The Hitler Divide - an outline

Holocaust victims piled up

Muslims showing their admiration for Hitler

• Western civilisation was profoundly shaken by the experience of WWII and has been engaged in a long process of recovery. Not only economically and structurally but also culturally. Hitler stands as a unique personification of evil and has come to represent all that should be avoided. He represents a moral black-hole that people in the West seek to distance themselves from and any proximity to him is regarded (generally rightly) as a slippery slope towards perdition.
• Much research such as Stanley Milgram’s obedience studies (1962) has been inspired by the events of WWII. A long process of soul-searching has taken place. To the extent that people feel distant from Nazism they feel good and virtuous. It is a benchmark of depravity.
• Images of the holocaust have a profound significance for Western civilisation. They represent the nadir, the lowest point that we reached and to which we never want to return. The European Union is partly the product of the desire to avoid any such outcome ever again. Nationalism in whatever form is seen as a source of disorder and warfare. De-fanging the nation state has become a commonly supported goal.
• Nazism and its greatest exponent, Adolf Hitler, have been so thoroughly discredited that no-one wants to be associated with it. Playing the Hitler card in a debate has become a common tactic to put an opponent on the defensive and to derail his/her argument. This is one of the many fallacies discussed at fallacyfiles.org.
• No such process has occurred in the Muslim world. In fact, quite the opposite. Islam has deeply ingrained anti-semitism, tyranny, and belligerence within it. Many prominent Muslims supported Hitler and Mein Kampf is still widely read.
• Hassan-al-Banna, Syed Qutb, Amin al-Husseini, and many others admired Hitler and many prominent Muslims today speak well of him. Hassan-al-Banna was the father of the Muslim Brotherhood, arguably the most influential Muslim organisation in the world today. Syed Qtub was the father of modern Islamism, a man with total contempt for democracy, Western freedoms, and the equality of the sexes. Amin al-Husseini was an ally of Hitler during WWII and helped to organise Muslim SS units in the Balkans. He was hopeful of continuing Hitler’s Final Solution in the Middle East once Hitler had finished the job in Europe.
• For sure, the existence of Israel has become a rallying point (and convenient disguise) for Muslim/Arab anti-semitism, but the roots of Jew hatred are far deeper and more extensive than the existence of Israel.
• Muslim culture is not well-suited to critical self-examination anyway but even if it were, the attitude towards WWII and Hitler is markedly different to our own.
• Thus, in respect of this crucial figure of recent history and his embodiment of tyrannical, anti-semitic attitudes, the West and the Muslim world have totally different perspectives.

18th Feb 2014

Integrity can be defined as loyalty to a principle. It can therefore be understood in terms of Moral Foundations Theory. Intellectual integrity can be defined as loyalty to the principles of Reason and evidence. Liberals tend to score lower on the Loyalty/Betrayal measure than conservatives. We do see evidence of lower intellectual integrity among liberals - they are often flagrant violators of Reason and Logic (see previous post on Laurie Penny). In The Uses of Pessimism, Roger Scruton in coined the phrase 'unscrupulous optimism' to describe the Utopian thinking of the Left. They are often guilty of making the most optimistic assumptions and deriving the most optimistic extrapolations from them. They want their dreams to come true and they'll stop at nothing to see that they do. Liberals frequently employ the most unscrupulous tactics to argue their case because they do not care much about intellectual integrity - they are intellectually unscrupulous. The loyalty that they feel is towards 'the vision'; you cannot sustain loyalty to Reason if you are committed to an imagined Utopia. In fact, very soon the ends come to justify the means.

Liberal Culture and the Loss of Reason

Laurie Penny

A recent article called "It isn't feminism. It's Islamophobia" by Laurie Penny in The Guardian is a good demonstration of where politically correct thinking takes us eventually. In his book The Retreat of Reason Anthony Browne argues that political correctness is an abandonment of Reason in favour of feeling; feeling guided by those presented as victims versus those presented as villains, typically those deemed to be powerless versus those deemed to be powerful, poor/rich, weak/strong and so on. Laurie Penny’s article takes us into this mental landscape.

