“I seem to smell the stench of appeasement in the air”
Margaret Thatcher
“Engagement is not appeasement. Engagement is not surrender”
Chuck Hagel
“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history, is the most important of all the lessons of history”
Aldous Huxley
The stark sequelae of the practice of appeasement leading up to the cataclysm that was the second world war has made the word appeasement a central focus of every consideration to determine how to confront tyranny since. The crystal clear lessons of Prime Minister of Great Britain’s Neville Chamberlain’s decision to allow the Nazi gangster regime to devour Czechoslovakia in trade for a temporary etherial peace has remained the example for all time of the legacy of appeasement. Since the events of 1938-39, western democracies have been more sensitive to the risk of the label of appeaser being applied to them, to avoid the stigma of their actions being interpreted as ignorance or weakness. The consequences, however, of ignoring history’s painfully learned lessons are no less dire in today’s modern world than they were in the simple fascism of the 1930s when state driven fascists bluntly developed their capabilities in easily recognizable uniformed, organized military forces.
The basic structural elements of weakness in recognition, preparation and confrontation native to appeasement remain every bit as trenchant in the need for understanding in today’s world as it did in the seeds of destruction planted by inaction prior to world War II. The power of last week’s march in Paris, where a common defense of the principles of free speech was trumpeted by many world leaders (sans America) and millions of citizens was visually stunning, but vacuous. It crumbled the minute the French President Hollande left the synagogue where the Israeli Prime Minister was about to speak, afraid to be associated with any expression of opinion that did not fit the meme of political correctness on the just the subject he had marched to defend earlier. To the tyrannists, no better signal of the hollow nature of the “outrage” could possibly have been sent. They could see that Hollande did not equate terrorism that Israel lives with on a daily basis with that of the Charlie Hebdo magazine massacre, though the terror cells responsible for both hold nearly identical credos and objectives.
What are the common foundational elements of ignorance and weakness that form the perverted logic resulting in appeasement, and are we once again heading down the road so presciently defined by Winston Churchill in 1938 with the current islamofascist threat? Ramparts takes a look at the science of Appeaseology.
The Falsehoods of Grievance :
The need to appease on the basis of perceived grievance is a common element put forth by all appeasers. The Nazi gangsters were forgiven their neanderthal tactics on the consideration that they had been aggrieved by the world. The territories they sought were, after all, filled with German speaking and germanic ancestral peoples forced to live under the unnatural flag of oppressive foreigners like the government of Czechoslovakia. Much the same, today’s Palestinians are forced to ceed their natural rights to the land to the occupationist Israelis, the once seamless islamic caliphate to the usurping Christians and Yazhidis of Syria and Iraq, and the arab nation to the vestiges of French and British colonial abuse. If only the rightful heirs to the land would be restored, the need to be belligerent would rapidly dissipate. Modern western European liberal thought particularly remains inextricably linked to this form of Appeaseology.
Engagement and the path of Least Resistance:
The belligerent character of aggressors is a sign of their immaturity in the realm of diplomatic give and take. Belligerents simply want to be respected and taken seriously. By constructively engaging them and showing your willingness to be reasonable and non-obstructive, you will show them the benefits of mature human behavior and the sincerity of your good will. Such behavior builds progressively trust and peaceful compromise. Though the risk of nuclear weaponry in the hands of Iran may seem volatile, their self respect and pride from being able to have the technical capacity to create such weapons and the national will to develop them is understandable, and willingness to deny them such capacity reactionary. They will appreciate the good will and recognize their role in needing to maintain stability. Nazi impulses were similarly seen as a temporary aberration of a civilized nation, that once engaged, would respond with the innate tempered civilized outlook of the great german nation evolved over hundreds of years. Putting up roadblocks to “evolution” would simply delay that behavior from the German nation.
Universal truths are relative and potentially insulting:
The tremendous rallies in the support of free speech last week in France are pledges only to the concept, not the reality of individual rights. Sarcasm or provocative expression anathema to another culture is the ultimate instigation to belligerence and hostile actions, as viewed by the politically correct modern appeasers. President Obama expressed this view best when he stated at the United Nations : “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” Of the insult to every other culture that Islamofascism insists upon, subjugation of all other religions, enslavement and prostituting of their young, destruction of their religious symbols, erasing of their cultures, and elimination of their representative voice, Obama is ignorantly incapable of appreciating such realities as counterintuitive to his argument.
The actions of the extreme are a perversion of the culture, not a reflection of it:
The “lone wolfs” and terrorist cells that plague the world are outliers and perversions to the base message of Islam. Whether it is the monsters of Nigeria, Boko Harum, the absolutionists of the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda Wahhabism, or the murderers of the ISIL caliphate, the Jew slayers of Hamas or Hezbollah, or individual “lone wolf” Soldiers for Allah such as the Boston Marathon Bombers or Major Hassan, the appeasement mantra is that this is no way reflects the base tenets of Islam, a supposed peaceful and tolerant religion. No different were the SS Waffen or the Jew beaters of the SA, obvious aberrations of the German nation to the appeasers who wanted to envision a Germany of Beethoven, Goethe, and Leibniz. Appeasers are capable of ignoring example after example of hostile actions because of the comfort they feel in the illusion of their contrived and fantastical image of their appeased subject.
The fires of extremism burn themselves out with the careful and steady management of appeasement:
Passions are the undirected energies of a rudderless culture, and as the culture is progressively brought into the family of nations, the passions will positively re-direct. Somehow by the West being patient and non-confrontational, willing to absorb a few spasms of violence, the progressive growth achieved by engagement will calm the instability. This irrational assumption that passion is not fed by fundamental belief flies in the face of all credible evidence In both the form of fascism of the late 30s in Germany and Japan, and the modern version in Islamofacism , the fundamental belief is that of a superior people denied its rightful place at the head of all peoples. The belief is not burdened by guilt, ethics, or any form of self controlled behavior. Each event that shows a lack of willingness to confront, reinforces the sense of that superiority. The fires are not burned out, but rather fed with the oxygen of each incitement without retribution.
It was briefly inspiring to see some blowback from the millions of French citizens who risked their anonymity to say “je suis Charlie Hebdo”. The proof however is in action, not intention. The modern governments of the West are filled with leaders who calculate and appease, rather than assess and confront. They are more offended and outraged by fantastical enemies such as climate change and lifestyle victimization then the ominous and fundamental threats to their civilization. We cannot count on our leaders, who are in love with their ability to socially experiment and control behavior, and willing to risk all that we have achieved. We need brave muslim leaders like General Al-Sisi of Egypt to continue to step forward and say no more. We need to have the average citizen of the civilized world stand up and say “Je suis Civilisation, J’aime Civilisation” – and let all know the appetite for appeasement is now at end. To the Islamofascists, our patience is at end. And with it, the unprovoked expansion of their perverted gangster world is at end. Its the end of our world or the end of their world, and we all know to preserve what is good in this world – its their world that must go.
