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Western Civilisation Under Siege -Preface

 Preface to my book, Western Civilization Under Siege

Is it too late to save the greatest civilization in history?

Internationally-renowned social commentator and author Mark Steyn[i] issued this ominous warning in his bestseller, America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It:

Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive the twenty-first century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most European countries.[ii]

These dramatic words give pause for thought.

Is it really that serious?

I am certain it is.

In this book, I will set out to show you how I have arrived at this frightening conclusion.

I hope you will too, not to scare you, but to take you out of your comfort zone and motivate you to do something about it.

This book traces the decline of Western civilization, and the West generally, from the early twentieth century until the present. It will present research and data from a variety of sources to support Mark Steyn’s chilling warning. It sets out to trace the history of events leading up to this parlous state of affairs and offers some prescriptions to deal with the crisis.

While Mr. Steyn is concerned mainly with the Islamist threat, this book takes a wide-ranging look at the multitude of threats facing the West and Western civilization. In my opinion, the majority of these threats are exacerbated by what I call the assault on the Western mind.

I am a firm believer in the concepts and institutions that make up what we call Western culture and Western civilization: free speech, parliamentary democracy, the rule of law, property rights and the free market.

However, for the past 80 years or so, all of these institutions have been under attack by implacable foes, starting with the Soviets, then various Marxist and anti-capitalist groups together with what the Islamists call “the grand jihad against the West.”

This relentless assault, starting from Stalin’s Soviet Union and carried forward by various players for nearly a century has resulted in a weary and dispirited population which has lost confidence in its great civilization.

As well as the very real threats to our culture, this book also explores the threats to the West from an increasingly aggressive China, from rogue states, from financial collapse and from a catastrophic electromagnetic pulse (EMP) event, both man-made and natural.

In my opinion, and the opinions of many commentators, some of these threats, if not taken seriously and dealt with accordingly, will usher in the end of the freedoms and lifestyles enjoyed by the citizens of many Western countries, and ultimately the end of Western civilization.

Although there are numerous citations in the footnotes to support the material presented, this book does not purport to be an academic tome. It is aimed at a general readership – people who are concerned about where Western society is heading.

If you are concerned about the gradual erosion of free speech under the guise of promoting “cultural diversity” or protecting “religions,” this book is for you.

If you are becoming concerned at the gradual Islamisation of your country, this book is for you.

If you are an older person who remembers a kinder, gentler, more tolerant society where you could speak freely without fear of being branded a “racist,” “bigot,” “homophobe” or “Islamophobe,” this book is for you.

If you are concerned about the escalating levels of violence and terrorism in your country, this book is for you.

If you are a young person tired of being fed a diet of Marxist thought at school and university, this book is for you.

It is not necessary to read the book in sequence from cover to cover. Most chapters are stand-alone, thus allowing you to pick the chapters of interest to you.

This book, however, is not just about doom and gloom. It offers some serious and practical steps to save our great civilization.

There have been many previous great empires and civilizations in the history of this planet.

All have disappeared.

If remedies similar to those prescribed in this book are not undertaken, then history students in a thousand years will ask (in a language unintelligible to today’s English-speaking person), “How could such a great civilization just disappear?”

We have been subjected to not an immediate crisis, but just a slow, unceasing ratchet effect.

We live in dangerous times.

We have reached the stage where each country must act decisively or join most of the rest of the Western world in terminal decline.

The book cover

Under the sub-heading, The Assault on the Western Mind is a montage of faces representing what I consider to be eight of the most important players in reshaping and undermining the culture and philosophy of Western civilization.

Clockwise from bottom left are:

Xi Jinping – President of the People’s Republic of China and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China. As well as flexing its military muscles with its neighbors, China is using soft-power to influence Western thought. As of 2014, it had set up “Confucius Institutes’ on 465 university campuses in 123 countries, to spread Chinese propaganda.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi – spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, a Muslim group intent on waging jihad against the West by infiltrating Western institutions and spreading Islamic propaganda.

George Soros – Using his massive wealth, Soros is the founder and financier of numerous left-wing activist groups that are influencing public opinion around the world, pushing Soros’ anti-capitalist, anti-American, world-government agenda.

Antonio Gramsci – Gramsci declared that Christianity had corrupted the working class and the West would have to be de-Christianised by a “long march through the culture” – starting with the traditional family and completely engulfing churches, schools, media, entertainment, civic organisations, literature, science, and the presentation (and revision) of history

Darren Walker – President of the Ford Foundation, an activist group that doles out over $500 million annually to mostly left-wing groups. Walker is representative of the cashed-up left-wing activist groups that have a massively deleterious effect on Western thinking. Although political correctness has been around for decades, the likes of Soros, the Ford Foundation and a collection of other wealthy left-wing groups have elevated it to a sinister level, with the consequent erosion of free speech.

Joseph Stalin – the brutal Soviet dictator who set up a massive campaign of propaganda and disinformation directed against the West.

Herbert Marcuse – Marcuse was one of the most influential members of the Frankfurt School and a key figure leading the revolution against Western civilization in universities, as well as the rise of radical minority groups to censor non-leftist thought in public life.

Saul Alinsky – Alinsky’s handbook, Rules for Radicals, first published in 1971,[iii] sets out the path for community organizers to achieve the aims of Gramsci and followers of the Frankfurt School. His influence continues to this day. Two of Alinsky’s most famous acolytes are Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

How times have changed

On June 6, 1944, thousands of young American men, together with thousands of others from Allied countries, stormed ashore on the beaches of Normandy and parachuted behind enemy lines, all with the knowledge that many of them faced certain death. These brave young men were prepared to sacrifice their lives to defeat the totalitarian scourge of Nazi Germany and to preserve Western freedom and democracy.

The scenes of Normandy were to be repeated many times over the next months as Allied troops advanced across Germany while others stormed beaches across Pacific islands as they drove that other totalitarian monster, Japan, back to its homeland.

This time around, two more totalitarian forces are advancing on the West, and like Germany and Japan, are working in concert. Alarmingly, they are already on American and German soil, as well the soil of most other Western countries.

One of the totalitarian forces is the insidious cultural Marxism, which over the years has softened the will of Western nations to defend their culture, by implementing political correctness and multiculturalism. Concurrently, the advance of cultural Marxism has eroded the concept of free speech, the bedrock on which Western freedom and democracy are built, with the introduction of “hate speech” and racial vilification laws together with various human rights bureaucracies to enforce the suppression of free speech.

The other great totalitarian force is that of Islam, with its aim of imposing its own form of totalitarianism, in the form of sharia law, across the world.

Aided and abetted by the softening-up process of cultural Marxism, the Islamic forces have made enormous progress in their quest, having inveigled and infiltrated the very hearts of societies and governments across the Western world.

Instead of putting their lives on the line for their country, thousands of today’s young American men (and women) cower in universities, demanding “safe spaces” where they will be safe from being “offended.”

A sad reflection on the times.

 

 



Preface

[i]       Mark Steyn is the author of America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2006), a “top five” bestseller in the United States and a number-one bestseller in Canada. Steyn’s writings on politics, arts and culture have been published in almost every major newspaper around the English-speaking world, including Britain’s Daily Telegraph, Canada’s National Post, The Australian, The Irish Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

[ii]       Steyn, America Alone, op. cit., p. xiii.

[iii]      Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals [1971] (New York: Vintage Books, 1989).

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