Douglas Murray's The Strange Death of Europe

The following are extracts (for review purposes) from The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, Douglas Murray, 2017-Jun:

Introduction

"In Die Welt von Gestern (The World of Yesterday), first published in 1942, Stefan Zweig wrote...'I felt that Europe, in its state of derangement, had passed its own death sentence—our sacred home of Europe, both the cradle and the Parthenon of Western civilisation.'...

"Western Europeans have lost what the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno famously called the 'tragic sense of life'. They have forgotten what Zweig and his generation so painfully learnt: that everything you love, even the greatest and most cultured civilisations in history, can be swept away by people who are unworthy of them. [O]ne of the few ways to avoid this tragic sense of life is to push it away through a belief in the tide of human progress....

"More than any other continent or culture in the world today, Europe is now deeply weighed down with guilt for its past. [T]here is also the problem in Europe of an existential tiredness[,] and a feeling that perhaps for Europe the story has run out and a new story must be allowed to begin. [T]he replacement of large parts of the European populations by other people[,] we seemed to think, was as good as a rest.

"[W]e know that we Europeans cannot become whatever we like. We cannot become Indian or Chinese[.] If being 'European' is not about race—as we hope it is not—then it is even more imperative that it is about 'values'. This is what makes the question 'What are European values?' so important....

"While unsure of ourselves at home we made final efforts at extending our values abroad. Yet...we seemed to make things worse and ended up in the wrong. [W]e...lost faith in our ability to advance...human rights...abroad. At some stage it began to seem possible that what had been called 'the last utopia'—the first universal system that divorced the rights of man from the say of gods or tyrants—might comprise a final failed European aspiration." – pp. 1–7

Chapter 10:  The tyranny of guilt

"[In] 2016 one Kuwaiti official, Fahad al-Shalami, explained in an interview on France 24 why Gulf countries like his were refusing asylum even to Syrian refugees: 'Kuwait and the Gulf countries are expensive, and are not suitable for refugees,' he explained. 'They are suitable for workers. The transportation is expensive. The cost of living in Kuwait is high, whereas the cost of living in Lebanon or Turkey is perhaps cheaper. Therefore it is much easier to pay the refugees [(]to stay there[)]. At the end of the day, you cannot accept other people, who come from a different atmosphere, from a different place. These are people who suffer from psychological problems, from trauma.' You cannot just place them in the Gulf societies, he explained....

"What is strange is that the default attitude of Europe is to agree that the Gulf States and other societies are fragile, whereas Europe is endlessly malleable." – pp. 158–9

Chapter 11:  The pretence of repatriation

"[O]n the evening of Friday 13 November[,] 2015[,] Paris was rocked by three hours of coordinated terrorist attacks....

"Yet two days after the Paris attacks...European Commission President...Jean-Claude Juncker insisted at a press conference in Antalya, Turkey, 'There are no grounds to revise Europe's policies on the matter of refugees.' He went on to explain that the Paris attackers were 'criminals', not 'refugees or asylum-seekers', adding, 'I would invite those in Europe who try to change the migration agenda we adopted. I would like to remind them to be serious about this and not to give in to these basic reactions which I do not like.' " – pp. 185–6

Chapter 12:  Learning to live with it

"[I]n the United Kingdom...in 2013 (under a Conservative majority government)...efforts to arrest illegal migrant workers were met with fierce and forceful opposition on the streets by left-wing campaigners." – pp. 201–2

Chapter 13:  Tiredness

The dreams we dream

"It may be, as [t]he English atheist theologian Don Cupitt wrote in 2008[,] that 'the modern Western secular world is itself a Christian creation'....The post-war culture of human rights that insists upon itself and is talked of by its devotees as though it were a faith does itself appear to be an attempt to implement a secular version of the Christian conscience....

"Existential tiredness is not a problem only because it produces a listless type of life. It is a problem because it can allow almost anything to follow in its wake....

"The effect...when the people who know the answers, whether artists, philosophers or clergy, keep being shown to be wrong is far from energising....

