results and maximize United States’ popularity here. Perhaps, the Americans are rightly fed up with the use of ever diminishing funds to secure an area or another of this weird world. I do not know. I’m not a military or geopolitical expert. Not at all. Of course, you Americans have every right to be tired of giving your best youngsters’ lives away.

    What I know for sure is that without American protagonism, no European protagonism is possible. That without the USA no one will ever see the USofE and that’s what the most generous hearts and minds of this continent have worked for since the last years of WWII, as a mean for peace, stability and common development. Without the strong bonds that – at least from the 1940s – have tied the two sides of the Atlantic, Europe could be doomed, oh yes, but time could also reveal that North America is not an island and, God forbid, it is weaker without its European friends and allies.

    And, please, take that as it is written: with friendship and gratitude.

  6. They are allies because both groups share a deep, visceral hatred for industrial capitalism, specifically, and western culture in general.

    It is well to remember that the tranzi socialist movement has never supported the west, and especially the US, at any time, except for the short period of WW2 when the Soviets were in desperate trouble, and ordered the 180 degree turn from opposition to support for the war effort in the west.

    The current alliance is between the mystics of muscle on the left and the mystics of spirit of islam. Each believes the other can be used for its own purposes and then betrayed once power is achieved.

    The natural result of such a cynical and amoral union is the very “war of all against all” that the marxists always predict will happen any minute within the capitalist world.

    In fact, it is the natural fate of all such cynical alliances, as was the case with the soviet/nazi pact, or the soviet/chinese “friendship”, and will also result in this instance, when the period of mutual need is past.

    My prediction—the most viscious and hysterical response to islamic radicalism will occur in europe when the collapse of their house of cards finally happens, and they need another scapegoat to blame for all their problems.

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