Thanks, Maral, for this astute assessment. Having grown up in Germany in the sixties and seventies, I remember the history lessons about the Third Reich, and the (sincere) refrain that we could not let ever let it happen again. After University I became an expat, and it has been surreal seeing Germany changing dramatically every time I visit. It was quite dramatic when Frau Merckel proclaimed “Wir schaffen das!”, suddenly even my Mutti’s quaint town was overrun by migrants, all of them younger men… now, in public, our cities are dominated by obviously culturally not assimilated persons. Parts of the larger cities feel like Turkey (or Iraq). During the day you see young Muslim families everywhere with many children, and the adults are clearly not working… What enables the convergence as you describe it is partially the decline of active involvement in the Christian faith by Germans. Christian faith in Germany is less and less significant in people’s daily life, particularly in the Protestant north, and that creates a blind spot. Secular Germans, mostly atheists and agnostics, fundamentally do not understand the primacy of Islam for its believers, or they miss-perceive it as simply exotic. And there is not just the sacrificing of one’s own national and cultural self-interest, there is a willful blindness and obliviousness on the part of many/most Germans to see what is only too obvious. The Islamification of Germany is still constantly being denied. Anyone who dares bring it up is immediately denounced as rightwing n*zi. I think however, that there will be a point in the not too distant future, when the Islamic takeover will become undeniable, and life in Germany will quickly become undeniably quite unpleasant, for young German women first. To an extent that is already the case with harassment of young females by foreign men, but it is positioned and perceived as individual problems and bad luck rather than a systemic issue. And then of course, there is the problem of the majority of the islamic people not working, and drawing welfare which has to be funded by the hardworking original Germans… unless Germany simply submits to Islam, civil unrest might come, but Ireland and the UK will be first, my fellow Germans will continue to be in denial a little while longer… fundamentally, Germans still think they need to be fighting a problem that was relevant 80 years ago, and sadly, many remain blind to current reality.
"...post-WWII guilt and Islamist ideology don’t collide—they converge". I appreciate your assessment. Having recently finished reading "Submission" by Michel Houellebecq... It may be a race to see which European nation self-immolates first.
Hi Jeff. Do you have a local European perspective? From my side of the pond it might be a three way split between UK, France and Germany. However that may be based on the articles I have read so far. I am prepared to reevaluate with new data.
I certainly would pick those three! I’m in NYC so I confess this is from reading. But two factors in the UK seem important to me:
1) The grooming gangs provide a unique accelerant to the fire (I don’t believe there’s an equivalent in scale elsewhere).
2) The government is uniquely hostile to free speech and in particular is suppressing objections to the current order as hate crimes. This is likely to create more resentment of multiculturalism.
Hello both of you from England. Jeff you are certainly right about #1 the grooming gangs being, as far as we know, unique to the UK, as a disproportionate number of the perpetrators come from the same region of Pakistan.
However I would say #2 the German government has also punished people for ridiculous things like insulting a judge.
The picture of the woman (?) holding a sign saying Islam is the best system while wearing a cloth bag and living the full effects of gender apartheid is ironic in the extreme.
Re:👆🏻“Our culture has few taboos that can't be violated, and our establishment has largely given up on setting standards in the first place. Except where Islam is concerned. There, the standards are established under threat of violence, and accepted out of a mix of self-preservation and self-loathing. This is what decadence looks like: a frantic coarseness that "bravely" trashes its own values and traditions, and then knuckles under swiftly to totalitarianism and brute force.”
Maral, are you familiar with the history of "poisonous pedagogies" in parenting books and advice arising primarily out of modern-day Germany? (I can't remember if I've shared this on your Substack before).
Shortly after the invention of the printing press, parenting books started to be published primarily out of modern-day Germany advocating parenting practices that can be considered neglectful if not outright abusive -- for example, Dr. Moritz Schreber was a bestselling parenting book author in the 1800s and advocated for not hugging or cuddling children. All three of his children were later diagnosed with mental illnesses, with one committing suicide and another becoming an early case study of schizophrenia and gender dysphoria. He can be credited for several generations of German children growing up without much physical affection in the lead-up to WWII and the Holocaust, and Jewish psychologist Alice Miller speculated that his books and other "poisonous pedagogies" spread at the time were one of the leading causes of Nazi Germany.
