by Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n
American Thinker<\/em><\/p>\n All-permeating “white-guilt” did not appear out of thin air. It has taken a sustained propaganda effort, a wide-ranging mobilization of education and culture, to inculcate and sustain self-loathing among American Caucasians. Like the Coca-Cola TM brand, white-guilt needs endless repetition to remain struck in the thought and behavioral processes of the masses.<\/p>\n The movie\u00a0Pathfinder<\/em>, which I saw on cable, offers a vivid example of the sort of brainwashing intended to refresh the white-guilt TM brand in the thinking habits of young people in particular.<\/p>\n Set around 900 AD, the film deals with Viking incursions into North America.\u00a0 The Vikings are portrayed as ironclad giants \u2014 more monster than human \u2014 mounted atop massive Clydesdales, barking and grunting obscenities in some strange tongue; the natives, as expected, gentle, innocent, and peace-loving. This theme, of course, is not new.<\/p>\n Subtleties playing on white-guilt, however, are spread throughout. Consider the usage of language. The Vikings speak only Norse, with English subtitles (though the viewer could do without, since apparently the north-men had naught to utter but barbarities and cruelties). Conversely, the natives rattle off in 21st-century colloquial English. If the movie was primarily interested in authenticity (let alone objectivity), both languages \u2014 Native and Norse \u2014 should have been used (as in\u00a0The Passion<\/em>, where Latin, Hebrew, and Aramaic are maintained throughout). Moreover, if either of the two languages should have been rendered into English, logically it should have been Norse, which is at least etymologically related to English and in the same linguistic group.<\/p>\n Of course, philological fidelity is not the movie-makers’ primary interest; empathy by association is. Violent Vikings are left to babble unintelligently about fire, war, and iron, while Natives talk of love, peace, and courage \u2014 all in very smooth English. Americans are supposed to identify with the natives, not their Norse co-linguists, nor, for millions of American viewers tracing their lineage to Scandinavia, their ancestors.<\/p>\n Language manipulation aside, the depiction of Vikings as brutal warriors and plunderers is at least plausible and historic. The Native presentation, on the other hand, is neither. Indeed, the cultural anachronisms of\u00a0Pathfinder\u00a0<\/em>suggest that 10th-century natives were akin to modern-day liberals, easily “traumatized” and constantly in need of “therapy” and “reaffirmation” \u2014 concepts wholly non-existent in the 10th century.<\/p>\n From the start, a native woman encounters dead bodies and starts shrieking (she is “traumatized”) and running madly \u2014 as if living in 900 AD North America (or anywhere else at the time, for that matter) men, women, and children would not find the sight of rotting corpses banal. In the midst of this carnage, she happens upon a Viking boy who brandishes a sword at her. Instead of reacting instinctively \u2014 fight-or-flight \u2014 she casts a loving look at him as if to say “You poor boy; what have they done to you?” and embraces him.<\/p>\n In fact, the main reasons that make the hero of the story, this same young Viking grown into manhood, agreeable, are his “liberal-therapeutic” tendencies. He has “daddy-issues” (his father beat and abandoned him for not being “man” enough) and is “confused” about his “identity,” finally sloughing off his violent Viking (read: “white”) heritage in favor of a sort of “multi-culti” native identity, thus making him the triumphant hero we can all support and identify with.<\/p>\n Of course none of this should be surprising; neither presenting dead white men as the personification of evil nor presenting non-whites as the personification of good \u2014 especially Native Americans, who have all but come to be the paradigmatic “noble other” who suffer countless and untold depredations at the hands of the white man. This theme is well rooted in popular culture, thanks to academia. Indeed, this motif is so ubiquitous that none other than Osama bin Laden exploits it to make white Americans feel shame and guilt.<\/p>\n This “noble-victimized-non-white” paradigm has further come to be applied to almost all non-whites. For example, early sub-Saharans are always portrayed as a peaceful people who simply wanted to live and let live-until warlike white man came along. (Pointing out that it was fellow Africans who sold their kinsmen into slavery is unpopular in polite \u2014 that is, white-guilt laden-conversation).<\/p>\n The most recent rehashing of the “noble-other vs. evil white-man” paradigm is based on the U.S. response to the Islamic world post 9\/11. Following al-Qaeda’s lead, academia and the media have been quick to portray George Bush as a ravenous brute (like the Vikings, also speaking an unintelligible tongue) who mindlessly attacks the peaceful others \u2014 this time Muslims \u2014 in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n What seems to be missed by all, however, is the simple fact that, if whites have been traditionally aggressive or exploitative of non-whites, that is not because the former are intrinsically violent (a racist point, incidentally) but simply because they were able to. And that’s the bottom line of all history: capability. Did whites defeat and uproot Native Americans, enslave Africans, and colonize the rest because they lived according to some sort of unprecedented bellicose creed alien to non-whites? Quite the contrary; they did so because they \u2014 as opposed to natives, blacks, et. al. \u2014 were able to do so.<\/p>\n Had 10th-century Native Americans developed galleys for transoceanic travel, or advanced fire arms, or compasses, or organized military structures and stratagems \u2014 or any of those other things that have made the Western way of war supreme \u2014 and had they arrived on the shores of Dark Age Europe, is there any doubt that they would have done the same exact thing?<\/p>\n Would they have conquered and subjugated in the name of empire, or would they have looked at the inferior pale savages and “respected” them, in the name of “diversity,” leaving them wholly unmolested? What if 18th-century, sub-Saharan blacks were technologically or militarily more advanced than their northern neighbors and could have easily subjugated and enslaved them? Would they have done so, or would they have left them in peace in the name of “multiculturalism”? These are the hypotheticals that no one seems interested in asking, since the answer is not only clear as day but immediately places whites and the rest of humanity on the same moral grounding.