Robert Spencer has provided a very good rebuttal of her article here but I want to explore the mode of thought that it represents. Penny deploys a catalogue of fallacious arguments. The ones I’ve identified are:

1. Poisoning the Well – vilifying the speaker in advance in order to discredit what he/she says.
2. Argumentum ad odium – (argument to hatred) whereby either the speaker is deemed to be so hateful that their argument should be discounted or the argument leads to such a hated conclusion that it cannot be true. Sub-type of appeal to emotion.
3. Argumentum ad hominem – (attack the character of the speaker)
4. tu quoque – a charge of hypocrisy as an attempt to invalidate what the speaker has said. It’s still a fallacy even if the charge of hypocrisy is justified.
5. Straw man – exaggerate or take an extreme case of what the speaker is saying in order to counter this instead of the more reasonable case that the speaker is actually making
6. Guilt by association – the speaker’s argument or point of view is invalid due to the people they can be associated with or the people who may share their point of view

You will find fuller definitions and examples of these fallacies at www.fallacyfiles.org

The above are examples of fallacious reasoning which have been recognised for centuries but Penny (and modern liberal culture) introduces new variants of fallacious reasoning which are the fruits of political correctness:

1. An argument is valid because the speaker belongs to a recognised victim group and what they say must be accepted uncritically
2. The speaker cannot be criticised because he/she belongs to a recognised victim group
3. An argument can be true for one group and simultaneously false for another. Each group can have a different truth.
4. Some arguments are highly offensive to certain recognised victim groups and must therefore be false. One suspects that even if true they would still be forbidden.

One thing that we learn from studying fallacies is that Reason has rules. Go against those rules and you go against Reason. Reason has guided us out of the darkness for centuries and we abandon it at our peril.

Instead of trying to write cogent arguments Penny attempts to discredit viewpoints through vilification (or assumed viewpoints which are given to her a priori as a consequence of which group someone belongs to in her conceptual world).

She writes, “the rhetoric and language of feminism has been co-opted by Islamophobes, who could not care less about women of any creed or colour.”

This statement reveals a lot. She has labelled those showing concern about women’s rights under the impact of Islam as Islamophobes. This label is a term of vilification for her. She thinks that anyone she defines in this way cannot possibly have any real concern for women. She is thus poisoning the well by declaring that anyone in this group should not be listened to regarding women’s rights. She thus attempts to invalidate their arguments based on the group she assigns them to. This is fallacious reasoning and we can see how it arises out of politically correct modes of thought.

Instead of being pleased that support for women is coming from unexpected quarters, she proceeds to base her evaluation of this concern on her own prejudiced and demonized view of those expressing concern. If she took the time to listen to their arguments and the evidence that supports them she would discover that she has in fact missed something. But she will not do this because she has defended herself against reason will fallacious thinking.

“It's the dishonesty that angers me most.(1) It's the hypocrisy of men claiming to stand for women's rights while appropriating our language of liberation to serve their own small-minded agenda.(2) Far-right groups like the English Defence League (3)  and the British National party (4) rush to condemn crimes against women committed by Muslim men (5), while fielding candidates who make claims like "women are like gongs - they need to be struck regularly". (6)

(1) Appeal to emotion

(2) Conclusion drawn from stereotype – what makes the EDL far-right?

(3) Assumption based on her own prejudice

(4) Guilt by association

(5) The nature of the speaker does not invalidate the accusation

(6) Biased sample, guilt by association, tu quoque

Penny is playing games with victims and villains in this paragraph. Her thinking is dominated by which group a person belongs to and who they are associated with in her own mind. The validity or otherwise of the things they say are buried underneath this heap of fallacies. Of course, having accepted guilt by association as a valid form of reasoning she is hoisted on her own petard since she now feels that feminism may be deemed in some way guilty by association because members of the EDL and BNP are actually agreeing with them. Perhaps the motivation for the whole article is an attempt to forestall this terrible eventuality.

Elsewhere in the article she says,

“I am not writing here on behalf of Muslim women, who can and do speak for themselves, and not all in one voice. I am writing this as a white feminist infuriated by white men using dog-whistle Islamophobia to derail any discussion of structural sexism; as someone who has heard too many reactionaries tell me to shut up about rape culture and the pay gap and just be grateful I'm not in Saudi Arabia; as someone angered that so many Muslim feminists fighting for gender justice are forced to watch their truth, to paraphrase that fusty old racist Rudyard Kipling, "twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools".”