Notably, Martin Luther is known to have had a very unhealthy relationship with both of his parents, in particular his father.
Miller's claims are supported by research on hunter-gatherer tribes; tribes which were highly physically affectionate toward babies and toddlers had lower rates of violence than tribes which were less physically affectionate (and tended to inflict more pain on their children). In other words, a lack of physical affection—i.e. neglect—in early childhood predicted violence in adulthood. (See: http://www.deconnection.org/site/images/publicaties/body%20pleasure%20and%20the%20origins%20of%20violence%20-%20j.w.%20prescott.pdf)
Miller described the following traits as being common among children who were emotionally neglected, physically abused, or lacked physical affection in early childhood:
- Hyperactivity
- Rejection of the inner child, negative self-talk about the self as a child
- Overachievement and “giftedness”
- Intellectualization and obsession with language and bureaucracy
- Perfectionism
- Validation-seeking
- Hypersensitivity and what we would now call “rejection sensitive dysphoria”
- Conformity of thought and reliance on groupthink (largely due to a fear of rejection and losing love)
- Gullibility
- Inability or limited ability to love and authentically connect to other people
- Codependency and people-pleasing
- Obsession with power
- Impaired theory of mind / cognitive empathy
- Poor boundaries
- Alexithymia (inability to identify and describe emotions)
- Masking and the creation of a “false self”
- Anger issues and outbursts / “meltdowns”
- A tendency toward exploitative relationships
I've noticed that many of the "woke" "Pro-Palestine" (and gender ideology) activists report growing up in neglectful, abusive, or dysfunctional homes. The above list describes them well -- and it describes the Nazis well.
I don't know enough about Islamic cultures to comment, but I read in Yasmine Mohammed's memoir that there are high rates of physical child abuse in Islamic extremist homes.
Thank you so much for this insightful comment, Meghan. You're right. The high rates of child abuse, rigid authoritarian structures, and emotional repression in many Islamic societies align strikingly with both Miller's and Prescott's frameworks. The outcome is unmistakable: brutal punishments, normalized violence, rigid gender segregation, and emotional illiteracy.
Yasmine Mohammed vividly describes being beaten daily, veiled and controlled from a young age, and conditioned to accept violence as normal. She's also shared that learning empathy took years of intense inner work and healing—something most people exposed to such treatment never achieve. Thankfully, she was able to reconnect with her true self. Most remain trapped in survival mode.
When authentic self-expression is punished in childhood—which is intrinsic to Islamic culture—the child constructs a socially acceptable mask. In adulthood, ideology becomes the final mask: a vessel for rage, grief, and unmet needs cloaked in moral righteousness.
You're circling something profound here. When we connect Prescott's neuroscience, Miller's psychohistory, Islamic authoritarian upbringing, and the modern ideological cults in the West, we arrive at a unified theory: The violence of today—whether fascist, jihadist, or woke—is rooted in the suppression of childhood pleasure, autonomy, and affection.
And in adult pleasure too -- the Prescott study notes that sexual permissiveness moderates the effects of low physical affection in childhood on adult violence. Nazi Germany followed the Victorian period ... and I get the impression a lot of "Woke" activists don't have a lot going on in the romance department :-/
That's a fascinating perspective, and I agree with you. Asexuality being part of the 'Woke Queer' spectrum is a contradiction in itself—but that's precisely how distorted and incoherent this entire movement is.
How I remember talking with a warm hearted German friend (RIP 😓) from 2015 to 2019 and how she strongly expressed the feelings you describe. She decided to move to Hungary. At the time all this pro pal anti Israel and antisemitic frenzy were not headlines at all. Favoring migrants above German citizens was. My friend discovered it all the more when she suddenly became a widow. All this happened before the Covid era...
