The destruction of Europe
Bach has the right idea
The Schreckenback/Rilling starts at 10:30; the Esswood/Harnoncourt at 10:50.
Too bad Angela Merkel and the other EU leaders
can't honor the sentiments in the text.
Contents of this post:
by Patrick J. Buchanan
2002-01-01
[Note: The italicized portions below were reprinted
in Pat's 2015-12-28 post "Is The West Disintegrating?".]
1. The economic issues
[1.1]
“Economic unity and political unity are twins:
one cannot be born without the other following,”
said Friedrich List, the famed German economist and nationalist.
Again and again, history has proven List right.
[1.2]
Economic union leads inexorably to political union.
The left has always understood this.
The right never does, until too late.
[1.3]
When Hamilton created a free-trade zone across 13 states,
a strong U.S. central government was baked in the cake.
Bismarck used a customs union, the Zollverein,
to harness Germany under Prussia’s whip hand.
[1.4]
And thus the European Coal & Steel Community of the 1950s led to
a Common Market, a European Community,
today’s European Union
and tomorrow’s Euroland.
There, the 12 nations that are today surrendering their national currencies to adopt the “euro”
will enjoy all the liberty and independence of Rhode Island.
[1.5]
For Europe there may be no turning back.
The patriot’s vision of DeGaulle,
of a Europe of fatherlands “from the Atlantic to the Urals,” is dead.
The alternative vision of a managerial elite,
of a socialist superstate that they shall run, has triumphed.
Despising sovereignty, worshipping power,
the nameless, faceless technocrats of the EU have just taken a Great Leap Forward.
[1.6]
France, Germany and Italy, who are exchanging their money for the euro,
are surrendering control of monetary policy and, with it,
control of fiscal policy and national destiny.
Should a recession hit Italy, Rome will be in a straight jacket,
unable to run a deficit or devalue the lira.
Italy will have less freedom to act in her national interest than Argentina
in her current crisis.
[1.7]
Nevertheless, a prediction:
This European superstate will not endure,
but break apart on the barrier reef of nationalism.
For when the hard times come,
patriots will recapture control of their national destinies
from Brussels bureaucrats to whom no one will ever give loyalty or love.
[1.8]
Who, after all, would fight or die for the EU?
[1.9]
There are other reasons to believe the new Europe will fail.
Unlike America, where 90 percent of the people speak English,
the 300 million people in the new eurozone speak a dozen languages.
And while she remains affluent,
Europe’s dynamism is fading away along with her industrial base.
Militarily, as we saw in Kosovo, the new Europe is pathetic.
Fifty-six years after Hitler died in his bunker,
Europe requires American troops to defend her.
Europe is a gated community in an increasingly desperate global neighborhood.
[1.10]
Each year brings a new European threat to “go it alone.”
But these have begun to ring as hollow as the threats of children to run away from home,
who never quite get around to it.
As for Europe’s plan to build a 60,000-soldier Rapid Reaction Force to replace NATO,
one is tempted to say: For heaven’s sake, get on with it!
2. The demographic issues
[2.1]
Most important,
Europe is dying.
There is not a single nation in all of Europe
with a birth rate sufficient to keep its population alive, except Muslim Albania.
In 17 European nations,
there are already more burials than births, more coffins than cradles.
[2.2]
Between 2000 and 2050, Asia, Africa and Latin America
will add 3 billion to 4 billion people – 30 to 40 new Mexicos! –
as Europe loses the equal of the entire population of
Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Germany.
By 2050, the median age in Europe will be 50,
nine years older than the oldest nation on earth today, Japan.
One in 10 Europeans will be over 80.
And who will take care of these scores of millions of elderly,
before the Dutch doctors arrive at the nursing home?
[2.3]
Immigrants is the answer,
immigrants already pouring into Europe in the hundreds of thousands annually
from the Middle East and Africa,
changing the character of the Old Continent.
Just as Europe once invaded and colonized Asia, Africa and the Near East,
the once-subject peoples are coming to colonize the mother countries.
And as the Christian churches of Europe empty out, the mosques are going up.
[2.4]
Yet, even as great nations like France, Germany, Italy and Spain
grow weary of the strain of staying independent, sovereign and free,
the sub-nations within are struggling to be born again.
In Scotland, Wales, Ulster, Corsica, the Basque country and northern Italy
are secessionist movements not unlike those that broke up
Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union into [24] independent nations.
[2.5]
If the alternative is the atheist-socialist superstate rising in Europe,
patriots everywhere should cheer the sub-nations.
For the world struggle that succeeds the Cold War is between patriots and globalists,
a struggle where loyalty to transnational regimes will one day
be considered treason to the nation.
by Patrick J. Buchanan
2015-12-28
On Jan. 1, 2002, the day that euro coins and banknotes entered into circulation,
my column, “Say Goodbye to the Mother Continent,”
contained this pessimistic prognosis:
“This European superstate will not endure,
but break apart on the barrier reef of nationalism.
For when the hard times come,
patriots will recapture control of their national destinies
from Brussels bureaucrats to whom no one will ever give loyalty or love.”
The column described what was already happening.
“Europe is dying.
There is not a single nation in all of Europe
with a birth rate sufficient to keep its population alive, except Muslim Albania.
In 17 European nations,
there are already more burials than births, more coffins than cradles.
“Between 2000 and 2050, Asia, Africa and Latin America
will add 3 billion to 4 billion people — 30 to 40 new Mexicos! —
as Europe loses the equal of the entire population of
Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Germany.
“By 2050, the median age in Europe will be 50,
nine years older than the oldest nation on earth today, Japan.
One in 10 Europeans will be over 80.
And who will take care of these scores of millions of elderly,
before the Dutch doctors arrive at the nursing home?
“Immigrants is the answer,
immigrants already pouring into Europe in the hundreds of thousands annually
from the Middle East and Africa,
changing the character of the Old Continent.
Just as Europe once invaded and colonized Asia, Africa and the Near East,
the once-subject peoples are coming to colonize the mother countries.
And as the Christian churches of Europe empty out, the mosques are going up.
“Yet, even as great nations like France, Germany, Italy and Spain
grow weary of the strain of staying independent, sovereign and free,
the sub-nations within are struggling to be born again.
In Scotland, Wales, Ulster, Corsica, the Basque country and northern Italy
are secessionist movements not unlike those that broke up
Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union into [24] independent nations.”
What was predicted, 14 years ago, has come to pass.
Migrants into Germany from the Middle and Near East reached 1 million in 2015.
EU bribes to the Turks
to keep Muslim migrants from crossing over to the Greek islands,
thence into the Balkans and Central Europe,
are unlikely to stop the flood.
My prediction that
European “patriots will recapture control of their national destinies,”
looks even more probable today.
Prime Minister David Cameron, who almost lost a referendum on Scottish secession,
is demanding a return of British sovereignty from the EU
sufficient to satisfy his countrymen,
who have been promised a vote
on whether to abandon the European Union altogether.
