AUSTRALIAN NATIONALISM: THE SWORD AND THE SHIELD

Ned Kelly, the defiant Australian bushranger and outlaw

  

Since nationalism has been simple-mindedly  blamed for world wars one and two, or more accurately, rounds one and two of the same war, the concept has been tarnished to the point where it is almost as dirty a word as 'manhole' is to feminists.  This process has been given more than a little help from you know who to whom via convoluted logic nationalism = Holocaust.  

Australian nationalism has become as vexed a term as the nationalism of any other white nation even though we could not be fairly accused of starting a single war.  Getting involved in other people's wars is more our style and, as the official history has it, none of those wars have been started by the sides we backed, it fortunately being the prerogative of winners to write the history.  There was of course that one that was lost but we'd skedaddled long before the enemy's flag had been hoisted on the Presidential Palace.  The only Australian left there was the late but legendary war cameraman, Neil Davis who bravely stood his ground to film an NVA tank crashing through the palace gates.  It would become a historical record the Vietnamese communists themselves would come to treasure and are probably thankful that Neil wasn't shot then and there instead of years later in Bangkok.

But I digress.  Given that our brand of nationalism hasn't led to any war (and judging by the way successive Australian governments have kow-towed to potential enemies, it will never be allowed to) why has it become so blackened?  That is, why has it become so blackened apart from the obvious: self-flagellating, self-loathing PC liberalism that also looks askance at our flag, seeing even evil racism in that. (The degree of racism here largely depends on the context in which the flag is being displayed; if it is simply being flown, although this may cause offence to certain of our precious minorities, it may just scrape by.  But if the flag is being worn in any way such as a cape, that is obvious, unadulterated racism and should be answerable to the iron heel of group-think.)

To answer that question, it is necessary to get a grip on this slippery chameleon known as nationalism.  What does the Oxford Dictionary have to say about it?  'nationalism n. Patriotic feeling, principles, or efforts; policy of national independence ..'  That doesn't seem too threatening.  How about Roger Scruton's 'A Dictionary of Political Thought'?  'nationalism. 1. The sentiment and ideology of attachment to a nation and to its interests.  2. The theory that a state (perhaps every state) should be founded in a nation, and that a nation should be constituted as a state.... '  Again, fairly innocuous stuff.  There is though a word of warning: 'Modern nationalism is often decried, on account, e.g., of its attempt to found political obligation in purely social [italics in original] allegiances , or its alleged irrationalism, or its opposition to universalist doctrines [italics mine], or its nascent belligerence or imperialism...'  So opposition to having one's country gobbled up by the New World Order could be construed as nationalism, but why should this be seen in a negative light?  But the reminder about lurking imperialism might be handy although imperialism today is monopolised by the superpowers: China's neo-imperialism in Africa and the imperialism of the US which is called 'the spreading or democracy'.

However, imperialism has never really been our style.  The closest we've ever come to it is being handed a mandate over Papua, New Guinea but under the urging of a leftist prime minister blinded by his ideology from seeing that perhaps not all races are equal, we backpedalled out of that arrangement faster than a politician from a promise leaving the newly minted liberal democracy to degenerate into being just another barbaric failed state.  It would probably have been cheaper to keep on running it ourselves rather than pumping foreign aid into it ad infinitum.  

The fact of the matter is that we didn't do anything to demonise nationalism.  It is generally believed that Hitler did it for us, that he cruelled it for everybody, everybody that is who is white.  Interestingly, Germany's ally in WW2, Japan, which was just as responsible for taking nationalism over the brink into fascism, instead of being slapped with the same ban, blithely carries on being as nationalistic as its collective heart desires.  Japaneseness isn't dished out like soup at a soup kitchen the way Australian citizenship is.  Even Koreans whose family trees have been planted in Japan for generations just don't cut it.

