What the Taliban Victory Means for Dixie

The victory of the Taliban over the military forces of Uncle Sam in Afghanistan raises some unpleasant questions for Dixie. Writing of the motivations of the Taliban, Mr Pat Buchanan says,

‘ . . . to brand the Taliban terrorists and pariahs is not new to them. What they seek is something for which they have proven they are willing to die.

‘What is critical for them is to restore the Taliban to their previous dominance; to create an Islamic Emirate; to make themselves the moral, social, and political arbiters of a more purely Islamic Afghanistan. And to be rid of the outsiders and their alien values. They want to be able to stand up and say to the Muslim world: "We have shown you how to do it. We fought America, the world superpower, for 20 years until we forced the Americans, tails between their legs, to get out of our land, and then put their puppets up against a wall."’

In this instance – loyalty to one’s fatherland and its culture, even to the death – the Taliban are shaming the South rather badly. It is often said that in the South, memory and tradition live; that Christianity is vibrant; that the extended family is a beloved institution; and so on. To be sure, there are still glimmers of those things in the South, but overall they are faint and growing dimmer.

We must admit the disquieting truth: Most Southerners, for the moment, would rather be a part of the un-Christian Yankee American Empire rather than experience any deprivation or discomfort to free ourselves of Washington City’s perverse and destructive influence. Not so the Taliban:

‘Geopolitically, what matters now is how the Taliban have written a whole new script, showing the lands of Islam, as well as the Global South, how to defeat the self-referential, seemingly invincible US/NATO empire.

‘The Taliban did it with Islamic faith, infinite patience and force of will fueling roughly 78,000 fighters – 60,000 of them active – many with minimal military training, no backing of any state – unlike Vietnam, which had China and the USSR – no hundreds of billions of dollars from NATO, no trained army, no air force and no state-of-the-art technology.’

--Mr Pepe Escobar

Thus, it is unsurprising that in the South what was unthinkable not long ago is now the agonizing ‘new normal’: The Governor of Arkansas vetoed legislation this year to protect female athletes from confused, ‘transgender’ males; North Carolina repealed a law in 2016 (HB 2) that mandated separate bathrooms and locker rooms for men and women and vetoed local laws granting special rights to LGBT people; the Republican Party, the party of choice of most conservative-minded Southerners, now officially celebrates Pride Month; the Southern Baptist Convention embraces Critical Race Theory; etc.

What is happening in the South is simply an extension of what is at play in the whole West. The author Paul Kingsnorth explains:

‘Ultimately, without that higher purpose to bind it, society would fall — as it has — into “emotivism”, relativism and ultimately disintegration. If every culture is cored around a sacred order — whether Christian, Islamic or Hindu, the veneration of ancestors or the worship of Odin — then the collapse of that order will lead inevitably to the collapse of the culture it supported. There is a throne at the heart of every culture, and whoever sits on it will be the force we take our instruction from. The modern experiment has been the act of dethroning both literal human sovereigns and the representative of the sacred order, and replacing them with purely human, and purely abstract, notions — “the people” or “liberty” or “democracy” or “progress.”

‘I’m all for democracy (the real thing, please, not the corporate simulacra that currently squats in its place), but the dethroning of the sovereign — Christ — who sat at the heart of the Western sacred order did not lead to universal equality and justice. It led — via a bloody shortcut through Robespierre, Stalin and Hitler — to the complete triumph of the power of money, which has splintered our culture and our souls into a million angry shards.

‘The vacuum created by the collapse of our old taboos was filled by the poison gas of consumer capitalism. It has now infiltrated every aspect of our lives in the way that the Christian story once did, so much so that we barely even notice as it colonises everything — from the way we eat to the values we teach our children. Cut loose in a post-modern present — with no centre, no truth and no direction — we have not become independent-minded, responsible, democratic citizens in a human republic. We have become slaves to the self and to the power of money; broken worshippers before the monstrous idol of Progress. “In the ethics of the West,” wrote Spengler, “everything is direction, claim to power, will to affect the distant.”’

Mr Buchanan’s statement, similar in spirit to Mr Kingsnorth’s, pierces the Southern soul like a sword:

‘Is what we have on offer—one man-one vote democracy—truly appealing in a part of the world where democracy seems to have trouble, from the Maghreb to the Middle East to Central Asia, putting down any deep roots?

‘The Taliban's God is Allah. The golden calf we had on offer was democracy. In the Hindu Kush, their god has proven stronger.’