Marine Le Pen’s anti-EU National Front ran first
in the first round of the 2015 French elections.
Many Europeans believe she will make it into the final round
of the next presidential election in 2017.
Anti-immigrant, right-wing parties are making strides all across Europe,
as the EU is bedeviled by a host of crises.
Europe’s open borders that facilitate free trade
also assure freedom of travel to homegrown terrorists.
Mass migration into the EU is causing member nations
to put up checkpoints and close borders.
The Schengen Agreement on the free movement of goods and people
is being ignored or openly violated.
The economic and cultural clash
between a rich northern Europe and a less affluent south —
Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal —
manifest in the bad blood between Athens and Berlin,
endures.
Northern Europeans grow weary of repeated bailouts
of a south that chafes at constant northern demands for greater austerity.
Then there is the surge of sub-nationalism,
as in Scotland, Catalonia, Flanders, and Veneto,
where peoples seek to disconnect from distant capitals that no longer speak for them,
and reconnect with languages, traditions and cultures
that give more meaning to their lives
than the economics-uber-alles ideology of Frau Angela Merkel.
[Here, if the news reports are accurate, Mr. Buchanan is at least part in error.
The complaints of the Scots, it is reported,
are that the London government is not giving them enough in welfare.
How economically viable Scotland would be,
without the taxes paid by the financial gnomes of the City,
I don't know, but my guess is that the Scots want more government benefits
than they are willing to pay for.]
Moreover, the migrants entering Europe, predominantly Islamic and Third World,
are not assimilating
as did the European and largely Christian immigrants to America of a century ago.
The enclaves of Asians in Britain,
Africans and Arabs around Paris,
and Turks in and around Berlin
seem to be British, French and German in name only.
And some of their children are now heeding the call to jihad against the Crusaders invading Muslim lands.
The movement toward deeper European integration
appears to have halted, and gone into reverse,
as the EU seems to be unraveling along ideological, national, tribal and historic lines.
If these trends continue, and they seem to have accelerated in 2015,
the idea of a United States of Europe dies, and with it the EU.
And this raises a question about the most successful economic and political union in history — the USA.
How does an increasingly multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual, multicultural United States
avoid the fate to which Europe appears to be headed,
when there is no identifiable racial or ethnic majority here in 2042?
Are our own political and racial divisions disappearing,
or do they, too, seem to be deepening?
Excerpts from various news articles,
Here is a collection of excerpts from various news articles,
mainly from the New York Times .
(The emphasis has been added by the author of the current blog.)
Is it not truly remarkable that the Times in its coverage of immigration from Africa
only discusses the problems from which the Africans are attempting to flee,
while it ignores the problems, of higher unemployment and social unrest,
that they will introduce into Europe?
And the same applies to the remarks of Pope Francis quoted in
the article about the ship disaster off the Italian coast.
France's worst urban violence in a decade exploded for a ninth night on Friday
as bands of youths roamed the immigrant-heavy, working-class suburbs of Paris,
setting fire to dozens of cars and buildings
while the government struggled over the violence
and the underlying frustrations fueling it.
(2005-11-05)
The euro zone jobless rate rose to a record 12.1 percent in March 2013.
(2013-05-01)
Record youth unemployment is emerging as
the most urgent problem in the euro zone,
if the political rhetoric of recent days is any measure.
But leaders are struggling to come up with effective ways
to prevent jobless young people in countries like Spain and Greece
from becoming a lost generation and source of social upheaval.
(2013-05-15)
Having floated for at least two days in the choppy Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe,
a rickety trawler overstuffed with African migrants fleeing war and poverty
was nearing a Sicilian island, not even a quarter-mile away.
...
Nearly 500 people are estimated to have been on board ...
The grisly deaths again underscored
the dangerous, desperate efforts by many migrants from Africa and the Middle East
to reach Europe by sea,
while also renewing criticism of European immigration policy.
Pope Francis,
who visited the island in July to draw attention to the plight of migrants,
expressed sadness and outrage over Thursday’s fatal accident.
“The word disgrace comes to me,” the pope said during an audience,
calling for prayers on behalf of the dead and their families.
“Let us unite our efforts so that similar tragedies do not happen again.
Only a decided collaboration among all can help to stop them.”
...
Veronica Lentini, who works with the International Organization for Migration in Lampedusa
[one of those they Times article quoted;
notably not anyone opposed to this "migration" (or invasion!)]
...
But finding a unified immigration policy is difficult,
given that member states have different attitudes and policies toward immigrants.
And many advocates for migrants said
the European Union had done too little to open legal channels for people to migrate,
especially those who are not wealthy or educated,
and also needed to improve resettlement programs for refugees and asylum seekers.
“Even people who aren’t engineers have reasons to want to have a good life,
and come to Europe, a place of safety and opportunity,”
[Huh? What about the high unemployment rate?]
said Philip Amaral, advocacy and communications coordinator
for the Brussels-based Jesuit Refugee Service Europe.
For many, he said, “the only option is to take a risky trip.”
(2013-10-04)
It was the third ship of the night to head toward the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa packed to the brim with migrants seeking a better life in Europe. The first, filled with Syrians, arrived about 10 p.m. The second, carrying Eritreans, slipped in at 2 a.m.
The third never reached shore.
(2013-10-03)
Jobless Rate in Euro Zone Stays at Record
By JACK EWING
FRANKFURT — The economic recovery in the euro zone is feeble. Employment continues to suffer. And the patient is likely to be getting around on crutches for months if not years to come. That was essentially the prognosis from two key economic indicators published Thursday and from economists assessing the latest conditions.
The number of people out of work in the countries using the euro currency rose slightly in September, while inflation fell more than expected — both signs of a weak economy.
Neither indicator necessarily contradicts other more positive economic news recently, notably an end to the recession in Spain. But the data, which showed euro zone unemployment stuck at a record high of 12.2 percent and inflation at its lowest level in four years, served as a reminder that a long convalescence lies ahead for Europe.
“It doesn’t mean we’re back in recession,” Marie Diron, an economist who advises the consulting firm Ernst & Young, said of the jobs number. “It’s consistent with growth, but weak growth.”
The unemployment rate is an especially critical economic indicator in Europe. Years of austerity and joblessness have fed radical political parties and strained democracy throughout the euro zone. The longer that record unemployment persists, the harder it will be for political leaders to contain discontent and push through changes in labor regulations and other rules that are needed for the region to grow more strongly.
“This is a race against time,” said Nicholas Spiro, managing director of Spiro Sovereign Strategy in London, a consultancy. “Can these economies recover fast enough before an anti-Europe backlash brings down the single currency project?”
(2013-11-01)
Five years after the economic crisis struck the Continent,
youth unemployment has climbed to staggering levels in many countries:
in September,
56 percent in Spain for those 24 and younger,
57 percent in Greece,
40 percent in Italy,
37 percent in Portugal and
28 percent in Ireland.
