Another educational thread on Jihad Watch's forum boards

Extract of an educational thread over at Jihad Watch: Spencer: Comings and goings. An excerpt:

But what you say about mirrors is an equally important point inasmuch as it addresses the same general issue of trying to understand WHY the average westerner can't see the enemy for who he is. This fact obviously has multiple contributing causes, one of which, as Television's [Smooth: a forum contributor] reference to the Maginot Line is meant to convey - is that the average westerner can only conceive of Nazi's as coming in the guise of white western people and so, when they see brown non-western people like Muslims, they are incapable of grasping the fact that Muslims are really no different from the Nazi's in their supremacism and imperialist goals of conquering the world. But because Muslims happen to be a minority in the west at this point (like the Jews were 60 years ago), the average westerner is unable to see that the Muslims are basically Nazi's. They instead imagine that Muslims are the new Jews - attacked for no reason whatsoever other than racist or xenophobic paranoia. The reference to the Maginot line is meant to convey something about human nature and its incapacity to grasp an ever shifting reality.

But your point about the mirror is equally applicable, even if it represents a different illustration of the obvious failure of the average westerner to grasp the problem of Islam.

What you're talking about is not the fear of repeating a history that the west is deeply ashamed of and that has left a huge scar on its psyche, but rather the common psychological matter of generalized projection - the assumption that "they" are just like "us". These are 2 different issues.

Re the projection issue, I was trying to understand that phenomenon myself here:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/012184.php#c242338

When the infidel falls into the all too natural and human tendency towards projection in assuming that Muslims are just like them (holding up that mirror and seeing themselves reflected back as you describe) - it is a deadly mistake, especially when they are facing sociopaths who make the very same assumption. It may be a natural human tendency to fall into the habit of generalized projection - yes - but that doesn't make it rational.

It's going to be a tough fight indeed for the forces of rationality to prevail against the forces of irrationality all around – against Muslims (the very definition of irrationality) but also those westerners driven by "noble" emotions - the sort of emotions that feed the egos of those who have the need to bask in an imaginary reflected glow (your mirror analogy is apt) that reinforces their ego needs to demonstrate their own moral bona fides, the kind of reflected glow that makes them feel shallowly virtuous, because THEY (unlike all the idiotic war-mongerers on both sides) have the vision to see past it all.

They’re living in a fantasy world of course, a world of false reflected images, as you suggest. But they’re very dangerous nonetheless, as the Muslims are. Two sides of the same irrational coin in the end. On the one side the jihadis. On the other side the dhimmis. Both irrational and deluded and completely avoiding reality, each in their own way, but working in tandem as two sides of an inseparable coin (a coin that I imagine having a malevolent joker on one side and a unicorn on the other, or something like that).