Japan suffers as much with the from the so called aging population crisis as western countries.  We are told that because of this phenomenon we are faced with two choices: we either import vast numbers of third worlders to support us in our old age or we die.  If this is true, it seems Japan would rather die than opt for the alternative (which would probably be worse kind of death anyway) 

It is this contradiction - the demonising of Germany's nationalism, but not Japan's - that gives the game away. It is only underlings, pawns and useful idiots who really believe that nationalism is evil because it inevitably and inexorably leads to war. The powers behind the scenes, the string pullers, the history shapers know better.  Millions slain in wars are of least concern to them.  War to them is not even intrinsically a bad thing; it is only bad when it is not in their interests.  So why are they against nationalism?  Simply because nationalism supports nation states and nation states have been slated for the toxic waste dump of history.  The game has been on for a long time and it has been and is played by people who think not in years but centuries.  World government is the Valhalla long strived for.

The League of Nations was the first serious but bungled and abortive attempt.  The United Nations was a more susuccessful shot but being predicated on the US and the USSR remaining the odd bedfellows they had been once their common enemy was crushed, it was doomed to still-birth even while the ruins of Berlin were still smouldering.  It however would still prove to be a useful tool now and again but the real business of nation state demolition was essentially privatised.  'Think tanks' such as the Bilderbergers, The Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission, comprising the world's elite from politics, the banks, academe, mighty cooperations and the media, became the engines of globalisation, and of course globalisation when taken to its logical conclusion must equal world government.

 We tend to forget that - even as our leading political lights constantly prattle on about the glories of globalisation.  But we also tend to forget it is not our local leaders who at the helm of our country.  At best they are branch managers taking their instruction from Global Inc.  Wriggle room is all they are allowed, left to dither over inconsequential matters such as how best to extort more money from the rubes: raise income tax or GST?  You may have noticed that apart from odd fits of sound and fury not much has been done about getting multinationals operating in our country to pay their fair share of tax.  Why isn't the so called 'double tax' bill passed in the early fifties being looked at?  This bill essentially let multinationals of the tax hook if they were paying tax in their own countries.  The justification was that we needed the investment but that was before 'investment' meant an amount equal to or greater than profits leaving the country.  

National governments  today (in the West - worry about the rest later) act on the 'advice' of the all powerful think tanks as well as what other dark forces swirl and lurk behind the curtain.  Forceful advice has been given that nation states are a ridiculous anachronism impeding 'progress'.  They have to go - along with everything that holds them together - family, religion, traditional morality and of course nationalism  

Here in Australia though we are allowed a small ration of nationalism once a year on Australia Day, albeit a very soft nationalism, so soft in fact that it is a sanitised, unthinking patriotism, approved and manufactured by the state. This is our once a year opportunity to wave our the flag as energetically as we like (but don't dare wear it - that would be going much too far),  This is the flag, notwithstanding the tens of thousands of men who fought and died under it, that a huge effort will go into removing and replacing with another that we'll be expected to wave just as enthusiastically come the following Australia Day.  Be warned though, once the Union Jack is gone that is our roots cut away and our demotion to being just another ethnic group.

 Scuttle the flag and give us another one; no problem we'll wave that one while we belt out the lines of 'I am Australian: We are one, but we are many and from all the lands on Earth we come ...There it is.  So that's why we are allowed our annual opportunity to let off some patriotic steam - so we can actually be celebrating our diversity while thinking we are celebrating the founding of a nation.  This is clever.  You have to hand it to them.  It's easy to see the fix is in though.  A little over thirty years ago we weren't blessed with all that much diversity.  Coincidentally, we didn't really have an Australia Day either, at least what it has morphed into. It was just a day off like Labour Day or the Queens birthday.  Who cared what the occasion was as long as we didn't have to go to work or school.  For years we had watched the way flag-waving Yanks carried on on the fourth of July and sadly shook our heads.  The thing was that we were so confident in who we were we didn't need all this bullshit.  

Fortunately for us though, the pendulum of history never rests - it swings eternally.  And evidence abounds that the pendulum has curently reached the zenith of its upward swing, its momentum no longer able to defy gravity - the gravity of reaction.  The chaos currenty playing out in Europe, make no mistake, is a game-changer.  As noted elsewhere so succinctly and graphically on the net, the frog was almost enjoying lazing in its the slowly heating saucepan of water - that is until Angela Merkel barged into the kitchen and switched the gas to full.  'WTF,' said the frog. Now Europeans with eyes to see know that their homeland is as much under threat as it would be by an invading army. It is unlikely, once the shadow of death reaches across them, they will '...go gentle into that good night.'