For people 25 to 30, the rates are half to two-thirds as high and rising.
Those are Great Depression-like rates of unemployment,
and there is no sign that European economies, still barely emerging from recession,
are about to generate the jobs necessary to bring those Europeans into the work force soon,
perhaps in their lifetimes.
Dozens of interviews with young people around the Continent
reveal a creeping realization that the European dream their parents enjoyed is out of reach.
(2013-11-16)
[With reports (like the one above) of employment problems in Europe rife,
it seems all but criminal to me to encourage yet more immigration into Europe
of people who will only be competing for jobs with those already in Europe.]
And just for comparison, here is a different attitude towards migration:
Illegal immigration from Africa to Israel
By STEVEN ERLANGER
New York Times, 2014-01-24
...
“We are strict on immigration, but this is not a war on cultures.
Our idea is to protect our welfare system.”
[I don't care to call it a war,
but I do believe that the culture that Europeans, of various nationalities,
have built is very, very valuable and well worth preserving.
I have nothing against Muslims,
indeed from what little I know about Islam it sounds like a fine religion
(but that doesn't mean I prefer it to Christianity),
but there are certainly many parts of the world where they have full control.
It is true that there is much conflict in those lands,
but at least one source of conflict, the schism between Sunnis and Shiites,
is most certainly not the fault of the West or Christianity,
but an internal feud within Islam,
just as the European religious wars that followed the Reformation
were an internal feud within Christianity, between Protestants and Catholics.
In any case, I have a "live and let live" attitude towards cultures:
Let the Muslims preserve and develop the glories of their religion and culture
in the lands which they have controlled since, say, 1500,
while Europeans and Christians
preserve the glories of European and Christian culture in Europe.
To me, the people on both sides
who desire to change the culture in distant (to them) regions of the world
are the extremists.
When I grew up, there was a common saying:
"When in Rome, do as the Romans do."
It has been a long time since I heard anyone say or write that.]
...
to “ensure the acceptance of immigrants”
by Guillaume Durocher
Occidental Observer, 2014-11-28
...
[I]t is astounding how much the continent’s elites are dedicating their political and cultural energies to
“free trade,” climate change or empowering EU institutions —
these goals being pursued with the fervor of a moral panic,
as though they were panaceas to what ails us.
In contrast, there is little effort to mobilize society to fight against low fertility
so as to avoid
the fundamental, intractable problems associated with it.
All the economic and political fiddling in the world is pointless
if the biological basis of society is collapsing.
[Oh, but many of those problems
will only appear in the future.
For the present,
why not worry about, say, equal pay for women,
which will benefit those alive today.
Who cares about the world their children (if they had any!)
will inherit?]
...
But if [some people's ideals] were to entail
welcoming hundreds or thousands of immigrants from Africa and the Middle East every day,
this is simply not compatible with the continued existence of European nations.
...
by Rod Liddle
Spectator (UK), 2015-04-22
...
Stopping people trying to come here is, for me [Ron Liddle], the better solution
(and is basically the one advanced by the Evil Nazi Hellhound, Katie Hopkins).
Make it clear
there will be no rescues at all
and that
anyone who succeeds in reaching Europe
will be sent straight back to where they came from.
These traffickers set out expecting that there is a good chance they will be rescued,
so remove that possibility from the equation.
Use armed boats to drive back the traffickers.
Make it even more clear that
refugees who apply for asylum legally will always take precedent over
those who come here in a cast-iron bath tub captained by some predatory Tunisian scumbag.
Those who come illegally by boat will never get asylum.
This stuff all works, and we have the Australian example for evidence.
Their prime minister, Tony Abbott, introduced this tough approach in 2014.
In the previous two years 35,000 people arrived in Australia
from Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.
And there were countless deaths at sea.
Six months of the get-tough policy
and there was not a single ‘people-smuggling venture’, as the Australians put it.
...
by Ross Douthat
New York Times Op-Ed, 2015-08-09
...
[The second] difference between immigration in Europe and America:
Namely, the scale of the migration that may be coming to Europe over the next fifty years.
That scale could be set by the staggering growth of Africa’s population, and the native European population’s stagnation and decline. Consider how much Latin American immigration has roiled U.S. politics (hello, Mr. Trump), when there are just over 300 million people in the United States and just under 600 million in all the countries to our south — a ratio that’s unlikely to change much over the next few generations.
Then consider: Today there are 738 million Europeans (500 million of them in the E.U.) and just under 1.2 billion Africans. In 2050, according to the latest U.N. projections, Europe’s population will have dipped to (an aging) 707 million, while Africa’s population will be 2.4 billion. By 2100, there will be 4.4 billion Africans – two of every five human beings overall — and Europe’s population will be just 646 million.
The Mediterranean is far wider than the Rio Grande, but this is still a wildly unstable demographic equilibrium. What’s more, as Noah Millman pointed out recently in Politico, northward migration – a kind of African “scramble for Europe” – is likely to increase whether African states thrive over this period or collapse. Desperation might drive it, but so might rising expectations, the connections forged by growth and globalization. (Many Africans currently braving the Mediterranean, for instance, seem to be ambitious, educated citizens from countries with growing economies, not just refugees.)
If Africans were to migrate to Europe at the rate Mexicans have migrated to America since 1970, Millman notes, by 2050 a quarter of Europe’s population would be African-born. That probably won’t happen: The birthrate projections will be off, the migration patterns will be different, European countries will impose restrictions that actually succeed in keeping people out.
But something significant is going to happen. In some form, a Eurafrican future is on its way. And judging by the stumbling response to a few thousand migrants at Calais, Europe is deeply unprepared.
[What a God-awful prospect.
Turning Europe into the mess that Africa now is.
Just in a cooler climate.
In any case, kiss European culture goodbye.
Hello, "gangsta rap". Goodbye, Bach, Handel, et al.]
by James Howard Kunstler
kunstler.com, 2015-09-06
by Michael Scheuer
non-intervention.com
The leaders and bureaucrats of the European Union (EU) are fortunate that they have largely disarmed the citizens of EU member states. If the citizens of Europe had personal weapons, all officials at all levels of the increasingly authoritarian EU organization might well be under fire — and rightly so – for causing the horde of unwanted, unneeded, and non-assimilable migrants that is now inundating Europe.
EU leaders also should be deliriously happy that most of the region’s media are
urging that Europe take in as many of the migrants as possible
and are
keeping their readers from asking why the migrants are flowing into Europe.
Many European politicians and pundits
are blaming Bashir al-Assad and the Syrian regime.
The British finance minister George Osborne, for example, said last weekend that
the world needs to focus on dealing with the migrant “problem at source,
which is this evil Assad regime and the ISIL (Islamic State) terrorists,
and you need a comprehensive plan for a more stable, peaceful Syria.”
