https://viaobscuramedia.com/2018/08/25/ ... bin-laden/
Part of this dissonance stemmed from the fact that ordinary Americans understood Bin Laden on an emotional level much better than their media and intellectual elites did. Regardless of the mainstream narrative, Bin Laden’s magnum opus was not the deaths of 3000 Americans, it wasn’t even the notion that large-scale terrorist attack could happen in America. Instead, the sheikh’s legacy was, a challenge for which the theatrics of the collapsing world trade center was a framing device. Osama’s legacy was an accusation that Western power -as far-reaching and as unquestioned as it remained in the early years of the 21st century – was at its core, hollow and built on a foundation of decadence.
For all the cultural self-criticism the West had undergone since the 1960s, Osama Bin Laden was the first to announce the weakness of modern man, not with critical theory or deconstruction, but with a declaration of war and a call to battle. Bin Laden was the first to wager that, underneath the mountainous wealth and military might of America and its European allies, was a “Weak Horse” that when the chips were down, no one would choose support. And for all the congratulations being exchanged in the spring of 2011, Bin Laden’s death had not answered his accusation.
On the left, we heard assurances that the jihadist ideology did not represent mainstream attitudes in the Muslim world and that further attacks could be managed easily by the reformation of American foreign and domestic policy. On the right we heard pronouncements that the attacks were the product of a small group of extremists and that the threat could be addressed through military action and a renewed commitment to national security. The message, over and over, was to stay calm, stay tolerant, go shopping, and to let the professionals manage the professional problem of global security. Besides, it worked in the cold war didn’t it?
Following the events of September 11th and an enormous wave of immigration, many among Europe’s self-assured elites were developing a desire to witness secular humanism’s victory over their countries’ newly initiated Muslim citizens. After all, if America’s wars had so obviously failed in winning the hearts and minds of the Islamic world, what better way to demonstrate the dominance of Europe’s peaceful humanitarianism, than to transform the newly immigrated Muslim into a modern secular European within the confines of the modern European welfare state?
The prospect, was too juicy to be undesired. And in response to this desire, the Danish satirical magazine, Jyllands-Posten published a set of 10 cartoons depicting the Muslim prophet Mohammad in irreverent and satirical contexts. The publication knew it was courting controversy, but no doubt the editors anticipated something akin to controversies generated by anti-Christian satire in the 20th century: a quick and lucrative outrage, followed by the full-throated support of the global “free-speech” community, concluding with total victory of irreverent secularism over traditionalist busybodies. Few in 2005 suspected how wrong this anticipation might be.
After this what more could be hoped for from a rootless Westerner dreaming of some liberation in global cosmopolitanism? To be a citizen of the world among a growing number of people who had no interest in granting your cherished principles? A rebellion against anything traditional, so long as that rebellion never crossed the piety of the most puritanical imams? It was one thing to be the “Weak Horse” on the battleground of Tikrit, quite another to be the “Weak Horse” in the culture of one’s homeland. No one could want this role for themselves. And no one did. And sure enough, a reaction was in the works.
