Steyn and Genocide

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19 Feb 2007 01:25 pm

Mark Kleiman wonders what the following paragraph in Mark Steyn's book, America Alone, can mean:

Why did Bosnia collapse into the worst slaughter in Europe since World War Two? In the thirty years before the meltdown, Bosnian Serbs had declined from 43 percent to 31 percent of the population, while Bosnian Muslims had increased from 26 percent to 44 percent. In a democratic age, you can't buck demography — except through civil war. The Serbs figured that out — as other Continentals will in the years ahead: if you can't outbreed the enemy, cull 'em. The problem that Europe faces is that Bosnia’s demographic profile is now the model for the entire continent.

Originally, I thought Steyn's point was not an endorsement of genocide. I thought it was that Europeans need to "breed" more Christians or, at the very least, more non-Muslims. (That's the current meme on what's left of the intellectual "right" in America.) But then when I re-read the passage, Steyn seems to be excluding the possibility of "out-breeding" the Muslim enemy. Why? That pesky thing called "democracy." You cannot force people to breed in a free country. But you can "cull" a minority group whose values threaten yours? And still remain in a "democratic age"? That seems to be his point. Is Steyn actually advocating genocide? When you read the full context of the paragraph in the book (pages 4 - 6), there are no exculpatory words around it. At the end of the book (pages 204 - 207), however, Steyn considers wiping out Muslims on a massive scale but clearly rejects it:

Even if you regard Islam as essentially incompatible with free societies, the slaughter required to end it as a force in the world would change America beyond recognition. That doesn't mean that, a few years down the line, if some kooks with nukes obliterate, say, Marseilles or Lyons that the French wouldn't give it a go in some fairly spectacular way. But they're unlikely to accomplish much by it, any more than the Russians have by their scorched earth strategy in Chechnya.

I'll merely note the manner in which Steyn dismisses the possibility of mass genocide of Muslims in Europe as a final solution to the Islamist problem. It "won't accomplish much." And America would be "changed beyond recognition." More than it was by dropping nukes on Japan? More than by authorizing torture and indefinitely suspending habeas corpus? Nah - Steyn is fine with all that. But he draws the line at a mass genocide of Muslims. Why? It might hurt us and "won't accomplish much." Damn.

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