The rise and rise of Donald Trump in the US might be considered exhibit B for the changing of the zeitgeist.  Even if he misses out on the presidency, or is assassinated before the election, whoever does win power will know that the country has changed irrevokably, that a huge swathe of the population has woken up and is not happy with what it sees.

Australian nationalists should derive hope from these developments.  'There is a time and tide ...' and this is it.  It is however a heavy responsibility.  We are all that can prevent the destruction of our nation by a globalising elite and the useful idiots of a the traitorous left.  

THE GREAT ISLAMIC SCHOOL SWINDLE

Malek Fahd Islamic School at Greenacre, Sydney

Hello! How long has this been going on?  It looks as though we are being taken for even bigger mugs than ever thought possible.

That something was decidedly off at the fish market first surfaced about a week ago when it was reported that Federal Government funding of the Malek Fahd Islamic school in Sydney amounting to $20 million was being axed. It has been further ordered to pay back  nine million dollars.
 This school, the largest Islamic school in the country operates along with five other Islamic schools under the umbrella of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC).  It is believed millions of dollars have been funnelled to the AFIC which also acts as a lobby group.  All six schools are being investigated by the Federal Department of Education in line with concerns about financial mismanagement and governance arrangements.

The guts of the 'concerns' could simply be stated as 'where is the money going as it sure as hell doesn't seem to be being spent on education.  Although Jews and Muslims have never really seemed to have hit it off, that apparently hasn't prevented to latter learning from the former in the matter of the famous Jewish chutzpah (taking pride in outrageous gall) if the reaction of the Malek Fahd school is anything to go by. Instead of anxiously attempting to explain away the glaring discrepancies, the school is simply stonewalling - implying it's none of your business -  and moreover, is taking legal action to get the money rolling again. And it's not as though the Education Department's decision was sprung on the school straight out of the blue.  No, the revoking of the funding came after repeated warnings of impending action if the school didn't come clean.  The possible reason the school felt so sans souci about these warning was that whatever the infidel Australian government wanted was completely irrelevant, given that  the Islamic diaspora rolling over (formerly) western countries do not think on the same frequency as the natives of the lands they are conquering.  Whereas westerners, at least since the time of Jesus Christ, see power in terms of a dichotomy - to God his due and to Caesar his due - to Muslims there is no such division.  In other words, Allah trumps earthly government.  That's of course not to say that governments are unneeded.  No, governments are fine, legal systems as well, as long as they fall in line behind and are all ears to the word of God.

Another reason the Malek Fahd school, and who knows, the other five schools possibly in on the racket, are so blase about the government's frustration is the fundamental Islamic belief in dhimmitude, a modernisation of the Arabic noun, dhimmi.  A dhimmi was a poor non-Muslim slob unfortunate enough to find himself living in Muslim territory, invariably by way of conquest.  Usually 'people of the book', Christians and Jews, a dhimmi was someone who had chosen the third option open to him after rejecting the first two: death (pretty ordinary) or conversion to Islam (slightly less ordinary).  Being a dhimmi entailed a second class status so far behind first class it hardly seemed connected to the train.  A dress code, for example was rigorously enforced so that they were easily identifiable, and legal rights were sparse.  The most oppressive though of the conditions of dimmitude was a heavy tax.

Perhaps, just perhaps, the Muslims in our midst, not unknown for their lack of arrogance, feel perfectly entitled to taking our money and doing with it whatever they feel like because it is seen as a version of the the dhimmi tax owed to them by the conquered infidel.  And who could blame them for thinking in terms of conquest when they are constantly being kow-towed to by our ruling elite.  Coincidentally, in just the last few days it was announced that Halal food would be provided to our soldiers when our armed forces contain less than 100 Muslims (and no prizes for guessing why so few 'patriotic' Muslims in an overall Muslim population inching toward half a million.).

