None Dare Call It Treason

A powerful essay on the treason being committed by many academics, journalists, and other influencers of public opinion.

From Crisis

One could be forgiven for thinking that a traitor is a rare bird. After all, most Americans can only name one traitor in American history—Benedict Arnold. And, if you know who he is, you probably went to school several decades ago when such things were still taught. Of course, there have been other traitors besides Arnold, but, except for students of history, few know their names.

Yet, there are, arguably, far more traitors on American soil today than ever before in history. They are not traitors in the legal sense, and this is because treason is defined as giving aid and comfort to an enemy in time of war, and the U.S. is not currently in a declared war with any nation. Still, many Americans can be considered traitors in the looser sense of the term. They may not be providing aid to an official enemy, but they are engaged in a serious betrayal, nonetheless.

Whether or not we are officially at war, the U.S. does have enemies. The nation of Iran considers America to be its enemy, and so do a host of other Islamic entities including Hezbollah, Hamas, the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and about a dozen or so other terrorist organizations.

All of these groups justify their hostility to America, and the West in general, by reference to their religious beliefs. According to the Koran and the Hadiths we are infidels. Our crime of disbelief is sufficient reason to attack us. One would expect, then, that loyal Americans would not want to do anything to aid and support the ideological system which motivates these enemies of America.

Instead, many segments of American society have, in effect, taken sides with our ideological enemy—not necessarily with ISIS and al-Qaeda, but with more the “moderate” Islamic entities that cleave to the same core beliefs. Meanwhile, they seek to silence other Americans who are critical of the Islamist agenda.

The 1400-year history of Islam’s war against Christendom and the West provides numerous examples of traitors who went over to the side of Islam. Today there is a difference: While in the past traitors were individuals who gave strategic information to Muslim enemies or supplied them with money or transportation or troops, it is more accurate to speak in terms of a traitor class rather than traitorous individuals. The impulse to be aligned with the other side is now a widespread phenomenon.

In the United States, the traitor class is well-educated, well-paid, and highly influential. They work in the media, universities, big business, politics, entertainment, and even churches. In short, the traitor class occupy important positions in the most powerful institutions in our society.

The average person’s first encounter with members of the traitor class occurs in the classroom. That’s not to say that every teacher is a Benedict Arnold; it’s just to acknowledge that American schools have drifted leftward, and certain taken-for-granted narratives go with the teacher’s job. To depart from these narratives is to risk one’s career.

Thus, if your child is in elementary school or high school, the odds are that he or she will learn a whitewashed version of Islam. History books will portray Muslims as innocent victims of Crusaders and imperialists. At the university level, students will learn about Islam from professors who draw their salaries from Arab-funded endowments. Meanwhile, speakers who are critical of Islam will be banned from campus.

The narrative will be supported on every side. If a Muslim perpetrates a knife or car attack, local authorities will profess to be baffled about the motivation, or they may chalk it up to mental illness. For its part, the media will play along with the charade. They won’t bother to dig into the facts or to challenge the nothing-to-do-with-Islam narrative. By contrast, if a Muslim is the victim of a hate crime, the story will be magnified out of all proportion. If it later turns out that the “hate crime” was manufactured, there will be no retraction or else only a brief one hidden away on the back page. If, on the other hand, a counter-jihad website tries to expose the Islamic motivation behind the jihad attack, or attempts to reveal the fake nature of the “hate crime,” giant corporations such as Google, Facebook, and MasterCard will move to silence it.

What is happening, in short, is that today’s Paul Reveres are being muzzled by the Benedict Arnolds who are running the show.

This is not to say that the modern Benedict Arnold recognizes himself as such. Until it occurred to some that it might be worth trying to stick the label “traitor” on Donald Trump, the term had largely fallen into desuetude. To many, the concept of “traitor” seems a relic of another era—an era when people supposedly thought in terms of “black and white.” Now that the era of black-and-white thinking has been replaced by the reign of relativism, treason has become a problematic subject. When one system of government is deemed to be as good as any other, loyalty to one’s country and culture begins to seem less important, even quaint.

Admittedly, our present situation can’t be blamed entirely on a rigorous relativism. Most people aren’t relativist when it comes to things in which they strongly believe. The fact is that generations of Americans have been actively taught that their country and culture are not worthy of loyalty. The traitor class doesn’t want you just to believe that your civilization is no better or worse than others; It wants you to believe that it is the worst that history has ever produced. Moreover, the traitor class has conditioned generations of students to believe in a new set of loyalties—loyalty above all to diversity and multiculturalism (and perhaps also to whatever multinational company for which one happens to work).

The upshot is that those who stifle free speech for the sake of protecting Islam from criticism, or those who cover up for cultures that are misogynistic, anti-Semitic, and anti-Christian may actually believe that they are serving their country.

Sir John Harington, a member of Queen Elizabeth I’s court, composed numerous trenchant epigrams. One of the most famous is this one:

Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

The logic is impeccable. Once the traitors have taken power, it’s dangerous to call them traitors. Today, treason is prospering in America as never before. Professors, politicians, and pundits who are willing to jeopardize their country’s safety for the sake of a fashionable narrative will be well-rewarded in terms of salaries, promotions, and honors. By the same token, those who dare speak out about the dangers of Islamization will be increasingly at risk.

Once again, I am not speaking of treason in its narrowly defined Constitutional sense, but in its broader sense of a betrayal of trust or a breach of allegiance. You can’t be hanged for committing treason in the broader sense, but this kind of treason still has its victims, and some of them suffer profoundly. For an instructive example, let’s switch from the U.S. to the U.K. In Rotherham, England, gangs of Muslim rapists victimized teenage girls for a period of 15 years with almost complete impunity. Police, town council members, child protection workers and the media knew about the crimes. (With 1,400 victims, how could they not know?) Yet they chose to cover up the crimes. They betrayed the girls and their families because they didn’t want to be thought racist or “Islamophobic.” In a grotesque inversion of priorities they protected the Muslim gangs and allowed the lives of the girls to be ruined. This may not be treason in the narrowly defined sense, but any sane person would recognize it as a profound betrayal. It is with good reason that some in Britain have taken to calling the governing class the “traitor class.” And there is good reason to believe that a similar class is already well-established in America.