I finally woke up in 2018 when my ex engaged girlfriend was threatened by a shariah police -only thirty meters away from the house door where I live
In this moment i realize the situation of young ( she was just 27 years old) woman in a Muslim dominated part of the big city i live in
65 percent of the population in this suburb is Muslim
Maybe some other religions and ethnics
But the majority is Muslim
I woke up and first ,before i turn to right wing consequent parties I tried a humanist group-but they were all critical of the contemporary leftist system and government in Germany
Then i became a member of the central council of exmuslims in Germany-as a „new Born atheist“ -I left Christianity behind ,realizing that religion is backwards directed-I was a secular member ,but not fully member ,because i am not an exmuslim
Then came corona ,you already remarked,and the resistance against this authoritarian system grew
In the end I was right with every feeling,empathy ,and my attitude
I have these barbarians as my neighbors-they are primitive,uneducated and vulgar -and criminal
So I did everything right and stand for real women’s rights ,not for Transideology, they call feminism -and reproduce patriarchal culture
I stand for democracy
I stand against Nazi Propaganda-old one as new one like critical race theory or new antisemitism
I saved this article for future reference. I have noticed the western cultural naziphobia, that is the irrational fear of Nazis, and belief that evil Nazis are lurking everywhere. And if you allow for real democracy, the evil Nazis will arise again. It seemed to stem from some sort of world war historical / social trauma that I had trouble putting into words when attempting to explain to others. This article seems to describe the same phenomena but in better words. Thank you.
Talk about Judaism the way you talk about Islam and you'll find out who the white guilt–weaponizing protected class actually is. Accusations of Islamophobia are vanishingly rare compared to accusations of antisemitism.
There's nothing in this piece to convince me that political Islam in the West is anything beyond a bad joke, even in Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, it's unpopular.
Wherever it takes hold there are mass civilian casualties, people in the West have no time for that.
The West is post democratic, and the various, more or less autonomous, self reproducing systems exist to maintain the passive consumerism and illusions of the masses.
The Right tries to shake people out of that with their own brand of hysteria and fear mongering.
But like Political Islam, their messaging only ever appeals to already rotten fruits.
The more their parents try to control them, or beat them, or subjugate them to their idea of God's will, the more likely the Children will be to rebel.
Let's hope so but since the end of the 90's I've experienced quite the opposite. Working with a Dutch converted female manager wearing a veil in the office in 2001 made it even more obvious, while a secular Turkish collegue was struggling to divorce her violent abusive husband. This was in Amsterdam and I left in 2005. What I perceive of the overall mentality there is a scaring belief of pro pal propaganda. I fear that the younger generations cannot escape their families - as soon as they start having children themselves they'll return. Being born into Islam means being in a prison from which it is extremely hard to break free - mentally and physically.
Thanks, Maral, for this astute assessment. Having grown up in Germany in the sixties and seventies, I remember the history lessons about the Third Reich, and the (sincere) refrain that we could not let ever let it happen again. After University I became an expat, and it has been surreal seeing Germany changing dramatically every time I visit. It was quite dramatic when Frau Merckel proclaimed “Wir schaffen das!”, suddenly even my Mutti’s quaint town was overrun by migrants, all of them younger men… now, in public, our cities are dominated by obviously culturally not assimilated persons. Parts of the larger cities feel like Turkey (or Iraq). During the day you see young Muslim families everywhere with many children, and the adults are clearly not working… What enables the convergence as you describe it is partially the decline of active involvement in the Christian faith by Germans. Christian faith in Germany is less and less significant in people’s daily life, particularly in the Protestant north, and that creates a blind spot. Secular Germans, mostly atheists and agnostics, fundamentally do not understand the primacy of Islam for its believers, or they miss-perceive it as simply exotic. And there is not just the sacrificing of one’s own national and cultural self-interest, there is a willful blindness and obliviousness on the part of many/most Germans to see what is only too obvious. The Islamification of Germany is still constantly being denied. Anyone who dares bring it up is immediately denounced as rightwing n*zi. I think however, that there will be a point in the not too distant future, when the Islamic takeover will become undeniable, and life in Germany will quickly become undeniably quite unpleasant, for young German women first. To an extent that is already the case with harassment of young females by foreign men, but it is positioned and perceived as individual problems and bad luck rather than a systemic issue. And then of course, there is the problem of the majority of the islamic people not working, and drawing welfare which has to be funded by the hardworking original Germans… unless Germany simply submits to Islam, civil unrest might come, but Ireland and the UK will be first, my fellow Germans will continue to be in denial a little while longer… fundamentally, Germans still think they need to be fighting a problem that was relevant 80 years ago, and sadly, many remain blind to current reality.
