In this, his fifth in a series of six essays, Peter Carl looks at today’s Counter-Jihad Movement in light of one of Churchill’s most ingenious insights. In the years leading up to World War II, Winston Churchill contradicted both his party and generally accepted thinking of his time. Once the war began, looking back to his experiences from World War I and his time as a political outcast, he determined that, in order to succeed against fascist totalitarianism and Hitler’s all-out bid to annihilate Western institutions and freedoms, the dire situation required that all partisan attacks on political ideology – within the context of the war – be fully and indefinitely put aside by all political parties. Victory, in the face of the greatest danger ever seen by the West, Churchill foresaw, would require all parties and their members to voluntarily and consistently adhere to one new common “Ideology” and one new common “Principle” alone. Peter Carl sees here in Britain’s grim situation and Churchill’s ingenious actions clear reference points and requirements if the West is ever to succeed at both turning back Islamization and preventing the rise of truly fascist individuals such as Anders Behring Breivik.

When Winston Spencer Churchill assumed the post of Prime Minister of Great Britain on May 10, 1940, most today do not realize that he was instantly engaged in two fierce battles. The first was the obvious battle; on that same day, Nazi Germany had invaded France, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Luxembourg thereby causing Neville Chamberlain, the individual responsible for the British government’s long appeasement of Adolf Hitler, to resign immediately as Prime Minister. Britain was at war and so too now was Winston Churchill and the nation that he led. Churchill’s second battle, however, was perhaps the most important of the two that he was charged with carrying out. Though placed into his lap, he was in no way required to take it up. To take on this second battle was optional. It was voluntary. This second battle was the battle to keep Great Britain from defeating itself by allowing domestic political and ideological infighting to divide the country along the lines of political ideology and personality conflicts which would, thereby, allow Hitler and fascist totalitarianism to quickly glide to victory over Britain, taking down a free Britain – and a free Europe right along with it.

To understand, then, where we are, what we are experiencing, and what is without doubt a proven way forward toward much greater success in the Counter-Jihad Movement, a look back at World War II and Winston Churchill’s words and government are well in order here. Long prior to the day Winston Spencer Churchill would take on the position of Prime Minister of Great Britain, he realized that the only way of defeating totalitarianism would be to put aside partisan ideologies and antagonisms in all things related to the struggle that the West was then about to face. While most did not see the impending catastrophe that would become World War II, much due to the scars and regrets of World War I, which had laid Europe in ruins only two decades before, Winston Churchill saw that appeasement of Hitler and the Nazis would lead to the opposite result of that which all others in his Conservative Party had continued to hope. For maintaining that position contrary to his leadership, Churchill became an outcast and a pariah within the party he had chosen, the Conservative Party of Great Britain.

I would argue – and I think most here would agree with me – that we today now face in Islamism and Islamists an ideology and an army of believers who are even more committed to their cause than were those Nazi soldiers faced by Winston Churchill and the allied armies during World War II. The struggle today, however, consists not of a physical war, but instead of an extremely important battle over ideas – and the implementation and spread of those ideas. Like Hitler’s fascism, Islamist ideology is a military, social, economic, educational, judicial, governmental, financial, and a civilian movement of national and world conquest to be imposed upon all unbelievers and their forms of government. As Hitler put it back then, summoning up Alexander Tille’s early Social Darwinist attacks on the “Christian-human-democratic ethic” forty years earlier (discussed in Part III), Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf: “The [Nazi] movement is anti-parliamentarian, and even its participation in a parliamentary institution can only imply activity for its destruction, for eliminating an institution which we must consider one of the gravest symptoms of mankind’s decay.” ⁱ

These same types of ideas, as we saw in Part IV in our look at the collaboration between Nazi Germany and the Muslim world during World War II, can also arise from a very different font of inspiration. For Nazi fascism, it became an independent but centralized belief system all unto itself that worked to uproot and replace all historically Western religion with Social Darwinist belief in the “superior” and the “inferior”. Islamism, then and now, in a similar way is both a political and a “religious” movement that separates the world into believing “superiors” and non-believing “inferiors”. It has at its core a belief in and legitimates violence against all it deems “inferior”. By “divine” will it permeates all of the varying aspects of life and society – adding to these the irrefutable omnipotent demands of Allah and a blood-spilling warrior messenger.

In this way, perhaps, Islamism becomes even more fierce and dangerous than areligious Social Darwinist Nazism. Hizb-ut-tahrir in Britain, an organization banned in most Muslim countries (as well as in some Western countries) due to its “soundly” Islamist message, informs us that “…the Islamic system is fundamentally different in that it takes the Qur’an and Sunnah of the prophet [] as the basis of governance. [….] The Khilafah [e.g. the international and eventually worldwide Muslim state] applies the Islamic constitution, [under which] it replaces the existing plethora of [parliamentary] constitutions that keep the Muslim world subjugated and backward.” In other words, to Islamists as for Nazis, parliamentary democracy equals human, moral, and societal decay. Sharia4Australia’s leader confirms this, proclaiming in words that also bring forth the ancient commands of the Koran, which, in fact, parallel the words of Nietzsche, Tille, and Hitler, “I hate the parliament. I hate [democracy] with a pure hate.” Since “…it is obligatory for all Muslims to reject democracy, because it is a challenge to God’s law: ‘They must hate it, speak out against it, and if that doesn't work, take action against it.’”

Adding Allah to fascism, resulting in Islamo-fascism, elevates the situation and the societal (though initially not a physical) danger to a “religious” plane comparable with, but in ways, above and beyond that seen among Nazi soldiers during World War II. Violence and oppression become no longer merely tools for the battlefield, they are aimed simply at all people, thoughts, ideas, and concepts that lie outside of or are adverse to Islamism. As one Australian journalist explained, paraphrasing the words of and then quoting from the founder of Sharia4Australia, “…ultimately, Muslims here will have to fight for Islamic law. [The Sharia4Australia founder] doubts the struggle will begin in the next 10 or 20 years, but hopes it will occur in his lifetime. ‘People don't give up [their [country] without a fight]. There’s always been a fight. It is inevitable that one day there will be a struggle for Islam in Australia. We don’t shy away from it. Whether it means we get put in jail, kicked out of the country. If it means harm to us, so be it.’” Like-minded Islamists in Great Britain foresee similar violence, looking gladly toward the day that the UK will be turned into “another Bosnia.”