If the South had not abandoned Christ, we would be willing to deny ourselves like the Taliban, dig in our heels, irritate the Yanks (using peaceful, non-violent methods), and wait until they get so frustrated with us that they turn us loose. But the South has accepted the ‘golden calf’ of Yankee democracy and materialism, and just as in Afghanistan, it is leading to chaos. Mr Declan Leary is exactly right when he says, ‘We must consider the possibility that the gospel of American Progress—democracy, liberalism, equality—failed in Afghanistan not because it is not Afghan but because it is not true. Because, if we are really being honest, it’s not doing too hot on the homefront either.’

The South, along with the rest of the States, has ‘suppress[ed] the natural human passions toward order and loyalty, faith, place, and blood, with shallow promises of voting rights and forward motion’.

This has consequences, ‘in Afghanistan’s case, in a tide of jihadi rage. Our return [to the ‘strong gods’ – ‘the old attachments to nation, clan, and religion’–WG] will not be so dramatic, but, severity aside, the mere fact of return is an unavoidable counterpunch to the liberal creed that took hold of the West after the Second World War.’

Mr George Michalopulos picks up this thread, writing, ‘We know that the days of the American Empire are all but over.  That’s what our very own Suez Moment means.  Britain survived; the USSR did not.  Therefore, the question for us is, will the American Republic endure as a unified state?  Based on “President” Joe Biden’s performance yesterday, in which he addressed the nation as to the debacle which was unfolding in real-time before our eyes, I wouldn’t bet on it.’

Even though most of the South is not actively pursuing secession from the American Empire, we may get it anyway. But Dixie must be prudent in how she approaches independence, should it come. Being ‘free’ in every aspect of geopolitical life is not the pinnacle of existence, especially if such liberty threatens the religious/cultural life of the people:

‘This mechanism of eternally breaking up larger nations/civilizations for the independence of some often unheard-of minority has served to create the Monopolar world we live in today, one in which America has had ever decreasing potential competition. The great empires that spanned over massive territory containing many religions and ethnicities have in contrast been demonized. Not to say this was done on purpose, but “The Empire” in any video game, movie, or fantasy novel is always the totalitarian bad guys. It isn’t that the “tiny helpless country = win” structure that Wilson proposed is the best idea, but the counter to it is actively trounced upon for every generation. The masses see Luke Skywalker achieve his whitehat goals, but forget to ponder what would happen to the masses if a galactic empire did fall apart. Then again you could probably ask the Russians, they lived through it all. Long story short one of the dirtiest political words we have around today is “empire”.

‘The answer to this proposition probably lies in breaking the narcissistic glee of tiny independent nations, that are neither independent nor particularly nations. Scotland has a lot more value as part of a British Empire than it does as an independent nation with no economic or military force so to speak of, thus no relevance besides that Mel Gibson movie. The Former Soviet Republics were convinced that the Russians were holding them back. Now after two generations, independence has earned them the right to sell watermelons off the MKAD highway in Moscow or to scrub glorious Polish toilets for a pittance. On a global scale the cultures of those former bits of the USSR have had zero resonance unlike the Soviet period where they played a major role and had some relevance on one sixth of the Earth’s land surface.

‘Being a small fish in a big pond is pointless, being a smaller wolf in a big pack is a much better offer especially since lone wolves tend to not make it through the winter. Perhaps the counter to Wilson’s independence is an offer for the right to greatness. For the right to “come home”. For the right to reap the benefits of an empire while maintaining one’s identity.’

--Mr Tim Kirby

What a Southland free of Yankee domination is in need of, in other words, is pro-Christian allies. They are out there – Hungary, Poland, and Russia, for instance, in Europe – and Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and others in Africa. That the South, where African slavery existed for more than two hundred years, would consider an alliance with African countries might seem strange in the eyes of some, but not here at the South, where it was always hoped that by making the best of a bad situation (the establishment of African slavery across the South), the African slaves would accept Christianity, grow in Grace, leave their bonds, and that some would eventually return to Africa as missionaries, preaching the Gospel to their kinsmen. William Grayson’s long poem ‘The Hireling and the Slave’ (1854) contains a clear statement of that hope. (This is precisely what did happen with the Anglo-Saxons, as the descendants of those who migrated to England returned to the German lands to evangelize the Old Saxons in the 7th and 8th centuries).

Independence for the South may be coming, one way or another. But if she comes to her senses before a forced separation occurs, it is still the Taliban who can show her what is necessary to gain it: ‘ . . . moral factors dominate material factors . . . . Morale, discipline, leadership, unit cohesion are more decisive than numbers of forces and equipment.’

A Southland dedicated to her old cultural folkways, and rooted firmly in Jesus Christ the God-man, would be able to drive out the Yankees. But first Southerners must stir up within themselves the desire for cultural survival.