Sunday, July 09, 2006

“Let Them Eat Kebab” — The New Marie Antoinettes

The Fjordman Report

The noted blogger Fjordman is filing this report via Gates of Vienna.


Admiral Horatio Nelson may have guided the British naval fleet to a famous victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, but he faced a far tougher foe during celebrations to mark its 200th anniversary. Organizers of a re-enactment of the sea battle in 2005 decided to bill it as between a “Red Fleet” and a “Blue Fleet”, rather than Britain and its French and Spanish adversaries, describing it as a re-enactment of “an early 19th century sea battle.”

The Battle of TrafalgarTrafalgar, in which the British Royal Navy saw off a combined Franco-Spanish fleet off the southern coast of Spain, marked a crucial defeat for Napoleon’s sea power. Nelson himself fell during the battle. Apparently, we now live in the age of the Borderless Utopia and the Brotherhood of Man, and shouldn’t be too hung up on Spain, England, France or other irrelevant historical details. It’s just rude. Maybe soon, we will hear that WW1 or even WW2 was fought between the Yellow Team and the Blue Team. We wouldn’t want to insult anybody, would we?

The incident is part of a broader trend of re-writing history. Partly because of immigration, the British government appointed a commission on the future of multiethnic Britain. It concluded that “Britishness” had “systematic, largely unspoken, racial connotations.” The report said Britain should be formally “recognized as a multicultural society” whose history must be “revised, rethought, or jettisoned.”

In the European Parliament, the German Christian Democrat Hans-Gert Pöttering stated that school textbooks should be reviewed for intolerant depictions of Islam by experts overseen by the European Union and Islamic leaders. He said textbooks should be checked to ensure they promoted European values without propagating religious stereotypes or prejudice. He also suggested that the EU could co-operate with the 56-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference to create a textbook review committee.

Timothy Garton Ash is considered a world-class expert on Europe’s future, and he refers frequently to his participation in glamorous-sounding international conferences. Bruce Bawer notes that Europe’s political élite has become extremely insulated from the people, and unwilling to address the problems that people are worried about. He thinks Garton Ash is typical of this élite. He distrusts national patriotism but adores the EU, writing about the need for a factitious European patriotism (“flags, symbols, a European anthem we can sing”) to encourage “emotional identification with European institutions.” Why does Europe need an EU? Garton Ash’s answer: “To prevent our falling back into the bad old ways of war and European barbarism.” Among his suggestions is that Europe encourage “the formation of an Arab Union.” He makes no mention of Arab democracy. Imagining “Europe in 2025 at its possible best,” he pictures it as a “partnership” with Arab countries and Russia that would extend “from Marrakesh, via Cairo, Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Tbilisi, all the way to Vladivostok.” But still, people claim that Eurabia is a conspiracy theory…

Mr. Carl I. Hagen of the right-wing Progress Party criticized the choice of a foreign citizen to head Norway’s immigration agency. “There should be no doubt about the loyalty to the native country and the connection with the Norwegian people, such as history and traditions, or the fact that you should look after this country’s interests. If you’re an immigrant from another country, with family and roots elsewhere, this could during conflicts raise questions about where your loyalty lies,” said Mr. Hagen.

Jonas Gahr Støre, Foreign Minister from the Labor Party, said Hagen’s statements were “bordering on racism.” Eva Joly, Norwegian born French magistrate, known in France for her tireless crusade against corruption, is now working as special adviser to the government in Norway. “To assume that nationality or citizenship have anything to do with being suitable [for a job] is a very old-fashioned way of thinking. We are no longer thinking in national terms, but in European or global terms. It is a duty to employ people from other countries,” said Joly. She has got both Norwegian and French citizenships, but considers herself European.

Manuela Ramin-OsmundsenThe director of Norway’s immigration agency, Manuela Ramin-Osmundsen, arrived in the country in the 1990s. Upon accepting the job as heading the country’s day-to-day handling of immigration, she vowed that it would become more open with those seeking residence permission in the country. As it turned out later, the agency (UDI) was in fact so “open” that it had been virtually running its own, private immigration policy. UDI violated both the law and political directives when it granted residency permits to nearly 200 Iraqi Kurds during the fall of 2005, even though not all their identities could be confirmed and some had criminal records. A commission that probed the controversial permits blasted the former head of UDI, and his successor, Ramin-Osmundsen, resigned.