Because it is not possible then to see when and from where on the fluctuating boundaries of Islamism its warriors (militarist and otherwise) will arise today, knowing the scope and extent of the existence of committed Jihadists at home and abroad remains and will only grow more difficult to gauge. That, as mentioned previously, thirty-five percent (35%) of Muslims in Canada, as in other Western countries, refuse to renounce Al-Qaeda should cause some serious concern. At the same time, however, across the world, Islamists are doing that which Islamism has done since the times of Mohammed; it is using violence, intimidation, fanaticism, demographics, politics, and we “unbelievers’” very own Common Freedoms and well-meaning natures and institutions to defeat our Western societies. In this way, slowly and over generations, Islamists look to raise a Khalifah in our place. Unlike the “hot” war against Nazism, in this new “cold” war carried out in slow motion, the many Islamist “warriors” (of all types on all continents) are not so easy to identify or pick out – often due to our own Western religio-cultural blind-spots. As a result, the present struggle goes on each day – with very little actual struggle – and with as little notice of its expansion as we likewise fail to perceive of the mundane daily defeats of our freedoms all across the West.

This Islamic revolution for the Kalifah (Calipha) even in Western nations, then, needs no guns and no ammunition. All it needs to succeed are truly committed believers and a strong birthrate. The idea is backed up by science. A recent scientific study carried out at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute just outside of New York City has shown that a minority population that is unyieldingly committed to its own set of ideas – regardless of what those ideas are – and that exceeds just one-tenth of the total population is all that it takes for a society to reach a “tipping point” and ensure that those minority views will rather quickly become the ideas that come to rule even the majority. “The scientists,” states a summary of the journal article, “who are members of the Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center (SCNARC) at Rensselaer, used computational and analytical methods to discover the tipping point where a minority belief becomes the majority opinion.” The threshold of that “tipping point” is relatively low. “[W]hen just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief,” the article explains, “their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society.” (Emphasis supplied). For those with any understanding of the power of ideas – whether those ideas be good or bad – it becomes rather obvious that, as the study says, “[t]he finding has implications for the study and influence of societal interactions ranging from the spread of innovations to the movement of political ideals.”

Thus, a high birthrate among a committed minority and a low birthrate among an ambivalent majority merely cements the success for the minority’s views. Numerous European cities and a handful of countries already have Muslim populations exceeding or nearing that ten percent (10%) threshold and, as to children aged below 16, many of these European countries have Muslim populations that also already exceed, in many cases, fifty percent (50%) of the population at or below that age. As a result, very conservative figures suggest that twenty percent (20%) of Europe will be Muslim by 2050. The Islamist movement, in any case, has no doubt in its beliefs or the accuracy of the Rensselaer study; whether in Australia, Iraq, Iran, Kenya, Libya, England, Italy, USA, or anywhere else Islamists call home. Nor do these large numbers of Islamists, even across the West, have any confusion as to the place of democracy, the place of the sanctity of life, and the place of religion in their preferred ideal society. Islamism and Islamists know their truths – not due to some scholarly article – but through their religion’s core texts, through a 1,400 year old Social Darwinist experiment, and from the Islamist’s own commitment to this very old cause even today.

Accordingly, the conversation I have held since 2008 with certain opinion-leaders concerning the “Counter-Jihad Argument” described in Part I and discussed throughout these essays is of immense importance right now. It is not merely some academic or intellectual exercise. No less than the future of the West hangs in the balance. Keeping the above in mind, in my communications with the various Counter-Jihad opinion-leaders over the past three years, I found that one set of never answered questions continually showed the unsustainability of the present ideological “Left”/”Right” polemics within the Counter-Jihad Movement, discussed in detail in Part I and Part II of these essays. In the three years of off-and-on e-mail discussion between myself and some of these more prominent Counter-Jihad opinion-leaders, I asked on a number of occasions two very simple but very important questions. As of this date, though we have traded views on numerous other points, I have never received any form of answer as to these questions.

The questions I asked were as follows. What if, I asked, during World War II the “Left” and “Right”, “Liberals” (in the American sense) and “Conservatives” had, instead of uniting together to stand up to Hitler and fascism, simply refused to cooperate and continually attacked one another’s political ideologies? What if the “Left” or “Liberals”, I further asked, instead of uniting together with the “Right” and “Conservatives” to stand up to Hitler and fascism, since many on the “Right” across the West, like Neville Chamberlain himself, perceived little danger in and, without knowing what was to come, even had sympathies for Hitler and his Nazi government, had instead simply refused all cooperation with and continued at every opportunity to blame those on the “Right” for both the danger and the worldwide rise of fascism?

The situation among Conservatives in both England and France was relatively similar. “Fear of communism in this period simply clouded in most [] conservatives’ minds the dangers posed by Germany,”ⁱⁱ writes author Mark Haas in his book The Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 1795-1989 (2007). As the French General, Maurice Gamelin (1872-1958), explained after the war: “[The [Leftist] Popular Front’s victory] made many of us lose sight of the dangers of Hitlerism and fascism at our doorstep because behind the ‘Popular Front’ one saw the specter of Bolshevism. Therein lies the origin of the slogans that disfigured the soul of the nation: ‘Better Hitler than Stalin’ and ‘Why die for Danzig?’” ⁱⁱⁱ In both Britain and France, the slogan “Better Hitler than Stalin” was used in elections. As Roderick Stackelberg writes in his book, Hitler’s Germany: Origins, Interpretations, Legacies (1999):

[T]he appeasement policy pursued by British and French leaders in the 1930s was not a policy of cowardice or passivity in the face of threats. It was an active policy of preventing war based on the premise that Europe could not survive another bloodbath of the kind that had occurred from 1914 to 1918. Memories of the Great War were still very much alive in the 1930s.^iv