So, where is the money going?  That is, what might be left over after the AFIC has snaffled its share.  Here' a hint (just sayin'):  In December 2014 it was revealed that the entire governing body of the first Islamic school in Birmingham, England had been sacked after it had been discovered that it was 900,000 pounds (of taxpayers' money) in the red even though the students were found to be being educated at substandard level and the school itself was in a dilapidated state.  Further investigation revealed that one million pounds had been used to fund a new school in Pakistan.  (Good to know we're not the only mugs.)

Another handy Muslim belief that puts us completely behind the eight ball in the ongoing war (we don't even know it's a war) is what is called taqiyya, an edict that allows Muslims to remain ethical while deceiving non-Muslims if in so doing it advances the interest of Islam.  Presumably lying for personal gain is frowned upon but there is sure to be a grey area of overlap.

These two basic precepts of Islam, dhimmitude and taqiyya, when combined form, a devastating weapon to be used a against the naive infidel.  What else are these unprincipled, devious people up to?  Presumably, all will be eventually revealed.  But by then the frog will be so well boiled, it probably won't make any difference. 


 

PEGIDA COMES TO AUSTRALIA

 If you live outside Canberra and were depending on the controlled mass media to inform you of it then you are more than likely to be still in the dark. However, Saturday February 6 will no doubt be recorded in Australian history as a turning point when the people stood outside 'their' national parliament and stated in no uncertain terms they are fed up with criminal betrayal,  cowardly appeasement of people who would see them in harm's way and (a la the film Network) they were fed up and were not going to take it any longer.
 
To illustrate just how much of a game changer  occurred here, simply compare these two head lines from the Canberra Times, the first from April 5, 2015: Anti-Reclaim Australia protesters send pro Islamic message at Parliament House Stand-off.  Now listen for the sigh of disappointment in the headline of February 7, 2016: Reclaim Australia Rally Drowns out Counter Protesters.  The worm, you might say, had turned, but now looking more like a deadly snake.

And drowned out the embarrassingly small contingent of leftists were.  They did though seem reasonably confident when their numbers roughly balanced those of the opposition which was however only an advance guard awaiting the full force of marchers from the old parliament house.  Their usual monotone chanting could be heard - please, could someone on their side do some work expanding this deadly boring repertoire -  as a kind of background noise while those who simply want Australia to remain Australia chatted amongst themselves.

Seemingly in a panic when the marchers joined those already at the assembly point, the decibels of leftist chanting were ramped up a notch or two but all hope was lost when the rally organisers' PA system roared to life with a cleverly re-written version of John Lennon's Imagine, prompting the listeners to 'imagine there is no Islam'.  More heart was lost then and there than could be afforded by the sadly misguided but nevertheless traitorous protesters who could be seen going a deathly pale.  But perhaps they had just heavily slip, slop, slapped.  Not long after, they quietly quit the field, tail tucked tightly between legs.

The rally in Canberra, organised by Daniel Evans of Reclaim Australia preceded a wave of anti-Islam rallies that rolled across Europe on the same day galvanised by PEGIDA.  An acronym standing for Patriotic Europeans Against Islamisation of the West, this organisation was born in Dresden Germany (formerly East Germany where PC is nowhere near as endemic as it is in Western Europe).

Australia's contribution was not directly organised by PEGIDA or anybody directly associated with it, but rather as a sympathy strike (meaning in this case to hit, not to stop work).  This was a ground-breaking achievement by the Australian Right - also known as the extreme Right because the official right is so far left - not well known for its willingness to co-operate.  In fact more infighting than outfighting has been the rule rather than the exception.

This time though, perhaps because there is now an instinctive awareness of the danger and the lateness of the hour, various groups came seamlessly together in as show of unified force.  This was such an inspiring rarity that moved at least one speaker  to express his hope that perhaps a united front could eventually be welded together.

Perhaps for the first time some sense could be discerned in the Orwellian absurdity, 'strength in diversity' as various speakers shared the same stage.  Daniel Nahlia of the Rise Up Australia Party was an early speaker and provided insight into just how far the supposedly democratic state of Australia will go to silence dissidents.  The following speakers all acquitted themselves admirably with rousing, inspiring addresses.  Blair Cottrell, leader of the United Patriots Front drove home point after point of why the country had arrived at such a parlous point and what needed to be done to save it from the globalisers and New World Order crew.  Scott Moeland, ex member of the Australian Army and one of the many feeling betrayed by PC Australian of the Year, David Morrison became so excited the swear jar was almost overflowing.  John Bolton, a South Australian lawyer appearing for the defence of Australia won a unanimous decision from the jury of 300 odd.

