Grim's Hall

Let's start with an article from the London Spectator.



This is on the subject of one of the more famous jihadis, Abu Hamza. Hamza, through his firey anti-West speeches in London, attracted the attention of a fair number of men who would later have famous names: Zacarias Moussaoui and Richard Reid are two such.



The article finally comes down against deporting Hamza. I'm thinking the author is in the right here, conditionally. My reasons are as follows:



In the American South, we have had a long tradition of dealing with a group similar to Al Qaeda in most respects: the Ku Klux Klan. Anyone who has had occasion to listen to an old Klansman talk recognizes Hamza's attitude at once. There are "good" jews/blacks, but a lot of "bad" ones too, who need to be controlled or destroyed. The righteous, who understand the conflict at hand, are few and always at such an extremity of need that violence is justified as a method of controlling the evil, unfit men (if "men" is the right word, they will often add).



In my great-great grandfather's day, our family hunted and killed these folks in the mountains of Tennessee. The various White-terror groups, who later banded together into the KKK (even as various Islamist groups seem to be banding together now) used their power largely against the unarmed and frightened, through lynchings, whippings, and burnings. We did then what the Green Berets are doing now in the mountains of Afghanistan: it was a part of the history of freedom that is largely omitted from the history books, that guerrilla campaign that began with the end of the Civil War, and lasted through Reconstruction.



Now, though, the KKK has grown old and feeble. The response of most listeners is just as the response to Hamza mentioned in the article: after a few minutes' hearing, you recognize the madness. Men like Hamza serve to discredit their movements more than anything else that can be done. Let him stay, and talk.



But let us also do what we do with the KKK: infiltrate his group with informants. The aged Hamza, the old KKK man, they aren't dangerous, but they attract young men who are. Thus they are doubly useful: first in discrediting their movements to the reasoned majority, and second in drawing the dangerous young into our circle of vigilance, if only we trouble to maintain it.