The coup in Turkey is another victory for Islam – and another proof that the West is hoisting itself with the petard of its own folly.
Having abandoned the content of our civilisation, we’re obsessed with the form. Hence the fetishistic worship of the democratic shell, regardless of what it contains, from unbounded corruption to downright despotism.
This explains the reaction of Western leaders to the failed coup. Divided as they may be on many issues, they stand united in shallow understanding of their own field, coupled with an understated intellectual and moral integrity.
Hence our new Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, the token Etonian in May’s class-war cabinet, expressed HMG’s support for Turkey’s “democratic elected government and institutions”.
So did the French Foreign Minister Ayrault: “France hopes that… Turkish democracy will emerge reinforced by this test and that fundamental liberties will be fully respected.”
Merkel added her pfennig’s worth: “Tanks on the streets and air strikes against their own people are injustice.”
The White House ploughed right in: “The President and Secretary agreed that all parties in Turkey should support the democratically elected government of Turkey.”
Chaps, I know it’s difficult, but do try to understand that it’s not method of government that matters, but what kind of society it brings forth.
The greatest achievements of our civilisation came when democracy was either a far cry from today’s one-man-one-vote madness or didn’t exist at all. Conversely, democratic governments either perpetrated or abetted the greatest calamities in history, such as two world wars.
Nor does democracy automatically preclude tyranny, as shown by the democratically elected Hitler, Perón, Mugabe, Putin and Macîas Nguema (who gratefully murdered a third of the population of Equatorial Guinea that had voted him in).
It was in the name of democracy that a neocon-inspired US ousted secular Middle Eastern regimes to watch on gleefully as feral-looking Muslims flocked to voting booths. As a direct result, the whole region is aflame, with millions dead or dying, and bloodshed spilling over into Western streets.
Like all philistines, democracy fetishists believe that everyone is, or wants to be, like them. Since they themselves regard religion as an annoying irrelevance, they assume that Muslims are similar. But that assumption is wrong: the green banner of Islam still has more unifying power than any other current institutional symbol. And history shows that Islam has been doctrinally hostile to the West for 1,400 years.
The conclusion is straightforward: the more fervently Muslim a state is, the greater danger it presents to the West. Therefore it’s in the West’s interest to support the most secular Muslim regimes, while trying to undermine those run by proselytising fanatics.
In practice this means supporting undemocratic regimes, for most Muslims, unlike most Christians and Jews, are active believers. A democratic election is therefore likely to bring to power an Islamic theocracy – and this is exactly what happened in Egypt, to cite one example.
In 2012 Egyptians voted for the Muslim Brotherhood, installing Mohamed Morsi as president, much to the delight of Western democracy hounds. That eccentric gentleman believed that Muslims had nothing to do with 9/11, and the explosions that brought down the Twin Towers “happened from the inside”.
Overnight Egypt was transformed from a reluctant ally of the West into its deadly enemy, and few were the Westerners who didn’t heave a sigh of relief when a year later the army overthrew that evil, democratically elected regime.
Historically the army is the only force in the Islamic world that’s capable of keeping Muslim piety, and concomitant savagery, in check. Yet the generals seldom take over by democratic process. It’s military coup that’s the normal expedient.
This has been the case in Atatürk’s Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lybia – in every place where variously vile but generally secular regimes were installed. Of course democratic demagoguery wouldn’t wear it.
Anyone with elementary knowledge of history will know that an Ayatollah is the only realistic alternative to the Shah, the Muslim Brotherhood to Mubarak, tribal cannibals to the Ba’athist regimes in Iraq and Syria – and Erdoğan to a secular government beholden to the army. A Winston Churchill isn’t an option in any of those places.
Hence the only intelligent reaction would have been for Western leaders to support the coup in every way they could. What we get instead is vacuous drivel on the delights of democracy and the evil of military coups as such. When the West was still led by nation-serving statesmen, rather than self-serving spivs, things were different.
For example, when the 1944 Generals’ Plot against Hitler was unfolding, one can’t picture Churchill, Johnson’s professed role model, saying something like: “Admittedly, Herr Hitler is an implacable enemy of this country and her allies, and we are aware of the crimes his regime has perpetrated. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that, unlike the military junta trying to oust it, Herr Hitler’s government was democratically elected. Therefore, we cannot welcome the Generals’ Plot unequivocally. In fact, we denounce it for the denial of the democratic principles that HMG is here to uphold.”
“Tempora mutantur”, the classically educated Mr Johnson would doubtless say. Yes, and usually for the worse, as he has so ably demonstrated.