Over the past few years we in the business of thinking about and writing about jihad and Left dhimmi fascism have had some difficutlies regarding the state of nations and the relationship of citizens to the nation. Who is a person entitled to be a full citizen and who, in a state, is not? The question crudely and stupidly, comes to this for some: if one argues that not all people are entitled to be citizens of a state, and if that denial of citizenship is based on ethnicity, does it mean those who would deny citizenship on the basis of ethnicity are racists?
That's the
framing of the question for some. For those who frame the question thus, the answer is that those who deny a legitimate place in a sovereign nation as citizens to "ethnic outsiders" are racists and neo-Nazis.
Most of us are more able to deal with complexity than are the few, those such as Charles Johnson; and then there is
Jaco Pastorius, with whom I hope I am having a reconciliation after a rupture concerning our respective positions on this topic. [See up-date.]
Those of us who make it our lives to deal with jihad and Left dhimmi fascism and its positive alternatives, e.g. Palinism, are engaged in a struggle to articulate a new understanding of nation, nationalism, ethnicity in the nation, and, in my case, the filibuster for universal Modernity. Some folks don't take any of this well. They are prone to finding all of us who ask questions and seek answers to these questions, neo-Nazis. I'm vaguely pleased to say that I, and many others, are "banned" from sites such as LGF and IBA that disapprove of us due to our "neo-Naziness." Now Robert Spencer is banned from LGF.
Spencer writes at Jihad Watch:
I'm sorry to say that my old friend Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has written this:
I'm done with Robert Spencer. And very, very disappointed in him.
And:
Jihad Watch and Dhimmi Watch are out of our RSS feeds. I'm not going to support people who link to vile sites like Gates of Vienna and Brussels Journal.
[....]
What heinous crime have I committed? Last month I restored the links here to Gates of Vienna and Brussels Journal, after speaking with Baron Bodissey, Paul Belien, and Geert Wilders in Washington, and wrote that I doubted that Fjordman was a neofascist or race supremacist.
[....]
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/023306.phpI've been driven to inspect the intellectual history of this issue, thanks to people like Pastorius and Johnson, for the past few years, which has given me the opportunity to read and perhaps study such seminal thinker as Johann von Herder, Johann Fichte, and Arthur de Gobineau. Such fun. And it didn't end there. I've looked as well at Ruth Benedict, Margaret Meade, Ernest Gellner, Roger Sandal, and numerous lesser known thinkers and writers on this topic. Who? Well, Francis Galton and Richard Hofstadter, for example. Others, too. It's a serious problem we face, this question of who is and who is not a rightful citizen of a rightful place. It doesn't need fools flinging abuse around. But since that happens due to those who feel above Godwin's Law, let them do so and be damned.
Palinites know better than to be dragged into stupidities of lazy-minded fools. Good riddance to them. When we have questions, they will be based on the best work we can do to resolve them.
Yes, we too have our own suicide bombers. Luckily they are mostly harmful only to themselves.
Meanwhile, you can find me fully informed by Robert Spencer at Jihadwatch and Dhimmiwatch daily.
Up-date: Given my cranky nature at times, I find I have to reconcile with people frequently. Happily, they are mostly more personable than I.
