YOU CAN'T BOMB IDEAS?

One of the current themes of the Stop the war crowd, gratefully taken up by more ardent apologists for Islamism is what Orwell would have called the silly/clever line you can't bomb ideas.


Those who fought fascism in Spain or on the beaches of Normandy knew different. Of course poisonous ideas are like the plague, difficult to eradicate, but ask yourself the following question. Your neighbour suddenly adopts the philosophy that he has permission from God to rape your wife or kill your husband and steal whatever of your belongings he feels so inclined. Do you say “Oh well, you can’t defeat ideas with a baseball bat?” Or do you slug him and wonder where he got such poisonous notions from later?  
Clerical fascists like IS can have poisonous ideas aplenty, however when they try to impose these on others the right response is to fight back. IS fighters can then take their ideas to the grave. What is more troubling is the sinister notion that we supposedly cannot fight these ideas with bombs and bullets. So what is the nature of the attractive and complex appeal  of IS and of the philosophy that requires so much more than an F16 fighter bomber?
As it happens IS have produced a manifesto; somewhat turgid and repetitive, however it repays reading.
However for those who feel unwilling or unable to digest this execrable document I can here provide a summary. God has spoken and demanded that IS establish a Caliphate in which non-believers will be killed or taken as slaves. Sharia law with all its brutality will be established and all citizens will be compelled to live their lives in abject subjugation to the will of Allah. Seductively appealing stuff you think? A sort of North Korea in the sand.
Kurdish fighter dialoguing
with Kalashnikov 
It says much about the level of rot that has set in amongst the western liberal intelligentsia that so many think that the IS ideology is complex, deep and requires sophisticated understanding. After all you can't bomb ideas.
In truth the ideology of IS, ISIL, ISIS, SS is as old as mankind itself and as crude as a fart in an elevator. It runs on the Fuhrer principle;[1] I have spoken to God and he thinks I am special and has asked me, with a select few followers to act as he directs. He has also given me permission to enforce rule over you in his name.
The appeal of this asinine crap is to all those inadequates, intellectual or otherwise who long to be special and select and like the idea of lording it over others, with a certificate from God giving them permission. Sub texts are, a desire to belong to something larger than oneself, the attractions of martyrdom and sacrifice and the comradery of the likeminded. We have seen it all before, the most recent manifestation being the fascism and Nazism of the 1930’s.  
So on a cold October morning in London my thoughts go out to the Kurds fighting in Kobane. To them truly has fallen the mantle of those who fought Hitler, Franco and Mussolini. I salute them.

“THEY SHALL NOT PASS!”



[1] The Fuhrer in this case being Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi head of IS, self-proclaimed Caliph 

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