Canary in the Coal Mine - Day

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

4:17PM - Minaretas

Above all, many Frenchmen thought that France had lost the war because it had turned away from the faith. (..) First, loudest, and nastiest among the explicitly anti-Semitic enemies of Dreyfus was Édouard Drumont, whose book “Jewish France” had already, in the eighteen-eighties, been a huge success. Drumont’s book was above all an anti-immigrant manifesto. He was responding to the waves of Jewish immigrants from Germany and Eastern Europe who had arrived in France during the previous twenty or so years, bringing with them, he argued, values and a faith alien to Christian France. In a tone familiar from today’s anti-Muslim polemics, and using the usual toxic cocktail of absurdly inflated numbers, hysterical overstatement, and guilt by association (many anarchists were Jews), Drumont managed to convince readers that France’s real crisis was the decline of Christianity. This had happened under the demoralizing pressure of modern art and culture, which was, of course, Jewish culture: the culture of bankers and speculators and atheists and decadent artists. (..) The Catholic Church, in turn, seized on Drumont’s ideology, and a virulent anti-Semitism became, especially in the pages of the Catholic newspaper La Croix, the new tonic note of even respectable French Catholicism.

— Adam Gopnik, Revisiting the Dreyfus affair

Nule kā Šveices pilsoņi referendumā pārliecinoši lēma — NĒ minaretiem, kuru adatām islāmisti grasījās durstīt debesis virs neitrālās Alpu paradīzes. (..) Tikmēr neaicinātu ieceļotāju tūkstoši un miljoni aizvien bezkaunīgāk steidz apsēsties pie Vecās Pasaules kopgalda — ne lūdzēju, bet saimnieku un dvēseļu paverdzinātāju statusā. Un Eiropa mīkstčaulīgi kapitulē! (..) Ja atceramies, diskutējot par tā saukto Eiropas konstitūciju, Eiropas Savienības runasvīri atteicās no atsauces uz kristietību kā vienu no Eiropas civilizācijas (līdztekus grieķu filozofijai un romiešu tiesībām) eksistenciālajiem pirmavotiem. (..) Gan 21. gadsimts pierādīs: šāds uzstādījums bija nodevīga atteikšanās no pagātnes un liktenīgs nākotnes noliegums…

— Aivars Tarvids, Būs minareti Latvijā…

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