"The fascist dream...never carried the intellectual class as communism did, but...though it crashed sooner[,] the devastation it left was as great." – pp. 213–8

Icarus Fallen

"In Le Souci Contemporain (1996), translated into English as Icarus Fallen[,] the French philosopher Chantal Delsol...suggested that the condition of modern European man was the condition that Icarus would have been in[,] had he survived the fall. We Europeans had kept trying to reach the sun, flew too close[,] and hurtled back down to earth. [B]ut we somehow survived[.] All around us we have the wreckage—metaphorical and real—of all our dreams, our religions, our political ideologies and a thousand other aspirations, all of which in their turn have proved false. And though we have no more illusions or ambitions left, yet we are still here. So what do we do?" – p. 221

Chapter 16:  The feeling that the story has run out

"It is as well to admit when your enemies [see weakness. W]e remain among the only cultures on earth [that are] so open to self-criticism and the recording of our own iniquities[.] But on one single thing it is possible that our critics are onto something....

"The problem...runs something like this: that life in modern liberal democracies is to some extent thin or shallow[. L]iberal democracy uniquely gives [us] the opportunity...to pursue our own conception of happiness[. M]ost people find deep meaning[; b]ut there are questions that remain, which have always been central to each of us[:]

" 'What am I doing here? What is my life for? Does it have any purpose beyond itself?'

"[The German legal scholar] Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde...in the 1960s...posed [a] dilemma[:] 'Does the free, secularised state exist on the basis of normative presuppositions that it itself cannot guarantee?'...One answer—which dominated in Europe for the final years of the last century—was to deny this history, to insist that what we have is normal and to forget the tragic facts of civilisation as well as life. Intelligent and cultured people appeared to see it as their duty not to shore up and protect the culture in which they had grown up, but rather to deny it, assail it, or otherwise bring it low....

"The way in which science, the dominant voice of our time[,] speaks to us and of us is itself revealing. At the opening of his 1986 work The Blind Watchmaker Richard Dawkins wrote...that...science has...solved [the] mystery [of] our own existence[. But] most of us still do not feel solved. We do not live our lives and experience our existence as solved beings. On the contrary we still experience ourselves, as our ancestors did, as torn and contradictory beings, vulnerable to aspects of ourselves and our world that we cannot understand.

"[F]ew people rejoice in being referred to as mere animals. [W]e...know that we are more than animals and that to live merely as animals would be to degrade this thing we are. Whether we are right or wrong in this, it is something we intuit. [W]e [also] know that we are more than mere consumers....We rebel...because we know that we are not only these things. We know we are something else, even if we do not know what that else is.

"[F]or real believers the question will always be, 'Why do you not just believe?'...Meantime the non-religious in our culture are deeply fearful of any debate or discussion that they think will make some concession to the religious, thereby allowing faith-based discussion to flood back into the public space." – pp. 258–67

Chapter 17:  The end

"In September 2016...I had an opportunity to speak with a Member of...the Bundestag...Parliament. [T]he realisation struck[,] that...even the most pro-Merkel, pro-migrant...MPs...have their snapping point...He was willing to plead the plight of all migrants[—]also condemn all the borders[—]and simultaneously be willing to pretend that the flow had slowed of its own volition. This was the way in which his conscience and his survival instinct had found room for an agreement. By pretending that the migrants simply weren't coming whilst supporting a policy that had stopped them from coming, it was possible to remain a humanitarian and remain in power." – pp. 285–8

Chapter 18:  What might have been

"[S]hould Europe be a place to which anybody in the world can move and call themselves at home? Should it be a haven for absolutely anybody in the world fleeing war? Is it the job of Europeans to provide a better standard of living in our continent to anybody in the world who wants it?...

"Chancellor Merkel, her contemporaries and her predecessors...could have consulted Aristotle[.] They were trying to weigh up the balance not between good and evil but between competing virtues: on this occasion 'justice' and 'mercy'. When such virtues appear to be in contravention, Aristotle suggests, it is because one of them is being misunderstood....The absent party in all this, for whom justice was never considered, were the peoples of Europe. They were people to whom things were done, whose own appeals—even when they could be voiced—were not listened to.