There is a lot of politically correct diplomacy at work in this paragraph (as well as a fantastic array of fallacies). She doesn’t want to appear culturally imperialist so we get the disclaimer about not writing on behalf of Muslim women. There is an implication that all Muslims are black when she says that “she is writing as a white feminist infuriated by white men using dog-whistle Islamophobia” and that all those opposed by Islam are white men. White men are apparently her principal villains and we have already seen how poisoning the well has poisoned her thinking about them. The black/white footwork is probably designed to distance her from any accusations of racism – the cardinal sin of the left. But the thing which really intrigues me in this paragraph is the phrase “their truth”.

This points to epistemological relativism, the view that the truth status of something can only be evaluated relative to the cultural background and assumptions of the speaker. It’s a popular view with politically correct thinkers because it provides them with a means of escape from making judgements about other cultures which could be deemed culturally imperialistic. So, within the Islamic culture that we’re concerned with here it is true that Muhammad was Allah’s final messenger and it is their mission to cleanse the world of unbelief. That’s the truth for Muslims whatever we might think of it so we have no basis on which to question it since we belong to a different culture.

It is on this basis that Penny and her ilk give Islam uncritical acceptance because the people holding these beliefs belong to a “good”, politically recognised group. Of course, if she was to be consistent (dream on) she would also accord the likes of the EDL and BNP “their truth” since they belong to a culture or sub-culture which could be treated as self-validating. But no, they have been assigned the role of villains and nothing they say or think has any validity.

Consistent with the cultural and epistemological relativism that Penny espouses we would presumably be forced to accept (which in fact we are) the argumentum ad baculum (the use of force or threat of force to silence an argument) which is justified in Islamic culture (but which is nonetheless a logical fallacy from the viewpoint of rational culture).

For Penny, as for many in her camp, an opinion is not to be judged on its merits in terms of evidence and supporting arguments (abiding by the rules of logic) but rather given uncritical acceptance or rejection based on who is speaking and which ethnic/racial/cultural or political identity that she assigns to them. This mode of thinking is particularly vulnerable to the effects of affective priming and perceptual set discussed elsewhere.

One commenter at “Comment is partly free” gave another twist to this which was very witty,

Laurie is understandably upset that certain sections of our society are too lazy to make their way to Oxbridge, but the fact remains the testimony of 4 feminists is only equal that of one male EDL supporter

In order to maintain her black and white conceptual world Penny has to ignore or find some means of excusing all those pieces of reality which don’t fit: Muslim patriarchs, non-white members of the EDL, black victims of Muslim persecution, sex slavery justified in Islamic theology, etc. You can see why relativism is so useful to her.

But in this process she continuously distorts reality and supplies justifications for doing so based on her politically motivated assumptions. This allows her to avoid ever questioning these very assumptions. It is rapacious, ill-disciplined thinking like this which has fuelled the explosion of irrationality that we see today in liberal culture.

What Penny’s screed demonstrates above all is the dire consequences of abandoning Reason and its rules: a descent into error, then confusion, then madness (random, emotive, and purely associative ideas predominate). Conversely, it also points the way out of this madness which I have called Malsi-Tung. We must abide by the rules of Reason and follow its guiding light.

If we have truth on our side we have nothing to fear from Reason.

Liberal Idea #3 - Education is the Key to Progress

Since, according to Liberalism, there is nothing intrinsically prone to wickedness in human nature and since we are essentially rational beings, social ills must caused by ignorance and dysfunctional social institutions. It is these bad institutions and social structures which lead people to do bad things. Poverty, inequality, and injustice (the first 2 being aspects of the 3rd) are the real engines of crime, conflict, and misery. Eradicate poverty and inequality and improve justice and we will become better people. There will be no crime because people will have what they need and as inequality is reduced, envy of others and the desire to steal from them will reduce too.

In order to solve social ills people must be educated to use their rational faculties to understand the causes of social problems and to acquire the means to solve them. They must become part of the solution instead of being part of the problem. Liberal education which aims to break down prejudice and discrimination is essential to this effort. People must learn to respect each other, whatever their differences, and this will foster peaceful and productive societies.