These ideas and concerns, rightly so, continue to live on with us today. Yet these ideas and concerns, even seventy years later, are continuing to create other forms of cultural and political blind spots that are resulting in new and other forms of appeasement. In words that also reflect our own present situation in relation to average Westerners of the “Left”, “Right”, and “Center” and their inability to perceive any danger in present-day Islam, Islamism, and Islamists, Stackelberg writes of the very well-meaning policy of appeasement that went unquestioned in the pre-World War II era. That policy, like the Golden Rule, however, as so few realize, works best within the context of nations grounded in Christian-based Western beliefs. It can only be used in situations where parties’ respective belief systems allow each to naturally think and assume the best of others and where others generally respond accordingly. Where, however, a political movement (Nazi Social Darwinism, fascism, or Islamism) or a religion (Islamism) inherently includes a belief in suppression of “inferiors” or “infidels”, appeasement and final negotiation can not work. Where a political movement (Nazi Social Darwinism, fascism, or Islamism) or a religion (Islamism) defines your trusting beliefs, your society, your Golden Rule, or, as Nietzsche, Tille, and Hitler would see it, your “Christian-human-democratic ethic” as the worst form of “decay” (Part III) and explicitly requires the complete and utter destruction of your beliefs, including especially the religion underlying them, a policy of appeasement becomes deadly for those willing to tolerate and unable to see intolerance. Our belief in appeasement and negotiation then and now, in very similar ways, are results of our belief in the universality of reason and humanity as well as the history lessons we have painfully learned within the West from each of the wars in which we have been engaged. Those wars, among all parties, have contradicted our deepest core values. Stackelberg writes of appeasement in the early 1900s:

Appeasement was at least in part the result of a history lesson too well learned. By the late 1920s most educated people subscribed to the view that the Great War [of World War I] was a tragic accident that could have been prevented if only the great powers had not cut short the diplomatic process by a premature resort to arms. At the heart of appeasement lay the conviction that differences between nations can and must be resolved by negotiation rather than the use of force. This principle was embodied in the Covenant of the League of Nations, which committed member nations not to go to war before submitting their disputes to arbitration. ^v

None of the foregoing assumptions and convictions – so deeply held by people across the West back then (as well as still today) – could ever conceive of a people, in extremely large numbers, being steered by ideas so foreign and so much the complete opposite of universal reason and Europe’s Western-Christian values. No one could envision that any people – least of all a people of a Western-Christian background – could turn to an ideology that was built upon the destruction of Christianity and its outgrowths of democracy, equality, the Golden Rule, and neighborly love. Even today most of us still fail to understand that it was not a lack of negotiation or the appeasement of Nazi Germany, but, instead, a volatile ideology of Social Darwinism, that grew out of the mid-1800s as was expressed in the writings of Häckel, Nietzsche, Tille, and Hitler (Part III), among others, that placed Nazi Germany on the terrible track it claimed for it and Europe’s future. As with Islamism today, the Social Darwinist National Socialism that began to arise in the 1860s, developing in the thoughts of these men and finally being realized in its full political form by Adolf Hitler, was nothing that anyone outside of Nazi Germany then (or even now) could truly comprehend. As evidence of this, even Churchill himself hoped at times to think the best of Hitler. He wrote of Hitler in 1935 – two years prior to Hitler’s first invasions of neighboring countries:

Whatever else may be thought about [Hitler’s] exploits, they are certainly among the most remarkable in the whole history of the world…. The story of [Hitler’s] struggle cannot be read without admiration for the courage, the perseverance, and the vital force which enabled him to challenge, defy, conciliate, or overcome, all the authorities or resistances which barred his path…. Thus the world lives on hopes that the worst is over, and that we may yet live to see Hitler a gentler figure in a happier age. Meanwhile, he makes speeches to the nations, which are sometimes characterized by candor and moderation. ^vi

Even so, at a time when most every party in Britain felt some degree of sympathy for Hitler and Germany in light of the Versailles Treaty, Churchill had few illusions about what Hitler actually could mean for the balance of world powers. On July 9th 1935, Winston Churchill, still ever the Conservative black sheep, boldly warned his nation and his Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947), that “…there lies before us a period of strain and peril which I do not think has been equalled – no, not even in the great war [e.g. World War I], certainly not in the years preceding it.”^vii Just months later, on November 12th, 1935, he wrote in an article published in the Daily Mail: “Terrible preparations are being made on all sides [e.g. Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union] for war... I do not feel that people realise at all how near and how grave are the dangers of a world explosion. Some regard the scene with perfect equanimity; many gape stolidly upon it, some are angry to be disturbed in such thoughts in their daily routine and pleasures.” ^viii Of course, however, appeasement in these early years leading up to World War II had not been a sole phenomenon of the “Right”.

In all ways, Britain’s Labour Party had also fully bought into the concepts of non-intervention and appeasement. “Many groups on the left of the Labour Party,” writes Frank McDonough in his book, Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement, and the British Road to War (1998), “defied the leadership and criticized the League [of Nations] [for its inaction related to Hitler]. The most significant critic was the outspoken Sir Stafford Cripps, who had supporters in the Socialist League. Cripps viewed the League of Nations as a club of ‘capitalist imperialists’ and considered the best means to resist the Hitler peril was to form a popular front of opponents of fascism and an alliance with the Soviet Union.” ^ix The Labour Party, however, was having none of it – and getting rid of any parties who might think otherwise on the topic of the policy of appeasement. As McDonough describes it, “…the latter demand was overwhelmingly rejected by the Labour Party at its 1937 conference and the Socialist League was expelled.” ^x But party bans for thinking differently on appeasement were not merely being applied to other political parties. “After Munich,” writes McDonough, “Cripps urged the Labour Party to make common cause with all opponents of Chamberlain’s policy.”^xi Such an alliance, of course, would have been intended to partner with Churchill and the few other renegades across the various political parties who were perceptive enough to see the dangers of totalitarianism looming just over the horizon. “This,” McDonough explains, “was also rejected by the moderate leadership of the [Labour] party and Cripps was expelled for consistently refusing to toe the party line in May 1939.” ^xii

For the Labour Party, it was first only in 1937, after Nazi Germany, in support of Spanish fascists, began bombing Spanish cities that the Labour Party and Socialists in Britain began to first move away from the widely-accepted policy of non-intervention and appeasement.^xiii For the Conservative Party, officially, however, it and its leader, Neville Chamberlain, refused to give up hope for the concept until May 10, 1940, the very day that Hitler invaded France, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Luxembourg – and Churchill, as a result, became Prime Minister. Britain’s Labour and Socialist Parties and Churchill, then, as a maverick Conservative who abhorred his party’s appeasement of Hitler and the Nazi regime, could have afterwards easily and justifiably treated Chamberlain and the majority of the Conservative Party and any others who had pursued appeasement with the harshest of measures and criticism once Churchill took power. There are reasons that he did not do so, however, most especially because Churchill understood very well that his nation and the West would not survive any inflammation of political or ideological infighting. Churchill also realized that, up until the day he assumed the post of Prime Minister, he had also been an outsider and a black sheep within his party. As a result, he would need to balance and not cross, even in war time, Chamberlain and the most committed supporters of Chamberlain who most disliked Churchill. For this reason, Churchill treated Chamberlain publicly with the greatest cordiality and respect, leaving him to head the Conservative Party. Churchill also ensured that most of Chamberlain’s closest supporters would not be disturbed in their positions.