"In the great migration movements the decisions of Merkel and her predecessors had overridden all their rights to justice....

"Edmund Burke...in the eighteenth century made the central conservative insight that a culture and a society are not things run for the convenience of the people who happen to be here right now, but [are instead] a deep pact between the dead, the living and those yet to be born.

"[In] the post-war period...Europe had already failed the easiest part of the immigration conundrum...out of personal comfort, lazy thinking and political ineptitude. [I]t also failed the harder test, which was the migration conundrum that Chancellor Merkel confronted in her live televised discussion with the solitary Lebanese teenager[,] but then buckled under when it came to the untold millions [(strangely, because] most people...abhor the crowds but pity the individual). She had misunderstood the virtues. Merkel could have been merciful to those in need whilst not being unjust to the peoples of Europe....

"The first way [to do this] would have been to go right back to the basics of the problem: principally the question of who Europe is for. Those who believe it is for the world have never explained...why Europeans going anywhere else in the world is colonialism whereas the rest of the world coming to Europe is just and fair. Nor have they ever suggested that the migration movement has any end other than the turning of Europe into a place belonging to the world, with other countries remaining the home of the people of those countries. They have also only succeeded to the extent [that] they have[,] by lying to the public and concealing their aims. Had the leaders of Western Europe told their publics in the 1950s or at any point since that the aim of migration was to fundamentally alter the concept of Europe and make it a home for the world, then the people of Europe would most likely have risen up and overthrown those governments.

"[A] policy upon which European leaders could have embarked from the beginning was to ensure that asylum claims were processed outside Europe....

"Australian officials have said in private since the beginning of the current European crisis that this is the way in which Europe will have to deal with its crisis at some point anyway....

"Another solution would be a concerted Europe-wide effort to organise the deportation of all those found to have no asylum claim. This is easier said than done: millions of people who are currently in Europe have no legal right to be here. Some might welcome assistance to return home, having found themselves working for gangs or otherwise finding life in Europe less appealing than they had expected. Still, this would be a monumental task to undertake....Governments['] publics—including legitimate asylum seekers—need...to hear the language of exclusion....

"In order to bring an end to the ongoing migration problem and turn around the challenge that already exists, it would also be necessary for Europe's political leaders to acknowledge where they have gone wrong in the past....They might concede that...diversity...in large numbers...would irrevocably end society as we know it. They might then stress that they do not actually want to fundamentally change our societies. This would be a painful concession for the political class[.]

"[T]hose who have actually killed Muslims in Britain have been overwhelmingly other Muslims murdering them for doctrinal reasons....

"Of...greater concern to the majority is the observation that many of those who come to Europe...seem happy about transforming European societies....But most Europeans do not appreciate this common glee over radical changes to their society[.]

"Pope Benedict implored Europeans to behave 'as though God exists'[.]

"At the root of such appeals is an awareness that Europeans are unlikely to simply find or come up with another culture or a better culture....

"If the culture that shaped Western Europe has no part in its future, then there are other cultures and traditions that will surely step in to take its place. To re-inject our own culture with some sense of a deeper purpose need not be a proselytising mission, but simply an aspiration of which we should be aware. Of course, it is always possible that the tide of faith that began its long, withdrawing roar of retreat in the nineteenth century will come back in again." – pp. 294–307

Chapter 19:  What will be

"There has been little meaningful acknowledgement among the political class that what it has done during the decades of mass immigration is in any way regrettable. There is no evidence that they would wish to reverse that policy. And there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that they could not do so even if they wished to....

"And so in time, during the present century, in the major cities first and then across whole countries, our societies will finally become those 'nations of immigrants' that we pretended...we always were....

"For the time being most politicians will continue to find the short-term benefits of taking the 'compassionate', 'generous' and 'open' course of action to be personally preferable[.]

"So they will continue to ensure that Europe is the only place in the world that belongs to the world....Western Europe will at best resemble a large-scale version of the United Nations. Many people will welcome this[.]

