Who is the West, and who is their threat?

To summarize before going into detail, making Russia into the threatening Other in a conflict between East vs. West assumes that the threat to the West comes from within Europe itself. Within that geographical scope, it draws the wrong dividing line, lumping Slavic countries like Poland in with Celtic and Germanic countries like Germany, France, and Britain.

The true threat to the West these days comes from outside of Europe, within the Muslim world, in particular Saudi Arabia and Turkey (not Syria or Iran). This draws a correct dividing line that puts Poland and, crucially, Russia in the same boat as Germany and France.

This proper assessment will run afoul of the Pentagon that controls GOP foreign policy, as they base their attempt to control the Middle East on an alliance with Turkey and Saudi Arabia. By enabling Saudi Arabia's jihadism and Turkey's use of Muslim mass migration to cause demographic replacement of Westerners, the current brass at the Pentagon are among the greatest threats to Western civilization.

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The main theme in Trump's speech in Warsaw was the nature of Western civilization and its defense from various threats against it. In the abstract, that kind of speech is a welcome relief from the typical left-liberal wailings about "boo America, Europe is so much better," and then "boo Europe, Asia is so much better". If you didn't read past the headline -- "Trump defends Western civilization" -- how could you not love it?

But "the West" is such a shape-shifting concept that we have to take a look into the details of who and what is included in that group, and which threats endanger it. If "we" are going to sacrifice for the defense of "the West," we had better be sure that it's "the West" that we have in mind that we're fighting for. Otherwise we are bound to get hoodwinked by the usual parasites that infest our government, as well as by foreigners seeking to draw us into their regional grudges and vendettas.

The context for the speech is an upcoming meeting with Russia, where Trump is expected to "stand up to Putin" while promoting cohesion among NATO. "Expected" by the Pentagon boarding party that controls foreign policy when a Republican is in the White House, even if the occupant ran on a platform of "getting along with Russia" and "NATO is obsolete" regarding current-day threats like radical Islamic terrorism.

Speechwriter Stephen Miller, although a hardline nationalist, has even less leverage against the Pentagon than does the President himself, so his primary task was to promote their failed vision and rhetoric about the Cold War that never ended. "America-first" becomes "NATO-first," where NATO increasingly refers to all of Europe aside from Russia, with Turkey thrown in for good measure. Miller slipped as many dogwhistles to the America-first nationalists as he could get past the imperial Pentagon censors, but by and large this is a speech that Reagan could have read 30 years ago -- or rather, Mike Pence doing his Reagan impersonation in the current year.

Most of the discussion about who threatens the West, with Poland as an exemplar victim, is about Russia -- from the partitions of Poland around 200 years ago, to the aftermath of WWI, the occupation by the Soviets during WWII, incorporation into the Warsaw Pact bloc, and through today when Russia is holding them captive by supplying most of their energy needs. The Germans make an appearance during WWII.

The problem is that in these conflicts, Russia has not threatened Western Europe or its off-shoots. The most you could say is that Russia does supply a large share of energy to the rest of Europe, but that is hardly military conquest or cultural erasure. Rather, these conflicts are mostly in-fighting among various Slavic groups. If Russia is selected as the antagonistic Other, that limits the scope of the West to non-Russian Europe.

But that gives the wrong civilizational divide within Europe, since East and West boils down to a deep ethnic split between Balto-Slavic in the East and Celto-Germanic in the West. (Italic, to the extent it joins either side, has gone with the Celto-Germanic.)

The Slavs have never come close to conquering a Western European nation, militarily or culturally, which is a good predictor that they never will, whether those Slavs are Russian, Polish, or whoever else. Western Europe has been controlled for too long by people descended from ancient Italic, Celtic, and Germanic migrations. The (Balto-)Slavic migration was the last of the major movements within Europe, lasting into the second millennium.

On the other hand, Russia has had a long history of jockeying for regional status with Poland and Lithuania (centuries ago, Lithuania was a much larger and more powerful nation). When you hear about the "partitions of Poland," you are hearing about Balto-Slavic in-fighting. The Russian partition did not include any piece of Poland, but rather the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which lies today in Belarus and Ukraine and Lithuania. The partitions of actual Poland came from the Prussians and the Austrians -- the latter two being Slavs who had been culturally Germanicized (with some Baltic remnants in the Prussians).

As the Soviets expanded westward, they were stopped after getting eastern Germany. Doesn't that mean they had a piece of the West? No: eastern Germany is Slavic, but like the Prussians and Austrians, culturally Germanicized.

