The quote above demonstrates how Ariana Grande is so stuck in her own civilized bubble that she doesn’t know how other cultures think, and is even too afraid to admit other cultures think differently for fear of opening Pandora’s box or appearing racist.
If you hug your enemies tightly enough they will love you, the left loves to say, albeit more convoluted and eloquently (because let’s give the left credit, they really know how to write).
The truth is, it depends on your enemy.
Some enemies – Western, European – do react to this positively. Westerners are taught from birth that negotiation is better than violence, it’s embedded into the culture. And I think that’s great!
There are two kinds of cultures: honor-shame and guilt cultures. Negotiation often involves guilting to get what you want out of the other. That’s why guilt cultures like Westerners and Jews automatically default to negotiation and embracing the enemy, to make guilt cultures feel so guilty to be mean to someone who is extending a hug.
The problem starts when guilt culture logic is extended to those in honor-shame cultures. Honor-shame include cultures in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The same reason why the Chinese work so hard in school to honor their families, the Arabs refuse to admit fault ever and stubbornly cling to a goal that won’t even bring them benefit in the end. Because losing is shame and they won’t stop until they get honor back, which means one thing: defeating us once and for all.
Islam is a colonialist religion, as Christianity is, by virtue of the need to proselytize that simply doesn’t exist in other major religions and cultures. When the Christians converted from honor-shame to guilt during the enlightenment onwards, they stopped trying to conquer the world and instead the Islamic religion is picking up their slack.
Not all Muslims subscribe to this framework. Most just want to make an honest living. However, many are encouraged by extremist imams to move to non-Muslim areas and Islamify them. They claim to want to move to Europe and America to live a better life free of the corruption back home, but then many of them refuse to embrace their new homes and instead work with other Muslims and turn their neighbourhoods into sharia law no go zones. This begs the question: why move to another country just to bring the same problems that screwed you over in your home country? Maybe it’s because this is all they know, maybe it’s something more sinister.
These first generation immigrants, contrary to popular belief, seldom commit crime or terror. More often than not, it’s their children who are desperate to return to their roots, who know they are different from the other kids in their class and want to be among people like them, so they are lured into the mosque which gives them a sense of community, and get radicalized there. They’ve never witnessed the horrors of the Old Country, but they’re told these horrors are because of us (this is part of the fact all most of the cultures where Islam dominates as a religion are honor-shame cultures, so they refuse to admit fault for anything and instead resort to blaming the outsider, usually guilt cultures like the West and the Jews).
In these youth groups, terrorism is glorified. They are us, they belong to us, they finally got back at the enemy for all they’ve done to us! And soon, terrorists are lauded and killing innocents is justified to apply pressure. Young malleable minds have been warped. And who funds most of these Islamic centres? Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
So in saying this quote, Ariana Grande just shows the whole world that she is naive and dumb. “I might be naive and dumb but at least I’m a good person with a heart and not full of hate!” She would likely respond, as many like her have. You think watching our civilization be undermined is okay as long as you’re a good person? Well you can’t be a good person when you’re dead. When you are a guilt culture fighting an honor shame culture, you speak in compromise and they speak in absolutes. They won’t stop until their honor is restored. And if they think YOU are responsible for destroying their honor, even if it is their own fault, the only way to regain their honor is by destroying YOU.
Once we take this to heart, the slippery slope we are going down has a chance at finally ending.