"The less well off will have to accept that they do not live in a place that is their home but in one that is a home for the world. And whilst incomers will be encouraged to pursue their traditions and lifestyles, Europeans whose families have been here for generations will most likely continue to be told that theirs is an oppressive, outdated tradition[.]

"European society today is ever less recognisable, and what chances it had to sustain the whole were lost when it chose to wage a war on its own design. The pieces...that were added were not carefully selected and did not fit the old shapes....

"Nonetheless, the political leadership of Europe will go around and around the same failed and contradictory ideas and repeat the same [fundamental] mistake....

"During the migration crisis it was not only 'open borders' activists who believed that bringing the whole world on board was a sensible policy. It was members of the Greek government and of governing parties across Europe. Some believed it as ideology. Others simply could find no reasonable moral way to deny entry to the world's inhabitants....

"Promised throughout their lifetimes that the changes were temporary, that the changes were not real, or that the changes did not signify anything, Europeans discovered that in the lifespan of people now alive they would become minorities in their own countries....When the Vienna Institute of Demography confirmed that by the middle of this century a majority of Austrians under the age of 15 would be Muslims, the Austrian people were—like everybody else in Europe—simply expected to ignore or wish away their own cultural end point. The dark...Bertolt...Brechtian joke [which] he wrote in his 1953 poem 'The Solution'...appeared after all to be true: the political elites had found their publics wanting and had solved the problem by dissolving the people and appointing another people in their place.

"What is more, it had all been done on the laughable presumption that while all cultures are equal, European cultures are less equal than others. And that a person who favoured the culture of Germany over that of Eritrea had, in the most gracious interpretation, an out-of-date or ill-informed opinion, and in the more common view was simply an out-and-out racist....

"For if there was any chance at all of this working it would be that the new Europeans from Africa or anywhere else in the world would swiftly learn to be as European as any Europeans in the past....Only in 2016 did it become clear that...the name 'Mohammed'...in all its variants had indeed become the most popular boy's name in England and Wales. At which point the official line changed to 'And so what?' It was implied that...Britain will remain British even when most of the men are called Mohammed, in the same way that Austria will remain Austria even when most of the men are called Mohammed.

"[N]early all the evidence appears to be pointing the opposite way. [S]imply consider the minorities within the minorities. Who...are the Muslims in Europe who are most under threat. Are they the radicals?...There is no evidence to suggest th[is]. Even groups whose graduates go on to behead Europeans are taken on their own estimation inside Europe to be 'human rights' groups[.] This is why by 2015 more British Muslims were fighting for Isis than for the British armed forces.

"The people who are at risk and the people who are most criticised both from within Muslim communities in Europe and among the wider population are in fact the people who fell hardest for the integration promises of liberal Europe....And in Britain it is not those who preach the murder of apostates to packed mosques up and down the country who draw British Muslim ire and who consequently have to be careful about their security. Instead, it is a progressive British Muslim of Pakistani heritage like Maajid Nawaz, an activist and columnist, whose only mistake was in believing Britain when it presented itself as a society that still wanted legal equality and one law for all....In every Western European country it is the Muslims who have come here or been born here and stood up for our own ideals—including our ideals of free speech—who have been castigated by their co-religionists and carefully dropped by what was once 'polite' European society....

"In 2014 a leaked report from Britain's Ministry of Defence revealed that military planners believed that 'an increasingly multicultural Britain' and 'increasingly diverse nation' meant that British military intervention in foreign countries was becoming impossible....

"Just one consequence of having 'diversity' and 'difference' rather than 'colour blindness' and proper integration as a goal is that Europe in the twenty-first century is obsessed with race.

"[I]f you have many people from various parts of the whole world living in close proximity[,] it is probable that various of the world's problems will descend on those communities at some time. And the world will always have problems. In the meantime it is not certain that the European publics will forever...resist the issue of race. If every other group and movement in society is able to identify race and talk explicitly about it, why not the Europeans? In the same way that it is not inevitable that Europeans will forever be persuaded of our historical and hereditary iniquity, so it is possible that we might eventually say that racial politics cannot be for everyone else but not for us....

