What Is This Mass Denial Made Of?

IN AN excellent article by Bruce Bawer, author of While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within, he wrote about what happened during and shortly after the "cartoon riots." Among other things, he said:

One book after another on the America-Europe relationship has contended that it’s America that’s the problem — that America is out of step with the world and needs to get back into line, pronto. In the title of Clyde Prestowitz’s 2005 book, America is a “rogue nation” because it refuses to go along and get along with the rest of the planet under the wise auspices of the UN. I don’t know exactly how to characterize or understand this mass self-deception, this determination to cling to an illusion of the West in which the ongoing Islamization of Europe simply is not a factor; it would appear to be rooted partly in confusion, partly in cowardice, partly in careerism — and partly, I think, in a perhaps not entirely conscious conviction that some truths are just too sensational to speak without sounding hysterical, too repulsive to be honest about without sounding (to some ears) vulgar and bigoted, and too challenging to face without being utterly overwhelmed by the scale and the horror of it all.

Read the whole article: Who's Sleeping More Deeply — Europe or America?

When we're talking to our friends and family about Islamic supremacism, we need to remember that their sources of information are almost entirely influenced by the self-deception about which Bawer is writing. Most of their information sources smugly "smile down upon" those who think the West might have a "creeping Sharia" problem. The fact that this point of view seems so universal makes it seem self-evident to most people.

So make sure you don't blame your listeners for being so skeptical (or even hostile) to what you're saying. The truth about the third jihad is shocking and nobody wants to say it.

Except you. I applaud your bravery. Your courage is what will save us.

My favorite line from Bawer's article is:

Meanwhile Europe’s cultural elites are dominated by people who seem likely to continue to smile upon Islamization right up till the moment they’re stoned to death.

Roughly the same thing was said eloquently by Cox and Forkum:


When people respond to you so ignorantly and blindly and they're self-righteous about it, try to remind yourself of the tremendous amount of public denial they have been exposed to and then gently, patiently, and kindly open their eyes.