Gore VidalIs it “xenophobia” if Norwegians, who make up less than a tenth of a percentage point of the world’s population, worry about being overwhelmed by immigration? As American writer Gore Vidal said in a lecture: “Liberal tradition requires that borders must always be open to those in search of safety or even the pursuit of happiness. But now with so many millions of people on the move, even the great-hearted are becoming edgy. Norway is large enough and empty enough to take in 40 to 50 million homeless Bengalis. If the Norwegians say that, all in all, they would rather not take them in, is this to be considered racism? I think not. It is simply self-preservation, the first law of species.”

Jonathan Friedman, an American living in Sweden, mentions that the so-called Integration Act of 1997 proclaimed that “Sweden is a Multicultural society.” Notes to the Act also stated that “Since a large group of people have their origins in another country, the Swedish population lacks a common history. The relationship to Sweden and the support given to the fundamental values of society thus carry greater significance for integration than a common historical origin.”

The Act thus implicitly states that the country of Sweden doesn’t have a history, only the various ethnic groups that live there. Native Swedes, who have shaped the country for centuries, have thus been reduced to just another ethnic group in Sweden, with no more claim to the country than the Kurds or the Somalis who arrived there last Thursday. The political authorities of the country have thus erased their own people’s history, without staging any public debate about this. I have read that Muslim immigrants in Sweden say that Sweden doesn’t have a common cultural or religious heritage; it’s just made up of different groups tied together by the use of a common language. It is thus “racist” to even talk about how “we” should integrate “them,” since there is no “we” to begin with.

Jens Orback, Democracy Minister in the Social Democratic Swedish government, is worried about “the public’s lack of faith in politicians.” Yet the same Orback said during a radio debate that: “We must be open and tolerant towards Islam and Muslims because when we become a minority, they will be so towards us.” It sounded almost too crazy even for Sweden that a minister could say something like this in public, so I checked with several independent sources, and apparently, he really did say this.

This is a government that knows perfectly well that their people will become a minority in their own country, and yet, is doing nothing to stop this. On the contrary, they are actively working to achieve this result. Has this ever happened before in human history, that the leaders of a nation are working to erase their own people and their history, and present this as an act of tolerance? No wonder some Swedes say that there is a war against Swedes going on: A physical war waged by Muslim immigrants, and a cultural and legal war waged by their own political élites.

Following threats from Muslim hardliners, some of the largest companies in England were afraid to display the English national flag during the football World Cup. In Sweden, a man was attacked and nearly killed for the crime of wearing clothes with his own national flag while Sweden was participating in the World Cup. Sweden, of course, has the same Christian cross in its flag as does England, and apparently, some “Multicultural youths” found this to be an intolerable provocation. The 24-year-old man was run down by a car in the city of Malmö. According to the police, he was wearing some clothes with Swedish national symbols on them, and this “provoked some emotions.”

Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city, is set to become the first major Scandinavian city with a Muslim majority. The wave of robberies the city has witnessed is part of a “war against Swedes.” This is the explanation given by young robbers with immigrant backgrounds on why they are only robbing native Swedes. “When we are in the city and robbing, we are waging a war, waging a war against the Swedes.” “Power for me means that Swedes shall look at me, lie down on the ground and kiss my feet.”

In Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, a Mr. Hans Hauge wrote an essay about Multiculturalism. “We are being told every day that Denmark has become a Multicultural society. This is a fact, it is said, and there is nothing we can do about it.” “It is not a question of something that the population has decided politically, it just happened. It is a bit like the industrialization or the modernization. It happens while we are asleep.” “We have to get used to it.” “Nobody could predict when the [Berlin] Wall fell. Nobody could predict the Muhammad [cartoons] crisis.”

According to Hauge, one thing we do know from history “is that it always moves from “multi” to “mono.” A Multicultural society is a sign of the last days before a new “mono” sets in. Multi is always a sign of destruction.” “We can thus be sure of the fact that we are moving from a multi-religious to a mono-religious society. The movement is always from many to one, but we don’t know which one.”