Mr. Osborne must be crazed.
And then there is the Pope Francis who wants to get all the migrants possible into Europe and wants Catholics to defy the law and put them up. The mindless, do-gooding interventionism of this Pope will not be sated until he helps to turn the EU into a gigantic Greece, and ensures the impoverishment of the rest of the Western world, while the Vatican’s art collection and property holdings remain intact.
The major and nearly only cause of the EU’s overwhelming influx of unwanted migrants is the relentless interventionism of the EU, NATO, and the United States in the Islamic world, and their refusal to win the wars they start there. Although such Western interventionism has been a constant since 1945, it has become the tool of first resort since the attacks of 9/11 and it is the direct and primary cause of the migrant tide now destabilizing the EU. From 1996 until this day, the four following realities lead in a direct, unambiguous, and causal line to the current migrant onslaught.
[See the original article for the four reasons.]
...
...
EU leaders ought, for a change, give some thought to Europe’s survival
and station their member-states’ navies along the coast of North Africa
and order them to forcibly return refugee-filled boats to the shore,
even as they direct the EU bureaucracy
to prepare the migrants’ return to their home states.
by Philip Jenkins
The American Conservative, 2015-09-15
They still haven’t got it.
European media and policymakers have correctly realized that the present refugee crisis is an enormous challenge to the assumptions that have guided the continent for decades, to the point of potentially breaking the European Union. But apparently they still are not prepared to confront the specifically religious revolution now under way.
This issue places me in a strange and unprecedented position. Over the past decade, I have written about the presence of Islam in Europe, arguing repeatedly that the threat of “Islamization” is overblown. Overall, I have argued, Europe’s Muslim population is presently around 4.5 percent of the whole, which by U.S. standards is in no sense a massive minority presence. It might rise to 10 or 15 percent later in the century, but the change will be gradual, allowing plenty of time for assimilation.
My moderate position on this has been heavily criticized by various right-wing outlets such as FrontPage Magazine, a publication with which I agree on basically nothing. On most issues, I find FrontPage’s tone hysterical and alarmist. Now, suddenly, I myself have to criticize that magazine for being insufficiently concerned about Islam. These are strange times.
Here is the problem. Germany recently declared that it would take 800,000 refugees this year. That is a very large figure, but as the government points out, that is only one percent of the population of 80 million. In FrontPage, Daniel Greenfield stresses that the issue is much graver than it appears, since the refugees are mainly young men, who will massively raise the Muslim presence among that section of Germany’s population. Other writers like Christopher Caldwell also raise alarms about the massive security threats posed by the present crisis. He warns that European politicians “are trying to pass off a migration crisis as a humanitarian crisis. It may be on the verge of turning into a military crisis.”
...
[Some German] officials are explicitly saying that something like this influx will continue more or less indefinitely. Sigmar Gabriel has also said that “we could certainly deal with something in the order of a half a million for several years.” If the present experience is anything to go by, that is likely to mean something like a million a year for how long? Five years? Ten?
However obvious this may be to say, there is no logical end to this process, even if the Syrian crisis ended tomorrow. As it becomes known that Germany is so open to migrants, that fact offers an irresistible invitation to anyone living in a country roiled by violence or economic crisis, which basically means most lands from Libya to Pakistan. There is no terminal point at which the nations sending migrants would ever run out of candidates seeking refuge and asylum. And even that projection takes no account of the likely spread of open warfare and terrorism into Turkey and Egypt in the coming decade.
So let’s put those numbers in context. Germany’s population is about a quarter that of the United States, so multiply all those refugee figures by four. Imagine if a U.S. president declared that the country would commit itself to taking between two and four million new refugees and migrants, annually, over the coming years—and that over and above other forms of immigration. Even given the diversity of the U.S. population, that would represent an inconceivably large social transformation.
Germany is also describing an epochal religious revolution. That point might not be clear from reading the very extensive articles in mainstream German media that discuss every aspect of the strains posed by the crisis, but somehow never mention the words Islam or Muslim. That reticence is understandable, given that Germans, more than any people, do not want to appear nativist or racist. But despite the taboos, that religious element is critical.
...
Many of the present migrants are not in fact Syrian, and they adopt that description to win the sympathy of host nations (a thoroughly understandable decision). Many are in fact Iraqis and Turks, Libyans or Afghans. All those groups, incidentally, come from countries with very young populations and extremely high fertility rates, so their numbers would likely grow rapidly in their new European homes.
Before 2015, Germany’s Muslim population was around 5 percent of the whole, potentially rising to 7 percent or so by 2030. If the present wave of migrants and refugees continues, that figure could well be 15 or 20 percent by the 2030s, and it would be rising fast. For the first time ever, we would seriously be looking at something like the Islamization of Europe that has been a nativist nightmare for a generation. And in the German context, that process would be squeezed into just a couple of decades. That is radically destabilizing.
Personally, I don’t believe that the presence of Islam in Europe need of itself be harmful or even negative, nor that it would necessarily lead to violence. But I am quite certain that numerical changes on this scale do portend a cultural and social revolution without precedent.
Shouldn’t the Germans, and other Europeans, at least be allowed to discuss this openly?
[Who on earth would try to prohibit the open discussion of this issue,
an issue that is in my opinion among the most important of those facing the West today,
along with global warming.]
Could the Immigrant Influx “End European Civilization”?
Germany's Jeopardy (transcript)
Germany's Jeopardy (video)
a 30 minute talk by Frank Salter
YouTube, 2016-01-05
Kevin MacDonald reviews the work described in the title
Occidental Observer, 2016-01-07
| Durch mächtige Kraft Erhältst du unsre Grenzen, Hier muss der Friede glänzen, Wenn Mord und Kriegessturm Sich allerort erhebt. Wenn Kron und Zepter bebt, Hast du das Heil geschafft Durch mächtige Kraft! | With mighty power Preservest thou our borders, Here peace must shine, Though murder and storm of war arise everywhere else. If crown and scepter shake, then hast thou salvation provided through mighty power! |
Too bad Angela Merkel and the other EU leaders
can't honor the sentiments in the text.
Contents of this post:
- Several columns by Patrick Buchanan
- Excerpts from various news articles,
mainly from the New York Times
Several columns by Patrick Buchanan
2002-01-01-PJB-say-goodbye-to-the-mother-continent
Say Goodbye to the Mother Continentby Patrick J. Buchanan
2002-01-01
[Note: The italicized portions below were reprinted
in Pat's 2015-12-28 post "Is The West Disintegrating?".]
1. The economic issues
[1.1]
“Economic unity and political unity are twins:
one cannot be born without the other following,”
said Friedrich List, the famed German economist and nationalist.
Again and again, history has proven List right.
[1.2]
Economic union leads inexorably to political union.
The left has always understood this.
The right never does, until too late.
[1.3]
When Hamilton created a free-trade zone across 13 states,
a strong U.S. central government was baked in the cake.