"...post-WWII guilt and Islamist ideology don’t collide—they converge". I appreciate your assessment. Having recently finished reading "Submission" by Michel Houellebecq... It may be a race to see which European nation self-immolates first.
I might bet on the UK.
Hi Jeff. Do you have a local European perspective? From my side of the pond it might be a three way split between UK, France and Germany. However that may be based on the articles I have read so far. I am prepared to reevaluate with new data.
I certainly would pick those three! I’m in NYC so I confess this is from reading. But two factors in the UK seem important to me:
1) The grooming gangs provide a unique accelerant to the fire (I don’t believe there’s an equivalent in scale elsewhere).
2) The government is uniquely hostile to free speech and in particular is suppressing objections to the current order as hate crimes. This is likely to create more resentment of multiculturalism.
Hello both of you from England. Jeff you are certainly right about #1 the grooming gangs being, as far as we know, unique to the UK, as a disproportionate number of the perpetrators come from the same region of Pakistan.
However I would say #2 the German government has also punished people for ridiculous things like insulting a judge.
https://freespeechunion.org/germany-man-criticizes-judge-who-fined-syrian-for-raping-15-year-old-girl-gets-fined-twice-as-much/
I don't know if Germans get prison sentences like eg Lucy Connelly in the UK though. If they don't then I imagine we will see civil war here first!
Amazing article. Thank you for your moral clarity.
The picture of the woman (?) holding a sign saying Islam is the best system while wearing a cloth bag and living the full effects of gender apartheid is ironic in the extreme.
Excellent dissertation.
Re:👆🏻“Our culture has few taboos that can't be violated, and our establishment has largely given up on setting standards in the first place. Except where Islam is concerned. There, the standards are established under threat of violence, and accepted out of a mix of self-preservation and self-loathing. This is what decadence looks like: a frantic coarseness that "bravely" trashes its own values and traditions, and then knuckles under swiftly to totalitarianism and brute force.”
- Ross Douthat
Maral, are you familiar with the history of "poisonous pedagogies" in parenting books and advice arising primarily out of modern-day Germany? (I can't remember if I've shared this on your Substack before).
Shortly after the invention of the printing press, parenting books started to be published primarily out of modern-day Germany advocating parenting practices that can be considered neglectful if not outright abusive -- for example, Dr. Moritz Schreber was a bestselling parenting book author in the 1800s and advocated for not hugging or cuddling children. All three of his children were later diagnosed with mental illnesses, with one committing suicide and another becoming an early case study of schizophrenia and gender dysphoria. He can be credited for several generations of German children growing up without much physical affection in the lead-up to WWII and the Holocaust, and Jewish psychologist Alice Miller speculated that his books and other "poisonous pedagogies" spread at the time were one of the leading causes of Nazi Germany.
Notably, Martin Luther is known to have had a very unhealthy relationship with both of his parents, in particular his father.