An interesting addition to the line up was Kim Vuga who won notoriety or fame depending on perspective but no doubt achieved celebrity status from her appearance in the heavily weighted SBS television programme, Go Back to Where You Came From.  Kim's staunchness is undeniable.  Instead of being bent and buckled as all who appear on the programme representing traditional Australia are expected to be by programmes end, she's apparently emerged from the ordeal feistier with an increased courage of her convictions.  Kim is the founder of the Love Australia or Leave party and will be running as a Queensland Senate candidate in the next federal election.

It could be safely assumed that all who came away from the rally (except of course the crestfallen lefties) did so inspired and with a stiffened sense of purpose and hope.  As a young Robert Zimmerman once wailed, 'the times, they are a changin' , but nowhere in the way Bob foresaw.  

Footnote: Present at the rally was at least one member of the Australian Liberty Alliance distributing ALA literature.  Leaders of the ALA quickly issued a disclaimer.  A letter was sent to all members expressing the official decree that the ALA in no way desires to be associated with 'neo-Nazis'.

AUSTRALIAN JOKE OF THE YEAR

DAVID MORRISON, PC AUSTRALIAN OF THE YEAR

Not since the hyper-sensitive and intellectually challenged Adam Goodes being named the winner of the increasingly dubious title of Australian of the Year has the mantle been bestowed on someone so little deserving apart from his being the current darling of the liberal left, especially the sisterhood.

 Former Chief of the Army and a General no less, David Morrison is the pacifist who famously declared that violence never solved anything.  What a Spartan!  If this weren't so sad, it would be an even better joke than his being named Australian of the Year for 2016.  Never mind bullets and bomb-blasts, simple booing would probably frighten David as much as it did Adam.  The only conflict this 'warrior' was interested in participating in was the culture war. He is front and centre one of those weirdest of creatures - a male feminist.

While our best and brightest were giving their lives in Afghanistan, David launched his personal crusade (and no doubt boost to his career) the fight against that darkest of evil, the sexual antics of enlisted men.  The episode in question featured one bone fide cad, the former soldier, and then employee of a defence contractor who recorded images of his having consensual sex with the unfortunate woman he'd seduced.  These images were then transmitted to his mates in the army who were then effectively deemed accomplices in this heinous crime and so became collateral damage.  Eight, including veterans of Afghanistan and battling PTSS were unceremoniously sacked while Hastings Frederickson, 'the Wolf of Wooloomooloo', and the instigator, received a 15 month suspended jail sentence for using a carriage service to cause offence.  So justice was seen to be done by the capeless crusader and his ilk, notwithstanding the destruction of the careers of so many good soldiers guilty of no more than insensitivity and poor taste in what they thought was the privacy of their own hard-drives. No matter.  Misogyny would be torn out root and branch from the armed services.

Once again the same mistake was being made, that which might be called Marx's monumental blunder: assuming humans could be cured of human nature.  Accepted wisdom has it that doing exactly the same thing over again and expecting a different result is a sure sign of not very impressive intelligence..  And yet the left keeps repeating its stupidity like a slogan at a street demo.  Examples are plentiful but just to pick one of the classics: force hundreds of incompatible ethnic groups together and then decry the rise of 'racism'. Gee, didn't see that coming.  Similarly, attempt to feminise the armed services (feminists have finally achieved their long term goal of being eligible to die in combat) and then decry the rise of misogyny.

As more and more girls take advantage of female friendly training demands and flock to the services in peace time, the great unknown of course is how they will conduct themselves in the unfortunate event of a war actually breaking out.  We'll know then whether having ideology and social engineering trump national security was such a good idea.  Islamic fighters no doubt already  have hard-ons just thinking about the prospect of being confronted by juicy girl soldiers.  Perhaps in future we'll have generals like Morrison hiding in bunkers while the girls are sent out to negotiate with the enemy.  'Why can't we all just get along?' 