Bismarck used a customs union, the Zollverein,
to harness Germany under Prussia’s whip hand.
[1.4]
And thus the European Coal & Steel Community of the 1950s led to
a Common Market, a European Community,
today’s European Union
and tomorrow’s Euroland.
There, the 12 nations that are today surrendering their national currencies to adopt the “euro”
will enjoy all the liberty and independence of Rhode Island.
[1.5]
For Europe there may be no turning back.
The patriot’s vision of DeGaulle,
of a Europe of fatherlands “from the Atlantic to the Urals,” is dead.
The alternative vision of a managerial elite,
of a socialist superstate that they shall run, has triumphed.
Despising sovereignty, worshipping power,
the nameless, faceless technocrats of the EU have just taken a Great Leap Forward.
[1.6]
France, Germany and Italy, who are exchanging their money for the euro,
are surrendering control of monetary policy and, with it,
control of fiscal policy and national destiny.
Should a recession hit Italy, Rome will be in a straight jacket,
unable to run a deficit or devalue the lira.
Italy will have less freedom to act in her national interest than Argentina
in her current crisis.
[1.7]
Nevertheless, a prediction:
This European superstate will not endure,
but break apart on the barrier reef of nationalism.
For when the hard times come,
patriots will recapture control of their national destinies
from Brussels bureaucrats to whom no one will ever give loyalty or love.
[1.8]
Who, after all, would fight or die for the EU?
[1.9]
There are other reasons to believe the new Europe will fail.
Unlike America, where 90 percent of the people speak English,
the 300 million people in the new eurozone speak a dozen languages.
And while she remains affluent,
Europe’s dynamism is fading away along with her industrial base.
Militarily, as we saw in Kosovo, the new Europe is pathetic.
Fifty-six years after Hitler died in his bunker,
Europe requires American troops to defend her.
Europe is a gated community in an increasingly desperate global neighborhood.
[1.10]
Each year brings a new European threat to “go it alone.”
But these have begun to ring as hollow as the threats of children to run away from home,
who never quite get around to it.
As for Europe’s plan to build a 60,000-soldier Rapid Reaction Force to replace NATO,
one is tempted to say: For heaven’s sake, get on with it!
2. The demographic issues
[2.1]
Most important,
Europe is dying.
There is not a single nation in all of Europe
with a birth rate sufficient to keep its population alive, except Muslim Albania.
In 17 European nations,
there are already more burials than births, more coffins than cradles.
[2.2]
Between 2000 and 2050, Asia, Africa and Latin America
will add 3 billion to 4 billion people – 30 to 40 new Mexicos! –
as Europe loses the equal of the entire population of
Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Germany.
By 2050, the median age in Europe will be 50,
nine years older than the oldest nation on earth today, Japan.
One in 10 Europeans will be over 80.
And who will take care of these scores of millions of elderly,
before the Dutch doctors arrive at the nursing home?
[2.3]
Immigrants is the answer,
immigrants already pouring into Europe in the hundreds of thousands annually
from the Middle East and Africa,
changing the character of the Old Continent.
Just as Europe once invaded and colonized Asia, Africa and the Near East,
the once-subject peoples are coming to colonize the mother countries.
And as the Christian churches of Europe empty out, the mosques are going up.
[2.4]
Yet, even as great nations like France, Germany, Italy and Spain
grow weary of the strain of staying independent, sovereign and free,
the sub-nations within are struggling to be born again.
In Scotland, Wales, Ulster, Corsica, the Basque country and northern Italy
are secessionist movements not unlike those that broke up
Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union into [24] independent nations.
[2.5]
If the alternative is the atheist-socialist superstate rising in Europe,
patriots everywhere should cheer the sub-nations.
For the world struggle that succeeds the Cold War is between patriots and globalists,
a struggle where loyalty to transnational regimes will one day
be considered treason to the nation.
2015-12-28-PJB-is-the-west-disintegrating
Is the West Disintegrating?by Patrick J. Buchanan
2015-12-28
On Jan. 1, 2002, the day that euro coins and banknotes entered into circulation,
my column, “Say Goodbye to the Mother Continent,”
contained this pessimistic prognosis:
“This European superstate will not endure,
but break apart on the barrier reef of nationalism.
For when the hard times come,
patriots will recapture control of their national destinies
from Brussels bureaucrats to whom no one will ever give loyalty or love.”
The column described what was already happening.
“Europe is dying.
There is not a single nation in all of Europe
with a birth rate sufficient to keep its population alive, except Muslim Albania.
In 17 European nations,
there are already more burials than births, more coffins than cradles.
“Between 2000 and 2050, Asia, Africa and Latin America
will add 3 billion to 4 billion people — 30 to 40 new Mexicos! —
as Europe loses the equal of the entire population of
Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Germany.
“By 2050, the median age in Europe will be 50,
nine years older than the oldest nation on earth today, Japan.
One in 10 Europeans will be over 80.
And who will take care of these scores of millions of elderly,
before the Dutch doctors arrive at the nursing home?
“Immigrants is the answer,
immigrants already pouring into Europe in the hundreds of thousands annually
from the Middle East and Africa,
changing the character of the Old Continent.
Just as Europe once invaded and colonized Asia, Africa and the Near East,
the once-subject peoples are coming to colonize the mother countries.
And as the Christian churches of Europe empty out, the mosques are going up.
“Yet, even as great nations like France, Germany, Italy and Spain
grow weary of the strain of staying independent, sovereign and free,
the sub-nations within are struggling to be born again.
In Scotland, Wales, Ulster, Corsica, the Basque country and northern Italy
are secessionist movements not unlike those that broke up
Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union into [24] independent nations.”
What was predicted, 14 years ago, has come to pass.
Migrants into Germany from the Middle and Near East reached 1 million in 2015.
EU bribes to the Turks
to keep Muslim migrants from crossing over to the Greek islands,
thence into the Balkans and Central Europe,
are unlikely to stop the flood.
My prediction that
European “patriots will recapture control of their national destinies,”
looks even more probable today.
Prime Minister David Cameron, who almost lost a referendum on Scottish secession,
is demanding a return of British sovereignty from the EU
sufficient to satisfy his countrymen,
who have been promised a vote
on whether to abandon the European Union altogether.
Marine Le Pen’s anti-EU National Front ran first
in the first round of the 2015 French elections.
Many Europeans believe she will make it into the final round
of the next presidential election in 2017.
Anti-immigrant, right-wing parties are making strides all across Europe,
as the EU is bedeviled by a host of crises.
Europe’s open borders that facilitate free trade
also assure freedom of travel to homegrown terrorists.
Mass migration into the EU is causing member nations
to put up checkpoints and close borders.
The Schengen Agreement on the free movement of goods and people
is being ignored or openly violated.
The economic and cultural clash
between a rich northern Europe and a less affluent south —
Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal —
manifest in the bad blood between Athens and Berlin,
endures.
