Savages

by Daniel Greenfield

We’re in a war between savages and civilization. Everything else is a detail.

Some of us woke up to that war when planes crashed into skyscrapers. Others when we saw beheading videos spread across social media. What we saw in Israel, Hamas terrorists raping, mutilating and defiling corpses, is another bloody wake-up call. There will be many others.

Beyond the politics and the geopolitics, we still haven’t come to terms with what we’re fighting.

The barbarism of murdering women and children, taking them as hostages, and posting photos of their dead bodies to social media, is not a byproduct of Islamic warfare, it’s the whole point.

Cruelty, beheading, burning to death, torturing and mutilating are the essence of Islam. This is how Islamic warfare was practiced beginning with Mohammed for over a thousand years. It’s how it continues to be practiced, whether it’s ISIS fighting other Muslims, Azebajani troops killing Armenians, Hamas attacking Israelis, or Islamic terrorists plotting carnage in Western nations.

Islam was born out of a war by barbarians against the civilized societies of Persia and Byzantium. Despite academic mythmaking, its vision never extended beyond rape and slavery, its empires fell into power struggles, beginning with Sunnis and Shiites, and its cultural and scientific accomplishments were all looted from conquered peoples. When civilization finally toppled the Ottoman Empire with some help from its internal barbarians, the cycle began again.

Israel is just one front in a global war between savages and civilization. And not all of the savages bow to Allah. There are inner city gangs across the American hemisphere that behead and torture their victims. And there are children of civilization that turn into savages. Savagery is not a condition of birth: it is a choice. People born into savagery can become civilized and those born into the highest echelons of civilization can prey on us like the worst vicious animals.

The question is how do civilized societies confront savagery? Do we blame ourselves for having made the savages what they are through our capitalism and colonialism even though they have behaved this way long before modern western civilization amounted to anything? Or do we set forth to reeducate them, to build modern nations for them and teach them to become civilized?

We have sent forth our sons and daughters to make peace with them and to educate them. Our societies opened themselves to embrace and celebrate the virtues of the noble savage. When we realized that we could not coexist with savages, we tried to remake our societies to serve them. All of that has been tried and civilization is still drowning in the violence of the savages.

The fundamental truth is that civilization and savagery are innately at war with one another.

Savages are offended by the existence of civilization. When they see one, they want to destroy it. There can be no peace with savages because, contrary to Islam, peace is a condition of civilization. To have peace, you must be civilized. Savages don’t even view peace as a value apart from the conclusion of a successful conquest which then sets the stage for the next one.

Civilized people develop complex mechanisms of exchange, but savages see no reason why they shouldn’t take something or someone if they are too weak to defend themselves. No amount of lectures will ever convince a savage that anything other than clan relations should prevent him from stealing a car or raping a woman if there will be no clear consequences.

That’s because savages, unlike civilized people, have no conscience, and therefore no soul.

Islam, unlike Judaism and Christianity, is not a religion of the soul, but entirely of power. From its genocidal chant, “Allahu Akbar” that proclaims the physical supremacy of Allah to all other religions through the military victories of its followers, everything is reduced to conquest. The truth of Islam is validated through war. When Jihadists conquer and rape non-Muslims, they are proving that Islam is true and that the religions of the conquered are false. That’s why ISIS Jihadists would tell the Yazidi girls they were raping that rape brought them “closer to Allah”

Civilizations have become too sophisticated and decadent to understand such concepts. When faced with barbarism, they go down a dialectic rabbit hole that explains the savages in terms of how civilized people interacted with them. Did they hurt their feelings, overthrow their governments or draw mean cartoons? Did capitalism leave them adrift in the world economy? How did we fail to integrate the newest generation of immigrants with all the welfare checks?

These sophomoric sessions are pointless. A hyena doesn’t eat your chickens because you failed to integrate it. That’s just what hyenas do. Man at the base state is a predator and savages strive to be the alpha predators. Civilizations become superior predators because they provide room for arts and sciences, because they think about something other than how they are superior to their neighbors and will prove it by killing their sons and raping their daughters.

But when civilizations spend too much time thinking, they forget that one reason they came into being was to build something better than a state of savagery. Decadent civilizations internalize all the criticism and their peoples endlessly quarrel and think that the worst possible things in the world are the ones that exist among their own people. Savages remind us otherwise.

Much like a hurricane reminds us of the alternative to houses and famine reminds us of the alternative to food, savages remind us of the alternative to civilization. Unfortunately truly decadent civilizations need constant reminders of all of these things. We have to be constantly told that food doesn’t magically emerge from a supermarket, that houses are not the natural state of being and that not being murdered by savages in your home is a new way of life.

Tolerate savages, give them enough rope and they will do all of these things to you. And more.

Savagery should not be confused with stupidity. Civilizations have been brought down by savages and civilizations were built by savages who became civilized. Savages are clever and cunning. They are alert to the weaknesses of civilized people and experts at finding ways around whatever walls and security systems that civilized people build to protect themselves.

Civilizations that spend enough time allowing savages to hang around will fall. Tolerating savages is actually a sign that a civilization has turned decadent. Welcoming and advocating for savages means that the end is nigh. Viable civilizations drive savages away. They do it not just to protect themselves but because banishing savages is what makes a civilization civilized.

When civilizations forget what the difference between themselves and the savages are, they lose their sense of right and wrong, and they can no longer explain why savagery is wrong. When faced with the worst imaginable crimes, they can still equivocate a case for the criminals.

Hamas terrorists can rape and kill their victims, and defenders will rally to explain why the issue is actually more complicated than it seems. This happens with Islamic terrorists all the time.

Savages and decadent civilizations have no firm concept of right and wrong. Everything is subjectively opportunistic and there can be scenarios in which raping a woman, killing her and then posting a photo of her body to social media so her family can see is actually right.

That is why civilization has to defeat savagery, without equivocation, apologies or sympathy, not only to win, but to revive its own soul. Negotiations and laws of war are for peer civilization. Savages offer nothing and so are owed nothing. They keep no agreements except when it suits them. Their word is worthless and their morality is non-existent.

A civilization that does not understand all this will learn it the hard way.

Civilizations are built on the suppression of savagery: both internally and externally.. When civilizations defeat savages, learning, art, science and ideas thrive. And when civilizations allow savages to ravage them, they lose their people, their morality and eventually their existence.

No form of war is more sacred than that of civilization against savagery. It is these wars that made Christianity and Judaism, not to mention all the ideas of western civilization, as well as those of Asia and India, possible. This is once again the defining struggle of our age.

Either civilization or the savages will prevail. Any attempt at a middle ground is suicide.

Our grandchildren will either make great things or they will be hunted by roaming savages like the teenage girls at a concert in Israel or those similarly hunted in venues in Europe.

All the hopes of mankind depend on the utter and total defeat of the savages, not just in Israel, but in America, in Europe, in India and Asia, and around the world. This is not the struggle of any single nation, but the crisis of mankind. Either humanity will rise or we will fall.