Miller's claims are supported by research on hunter-gatherer tribes; tribes which were highly physically affectionate toward babies and toddlers had lower rates of violence than tribes which were less physically affectionate (and tended to inflict more pain on their children). In other words, a lack of physical affection—i.e. neglect—in early childhood predicted violence in adulthood. (See: http://www.deconnection.org/site/images/publicaties/body%20pleasure%20and%20the%20origins%20of%20violence%20-%20j.w.%20prescott.pdf)
Miller described the following traits as being common among children who were emotionally neglected, physically abused, or lacked physical affection in early childhood:
- Hyperactivity
- Rejection of the inner child, negative self-talk about the self as a child
- Overachievement and “giftedness”
- Intellectualization and obsession with language and bureaucracy
- Perfectionism
- Validation-seeking
- Hypersensitivity and what we would now call “rejection sensitive dysphoria”
- Conformity of thought and reliance on groupthink (largely due to a fear of rejection and losing love)
- Gullibility
- Inability or limited ability to love and authentically connect to other people
- Codependency and people-pleasing
- Obsession with power
- Impaired theory of mind / cognitive empathy
- Poor boundaries
- Alexithymia (inability to identify and describe emotions)
- Masking and the creation of a “false self”
- Anger issues and outbursts / “meltdowns”
- A tendency toward exploitative relationships
I've noticed that many of the "woke" "Pro-Palestine" (and gender ideology) activists report growing up in neglectful, abusive, or dysfunctional homes. The above list describes them well -- and it describes the Nazis well.
I don't know enough about Islamic cultures to comment, but I read in Yasmine Mohammed's memoir that there are high rates of physical child abuse in Islamic extremist homes.
Thank you so much for this insightful comment, Meghan. You're right. The high rates of child abuse, rigid authoritarian structures, and emotional repression in many Islamic societies align strikingly with both Miller's and Prescott's frameworks. The outcome is unmistakable: brutal punishments, normalized violence, rigid gender segregation, and emotional illiteracy.
Yasmine Mohammed vividly describes being beaten daily, veiled and controlled from a young age, and conditioned to accept violence as normal. She's also shared that learning empathy took years of intense inner work and healing—something most people exposed to such treatment never achieve. Thankfully, she was able to reconnect with her true self. Most remain trapped in survival mode.
When authentic self-expression is punished in childhood—which is intrinsic to Islamic culture—the child constructs a socially acceptable mask. In adulthood, ideology becomes the final mask: a vessel for rage, grief, and unmet needs cloaked in moral righteousness.
You're circling something profound here. When we connect Prescott's neuroscience, Miller's psychohistory, Islamic authoritarian upbringing, and the modern ideological cults in the West, we arrive at a unified theory: The violence of today—whether fascist, jihadist, or woke—is rooted in the suppression of childhood pleasure, autonomy, and affection.
And in adult pleasure too -- the Prescott study notes that sexual permissiveness moderates the effects of low physical affection in childhood on adult violence. Nazi Germany followed the Victorian period ... and I get the impression a lot of "Woke" activists don't have a lot going on in the romance department :-/
That's a fascinating perspective, and I agree with you. Asexuality being part of the 'Woke Queer' spectrum is a contradiction in itself—but that's precisely how distorted and incoherent this entire movement is.
Brilliant article. Penetrating cultural analysis. And, sadly, true.
I love every single Post-you are looking through these circumstances and you understand German soul and it’s schizophrenia
Dear Maral salmassi
Because you live in Germany you know how German people feel -they are sacrificed on the altar of anti racism theory and critical race theory
And of course the UN Migration pact
How I remember talking with a warm hearted German friend (RIP 😓) from 2015 to 2019 and how she strongly expressed the feelings you describe. She decided to move to Hungary. At the time all this pro pal anti Israel and antisemitic frenzy were not headlines at all. Favoring migrants above German citizens was. My friend discovered it all the more when she suddenly became a widow. All this happened before the Covid era...