I agree with Mr. Hauge on the second part. A Multicultural society is only temporary. Sooner or later, we will return to a new mono-cultural society. This will happen either through the division of the previously coherent territory into new, mono-cultural enclaves or through the takeover by society as a whole of the most forceful and aggressive of these competing cultures.

The Multicultural ideology is malignant because it fragments society into separate, cultural ghettos, a kind of apartheid. We’re living in an age dominated on one hand by cultural relativism in the West, and on the other hand by aggressive Islamic intolerance, No Truths vs. One Truth. Is this just a coincidence, or is it possible that the vacuum of nihilism and moral indifference is provoking an aggressive counter-reaction? If so, Multiculturalism promotes totalitarianism rather than tolerance.

Of course, it is possible that Multiculturalism never was about tolerance to begin with. For some, it was about vanity. “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s most open-minded of them all?” It’s a beauty contest for bored, Western intellectuals who use immigrants as a mirror to reflect their own inflated egos, a sport where they can nurse their vanity in the mistaken belief that denigrating your own cultural heritage is a sign of goodness and lack of prejudice.

EUSSRHowever, there are others who understand perfectly well that Multiculturalism is only temporary, and use it as a means to further their own ideological ends. They use Multiculturalism and massive immigration as a battering ram to smash the Old Order of Judeo-Christian nation states to pave way for a New Order, be that a pan-European super-state or the global dictatorship of the proletariat. Creative destruction, in other words. And this is where I strongly disagree with Mr. Hauge, who thinks Multiculturalism “just happened,” an accident of nature. I don’t know; much of it sounds pretty man-made to me.

It is true that the traditional system of nation-states will be challenged in the 21st century. Part of the challenge is indeed posed by impersonal forces of technological globalization. However, Multiculturalism is probably more a deliberate result of ideology than an accidental result of technology. The settlement slash invasion by millions of Muslims in major European cities was a direct result of secret behind-the-scenes agreements made by EU authorities, as documented in Bat Ye’or’s work on Eurabia, and it was widely cheered by Leftist intellectuals.

The Internet makes borderless communication easier, yes, but that’s not the major problem. The major problem is that millions of people are moving physically across the borders due to an intentional government policy of erasing the borders of Western nations.

If massive immigration is the inevitable result of technological globalization, how come Japan hasn’t been overrun by millions of Muslims the way Western Europe has, or how come a country such as Finland has received a lot fewer immigrants than neighboring Sweden? Why is Multiculturalism “inevitable” in Sweden or Britain but perfectly avoidable in Japan? Could it be that it has been decided by certain powerful groups, and that this Project is hidden from public discussion by saying that it is “inevitable” and that all those who oppose it are “racists,” anyway?

Valéry Giscard d’EstaingThe political élites are involved in a Project — for it is a deliberate, organized project — to dissolve the nation states of the West. It is a coalition of several groups: Leftists, who hate the capitalist, Christian West in general and are influenced by Marxist ideas about the nation state being an obstacle to international liberation. However, there are also centrist and even so-called conservative groups participating in this. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the author of the awful EU Constitution, is considered a conservative politician, who however has an enormous contempt for the intelligence of ordinary people and never cares to hide this fact.

There is another group, whose members are convinced that the nation state is the cause only of wars and trouble. I suspect former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl belongs to this group. And finally, we have perhaps the largest group: Opportunists who just mind their own business and follow the lead of the other groups. They have good jobs on an international basis and no longer feel any close attachment to the nation states they are supposed to represent.

Marie Antoinette
I call them The New Marie Antoinettes. The old Marie Antoinette, 18th century Queen of France, was famous for the quote “If the people have no bread, then let them eat cake,” although some claim she never actually said this The New Marie Antoinettes would probably have said “Let them eat kebab.” They think cries for national sovereignty is an old superstition among common people, and are actively dismantling the nation states of Europe through massive immigration, Multiculturalism and supranational institutions, primarily the EU.