Upon these foundations of human plasticity, rationality and the external source of social ills Liberalism bases one of its most tantalising features: historical optimism. Since there is nothing intrinsic to human nature which leads to wickedness and since the means to improve the social institutions can be rationally deduced and spread through education, we can expect there to be a gradual improvement in the condition of mankind. Hence we can expect the future to be better than the present. This is historical optimism. In fact, so optimistic is this outlook that many have foreseen humanity eventually attaining perfection. Consider this from the Marquis de Condorcet,

The aim of the book that I have undertaken to write, and what it will prove, is than man by using reason and facts will attain perfection...Nature has set no limits to the perfection of the human faculties. The perfectibility of mankind is truly indefinite; and the progress of the perfectibility, henceforth to be free of all hindrances, will last as long as the globe on which nature has placed us. (Outline of the Progress of the Human Mind)

Similar sentiments were echoed by the Americans for Democratic Action in 1962:

...the goals of liberalism are affirmative: not only the fulfilment of the free individual in a just and responsible society at home but a world where all people may share the freedom, abundance, and opportunity which lie within the reach of mankind - a world marked by mutual respect, and by peace. [my emphasis]

If only people will behave rationally and adopt the liberal ideology and programme these are the results that can be expected.

This is a solution-oriented creed; the belief that for any social problem there can be found a rational solution. William Beveridge in his planning for the British welfare state identified five giant evils: Squalor, Ignorance, Idleness, Want, and Disease. These, and many others besides, are the problems that liberalism has sought to remedy. (The Beveridge Report 1942) The provisions of the report set out plans for overcoming these evils. Thus was instituted a welfare system that can claim many victories but which, as of 2013, also claims a massive proportion of Britain's national income (with no end in sight for the massive spending or the elimination of the problems which at times appear to be Hydra-headed). Nevertheless, the historical optimism of liberals springs ever-hopeful. In fact, to be a hope-filled person is to be among the good and the just as far as liberals are concerned. Anyone who thinks differently is just a crabby curmudgeon.

Without education none of the above is possible. Education not just of the young but of everyone. Education to teach people of the benefits of rationality and the solutions that reason reveals to us.

The two concepts of an infinitely malleable human nature and the power of education and social reform enable liberals to discard the evidence of thousands of years of human history and the less optimistic picture that it presents. Having cast this evidence aside they can then argue that once social institutions have been perfected, discrimination and inequality abolished, that human nature (as we call it) will lose its noxious aspects. This is a human nature conjured out of ideas, not the one rooted in the visceral reality of semi-animals vying for survival and advantage and greater control over their environment - an environment that in each individual case includes all other people.

Of course we are not only beings with an individual nature, we also exist as members of larger wholes: relationships, families, communities, companies, nations and other collective entities. We are partially dependent on these collectives and both served and constrained by them. We are engaged in a constant process of balancing an urge towards greater individual autonomy against both our need and desire to be accepted as members of these larger wholes. This is our inescapable condition.

The science and reason that Liberalism originally advocated have both taught us a great deal - including a great deal about human nature. But many of those calling themselves liberals today still cling to the false notion of human nature of early liberalism in what is a wholly irrational manner. They do this because they fear the consequences of changing their views in case their utopian ideals also require modification. But that is a very irrational position to take and is largely antithetical to the original doctrines and aspirations of Liberalism. To adopt a rational, scientific approach but refuse to change your theory in light of the evidence is a pretence of rationality. Naturally, it is a very human thing to do, one arising from our nature, an example of feeling overriding reason.

Our groupishness is one of the major obstacles to our rationality. Because we depend on our groups for so much we are very reluctant to jeopardise our position within them. For a liberal to acknowledge that our nature is not wholly plastic and changeable is to show disloyalty to his/her reference group. The liberal position has thus become yet one more dogma instead of a working hypothesis.