With all of this in mind then, as mentioned above, though I received other answers, I never received an answer to my two specific “what if” questions regarding World War II and Churchill from any of these opinion-leaders or the Member of Parliament with whom I had been writing. The reason, I believe, is quite simple; we all know the answer. The result of the various British political parties' failure to cooperate in challenging a merciless end threatened to a free and democratic West at the hands of Nazism would have been (and would in today’s case of Islamism still be) massive, extreme, and eternal social, political, religious, economic, and human devastation. Thankfully, the various political parties in most Western countries, most especially England, were able to put their partisan ideologies aside for the time being. Contrary to normal political behavior, they ceased antagonizing one another with respect to partisan ideology and as to any and all things related to the war against Hitler. Instead, they focused their efforts and rhetoric on defeating – not each other – but their one common enemy: National Socialism. Had this not been the case, many of us – including the democratic nations we now live in and love – would not be here today.

Few of us within the Counter-Jihad Movement might realize that the approach I have suggested throughout these essays comes not merely from my own thoughts and reflections over the past years on the shortcomings and hurdles faced by the Counter-Jihad Movement, it comes quite specifically as well, I have seen, from the high-minded thoughts, words, and actions of Sir Winston Churchill himself. As Randall Bennett Woods describes the analogous situation during World War II in his book, A Changing of the Guard: Anglo-American Relations, 1941-1946 (1990), “As Winston Churchill had pointed out so emphatically to John Maynard Keynes in his instructions, Great Britain was ruled by a multiparty, national government during World War II, a most unusual situation in that country’s political history.”^xiv Prior to that time, as is normal in more peaceful and stable times, many divisions between the different parliamentary constituents had been apparent, most ideological in nature. As Woods writes, “A virtue of the parliamentary system was that it featured parties that took fairly clear-cut stances on the major issues of the day and offered the voters a choice.” Change, however, came with the rise of the fascist threat. As Woods reminds us, in ways mirroring demands of the Counter-Jihad predicament today, though forgotten by most, “[t]he monumental crisis spawned by World War II placed a premium on unity and efficiency….”^xv

When Neville Chamberlain had finally fallen sufficiently short in the confidence of his colleagues in parliament due to his continuous appeasement of Hitler and Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill was quickly selected. Churchill had been “…perceived to be the one person who could unify the nation and lead it to victory…” following the “…widespread public discontent with the Chamberlain government after the German invasion of Norway….”^xvi Already prior to Norway and Denmark, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Poland had already fallen to Hitler. Immediately upon taking office, Churchill determined to build a “unity” government – “…a truly national government, a coalition of the three major parties.” ^xvii As Woods wrote, “[t]he cabinet he built in 1940 and rebuilt in 1942 was…a monument to his skill as a political leader and administrator.”^xviii In order to overcome deep political differences in ideology between the various political parties and citizens within the United Kingdom and to focus all on the war against totalitarianism in Europe, Churchill determined that his “…ability to hold together the seventy-odd Socialists, parliamentary Labour leaders, high Tories, reform Conservatives, and Liberals that came and went in his government between 1940 and 1945 depended on his being able to provide the government with an organizing and defining principle.” ^xix That common defining principle, which was voluntarily accepted by all of Great Britain’s political parties, politicians, and citizens at that time, was described, among other places, in a speech Churchill gave to the House of Commons on October 13, 1943. I have referred to this principle in the title of and throughout this series of essays as “Churchill’s Principle.”

In his October 13, 1943 speech, Churchill sought a reconfirmation of his simple but effective Principle. In that speech he was careful to stress unity and to place the blame for Great Britain’s allowing Nazi fascism to grow and Britain’s being drawn late and poorly-armed into the war against Nazi Germany equally upon all political parties across the British Parliament, not merely upon Chamberlain or those that had opposed his own party or views. Churchill, in words that accurately describe the present situation of the West with respect to Islamist expansionism, declared in that speech, “I thought it might help if I reminded the House at the outset of this discussion of the general foundations upon which we stand at the present time. We have a National Coalition Government, which came together to try to pull the nation out of the forlorn and somber plight into which the action, or inaction, of all political parties over a long period of years had landed it.”^xx (Emphasis supplied). Churchill then argues that, since all must concentrate on the war against totalitarianism, commonalities must be sought out and adhered to and all political ideologies and parties of the British Parliament must be respected within and across the government with no person or party to be asked or expected to change his or her political beliefs. “What holds us together,” Churchill, a true Conservative, challenged his colleagues, “is the conduct of the war, the prosecution of the war. No Socialist, or Liberal, or Labour man has been in any way asked to give up his convictions. That would be indecent and improper. We are held together by something outside, which rivets all our attention.” ^xxi (Emphasis supplied). With that, Churchill laid out his simple but very effective Principle, which, already for a period of three years, he had expected all parties of his “unity” government to live up to if Allied Europe were ever to win the war and defeat its key ideological nemesis, Nazi Germany. “The principle we work on,” proclaimed Churchill, “is: ‘Everything for the war, whether controversial or not, and nothing controversial that is not bona fide needed for the war.’” ^xxii (Emphasis supplied).