Note, then, that the only evidence of the East or the West culturally assimilating the other is the West converting the East -- the Poles adopting Western Christianity, the residents of Berlin and Vienna speaking a Germanic language, and courtly customs traveling from Paris to Prague and even Petersburg. That asymmetry may reflect the deeper roots of the Italo-Celto-Germanic civilizations, compared to the much younger Balto-Slavic ones.

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If Russia is not a civilizational threat to the West, but only to other smaller Slavic groups of the East, then who is? Today it is obviously (some subset of) the Muslim world.

In Trump's speech, there was only a line or two about Islamic terrorism, and even then the enemies were made out to be Syria and Iran -- who have never attacked the West -- and the earnest helper in the fight against Islamic extremism is supposed to be Saudi Arabia, the number one state sponsor of jihadism, which has in fact inflicted massive damage against the West, with the September 11th attacks. Syria and Iran do not proselytize into Western regions, whereas Saudi Arabia props up radical Islamist mosques throughout the Western world. It is the Saudis, not the Iranians, who are radicalizing Muslims already residing in the West to destroy it from within.

This censorship of which Middle Eastern countries threaten us stems from the Pentagon relying on Saudi Arabia as its oldest ally in the region, and being opposed to an independent Iran for just as long. The military brass is not about to remind Americans or Westerners who is responsible for all that Islamic terrorism and radicalization -- or else their whole plan in the Middle East would be revealed to be built on a foundation of support for regimes that actively threaten the West through international jihadism, not just the bluster you hear from Syria or Iran.

Posing the spread of Muslims as a civilizational threat to the West would have been far more appropriate for the setting in Poland -- all of Europe is threatened by these migrations, and by jihadism. But that would put Russia in the same group as Germany, France, Britain, and America. And the main goal of Establishment propaganda about Western Civ is to pose a distinction against Russia, so that is not allowed to make it into the speech.

In fact, Eastern Europe has always faced far greater threats than the West from foreign invaders -- the Scythians, the Huns, the Mongols, and the Turks. Facing potential hordes of Muslims streaming into Europe today, the Poles would surely resonate more with those historical examples of foreign threats to their way of life and values -- not from Russia.

But bringing up any of those more relevant examples would be racist or Islamophobic, so the Pentagon censors will not allow it -- especially since the most recent foreign menace was not only Muslim but from Turkey, one of our NATO allies who therefore cannot be criticized (even as their leader attempts to revive the Ottoman Empire, and who threatens Europe with allowing millions of Muslim migrants to cross from his country into the EU).

The comparison to today is even more ominous, since culturally alien invaders have never controlled Western Europe, but are now being invited into the West by the millions. Before now, the Scythians, Huns, and Turks only managed to control the southern half of the East, and the Mongols got even less than that. North African Muslims took over much of Iberia, but were beaten and never tried to come back once they crossed the Pyrenees into Gaul / France. They never took over the Celtic and Germanic lands, or Italy.

Sidebar: I don't think the Slavs were responsible for "beating back" the invaders who would have otherwise stormed all the way across Germany, France, and Britain. There were no settled Slavic groups during the invasions of the Scythians and the Huns, yet these invaders still could not control Western Europe, and remained confined to the southern part of the East. Perhaps it's the more hilly and mountainous terrain in the West that makes it hard for horse-riding nomads to blaze clear through like they can do in the Great European Plain of the East.

At any rate, the Slavs have had a hell of a lot of experience with invaders from alien civilizations over the past 1000 years, so they would be ideal allies and tutors for how to deal with today's Muslim hordes pouring into the West. The fact that Eastern Europe has sealed its borders to immigration from the Muslim world means that's one of the easiest things we can do pre-emptively.

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However, the movement to defend Western civilization is going to slam into the obstacle of the globalist imperial leaders at the Pentagon: learning from and partnering with Eastern Europe, vis-a-vis the Muslim Question, would mean including Russia on our side, taking a stance against Saudi Arabia, and even lumping in Turkey with the Other.

All three are non-starters for the managers of a crumbling empire that is founded on antagonism toward Russia, military alliance with Turkey, and unflinching support for Saudi Arabia -- to such a degree that the Saudis can crash a hijacked plane into the very Pentagon building itself, and get off 100% scot free. No other country enjoys that level of support.

Defending Western civilization not only requires a re-orientation toward (parts of) the Muslim world rather than Russia, but also toward the power groups within our own nation that are deeply tied to the forces that threaten our civilization, above all in the jihadism and radical Islam that is pumped out into the world by the Pentagon's closest ally in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, but also by the millions of Muslim migrants that NATO member Turkey unleashes upon Europe.