Liberal idea #2 - We are Rational Beings

Liberalism grew up within the rationalist school of thought of 17th century Europe. Reason was held to be humanity's most distinctive attribute, the one that most clearly identifies us as human and not simply animals. We can act in accordance with rationally derived plans and principles which override our animal impulses. Liberalism is confident that acting in accordance with reason (and particularly through the rational endeavour of science) humanity can comprehend the world and solve its problems. The history of science, technology, and economics since the birth of Liberalism would offer plenty of support for this hope.

The liberal stands for the authority of reason in all matters. There is no authority which cannot be questioned; no opinion that cannot be challenged; no subject that cannot be examined in the cold light of reason. The authority of reason demands that everything be tested by the standard of reason. There is no custom, prejudice, sentiment or belief that should escape its resolute eye. The authority given to reason endows the liberal with an attitude that is both sceptical and optimistic.

You will no doubt have noticed that this depiction of the liberal attitude is somewhat out of date. Liberalism claims to be a rationalist philosophy, as indeed it originally was. One wishes that it would be more rational now. Liberals today are all too happy to gloss over the irrational in order to maintain "respect" for cultural differences; to make allowances for the "disadvantaged"; to save the foolish from facing the consequences of their folly; to promote dubious research which supports a liberal agenda and to suppress solid research which contradicts it; in short, the end now justifies the means as far as many liberals are concerned. This cynicism is given a gloss of respectability because the liberal is seen to be the advocate of the weak and and the poor. As a consequence, liberalism is mired in double standards, relativism, and logical incoherence. In fact, to insist on greater rationality and logical coherence is, to many liberals, to be something other than liberal.

Tu Quoque - A Common Fallacy of the Left

Aristotle

Tu Quoque (literally “you also”) is a very common fallacy which I see committed again and again on comment threads. This fallacy is remarkably common in the comments that I see coming from left/liberal perspectives and I think there are underlying reasons for this which I’ll examine later. I hope that once you have this fallacy established more clearly in your mind you will be able to identify it more easily when it’s used by someone in an argument. Once you see an argument as fallacious you need waste no more time trying to counter it but simply point out that it is a fallacy and await a more logical response to your original point.

First of all, lets define a fallacy and then the tu quoque type of fallacy. One of the best sites for exploring fallacies is www.fallacyfiles.org where you will find definitions and examples of all types of fallacies.

The rules of correct reasoning go back to Aristotle. He was both “the first formal logician—codifying the rules of correct reasoning—and the first informal logician—cataloging types of incorrect reasoning, namely, fallacies. He was both the first to name types of logical error, and the first to group them into categories. The result is his book On Sophistical Refutations.”

First an example: I make the assertion that Muslim slave traders were a constant threat to the peoples of Southern Europe throughout the 16^th and 17^th centuries. That assertion is either true or false; either it can be justified with evidence or it can’t. The tu quoque response might take the following form: European slave traders were a constant threat to black Africans during the 17^th century. 

As you can see, the argument does not address the truth or falsity of the original assertion but instead sidesteps it and tries to put the person on the back foot by making a charge of implied hypocrisy. Whether or not European slave traders were a threat to black Africans has no bearing on the truth of the original assertion but the person against whom the tu quoque is deployed often feels a need to defend themselves from the charge of (implied) hypocrisy and a diversionary game ensues in which the original argument is forgotten. Thus tu quoque is a form of Red Herring. The argument gets "lost" but no logical refutation has occurred.

Fallacies are instances of faulty reasoning. The fallacies that we’re concerned with are errors of reasoning. In the example above, both the first accusation and the second accusation are supported by evidence and are in that sense both true. Neither is a fallacy. The fallacy occurs when the second accusation is used as a counter-argument to the first accusation. It is the mistaken reasoning which is the specific meaning of  “fallacy” we are talking about. It is a violation of logic.

This tu quoque fallacy is in my experience committed a lot by liberals and I think there are some identifiable reasons for this:

Firstly, liberal thinking grew up in the context of a Christianity which was preoccupied with acknowledging the fault in ourselves (original sin). As it says in Matthew 7: 3-5 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?  How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye..”

One result of this teaching was illustrated very clearly in a recent presentation made by Karen Armstrong (an ex-nun and professional apologist for Islam). In commenting on the 9/11 atrocities she said, “We did this…I like to turn the finger against myself first.” This is her comment on jihadism in general, “We’ve all done terrible things.” Both of these statements are demonstrably false: We were not responsible for 9/11, the 19 hijackers and their backers were. And no, we have not all done terrible things. To say so is to falsely blacken millions of people with crimes they have never committed nor even considered committing.