Churchill’s understanding of the need for and benefits of full unity in difficult times as reflected in his Principle could already be seen during and just after World War I as well as leading up to the beginnings of World War II. As David Powell writes in British Politics, 1910-1935: The Crisis of the Party System (2004), within the first year after World War I, Churchill worked to set the tone for the creation of a fusion party between the Liberals and Conservatives. Churchill’s good friend and colleague, Frederick Edwin Smith, 1^st Earl of Birkenhead, supporting Churchill’s lead, called for a “National Party” in an article in the Weekly Dispatch in January of 1920. As Churchill himself put it then, “…party spirit, party interest, party organisation, must, in these very serious times, be definitely subordinated to national spirit, national interests, and national organisation.” ^xxiii (Emphasis supplied). The war against fascism that arose in World War II would require this same approach – but even more so.

Years later, on May 9, 1938, as a Member of Parliament for Epping (1924-1945) for the Conservative Party, a full two years before Churchill would become Prime Minister but still only two months after Hitler’s Anschluss of Austria and the Sudetenland, Churchill gave a speech entitled “The Choice for Europe” at The Free Trade Hall in Manchester, England. At this point, Great Britain stood largely on its own against Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (USSR), the latter of which would not become an ally of Great Britain until after the attack by Nazi Germany on the USSR on June 22, 1941. In this 1938 speech, Churchill went deep into the details of the requirement for unity and the subordination of partisanship to the daunting task at hand of defeating Hitler and Stalin’s ravenous ideologies. Churchill said:

I have felt it my duty to make exertions, so far as I can, to rouse the country in the face of an ever-growing danger. This is no campaign against the Government of the day, nor against the Opposition. It is not intended to promote the interests of any Party, or to influence the course of any Election. All Parties, Conservative, Liberal, Labor, Socialist, are on the platform. Church and Chapel, Protestant and Catholic, Jew and Gentile, have come together. Trade Union leaders, Co-operators, merchants, traders, industrialists, those who are reviving the strength of our Territorial forces, those who are working on A.R.P. – none have felt themselves debarred.

But what is the purpose which has brought us all together? It is the conviction that the life of Britain, her glories and message to the world, can only be achieved by national unity, and national unity can only be preserved upon a cause which is larger than the nation itself. However we may differ in political opinion, however divergent our Party interests, however diverse our callings and stations, we have this in common: We mean to defend our Island from tyranny and aggression, and so far as we can, we mean to hold out a helping hand to others who may be in even more immediate danger than at this moment we are ourselves. We repudiate all ideas of abject or slothful defeatism. We wish to make our country safe and strong – she can only be safe if she is strong – and we wish her to play her part with other Parliamentary democracies on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean in warding off from civilization, while time yet remains, the devastating and obliterating horrors of another world war. [….]

[….]

We make ourselves the servants of this cause, but it is no use espousing a cause without having also a method and a plan by which that cause may be made to win. I would not affront you with generalities. There must be the vision. There must be a plan, and there must be action following upon it. We express our immediate plan and policy in a single sentence: “[Prepare], and stand by the Covenant.” In this alone lies the assurance of safety, the defense of freedom, and the hope of peace. ^xxiv

Like the “Covenant” contained the “Counter-Jihad Argument” that I have proposed throughout these essays, Churchill also urged an end to partisan and political bickering over the “Covenant” of his time, that is, England’s agreement via the League of Nations and its member countries in pacts of self-defense – a sort of precursor to NATO. The “Covenant” referred to by Churchill set forth what England’s relationship was vis-à-vis the then rather new League of Nations. There specifically, he urged that the divergent political interests and points of view of the country’s political parties find unity. Churchill urged:

Is it not better then, on the grounds of prudence alone, to gain the strength which comes from combined action? [….] By this present policy of decrying the League and making the Covenant a matter of division between parties we are only having the disadvantage of both courses. It would indeed be disastrous if we were led into a fierce division here at home about foreign policy. An election fought on ordinary domestic issues is a process with which we are all familiar; but an election turning on the dread issues of defense and foreign policy might leave us a deeply divided nation, with an evenly balanced, incoherent Parliament, and this at the very moment when the danger on the Continent had reached its height. That is why I plead for national unity, and for a policy upon which alone it is to be achieved. We might [against our own safe and free futures and best interests now] be having a general election in this country, or preparing for one, with both sides rivaling each other as to who was most in favor of peace at any price. We might have this at the very moment when the war-lust of Dictator Powers has reached its culminating explosion point. ^xxv

Churchill, as I have asserted as being now necessary in the case of the Counter-Jihad Movement, fully understood that he was making an unusual request of the various parties of the British Parliament when he asked them to indefinitely and wholly and voluntarily to put aside and suspend, for the good of all of Britain and all of Western Europe, contentious party positions and conflict (that otherwise only benefited their Nazi enemy). Churchill – as I myself have suggested throughout these essays – asked the various parties to let go of intensifying political differences and the self-defeating practice of using others’ political ideologies as target practice for debate. Instead, Churchill asked politicians and citizens alike to choose, recognize, and focus upon making sure that every person in the United Kingdom agreed that the only “ideology” that counted for every political party in Britain was the one “ideology” founded in their ancient institutions and “common freedoms” in which they as British people of all political persuasions had long believed and looked toward. Churchill explained:

But we are told that we must not involve ourselves in a quarrel about ideologies. If this means that we are not going to back Communism against Nazi-ism or vice versa, we all agree. Both doctrines are equally obnoxious to the principles of freedom. Certainly we should not back one against the other. ^xxvi

It is important to note here that – contrary to the situation today with Islamism – an ideological attack on Communism or Nazism then or now could never be confused with an attack on a “religion” or an “ethnicity” or another protectable element of our pantheon of Western human rights. It is for this reason that those Westerners who today naively offer “support” to Islamism “back it” not because they themselves believe in it or want to see it implemented locally or worldwide; they do it because they believe that Islamism (as were Christianity and Judaism during World War II) and Islamists are harmless and being unfairly attacked and picked out due to their religion and, moreover, that there can be no danger in the practice or beliefs of any “religion”, especially not Islam, the so-called “Religion of Peace.” One need only think of the recent statements (addressed previously in Part I) of the leader of the Norwegian Conservative Party comparing Muslims in Norway today to the Jews of the 1930s. As I have pointed out above, those Westerners who are concerned about religious and ethnic discrimination in relation to Islam and Muslims honestly believe that they are – even if in a rather short-sighted manner – simply defending our core Western human rights. In the same way as Westerners once assumed they could give Hitler the benefit of the doubt and were unable to envision any of the beliefs Hitler actually stood for, so too do people today – “Left”, “Right”, and “Center” – do the same now, denying that any concerns might or could exist within or in relation to Islamism. Thus, it is futile to argue against any person’s mainstream political ideology. The Argument must be pursued in showing such persons how their actions and ideas specifically about Islam and human rights (not their political ideology) are actually undermining the rights, institutions, and Common Freedoms we all – they included – as Westerners value and love.