These are the prerequisites for Australian of the Year:demonstrated excellence in the field, known to have made contribution to the community and nation, providing an inspirational role model.  As for the first, few had even heard of Morrison before his wading into flavour-of the-month gender politics.  Contribution to the community and the nation? Has anyone seen this so called military man's service record?  As for being an inspirational role model, well in a way he has been this if you count inspiring young men not to see the services as a career choice.  If bullets don't get you feminism probably will.

Roughly fifteen seconds after receiving the award Morrison informed all and sundry he would be using the his new platform to lend his voice to a call for a republic.  Is that what the honour now means, a megaphone to spruik personal opinions?  Apparently that is what it has become.  After all, Goodes never shut up about evil white racism, even stooping to traumatise a young female fan who'd insulted him.  It's a one way street of course.  If in doubt, just imagine the shock and horror, if by some infinitesimal chance, someone not sharing left wing opinions winning the gong and then going about airing opinions not palatable to those who consider their life-work comprises telling the rest of us how to think..  It's about time these social justice warriors were told the awarding of these honours is not a soapbox.

If a fool like Morrison is the best to be found to pin this award on, it's high time this charade was junked..

THE POLITICAL CORRECTION OF THE CRUSADES

The traitors among us who see the white race as a cancer on humanity and the history of western civilization as one continuous litany of evil leave no monument unturned in their search for further evidence to support their psychotic world-view.  By flagellating themselves on behalf of the rest of us who are too dim or slow to see the 'truth' as they see it, they are, by some psychic quirk lifted to a higher moral ground (in their own minds).

But make no mistake, their demented preaching on the scale and over the long span of time it has been happening has been highly effective, so effective it has informed the zeitgeist.  As corrosive as salt water on iron, it has eaten away at the soul of the west, destroying belief in itself and causing the collapse of its value system and, has history has shown repeatedly, the fall of civilizations has always been preceded by the destruction of these two central pillars.

Since just after the last world war we have been riding and escalator through a time of atonement for the myriad of sins we've committed against the peace-loving people of the world.  Our atonement will never be complete until we have effectively removed ourselves from the world, destroyed ourselves.  Progress towards this goal has been impressive.  One of the most effective tools we have at our service for this task is multiculturalism.  Again with just a glance at  history, the inevitable result of multiculturalism is the poisoning of the host culture through an introduction of a Bacillus and the  fragmentation of a nation into a collection of warring tribes.  Of course, for a homogeneous people to accept this epitome of violation, massive machinery of mind-control must be constructed to convince them that black is white, that there is strength in diversity (just as there is peace in war) and that it is all for the good in this materialisng heaven on earth.

'Those who control the present control the past.  Those who control the past, control the future.'  This is probably one of the most profound statements ever made by George Orwell.  Controlling the past of course entails rewriting history.  The absolute imperative for this was seen by the members of the infamous Frankfurt School who came up with the seemingly academically respectable sounding means for doing this.  It was termed 'Critical Theory', with which those whose hopes for world wide communist revolution had been dashed by the First World War in which, instead of workers of the world uniting, they had fought against each other, could change tack and begin Gramsci's 'long march through the institutions'.  This insidious infiltration would become known as 'Cultural Marxism'.

As the name implies, Critical Theory's main purpose is to criticise, that is, criticise every achievement of western civilisation, its history effectively turned on its head: good is evil, white is black, black is good, white is evil.  One of the best examples of this is what we labour so hard to celebrate on Australia Day.  The foundation of a nation becomes dispossession and the beginning of genocide.  The bringing of civilization to one of the most unforgiving continents on the planet becomes grand theft Terra Australis.

With this slow drip of poison it is not difficult to understand why a significant proportion of the white race is beginning to lose the will to live.

