From the Thousand Year Reich to the Global Caliphate

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose ...

From Jeffrey Lord at The American Spectator:

 

First it was the Thousand Year Reich. Now it’s the Global Caliphate. The pattern is as simple as it is stark. It always begins with the unruly rabble-rousers. A curiosity at first, then a police problem, then a raised governmental eyebrow. Eventually, the rabble-rousers attract more rabble. Now the jails begin to fill. Then the streets. There is violence. Then the sympathizers appear, making the case that, well, when you think about it, the growing rabble has a point or two or three. Money starts to flow in from supporters as well as the sympathizers. The rabble rousers finally get organized. The media gets involved, with the rabble getting their hands on communications capabilities and attracting attention from other media not their own. The latter media follows along, ignoring the first stirrings, then not, then with some leaping over the side into the deep water with the rabble’s “rising star.” And don’t forget the foreigners. They are always there to be attracted, supplying everything from money to support in their own country, when not simply abandoning their own country altogether and joining the cause.

And rising stars? That is exactly the way the leaders of these rabble-rousers are presented, even if the terminology is not used. Sometimes these rising stars come in two personas — the intellectuals and the activists. Sometimes? They are both in one.

If there is anything to learn from this historical pattern, it would be that Mistake Number One is to not take what’s happening very seriously and do something about it. As then-Obama White House counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan was clearly advising an agreeable President Obama not to do something about Islamic radicalism. In case you missed it, there was this jewel awhile back from Brennan — who is now the director of the CIA. Said Brennan of ISIS:

We are not going to organize our counterterrorism policies against a feckless delusion that is never going to happen. We are not going to elevate these thugs and their murderous aspirations into something larger than they are.

Ahhhh yes. The feckless delusions of thugs. Just one no big deal. Unless, of course, one realizes the world has been here before. With ISIS and all those Islamic radicals making it perfectly plain that in their quest for a global caliphate they are following the old, well-worn pattern of history. A pattern that once produced the vision of the “thousand year Reich.” 

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