Churchill in the very next sentence of this speech goes on then to explain exactly what it meant “not [to] involve ourselves in a quarrel about ideologies” and follows up by defining for us exactly what “ideology” or “broad central theme” we all – “Center”, “Left”, and “Right – then and now all have in common and must focus upon in our struggle against totalitarian ideologies. Churchill’s description is analogous to that which I have defined in these essays as our “Common Freedoms.” He continued on, intentionally using the word “we” to mean all persons in Great Britain of every single political belief. By doing so, he gave everyone of his listeners – a part of this massive “we” – a new but very ancient “ideology” meant to replace, during the ongoing threat of Nazism, every other mere political ideology:

But surely we must have [within our common ideology] an opinion between Right and Wrong? Surely we must have an opinion between Aggressor and Victim? This is no question of resisting Dictators because they are Dictators, but only if they attack other people. Have we not an ideology – if we must use this ugly word – of our own in freedom, in a liberal constitution, in democratic and Parliamentary government, in Magna Charta and the Petition of Right? Ought we not to be ready to make as many sacrifices and exertions for our own broad central theme and cause as the fanatics of either of these new creeds [e.g. Communism and Nazism]? Ought we not produce in defense of Right, champions as bold, missionaries as eager, and if need be, [defenses] as sharp as are at the disposal of the leaders of totalitarian states? ^xxvii (Emphasis supplied).

In this way, Churchill urged that for those who wished to carry out ideological attacks on the ideologies of Communism and Nazism themselves, such would be fine. For those, however, who wished to use Communism or Nazism as a rhetorical tool of political advantage to beat into capitulation the various other political parties in Britain, no, according to Churchill, that would not and could not be acceptable. The only “ideology” to be used between and on other mainstream political parties in the struggle against the beliefs of Communism and Nazism were the measure of the ancient Western institutions and freedoms that Britain had together – by the contributions and sacrifices of all of its political and social layers – created and enjoyed over the centuries. To the extent citizens or politicians in Great Britain wished to argue over political ideologies, there was only one ideology to be put forth and argued – our Common Freedoms and institutions; to the extent citizens or politicians wished to direct their ideological arguments against a specific target, there was only one acceptable target: totalitarianism – symbolized by Nazism and Communism, each alone or together. Never during the war, argued Churchill, should the selfishness and divisive rhetoric relating to the war on the ideologies of Nazism and Communism be used as a tool against one’s fellow mainstream political parties, politicians, their followers or their political beliefs. Churchill said:

If deep causes of division are to be removed from our midst, if all our energies are to be concentrated upon the essential task of increasing our strength and security, it can only be because of lofty and unselfish ideals which command the allegiance of all classes here at home, which rouse their echoes in the breasts even of the Dictator-ridden peoples themselves, and stir the pulses of the English-speaking race in every quarter of the globe. That is why I say, “Stand by the Covenant and endeavor to revive and fortify the strength of the League.” ^xxviii

That “Covenant” named by Churchill, regardless of how one may look upon the United Nations today, was the “Covenant” of the League of Nations which had been formed by the Western European nations to stand against the tyrannical militarism of World War I. This organization moreover served as the precursor to NATO and would come to incorporate in its various charters protections for Western universal human rights, women’s rights, the rule of law, equality under the law, freedom of expression, freedom of inquiry, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, etc. (our “Common Freedoms”). Jean Rose Freedman writes in Whistling in the Dark: Memory and Culture in Wartime London (1999) of Churchill’s efforts to call for and maintain unity in relation to this “new” and “common ideology” for World War II, which was meant to and did cross all party lines and all party loyalties. “Wartime ideology was not only an expression of support for the war;” writes Freedman, recognizing even the manner of applicability of Churchill’s Principle and a new “Ideology” by politicians in maintaining unity among a citizenry that embraced different political ideologies, “it was also a means of creating unity among a diverse people whose help was essential to successful prosecution of the war. Politicians and generals may have been the leaders, but it was the efforts of those they led that accomplished most of the work.” ^xxix

To succeed in getting all people of highly differing political colors and backgrounds across Britain to understand that our Common Freedoms and institutions were the one new and only “ideology” around which to rally, Freedman writes of what, in effect, occurred via Churchill’s urgings. In effect, Freedman argues, Churchill formed a “collectivity”, a cohesive social unit wherein individuals voluntarily coordinate their thoughts, words, and actions simply because they see themselves as having a common identity or goal. As Freedman writes, “While members of organizations act according to rules and regulations, members of collectivities act according to [a] fellow feeling. Whereas organizations are based on acknowledged and regulated codes, collectivities draw their strength from ideology.”^xxx According to Freedman, the common identity – especially that outlined by Churchill as their Principle and new “ideology” – was the one important centerpiece of British wartime feeling.

However, as Churchill also recognized very well and reminded the members of Britain’s various political parties, adhering to the new, common “ideology” – which was, in truth, entirely a matter of life and death – was fully voluntary. No one could be forced to refrain from divisive ideological political infighting. “Shared identity,” explains Freedman, “must be carefully constructed; it neither exists naturally nor can it be imposed by force. Rather, it appeals to our free will – to a freely chosen and personally affirmed sense of self.” ^xxxi In a speech given eight years after the end of the war, on May 27, 1953, at St. Stephen’s Hall, Westminster, Churchill touched on the voluntary ability of people in democratic societies to be able to recognize when to deliberately put political partisanship, ideology, and rhetoric aside for a higher “ideology” at times when relationships are more important and must be maintained. “It is indeed,” said Churchill, “the most striking example I have ever known of that characteristic British Parliamentary principle cherished in both Lords and Commons [-] ‘Don’t bring politics into private life.’ It is certainly a mark of the underlying unity of our national life which survives and even grows in spite of vehement party warfare and many grave differences of conviction and sentiment. This unity is, I believe, the child of freedom and fair play fostered in the cradle of our ancient island institutions, and nursed by tradition and custom.” ^xxxii

