Today, many European politicians and mainstream journalists cry crocodile tears about Syria´s ancient city of Palmyra coming under terrorist control. They express their concerns that the armed militants of the "Islamic State" will destroy Palmyra, which harbors the ruins of a great city that was once one of the world's key cultural hubs. It wouldn´t be the first time that the "Islamic State" destroys cultural heritage.
But those emotions are deeply hypocritical, because many of those who are now so concerned are, in reality, the ideological spin doctors of the "Islamic State" and other terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq. With their support for the so-called "Syrian Revolution," they fueled these movements.
The "Islamic State" is today simply executing its job—destroying civilization, desintregating whole nations, killing everyone who represents "order" in the most brutal way they can. They atomize Syria, the geopolitical obstacle in the eyes of Washington and Brussels.
This pattern is not new at all:
In Kosovo, extremist Albanians didn't just attack Serbs, they attacked and destroyed Serbian-Orthodox churches and burial grounds. They didn't just want to get rid of the Serbian population, they wanted to get rid of the Serbian historical presence. Kosovo-Albanians desecrate Serbian graves by putting animal cadavers on them.
In the Southern Caucasus, Armenian churches and monasteries were targeted by the Azerbaijan forces during the Nagorno-Karabakh War. The Armenian cathedral of Shushi was desecrated and turned into a weapons stockpile by the Aziri forces.
It is not a coincidence that this barbarian and anti-cultural warfare was supported by "volunteers" (such as Chechnyan and Afghan Djihadis) in both, former Yugoslavia and Southern Caucasus.
Destroying cultural, historical, religious and national heritage is an effective way to create a fait accompli on the geopolitical battleground. The purpose of those "measures of war" is to cut the enemy population off from their historical, cultural, and religous collective bonds and identities.
And this is exactly the ideological concept of the post-modernist and liberal West. They do the same in Europe—of course by other means, with "soft power." Here, our political and cultural elites deny the existence and importance of collective identities. They fantasise in our universities about intellectual holographs such as "hybrid identities" and so on. They fight against religion, they "deconstruct" the family. They've even created a whole genre of literature that denies the existance of "male" and "female." They turn churches into department stores or appartment buildings. They worship the "individual," which is "free" to act in an "open society"—which really means a global "open market."
The Russian philosopher and political scientist Alexandr Dugin once described this process as a way to spread a modern "idtiocy." In ancient Greek, the term "idiōtēs" described "a private citizen, one who has no professional knowledge, a layman." "Idiōtēs" was used in ancient Athens to refer to one who declined to take part in public life—someone without any collective bonds.
The "Islamic State" is today the "bulldozer" of wars to destroy collective bonds in the Middle East. In that way, it is the militant wing of Western liberalism.