"Even now the onus still remains on Europeans to solve the world's problems by bringing in people from many parts of the world. Only we, when we say 'enough', are castigated and then troubled by such castigation[.] Iran['s] Hezbollah among other militias ha[s] been fighting for Iranian interests in Syria since 2011[. Yet i]n September 2015 Iran's President Rouhani had the gall to lecture the Hungarian ambassador to Iran over Hungary's alleged 'shortcomings' in the refugee crisis....

"Although recent history shows that politicians certainly can go on ignoring majority public opinion for decades, it is not inevitable that such a situation will continue indefinitely....

"Can governments continue to dodge the consequences of their own actions and inactions? Perhaps in some countries they will. Others may cynically switch track in a second. During this crisis I spoke with one French politician of the centre right [regarding] his...party's immigration policies[.] Asked how he would deal with a particular set of challenges to do with people who were already nationals, he replied with remarkable nonchalance that it would 'probably be necessary to change some bits of the constitution'....

"Perhaps in one European country in the near future a party of the kind previously described as 'far right' will come to power. Perhaps a party even further to the right will then come to power at some point later. One thing is certain, which is that if the politics are to turn bad it will be because...the rhetoric [and then] the ideas turned increasingly bad....In the wake of Cologne[, s]treet movements began to talk of all arrivals into Europe as 'rapefugees'. In Paris I met an elected official who referred to all migrants as 'refu-jihadists'. [S]uch deterioration in the language seems inevitable after a period of dishonesty from the other direction....

"Europeans are left in the position of not believing sufficiently in their own story and being distrustful of their past whilst knowing that there are other stories moving in[,] that they do not want. Everywhere a feeling is growing of all options being closed off. All routes out seem to have been tried before and appear impossible to venture into again. Perhaps the only country in Europe that could lead the continent out of such stagnation would be Germany....

"In the meantime elected officials and bureaucrats continue to do everything they can to make the situation as bad as possible as fast as possible. In October 2015 there was a public meeting in the small city of Kassel in the state of Hesse. Eight hundred immigrants were due to arrive in the following days[.] As a video recording of the meeting shows, citizens were calm, polite but concerned. Then at a certain point their district president, one Walter Lübcke, calmly informs them that anybody who does not agree with the policy is 'free to leave Germany'. You can see and hear on the tape the intake of breath, amazed laughter, hoots and finally shouts of anger. Whole new populations are being brought into their country and they are being told that if they don't like this they are always free to leave? Do no politicians in Europe realise what could happen if they continue to treat the European people like this?

"Apparently not. Nor do all of the arrivals. In October 2016 Der Freitag and Huffington Post Deutschland both published an article by an 18-year-old Syrian migrant called Aras Bacho. In the piece he complained that the migrants in Germany were 'fed up' with the 'angry' German people who 'insult and agitate' and are 'unemployed racists'. Among other imprecations he continued, 'We refugees...do not want to live in the same country with you. You can, and I think you should, leave Germany. Germany does not fit you, why do you live here?...Look for a new home.'

"On New Year's Eve 2016[,] there were...sex attacks in...Innsbruck and Augsburg. Police in Cologne were heavily criticised by MPs from the SPD and Green parties...for allegedly 'racially profiling' those seeking access to the city's main square in an attempt to prevent a repeat of the previous year's atrocities. [Just o]ne year after Germany had awoken to part of its new reality, the censors had returned and resumed control. On the same night in France just under 1,000 cars were set alight—a 17% rise on the same night one year before. The French Interior Ministry described the night as having gone off 'without any major incident.'

"Day by day the continent of Europe is not only changing but is losing any possibility of a soft landing in response to such change. An entire political class have failed to appreciate that many of us who live in Europe love the Europe that was ours. We do not want our politicians, through weakness, self-hatred, malice, tiredness or abandonment to change our home into an utterly different place....If they do so change it then many of us will regret this quietly. Others will regret it less quietly. [F]or Europeans[, p]risoners of the past[,] there seem finally to be no decent answers to the future. Which is how the fatal blow will finally land." – pp. 308–20

Copyright (c) 2022 Mark D. Blackwell.