WCF

History, politics, and culture articles and forum discussions.

General history

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The Fall of the Western World

According to your experience, sagacity and knowledge, what reasons or causes would be a threat to our Western civilisation?

History is the study of the past, and several civilisations have preceded ours.  From what we’ve learned, sometimes in detail, can it be possible to prevent a similar fate like the ones of our ancestors?  In my opinion, the main difference with the past is that Western civilisation doesn’t depend on one place mainly (Europe, USA, Australia, etc. and not Rome or Aachen, Paris, London or Washington).

Western civilisation has spread worldwide. Is it enough ?

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Notre Dame Burning

With total destruction averted, we stop to remember the value of Western Civilization

Few monuments are as memorable within the history of Western Civilization as the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, so when fire almost entirely consumed the church today, people around the world were in shock.

Sitting on the Ile-de-la-Cite, the iconic building is famous not only as a beautiful example of early Gothic architecture, but also for its testament to a variety of historical events over the past 800 years. It has been the site of coronations over centuries, it survived the French Revolution, and survived the Nazis during World War II. During the French Revolution it was converted into a “Temple of Reason” for a short time, and after the liberation of Paris in 1944, it was the site of celebration among citizens. Today, alongside the Eiffel Tower, it stands as a symbol of France.

Notre Dame was born into an architectural age of twelfth-century medieval France after the new style, which we call “Gothic”, began to influence church construction about twenty years earlier at the Abbey church of Saint-Denis. Other French churches, such as those at Chartres and Laon, would also be constructed in this style during the century which revolved around a two key structural improvements – the pointed arch and the ribbed vault – which allowed weight to be channeled more efficiently than was possible during the preceding Romanesque period. This made it possible to not only create taller structures than previously possible, but also to replace the mass of walls with open and airy spaces, as well as stained glass windows. By the end of the twelfth century the Gothic age would take yet another step forward into the “High Gothic” period when flying buttresses were added to the arsenal of building construction.

Construction on Notre Dame cathedral began in 1163. The transept and choir sections were finished by 1182, and the nave by 1225. The facade was later completed by around 1260. At 400 feet long, it is a huge cathedral – the largest of all from the early Gothic period – and quite tall at 108 feet in height.

The modified elevation (on the left) beside the original elevation (and Viollet-le-Duc restoration).

The church was designed in a five-aisled basilica plan with two ambulatories, sexpartite vaults, and an unusual elevation comprised of the nave arcade, triplet arches, oculi, and clerestory level. This design would be changed in the thirteenth century to eliminate the oculi and increase the size of the stained glass windows in the clerestory, only to be changed back (partly) by the nineteenth century preservationist, Viollet-le-Duc. (On a side note, it was Viollet-le-Duc who designed the spire which caught the world’s attention today when it went up in flames.)

On the exterior, the church is famed for its quaint appearance hugging the Ile-de-la-Cite along the Seine. Part of its grand look is due to its spider-like flying buttresses which project from the apse exterior. Since the flying buttresses used on the cathedral were installed after the church was built, rather than as part of its original design, it is likely that Notre Dame did not benefit from them in quite the same way that other churches were which incorporated them from the beginning.

Today, Notre Dame continues to survive, albeit bruised and broken from the fire. As one of the few medieval structures that have become a household name throughout the world, the church occupies a special status in the hearts and minds not only of the French, but for anyone who loves the heritage of Western Civilization.

Will the church be rebuilt? Macron has already pledged to do just that, and it can potentially be done with the help of laser scans of the building that have recently be done, but there will inevitably be some loss after destruction of this magnitude.

If there is a silver lining to this, it’s that for a rare moment, people in the West stopped for a moment to realize that the heritage of Western Civilization still means something. In fact, it means a lot. It’s just a shame that it took a situation of this gravity to make people remember that.

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Is the media actually the enemy of the people?

News came out recently that a Der Spiegel writer, Claas Relotius, fabricated a number of stories for the German magazine over the years. He helped craft around 60 articles over the last seven years and enjoyed so much success there that in 2014 he was awarded with the title of CNN Journalist of the Year.

While this might seem like distant news to us in the United States, Relotius’ work often touched on American news, which means he may have had a significant influence on the creation of German and pan-European thought (the publication has a circulation of 840,000 per week).

One of the stories that caught my attention was one that Relotius did on the politics of the small Minnesota town of Fergus Falls. Relotius spent time living in the rural town in early 2017, not long after Donald Trump won the election. One of the more unsettling false claims made in the story was that a sign greeted visitors to the town which read “Mexicans Keep Out”, but this was hardly the only fabrication that would appear in the story.

A couple of authors who live in Fergus Falls came up with a list of eleven rather startling, unsubstantiated claims made by Relotius in his article, one of which was that the town was a Trump haven and supported Trump at a rate of 70.4% (in reality, it was 62.6%). Among other debunked claims were:

  • The young, lonely city administrator walked around with a Beretta at work and enjoyed eighteenth-century French philosophy.
  • The townspeople liked the movie American Sniper so much that it continued to be played at the local movie theater two years after its original run in 2015.
  • A woman named Maria Rodriguez owned the local Don Pablo’s Restaurant, had kidney disease, and became a Trump supporter due to expenses under Obamacare. Also, that she had a (non-existent) high school son named Israel.
  • A rather involved, western-themed party that no one can seem to remember.

What’s staggering about this is the sheer distortion of the facts provided by Relotius. This wasn’t a case of simply mistaken identities or exaggerating here and there, but outright falsehoods.

According to Der Spiegel, Relotius “falsified his articles on a grand scale and even invented characters, deceiving both readers and his colleagues. This has been uncovered as a result of tips, internal research and, ultimately, a comprehensive confession by the editor himself.”

What is the effect that such fake news might have on influencing public opinion? If you connect the dots in the story about Fergus Falls, they all seem to paint the town as a kind of eccentric Trump-loving wasteland, the kind that seems to play on a variety of stereotypes that foreigners might take at face value.

We really should question how much this kind of article – or any other articles by this author – influenced the winds of public discourse in Germany and throughout Europe as a result. Did it make any European leaders less inclined to work with Trump, thinking that his followers were intolerant, crazy racists? Did it change the way Europeans wanted to deal with the U.S. in light of the sample of “fly-over country” citizens portrayed in the story? I think it would be a stretch to think that the faked articles created by Relotius did not have a negative effect on the U.S. or Trump as a result.

I should point out that this happened at Der Spiegel, the so-called “world’s largest fact checking operation”. Back in 2010, the publication had around 80 full-time people checking facts and doing related work. One scratches one’s head wondering what kind of effectiveness they have if a single journalist can pass off over a dozen stories with faked content.

Not long ago, President Trump was maligned for calling the media the “enemy of the people”. While that may be hyperbole, it is definitely possible to see the far-reaching, harmful socio-political effects by even a single journalist who decides to go off the rails to pursue some untruthful objective.

Once false news has been published, it is difficult, if not impossible, to restore views to the status quo. People who read Relotius’ article in early 2017 have already had their opinions affected, and have probably voted in elections and argued for this or that policy.

So how many other journalists are out there doing this very thing? We only hear about those who are caught before they fade into our collective memories, but their damage has already been done. If not enemies of the people, then they are exploiters of people’s trust and distorters of reality.

WCF