Another of Churchill’s speeches, this given to the Conservative Association on March 27, 1941, during the early years of the war, was perhaps one of Churchill’s finest speeches on the role and place of political parties and partisanship with respect to maintaining national unity in the face of the threat of a totalitarian ideology seeking world domination. There Churchill discussed the necessity of voluntarily uniting behind our Western Common Freedoms and institutions. He also specifically addressed the destructiveness of engaging in partisanship and ideological sniping when faced with a foreign totalitarian ideology capable of destroying in a very short time all that had been built upon centuries of freedom. Making the task of uniting a national or even international Counter-Jihad Movement look easy, Churchill said:

[With Neville Chamberlain’s help] I was able to form in a week – in the midst of a great battle which was raging in France and the Low Countries – a Government of national union, an all-party Government. That was a dark hour, but we got through it.

Nearly a year has gone by since the new Government was formed. In these times one loses the measure of time; sometimes it feels as if it were ten years and sometimes as if it were only ten days. Anyhow, however you count it or reckon it in your mental picture, here we are still, never so strong or so hopeful as we are today. This is because the national unity has been preserved and fortified; because we have set an example to all countries in the hours of danger.

National unity requires sacrifices from all parties, and no party has sacrificed more than the Conservative Party with its large Parliamentary majority. Many eminent men have had their careers interrupted, many Ministers of promise have seen their prospects obscured, but none has thought of himself; all have made sacrifices…. We shall continue to make these sacrifices, and we shall preserve national unity until we have finally beaten down Satan under our feet. I cannot tell you how and when this will come, but that it will come is certain. I cannot attempt to forecast the form or character of the victory, still less what the situation in Europe and in the world or what the mood in the minds of men may be when that victory has been won.

I hope, however, that there will be national unity in making the peace. I hope also that there will be national unity in certain practical measures of reconstruction and social advance to enable this country to recover from the war and, as one great family, get into its stride again. ^xxxiii

With this reference to “family”, Churchill goes on in his next sentences to describe the close relationships and respect that had grown between individuals of differing political parties within the government once they recognized their new common “ideology”, common foe, and common obligation to defeat fascism and save the world. It was Churchill’s opinion that this cross-partisan cooperation would continue to have a very positive effect on the British government in the future once the planet were free of totalitarianism.

I may say, however, that some of the ties and friendships which are being formed between members of the administration of all [political] parties will not be easy to tear asunder, and that the comradeship of dangers passed and toils endured in common will forever exercise an influence upon British national politics far deeper than the shibboleths and slogans of competing partisans. We have found good, loyal, able comrades in our Labour and Liberal friends, and we work together with the single aim, so well expressed in your resolution today, of saving Europe and the world from the curse and tyranny of Nazism.^xxxiv [….]

In light of the overwhelming threat posed by the totalitarian menace then faced by the civilized West, Churchill described partisanship as being a weakness that he and all other politicians of all party ideologies must successfully struggle to resist. The country would judge men and women of each party, he argued, according to what they contributed or did not contribute to achieving the common victory that survival demanded. That we today must define and explain to the unconvinced of our times exactly how a “religion” can also simultaneously be a set of “religious” beliefs and a totalitarian ideology, however, is a complex and thorny issue that Churchill was never required to address. Because fascism was not a “religion”, it was far easier for everyone across the West to recognize the mere ideology as a danger and unite. Today, however, because of our Western view of the inherent goodness or, conversely, the flawed nature of every religion equally, few understand in present times how any “religion” could ever be dangerous let alone that distinctions between religions – especially this uniquely totalitarian and violent “religion” followed by Islamists – can and should be made. It is for this reason especially that partisanship, in meeting and defeating this danger, must be put aside as quickly as possible. According to Churchill, this had to be done – in order to, then during his times, maintain the maximum potential support of the largest numbers of voters – according to his own “Principle” of non-controversiality and non-partisanship.

Moreover, I do not believe that partisanship will benefit, after the war is over, those who indulge in it when the war is going on. The country will judge party men and women in every sphere of life, throughout the island, not by any partisan remarks or rejoinders they may have uttered, but by the contributions which they will have made to the common victory. ^xxxv

In the very next sentence, Churchill describes the one acceptable way that he saw that the various political parties that existed in the difficult and dangerous times during which he governed might “compete” and “win the prize” of being best and most honorably viewed once the war were over. Stated in simple terms, the way to both win the war and be most popular after the war was to focus all actions and arguments on winning that great conflict – not on self-defeating and destructive partisan confrontation.

There is an honourable competition in which we may all strive as parties and individuals to win the prize. Therefore, the guidance which I offer to the Conservative Party as its leader is that we keep our party organization in good order by associating it at every point with the war effort, and that we concentrate all our thoughts and actions on the victory of the great cause we serve. ^xxxvi

In other words, forget partisanship and partisan sniping and bickering and concentrate on the things we can all agree upon: our Common Freedoms and defeating an immensely menacing totalitarian ideology. For Churchill personally, he himself saw the need to – and did – refrain from raising certain issues and discussing or presenting certain topics during the ongoing struggle against fascism. He did so because he clearly saw and understood that, if he were to descend from his Principle and his new “ideology” of our Common Freedoms, any discussion of points outside of these would quickly turn into partisan contentions and argument thereby placing the potential for victory against totalitarianism very much at risk. Churchill acknowledged:

It is because of the interests of national unity that I have forborne to produce a catalogue of war aims or peace aims; every one knows quite well what we are fighting about, but if you try to set forth in a catalogue what will be the exact settlement of affairs in a period which, as I say, is unforeseeable; if you attempt to do that you will find that the moment you leave the sphere of pious platitude you will descend into the arena of heated controversy. That would militate against the efforts which we are making, and we could not in justice to our country take such a step. ^xxxvii

It is exactly this inability to remain – or even to realize or believe today that one should remain – in the “sphere of pious platitudes” that occurs each day among so many Counter-Jihad opinion-leaders and politicians alike. The result, as Churchill then realized could become the case in resisting Nazism – should unity and non-partisanship have failed, is today our own self-sabotage of every element of the present Counter-Jihad Movement and its goals. From this speech made to Churchill’s own Conservative Party colleagues, there is one quote that stands out and is highly applicable to the situation of the Counter-Jihad Movement and parties today wherein partisan sniping – at the expense of unity, victory, and the Movement and its parties’ own reputations and following – has very much become the norm. In Churchill’s case here, he speaks very directly of the “blameworthy” nature of any and every individual who does not maintain non-partisan unity in such a momentous struggle and who appears incapable of ignoring partisan emotions in political debate. Here even Churchill admits to feeling at times provoked and desirous of making partisan rebuttals. However, he reminds all to keep in mind both the great danger they faced as a society from the outside and the common purpose they were required to maintain together in order to achieve victory and survive. As such, Churchill challenges his colleagues to restrain their emotions and to put aside everything that would keep them from the speediest victory possible which, he foresaw, could only be accomplished by sticking to his Principle and the higher “ideology” of our Common Freedoms.