<\/p>\n Nor can the argument be made that non-whites did not reach such a militarily advanced state because they were a peaceful and content people. If so, why then did they also constantly war, kill, rape, plunder, and sell each other into slavery \u2014 as history so unambiguously records? If this is how they treated, and often still treat, their own kin, what would they have done to the “other,” such as the white man? As for Muslims, history attests that whenever there has been a caliphate on the ascendancy, it had no compunctions whatsoever about launching devastating wars of conquest. Approximately 85% of the “Islamic world” today was subjugated during the Islamic conquests (or, according to the white-guilt lexicon, Islamic “expansions”).<\/p>\n None of this is meant to exonerate the crimes of the white-man, but rather to put them in context by indicating that all people \u2014 all races, all ethnicities \u2014 are the same; they war, and, when capable \u2014 keyword \u2014 go on the offensive in search of conquest and hegemony. Depending on scope, it could be either tribal or international hegemony. Some religions incite these innate “passions,” others mollify them. Yet these passions \u2014 which, according to that astute philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, “carry us to partiality, pride, revenge and the like [e.g., war and conquest] \u2014 apply to all of humanity. To say otherwise is to be racist.<\/p>\n Raymond Ibrahim is the editor of the\u00a0Al-Qaeda Reader<\/i>, translations of religious texts and propaganda.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Raymond Ibrahim American Thinker All-permeating “white-guilt” did not appear out of thin air. It has taken a sustained propaganda effort, a wide-ranging mobilization of education and culture, to inculcate and sustain self-loathing among American Caucasians. Like the Coca-Cola TM brand, white-guilt needs endless repetition to remain struck in the thought and behavioral processes of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[227,725],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-MT","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7282,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/raymond-ibrahim-on-cbn-news-will-egypts-el-sisi-protect-christians\/","url_meta":{"origin":3031,"position":0},"title":"Raymond Ibrahim on CBN News: ‘Will Egypt’s el-Sisi Protect Christians?’","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 1, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/ CBN News\u00a0 On April 24, CBN News Senior International Reporter Gary Lane interviewed me about Egypt. Lane\u2019s write-up, \u201cWill Egypt\u2019s el-Sisi Protect Christians?\u201d as well as the three part interview, follow: With only one month to go before Egyptians elect a new president, it looks like\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egypt"","block_context":{"text":"Egypt","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/egypt\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/lklkl-300x223.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6219,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/crucified-again-venn-institute-interviews-raymond-ibrahim\/","url_meta":{"origin":3031,"position":1},"title":"Crucified Again — Venn Institute Interviews Raymond Ibrahim","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 18, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Raymond Ibrahim [Note: The following interview was conducted by the\u00a0Venn Institute\u00a0with Raymond Ibrahim] Raymond Ibrahim is a widely published author, public speaker, and Middle East and Islam expert, and author most recently of\u00a0Crucified Again: Exposing Islam\u2019s New War on Christians. Follow him on Twitter\u00a0@RaymondIbrahim5 Venn Institute: Most Americans see persecution\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Raymond Ibrahim"","block_context":{"text":"Raymond Ibrahim","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/raymond-ibrahim\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Crucified-Again-Cover.jpg?fit=797%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Crucified-Again-Cover.jpg?fit=797%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Crucified-Again-Cover.jpg?fit=797%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Crucified-Again-Cover.jpg?fit=797%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3265,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/islam-and-innocence\/","url_meta":{"origin":3031,"position":2},"title":"Islam and Innocence","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 19, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim Jihad Watch Just recently, a high ranking Pakistani cleric, one Munib ur-Rehmen,asserted\u00a0that \u201cIslam does not allow anybody to take lives of innocent people by any means.\u201d However, when he was grand mufti, two years earlier, he alsosaid\u00a0that \u201ctruly Islamic\u201d states must kill the apostate from Islam. 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Introduction:\u00a0On May 5, Mr. Ibrahim gave a talk on Islam at\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Jamie Glazov"","block_context":{"text":"Jamie Glazov","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/jamie-glazov\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":647,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/calls-for-hearings-on-radicalization-of-white-christian-women\/","url_meta":{"origin":3031,"position":5},"title":"Calls for Hearings on ‘Radicalization’ of White Christian Women","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 14, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim FrontPage Magazine During a Homeland Security committee hearing last month on the \"Radicalization of Muslim-Americans,\" Texas Congressman Al Green (D) criticized the hearings as biased and unfair to Muslims, suggesting that the only way to justify them is if Congress would also conduct a \"hearing on the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/religion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3031"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3031"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3032,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3031\/revisions\/3032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}