Northern Europeans grow weary of repeated bailouts
of a south that chafes at constant northern demands for greater austerity.
Then there is the surge of sub-nationalism,
as in Scotland, Catalonia, Flanders, and Veneto,
where peoples seek to disconnect from distant capitals that no longer speak for them,
and reconnect with languages, traditions and cultures
that give more meaning to their lives
than the economics-uber-alles ideology of Frau Angela Merkel.
[Here, if the news reports are accurate, Mr. Buchanan is at least part in error.
The complaints of the Scots, it is reported,
are that the London government is not giving them enough in welfare.
How economically viable Scotland would be,
without the taxes paid by the financial gnomes of the City,
I don't know, but my guess is that the Scots want more government benefits
than they are willing to pay for.]
Moreover, the migrants entering Europe, predominantly Islamic and Third World,
are not assimilating
as did the European and largely Christian immigrants to America of a century ago.
The enclaves of Asians in Britain,
Africans and Arabs around Paris,
and Turks in and around Berlin
seem to be British, French and German in name only.
And some of their children are now heeding the call to jihad against the Crusaders invading Muslim lands.
The movement toward deeper European integration
appears to have halted, and gone into reverse,
as the EU seems to be unraveling along ideological, national, tribal and historic lines.
If these trends continue, and they seem to have accelerated in 2015,
the idea of a United States of Europe dies, and with it the EU.
And this raises a question about the most successful economic and political union in history — the USA.
How does an increasingly multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual, multicultural United States
avoid the fate to which Europe appears to be headed,
when there is no identifiable racial or ethnic majority here in 2042?
Are our own political and racial divisions disappearing,
or do they, too, seem to be deepening?
Excerpts from various news articles,
mainly from the New York Times
Here is a collection of excerpts from various news articles,mainly from the New York Times .
(The emphasis has been added by the author of the current blog.)
Is it not truly remarkable that the Times in its coverage of immigration from Africa
only discusses the problems from which the Africans are attempting to flee,
while it ignores the problems, of higher unemployment and social unrest,
that they will introduce into Europe?
And the same applies to the remarks of Pope Francis quoted in
the article about the ship disaster off the Italian coast.
France's worst urban violence in a decade exploded for a ninth night on Friday
as bands of youths roamed the immigrant-heavy, working-class suburbs of Paris,
setting fire to dozens of cars and buildings
while the government struggled over the violence
and the underlying frustrations fueling it.
(2005-11-05)
The euro zone jobless rate rose to a record 12.1 percent in March 2013.
(2013-05-01)
Record youth unemployment is emerging as
the most urgent problem in the euro zone,
if the political rhetoric of recent days is any measure.
But leaders are struggling to come up with effective ways
to prevent jobless young people in countries like Spain and Greece
from becoming a lost generation and source of social upheaval.
(2013-05-15)
Having floated for at least two days in the choppy Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe,
a rickety trawler overstuffed with African migrants fleeing war and poverty
was nearing a Sicilian island, not even a quarter-mile away.
...
Nearly 500 people are estimated to have been on board ...
The grisly deaths again underscored
the dangerous, desperate efforts by many migrants from Africa and the Middle East
to reach Europe by sea,
while also renewing criticism of European immigration policy.
Pope Francis,
who visited the island in July to draw attention to the plight of migrants,
expressed sadness and outrage over Thursday’s fatal accident.
“The word disgrace comes to me,” the pope said during an audience,
calling for prayers on behalf of the dead and their families.
“Let us unite our efforts so that similar tragedies do not happen again.
Only a decided collaboration among all can help to stop them.”
...
Veronica Lentini, who works with the International Organization for Migration in Lampedusa
[one of those they Times article quoted;
notably not anyone opposed to this "migration" (or invasion!)]
...
But finding a unified immigration policy is difficult,
given that member states have different attitudes and policies toward immigrants.
And many advocates for migrants said
the European Union had done too little to open legal channels for people to migrate,
especially those who are not wealthy or educated,
and also needed to improve resettlement programs for refugees and asylum seekers.
“Even people who aren’t engineers have reasons to want to have a good life,
and come to Europe, a place of safety and opportunity,”
[Huh? What about the high unemployment rate?]
said Philip Amaral, advocacy and communications coordinator
for the Brussels-based Jesuit Refugee Service Europe.
For many, he said, “the only option is to take a risky trip.”
(2013-10-04)
It was the third ship of the night to head toward the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa packed to the brim with migrants seeking a better life in Europe. The first, filled with Syrians, arrived about 10 p.m. The second, carrying Eritreans, slipped in at 2 a.m.
The third never reached shore.
(2013-10-03)
Jobless Rate in Euro Zone Stays at Record
By JACK EWING
FRANKFURT — The economic recovery in the euro zone is feeble. Employment continues to suffer. And the patient is likely to be getting around on crutches for months if not years to come. That was essentially the prognosis from two key economic indicators published Thursday and from economists assessing the latest conditions.
The number of people out of work in the countries using the euro currency rose slightly in September, while inflation fell more than expected — both signs of a weak economy.
Neither indicator necessarily contradicts other more positive economic news recently, notably an end to the recession in Spain. But the data, which showed euro zone unemployment stuck at a record high of 12.2 percent and inflation at its lowest level in four years, served as a reminder that a long convalescence lies ahead for Europe.
“It doesn’t mean we’re back in recession,” Marie Diron, an economist who advises the consulting firm Ernst & Young, said of the jobs number. “It’s consistent with growth, but weak growth.”
The unemployment rate is an especially critical economic indicator in Europe. Years of austerity and joblessness have fed radical political parties and strained democracy throughout the euro zone. The longer that record unemployment persists, the harder it will be for political leaders to contain discontent and push through changes in labor regulations and other rules that are needed for the region to grow more strongly.
“This is a race against time,” said Nicholas Spiro, managing director of Spiro Sovereign Strategy in London, a consultancy. “Can these economies recover fast enough before an anti-Europe backlash brings down the single currency project?”
(2013-11-01)
Five years after the economic crisis struck the Continent,
youth unemployment has climbed to staggering levels in many countries:
in September,
56 percent in Spain for those 24 and younger,
57 percent in Greece,
40 percent in Italy,
37 percent in Portugal and
28 percent in Ireland.
For people 25 to 30, the rates are half to two-thirds as high and rising.
Those are Great Depression-like rates of unemployment,
and there is no sign that European economies, still barely emerging from recession,
are about to generate the jobs necessary to bring those Europeans into the work force soon,
perhaps in their lifetimes.
Dozens of interviews with young people around the Continent
reveal a creeping realization that the European dream their parents enjoyed is out of reach.
(2013-11-16)
[With reports (like the one above) of employment problems in Europe rife,
it seems all but criminal to me to encourage yet more immigration into Europe
of people who will only be competing for jobs with those already in Europe.]