I finally woke up in 2018 when my ex engaged girlfriend was threatened by a shariah police -only thirty meters away from the house door where I live
In this moment i realize the situation of young ( she was just 27 years old) woman in a Muslim dominated part of the big city i live in
65 percent of the population in this suburb is Muslim
Maybe some other religions and ethnics
But the majority is Muslim
I woke up and first ,before i turn to right wing consequent parties I tried a humanist group-but they were all critical of the contemporary leftist system and government in Germany
Then i became a member of the central council of exmuslims in Germany-as a „new Born atheist“ -I left Christianity behind ,realizing that religion is backwards directed-I was a secular member ,but not fully member ,because i am not an exmuslim
Then came corona ,you already remarked,and the resistance against this authoritarian system grew
In the end I was right with every feeling,empathy ,and my attitude
I have these barbarians as my neighbors-they are primitive,uneducated and vulgar -and criminal
So I did everything right and stand for real women’s rights ,not for Transideology, they call feminism -and reproduce patriarchal culture
I stand for democracy
I stand against Nazi Propaganda-old one as new one like critical race theory or new antisemitism
I think without any euphemism I am a good guy
And I stand for critical rationalism
Dear Mrs Salmassi
I wrote a message to you at messenger
Please take a look when you find a little time
Greetings
Thomas
“Islam is not treated like any other ideology”…
That’s absolutely correct. It is not. And mostly because people fear it.
I don’t.
https://thequillandmusket.substack.com/p/why-western-civilization-is-morally?r=4xypjp
Fascinating read
@Karen Hunt aka KH Mezek 🙏🏽
point blank
as usual
I saved this article for future reference. I have noticed the western cultural naziphobia, that is the irrational fear of Nazis, and belief that evil Nazis are lurking everywhere. And if you allow for real democracy, the evil Nazis will arise again. It seemed to stem from some sort of world war historical / social trauma that I had trouble putting into words when attempting to explain to others. This article seems to describe the same phenomena but in better words. Thank you.
Except they are cool with people literally running around yelling “gas the Jews” and call THE Jews Nazis. It is a bizarre situation to witness.
Nobody yells “gas the Jews,” and Zionists are arguably even more sadistic than Nazis; they film the evidence themselves.
FU2
At least you don't deny it.
Brilliant run down !
Is the "aversion to national identity" more pronounced in the former FDR?
Yes, it's worse in the West.
Talk about Judaism the way you talk about Islam and you'll find out who the white guilt–weaponizing protected class actually is. Accusations of Islamophobia are vanishingly rare compared to accusations of antisemitism.
There is nothing wrong with Judaism, they don't force their religion down your throat. Why do you hate Jews?
I don't. But thanks for admitting you hate Islam.
If you don't hate Jews, why do you lie about them?
Calling me a liar and not just calling me names? That makes you a cut above the rest. But you can't tell me what I lied about, because I didn't lie.
Everything you said was a lie, but I did not specify because I fear you are uneducable.
There's nothing in this piece to convince me that political Islam in the West is anything beyond a bad joke, even in Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, it's unpopular.
Wherever it takes hold there are mass civilian casualties, people in the West have no time for that.
The West is post democratic, and the various, more or less autonomous, self reproducing systems exist to maintain the passive consumerism and illusions of the masses.
The Right tries to shake people out of that with their own brand of hysteria and fear mongering.
But like Political Islam, their messaging only ever appeals to already rotten fruits.
unfortunately the offspring are becoming majority
The offspring are becoming secular.
The more their parents try to control them, or beat them, or subjugate them to their idea of God's will, the more likely the Children will be to rebel.
Especially in the West.
Not at all, the second and third generations are even more radical.
Let's hope so but since the end of the 90's I've experienced quite the opposite. Working with a Dutch converted female manager wearing a veil in the office in 2001 made it even more obvious, while a secular Turkish collegue was struggling to divorce her violent abusive husband. This was in Amsterdam and I left in 2005. What I perceive of the overall mentality there is a scaring belief of pro pal propaganda. I fear that the younger generations cannot escape their families - as soon as they start having children themselves they'll return. Being born into Islam means being in a prison from which it is extremely hard to break free - mentally and physically.
🤔🤔🤔
Just look around, because in this case, mainstream media is a big big basket full of rotten fruit 🤢