Anyone in any party who falls below the level of the high spirit of national unity [-] which alone can give national salvation [-] is blameworthy. I know it is provoking when speeches are made which seem to suggest that the whole structure of our decent British life and society, which we have built up so slowly and patiently across the centuries, will be swept away for some new order or other, the details of which are largely unannounced. The spirit sometimes tempts me to rejoinder, and no doubt there are many here who have experienced passing sensations of the same kind, but we must restrain those emotions; we must see things in their true proportion; we must put aside everything which hampers us in the speedy accomplishment of our common purpose. ^xxxviii (Emphasis supplied).

In the present case, so many involved in the Counter-Jihad Movement otherwise very much remember the “true proportions” of the sweeping demographic, social, legal, and political changes that Islamism is bringing down each day over more and more of Europe and the West – except, of course, when it comes to seeking supporters and working together across the lines of ideological politics. At that point, all restraint, perspective, and “true proportion” goes out the window as we carelessly hand Islamists, both domestically and internationally, their victory by painting ourselves and our Movement over and over – in all ways contrary to all statistics – as being: First, no home for the “Center” and “Left”; Second, overwhelmingly “Right-wing”; and, Third, as a danger to (not a supporter of) Western Common Freedoms and human rights.

In his first speech given in the House of Commons as Britain’s new Prime Minister on May 13, 1940, Churchill laid out for his colleagues what was required of them then – and of us today – in order to defeat the totalitarian ideology they faced. As Churchill said as he assumed the Prime Minister’s office at the outbreak of World War II:

We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage [this struggle] with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage [it] against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: victory; victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realized; no survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal. But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, “Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength.”

In reading these great words, we can see in Churchill’s profound example how and why the British people found the way to hold together at a time that very clearly was that nation’s and the West’s darkest hour. At the time Churchill became the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Hitler had already taken control of much of Europe. Britain stood quite nearly alone. Instead of blaming opposite parties and launching ideological attacks for failures or the perceived failures that had led up to Britain’s utter lack of preparedness for this grave moment, Britain’s ideologues and political parties rose to the occasion and put their ideologies aside in all matters relating to their struggle. Only in doing so did England succeed in freeing its energies and its attentions to concentrate on the nation’s real enemy and, only in that way, did it become a real and organized threat to totalitarianism. Consciously and voluntarily choosing unity, we see in hindsight today, allowed Britons to focus upon their one common “ideology” consisting of our Western Common Freedoms and their one common foe which, in all ways, stood for the opposite of those freedoms.

In the same way today, with these words of Churchill, the Counter-Jihad Movement is beginning to show signs that it realizes that the present course and the present polemical approach has damaged the movement greatly from both inside and out. The acts of Breivik have underscored that attacks on ideology are fully unsustainable and will only lead to further marginalization and labeling of the Movement, continued alienation of potential voters, a severe delegitimizing of the Movement's message, and, in the end, it will not only further open the West to Islamization, it will, at the same time, create conditions conducive for the rise of truly fascist parties. Europe has neither the will nor the population to spare for such chaos. Churchill’s words then, like a gift across the many decades since World War II, show us the way. Success, however, does not merely lie in putting aside ideologies, it requires doing so in such a way that allows us to argue the case against Islamism as well as for our Common Freedoms in a way does not blame and that does not require references to political ideologies. Success for the Movement lies then in consciously learning to make the Counter-Jihad Argument while choosing and sticking to unity. Unity – though difficult to grasp and hard to hold onto – is, as Churchill showed us so well, the only way out of our very difficult predicament today.

In the next essay, the sixth and final of these essays, we will examine a few insights and suggestions as to how the Counter-Jihad Movement and its supporters can best learn from Winston Churchill’s experiences and successes in, when it most counted, putting aside destructive politically ideological infighting during World War II. We will also see how, by doing so, leveraging the unity he created, Churchill and the British turned back totalitarianism and, in so many ways, saved the West. We will then consider whether, in light of Islamization’s own well-coordinated international strategy and deeply local successes today, hesitation on the part of the Counter-Jihad Movement to quickly and permanently put aside ideological infighting and to manage a unified non-ideological, human rights-based message with at least the same effectiveness as that achieved by Islamists worldwide, can bode well at all for a vulnerable Movement and the future of the West.

 

The author, writing under the pseudonym Peter Carl, is an independent non-partisan advisor to a sitting American congressperson and a strategic political researcher and consultant on international and comparative political and public policy issues. He is also a member of the American Committees on Foreign Relations. The author maintains contacts with numerous present and former ambassadors from both the U.S. and European countries, a number of whom are serving or have served in the Middle East. Similarly, he also maintains contacts with present and formerly elected representatives from parties across the political spectrum who have been elected to the U.S. Congress, the EU Parliament, and various national parliaments within Europe. Fluent in five languages and possessing elementary abilities in others, the author was trained and works as an international attorney and possesses a Masters Degree in Public Policy from the top-ranked public affairs program in the United States.

The terms “Islamist” and “Islamism” are used in this piece in recognition of relevant and applicable European Union directives or national laws, while duly noting valid and correct concerns over these terms and any uses of such terms.

 

 

Other parts of this series:

Part I: The Conversation

Part II: Right v. Left

Part III: Breivik v. Hitler

Part IV: On Politics & Nazis

Part VI: Back From The Brink

 

___________________

NOTES