However, given the contemporary geopolitical climate, the most dangerous and egregious example of Critical Theory doing its worst would have to be the steamrolling leftist version of the Crusades which sees peace-loving Islam as the victim of unprovoked attack by blood-maddened, burning, looting and sword-wielding fanatics of Christendom.  This cartoonish caricature has become so unquestioningly accepted that any apologist for Islam  automatically assumes that any discussion not going his way can win it simply by uttering the magic words: 'What about the Crusades?'  But the discussion need not end here.  Feel like some fun?  Then simply parry with 'well what about the Crusades?'.  Picture a fish trying to breathe on dry land.  This is how the ignoramus who thought by one simple snip (or snipe)  the discussion was declared won will usually look.

A few undeniable facts about the Crusades: Before the First Crusade Christendom had been subject to the onslaught of Islam for more than six hundred years, as it had to be by a religion launched by the sword.  The  Byzantine Empire., the Eastern half of the Roman Empire and only half remaining. had been rolled back to not much more than the confines of Greece by the marauding armies of Islam and Constantinople had been attacked on numerous occasions.  Indeed, it has been posited that if Constantinople had fallen to one of these earlier attacks instead of its eventually being taken by the Turks in 1453, all of Europe and possible America would now be Muslim.

In the lands overrun by Islam, Muslim overlords professed tolerance for 'people of the book' (Jews and Christians) although as decidedly second class citizens, as Dhimmis, paying a harsh tax (jizya) and subject to other humiliating regulations as well as dress codes.  These were the lucky non-Muslims now living under Muslim rule.  Those living in cities taken by siege did not fare so well.  Males (those with pubic hair and so considered adults) were beheaded, infidel women were raped (as exhorted by the Koran) and then either kept as sex slaves or sold into slavery along with the children.

'Tolerance' waxed and waned.  In the best of times infidels were allowed to practise their religion (out of sight of course) and Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land were by and large left unmolested.  Proselytising was however a beheading offence.

All of this changed with the rise of the Seljuk Turks. This was, ISIS taking over from Al Quaeda, if you will.  The party was over; no more Mister Nice Guy.  From now on there would be no pussy-footing around.  In 1091 Seljuk forces smashed a Byzantine army at the battle of Manzikert.  They were now about to own virtually all of Asia Minor, with the populations of a multitude of great Christian cities being subjected to Dhimmitude.  In the meantime, tolerance for the book people had effectively evaporated.  Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Land were routinely attacked.

This situation was the setting for Pope Uban the second's calling of the First Crusade in 1095 and then only after the pleading for help from from the Byzantine Emperor, Alexis Commenus. Four years later in 1099 Godfrey of Bouillon with his forces conquered Jerusalem.  However fortunes would change over the next two centuries and six subsequent crusades until the fall of the last crusader castle in 1291.

The crusaders have been accused of many things, ironically, one of the most shocking being the sacking of Constantinople. The context here, which is usually not alluded to, is the continuous treacherous betrayal and reneging on promises of help by the Byzantines.  Once the crusaders had gotten the Byzantines out of immediate danger it was don't call us, we'll call you.

Another 'war crime' of the crusaders was the blood-letting at Jerusalem but this is simply another attempt at the cardinal sin of historiography of superimposing contemporary mores, values and attitudes onto a bygone ere.  What happened is shocking to modern sensibilities but was par for the course for the time in which it happened.  Universally accepted rules of engagement was that mercy would be shown if the besieged surrendered, if not, then no mercy would be shown, and that exactly was what was meant.  The defenders at Jerusalem refused to surrender.

These are just a couple of the many sleights of historical hand and myths that have been perpetuated about the evil white man's Holy Wars which have been equated to colonialism - another mangling of history.  Most of the nobles who fought had mortgaged or sold property to finance their individual crusades.  It was an expensive business.  And in the mostly barren lands over which the crusader state existed there was little opportunity for recouping their expenses.

The supreme irony is that hard feelings about the holy wars weren't harboured by Muslims - that is until relatively recent times.  Now with the egging on of demented liberals and Muslim apologists the crusades are being remembered (planted memory?) as something about which a smouldering grudge must be nursed.  Indeed, the current conflict between Muslims and 'Christians' is being re-wrapped as an extremely belated eighth crusade.

Sources: God's Battalions The Case for the Crusades
                by Rodney Stark
               
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades
                 by Robert Spencer