What Karen Armstrong illustrates is a preoccupation with our own guilt (even when we are innocent). There has undoubtedly been a place for introspection and the desire to root out evil in our own hearts; it has developed certain moral attributes in Christian cultures that are lacking elsewhere, but taken too far and it becomes a morbid and suicidal impulse. This impulse chimes very sonorously with the implied charge of hypocrisy in the tu quoque argument.

Secondly, the charge of hypocrisy has been both justified and useful for liberal reformers. As in the example of Thomas Day making scornful remarks regarding the American Constitution when signed by men who owned slaves, the charge of hypocrisy is a powerful weapon in getting those with power over others to examine their consciences with respect to their avowed principles and their actions. It has been the well-spring for many social changes that have given life in the West its peculiar advantages and freedoms.

When a liberal levels the charge of hypocrisy against you (in the form of tu quoque) he very likely sees him/herself following in this tradition of exposing hypocrisy.

Thirdly, the Left is very focused on what are seen as the great wrongs of Western culture. They have developed thousands upon thousands of critiques; rhetorical weapons, analyses, theses, theories, jokes, articles, paintings, posters, bumper stickers, satires, poems, pop songs, operas, etc etc all aimed at undermining the position of Western civilisation. (of course, they readily scoff at the very concept of “Western civilisation”) and puncturing its self-confidence. The underlying message of all the above is that “we” are in the wrong; we don’t have a leg to stand on; we are morally bankrupt; hideously corrupt and corrupting. By contrast to us, the rest of the world is noble and innocent. We have no right to criticise anyone. Liberals distrust any form of self-congratulation in the West or the belief that we have created a culture which is “better”. Such an attitude is seen as a source of jingoism and a platform for imperialism.

With this backdrop to his thinking; with this unexamined assumption regarding the condemned nature of western culture the liberal believes that the tu quoque argument always hits the nail on the head because it points to our own wrongs. This is why he feels particularly clever and justified when using it. 

The tu quoque fallacy is often delivered in the proverbial form: “the pot calling the kettle black.” But just look at it: the blackness of the pot has no bearing on whether the kettle is black or not. The kettle is either black or it isn’t.

The Final Surrender

In 1941 a Hungarian émigré working in New York wrote an intriguing book entitled Foundations for a Science of Personality.  His name was Andras Angyal. As far as I know his work has been largely ignored by psychologists. This may be due to the highly abstract nature of the theory or its great generality or the difficulty of deriving specific testable hypotheses from it which can be falsified. What he created was a model of personality which offers an understanding of personality in terms of the physical and psychological totality of the person. Not only this but his view of the personality encompasses the biosphere, by which he means all the relations, objects, interests, associations, participations and so forth which are pertinent to an individual. It is not an original idea that we do not exist in isolation but in Angyal's theory personality has no existence without participation. There is a spectrum along which we exist, a spectrum extending from the pole of individuality towards the pole of complete participation or submersion (what Angyal calls homonomy or self-surrender). We are at once individual organisms and part of larger wholes. The dynamic tension between these two polarities is what drives personality, it is what gives us psychological existence.

Generality of the theory lends itself to transcultural perspective. It also ties in with a systems way of thinking about larger wholes.

Autonomy displayed by Islam as a whole is in contrast (or dynamic equilibrium) with lack of individual autonomy for individual Muslims. Islam frustrates self-expression for individuals.

Homonomy displayed by liberal societies in relation to Islam. We seek to accommodate and fit in with what they demand. Individuals within liberal societies have a high degree of autonomy which contrasts with (or is in dynamic equilibrium with) homonomous tendencies of liberal societies at supra-individual level.

It seems that Islam (as autonomous oriented system) is complementary to Liberal society (as homonomous oriented system). It's like yin and yang.

Islam is the expression of Muhammad's autonomous drive. It is Muhammad's will-to-power writ large. It is effectively the extension of Muhammad's character and will through time and space; it has been given permanence and expression through the system code derived from the canonical texts of Islam.