And just for comparison, here is a different attitude towards migration:
Illegal immigration from Africa to Israel
2014
2014-01-24-NYT-Norway-anti-immigrant-party-norway
Anti-Immigration Party Occupies the Center of an Uneasy Debate in NorwayBy STEVEN ERLANGER
New York Times, 2014-01-24
...
“We are strict on immigration, but this is not a war on cultures.
Our idea is to protect our welfare system.”
[I don't care to call it a war,
but I do believe that the culture that Europeans, of various nationalities,
have built is very, very valuable and well worth preserving.
I have nothing against Muslims,
indeed from what little I know about Islam it sounds like a fine religion
(but that doesn't mean I prefer it to Christianity),
but there are certainly many parts of the world where they have full control.
It is true that there is much conflict in those lands,
but at least one source of conflict, the schism between Sunnis and Shiites,
is most certainly not the fault of the West or Christianity,
but an internal feud within Islam,
just as the European religious wars that followed the Reformation
were an internal feud within Christianity, between Protestants and Catholics.
In any case, I have a "live and let live" attitude towards cultures:
Let the Muslims preserve and develop the glories of their religion and culture
in the lands which they have controlled since, say, 1500,
while Europeans and Christians
preserve the glories of European and Christian culture in Europe.
To me, the people on both sides
who desire to change the culture in distant (to them) regions of the world
are the extremists.
When I grew up, there was a common saying:
"When in Rome, do as the Romans do."
It has been a long time since I heard anyone say or write that.]
...
2014-11-28-pope-francis-tells-no-longer-fertile-europe-to-ensure-the-acceptance-of-immigrants
Pope Francis tells “no longer fertile” Europeto “ensure the acceptance of immigrants”
by Guillaume Durocher
Occidental Observer, 2014-11-28
...
[I]t is astounding how much the continent’s elites are dedicating their political and cultural energies to
“free trade,” climate change or empowering EU institutions —
these goals being pursued with the fervor of a moral panic,
as though they were panaceas to what ails us.
In contrast, there is little effort to mobilize society to fight against low fertility
so as to avoid
the fundamental, intractable problems associated with it.
All the economic and political fiddling in the world is pointless
if the biological basis of society is collapsing.
[Oh, but many of those problems
will only appear in the future.
For the present,
why not worry about, say, equal pay for women,
which will benefit those alive today.
Who cares about the world their children (if they had any!)
will inherit?]
...
But if [some people's ideals] were to entail
welcoming hundreds or thousands of immigrants from Africa and the Middle East every day,
this is simply not compatible with the continued existence of European nations.
...
2015
2015-04-22-Ron-Liddle-will-jailing-katie-hopkins-save-the-lives-of-migrants-i-have-my-doubts
Will jailing Katie Hopkins save the lives of migrants? I have my doubtsby Rod Liddle
Spectator (UK), 2015-04-22
...
Stopping people trying to come here is, for me [Ron Liddle], the better solution
(and is basically the one advanced by the Evil Nazi Hellhound, Katie Hopkins).
Make it clear
there will be no rescues at all
and that
anyone who succeeds in reaching Europe
will be sent straight back to where they came from.
These traffickers set out expecting that there is a good chance they will be rescued,
so remove that possibility from the equation.
Use armed boats to drive back the traffickers.
Make it even more clear that
refugees who apply for asylum legally will always take precedent over
those who come here in a cast-iron bath tub captained by some predatory Tunisian scumbag.
Those who come illegally by boat will never get asylum.
This stuff all works, and we have the Australian example for evidence.
Their prime minister, Tony Abbott, introduced this tough approach in 2014.
In the previous two years 35,000 people arrived in Australia
from Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.
And there were countless deaths at sea.
Six months of the get-tough policy
and there was not a single ‘people-smuggling venture’, as the Australians put it.
...
2015-08-09-NYT-Douthat-africas-scramble-for-europe
Africa’s Scramble for Europeby Ross Douthat
New York Times Op-Ed, 2015-08-09
...
[The second] difference between immigration in Europe and America:
Namely, the scale of the migration that may be coming to Europe over the next fifty years.
That scale could be set by the staggering growth of Africa’s population, and the native European population’s stagnation and decline. Consider how much Latin American immigration has roiled U.S. politics (hello, Mr. Trump), when there are just over 300 million people in the United States and just under 600 million in all the countries to our south — a ratio that’s unlikely to change much over the next few generations.
Then consider: Today there are 738 million Europeans (500 million of them in the E.U.) and just under 1.2 billion Africans. In 2050, according to the latest U.N. projections, Europe’s population will have dipped to (an aging) 707 million, while Africa’s population will be 2.4 billion. By 2100, there will be 4.4 billion Africans – two of every five human beings overall — and Europe’s population will be just 646 million.
The Mediterranean is far wider than the Rio Grande, but this is still a wildly unstable demographic equilibrium. What’s more, as Noah Millman pointed out recently in Politico, northward migration – a kind of African “scramble for Europe” – is likely to increase whether African states thrive over this period or collapse. Desperation might drive it, but so might rising expectations, the connections forged by growth and globalization. (Many Africans currently braving the Mediterranean, for instance, seem to be ambitious, educated citizens from countries with growing economies, not just refugees.)
If Africans were to migrate to Europe at the rate Mexicans have migrated to America since 1970, Millman notes, by 2050 a quarter of Europe’s population would be African-born. That probably won’t happen: The birthrate projections will be off, the migration patterns will be different, European countries will impose restrictions that actually succeed in keeping people out.
But something significant is going to happen. In some form, a Eurafrican future is on its way. And judging by the stumbling response to a few thousand migrants at Calais, Europe is deeply unprepared.
[What a God-awful prospect.
Turning Europe into the mess that Africa now is.
Just in a cooler climate.
In any case, kiss European culture goodbye.
Hello, "gangsta rap". Goodbye, Bach, Handel, et al.]
2015-09-06-Kunstler-there-goes-europe
There Goes Europeby James Howard Kunstler
kunstler.com, 2015-09-06
2015-09-07-Scheuer-u-s-nato-military-interventions-caused-europes-migrant-disaster
U.S.-NATO military interventions caused Europe’s migrant disasterby Michael Scheuer
non-intervention.com
The leaders and bureaucrats of the European Union (EU) are fortunate that they have largely disarmed the citizens of EU member states. If the citizens of Europe had personal weapons, all officials at all levels of the increasingly authoritarian EU organization might well be under fire — and rightly so – for causing the horde of unwanted, unneeded, and non-assimilable migrants that is now inundating Europe.
The migrants will produce further lawlessness,
a debilitating level of societal tensions,
enormous increases in the expense of social services and public housing,
and contribute nothing worth having to the nations of the EU.
The migrants also will wreck the status quo in EU security
as the many hundreds of thousands of incomers
are mixed with a goodly number ISIS and al-Qaeda organizers, recruiters, fighters, and suicide attackers
who will make the job of EU security and intelligence services
even more undoable.
EU leaders also should be deliriously happy that most of the region’s media are
urging that Europe take in as many of the migrants as possible
and are
keeping their readers from asking why the migrants are flowing into Europe.
Many European politicians and pundits
are blaming Bashir al-Assad and the Syrian regime.
The British finance minister George Osborne, for example, said last weekend that
the world needs to focus on dealing with the migrant “problem at source,
which is this evil Assad regime and the ISIL (Islamic State) terrorists,
and you need a comprehensive plan for a more stable, peaceful Syria.”
Mr. Osborne must be crazed.
And then there is the Pope Francis who wants to get all the migrants possible into Europe and wants Catholics to defy the law and put them up. The mindless, do-gooding interventionism of this Pope will not be sated until he helps to turn the EU into a gigantic Greece, and ensures the impoverishment of the rest of the Western world, while the Vatican’s art collection and property holdings remain intact.
The major and nearly only cause of the EU’s overwhelming influx of unwanted migrants is the relentless interventionism of the EU, NATO, and the United States in the Islamic world, and their refusal to win the wars they start there. Although such Western interventionism has been a constant since 1945, it has become the tool of first resort since the attacks of 9/11 and it is the direct and primary cause of the migrant tide now destabilizing the EU. From 1996 until this day, the four following realities lead in a direct, unambiguous, and causal line to the current migrant onslaught.
[See the original article for the four reasons.]
...
EU and U.S. leaders have forgotten —
perhaps they never learned —
that the West’s only obligation is to itself,
its preservation, and its posterity.
It has no obligation to commit suicide
in an effort crafted and supported by
the academy’s nation-killing, diversifying, and multicultural charlatans,
[and] their enablers in the media
...
...
EU leaders ought, for a change, give some thought to Europe’s survival
and station their member-states’ navies along the coast of North Africa
and order them to forcibly return refugee-filled boats to the shore,
even as they direct the EU bureaucracy
to prepare the migrants’ return to their home states.
2015-09-15-AmericanConservative-Jenkins-germanys-coming-demographic-revolution
Germany’s Coming Demographic Revolutionby Philip Jenkins
The American Conservative, 2015-09-15
They still haven’t got it.
European media and policymakers have correctly realized that the present refugee crisis is an enormous challenge to the assumptions that have guided the continent for decades, to the point of potentially breaking the European Union. But apparently they still are not prepared to confront the specifically religious revolution now under way.
This issue places me in a strange and unprecedented position. Over the past decade, I have written about the presence of Islam in Europe, arguing repeatedly that the threat of “Islamization” is overblown. Overall, I have argued, Europe’s Muslim population is presently around 4.5 percent of the whole, which by U.S. standards is in no sense a massive minority presence. It might rise to 10 or 15 percent later in the century, but the change will be gradual, allowing plenty of time for assimilation.
My moderate position on this has been heavily criticized by various right-wing outlets such as FrontPage Magazine, a publication with which I agree on basically nothing. On most issues, I find FrontPage’s tone hysterical and alarmist. Now, suddenly, I myself have to criticize that magazine for being insufficiently concerned about Islam. These are strange times.
Here is the problem. Germany recently declared that it would take 800,000 refugees this year. That is a very large figure, but as the government points out, that is only one percent of the population of 80 million. In FrontPage, Daniel Greenfield stresses that the issue is much graver than it appears, since the refugees are mainly young men, who will massively raise the Muslim presence among that section of Germany’s population. Other writers like Christopher Caldwell also raise alarms about the massive security threats posed by the present crisis. He warns that European politicians “are trying to pass off a migration crisis as a humanitarian crisis. It may be on the verge of turning into a military crisis.”
...
[Some German] officials are explicitly saying that something like this influx will continue more or less indefinitely. Sigmar Gabriel has also said that “we could certainly deal with something in the order of a half a million for several years.” If the present experience is anything to go by, that is likely to mean something like a million a year for how long? Five years? Ten?
However obvious this may be to say, there is no logical end to this process, even if the Syrian crisis ended tomorrow. As it becomes known that Germany is so open to migrants, that fact offers an irresistible invitation to anyone living in a country roiled by violence or economic crisis, which basically means most lands from Libya to Pakistan. There is no terminal point at which the nations sending migrants would ever run out of candidates seeking refuge and asylum. And even that projection takes no account of the likely spread of open warfare and terrorism into Turkey and Egypt in the coming decade.
So let’s put those numbers in context. Germany’s population is about a quarter that of the United States, so multiply all those refugee figures by four. Imagine if a U.S. president declared that the country would commit itself to taking between two and four million new refugees and migrants, annually, over the coming years—and that over and above other forms of immigration. Even given the diversity of the U.S. population, that would represent an inconceivably large social transformation.
Germany is also describing an epochal religious revolution. That point might not be clear from reading the very extensive articles in mainstream German media that discuss every aspect of the strains posed by the crisis, but somehow never mention the words Islam or Muslim. That reticence is understandable, given that Germans, more than any people, do not want to appear nativist or racist. But despite the taboos, that religious element is critical.
...
Many of the present migrants are not in fact Syrian, and they adopt that description to win the sympathy of host nations (a thoroughly understandable decision). Many are in fact Iraqis and Turks, Libyans or Afghans. All those groups, incidentally, come from countries with very young populations and extremely high fertility rates, so their numbers would likely grow rapidly in their new European homes.
Before 2015, Germany’s Muslim population was around 5 percent of the whole, potentially rising to 7 percent or so by 2030. If the present wave of migrants and refugees continues, that figure could well be 15 or 20 percent by the 2030s, and it would be rising fast. For the first time ever, we would seriously be looking at something like the Islamization of Europe that has been a nativist nightmare for a generation. And in the German context, that process would be squeezed into just a couple of decades. That is radically destabilizing.
Personally, I don’t believe that the presence of Islam in Europe need of itself be harmful or even negative, nor that it would necessarily lead to violence. But I am quite certain that numerical changes on this scale do portend a cultural and social revolution without precedent.
Shouldn’t the Germans, and other Europeans, at least be allowed to discuss this openly?
[Who on earth would try to prohibit the open discussion of this issue,
an issue that is in my opinion among the most important of those facing the West today,
along with global warming.]
2016
2016-01-05-Frank-Salter-Germany's-jeopardy
Germany’s JeopardyCould the Immigrant Influx “End European Civilization”?
Germany's Jeopardy (transcript)
Germany's Jeopardy (video)
a 30 minute talk by Frank Salter
YouTube, 2016-01-05
2016-01-07-Kevin-MacDonald-reviews-dr-frank-salter-on-germanys-jeopardy
Dr. Frank Salter on Germany’s JeopardyKevin MacDonald reviews the work described in the title
Occidental Observer, 2016-01-07
Labels: Europe, immigration
posted by KHarbaugh at 11:00
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