They never asked for permission to do this, and have never even mentioned this Project in public. The creation of this new entity, Eurabia, is the greatest act of treason in the last two thousand years of Western history, and has almost brought Europe to its knees. Western political élites seem to think that we now live in the “global” age, and that any sense of attachment to your nation state or even your civilization is silly and “old-fashioned.” This is now creating an unprecedented gap of trust between the people and their leaders, which in Europe in particular is now so large that it could soon threaten the foundations of our democratic society. Can our countries survive when the people who are supposed to protect and serve them no longer believe in the very institutions they are supposed to represent?

One blogger suggested naming this Project The Great Deconstruction, a name I like. Earlier generations lived in the Age of Reason, we live in the Age of Deconstruction, where our Universities and institutions are more interested in deconstructing and breaking down all of our cultural heritage than in defending it and passing it on to our children.

It is noteworthy that Marie Antoinette, more than 200 years after she was guillotined at the height of the French Revolution in 1793, has become a national obsession, the subject of books, magazine articles, films, even chocolates and perfumes. “I love my country but we’re in a terrible mess,” said Claude Dufresne, a historian, referring to the rioting in the immigrant suburbs, the economic stagnation and the seeming inability of French politicians to offer solutions. “Under the circumstances, the past seems all the more glorious and brilliant.” The fascination with Marie Antoinette also reflected “nostalgia for what we have destroyed”, he added. In a similar vein, Evelyne Lever, author of a biography of Marie Antoinette, said the public related to her because of the extraordinary tragedy that she suffered: “She went from being almost a goddess in the palace to being dragged on to the scaffold.” At the same time, Marie Antoinette represents the end of an era, “and that is exactly what we are living through now, the death throes of a particular system”, said Lever, referring to suggestions that the institutions of France’s so-called Fifth Republic are exhausted and in need of renewal.

Roger ScrutonRoger Scruton, in a speech given in Belgium, noted that “buying and selling of citizenship, often to people who think of it purely as a right and never as a duty, is common throughout Europe. The political élite sees nothing wrong in people collecting passports as they might collect memberships of clubs.” “Members of our liberal élite may be immune to xenophobia, but there is an equal fault which they exhibit in abundance, which is the repudiation of, and aversion to, home.” This, attitude, which he calls oikophobia, is “the disposition, in any conflict, to side with ‘them’ against ‘us’, and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably ‘ours’.”

The person who suffers from this state of mind repudiates national loyalties and “defines his goals and ideals against the nation, promoting transnational institutions over national governments, accepting and endorsing laws that are imposed from on high by the EU or the UN, and defining his political vision in terms of cosmopolitan values that have been purified of all reference to the particular attachments of a real historical community. The oikophobe is, in his own eyes, a defender of enlightened universalism against local chauvinism. And it is the rise of oikophobia that has led to the growing crisis of legitimacy in the nation states of Europe.”

“The ordinary people of Europe are now deeply anxious about their future. And when people are in a state of anxiety they pose a threat, both to themselves and to those whom they fear.” “If the liberal élite will not discuss the matter, and continue to put all blame for the growing anxiety on the xenophobia of the indigenous population while ignoring the oikophobia which is an equal contributory cause, then the likely long-term effect will be a popular explosion, and one from which no-one will benefit, least of all the immigrant communities.”

Serge Trifkovic, author of Defeating Jihad: How the War on Terrorism Can Be Won — in Spite of Ourselves, puts it this way: “At the root of the domestic malaise is the notion that countries do not belong to the people who have inhabited them for generations, but to whoever happens to be within their boundaries at any given moment — regardless of his culture, attitude, or intentions.” “A further evil fallacy is the dictum that we should not feel a special bond for any particular country, nation, race, or culture, but transfer our preferences on the whole world, “the Humanity,” equally.” “Those Americans and Europeans who love their lands more than any others, and who put their families and their neighborhoods before all others, are normal people. Those who tell them that their attachments should be global and that their lands and neighborhoods belong to the whole world are sick and evil.” “The refusal of the elite class to protect Western nations from Islamic terrorism is the biggest betrayal in history.”

I have noted before that the European Union is a throwback of to the pre-democratic era, the creation of a new aristocracy. It looks like this new aristocracy has the same grip on reality as Marie Antoinette and the pre-revolutionary French élites. Never mind the gang rapes, the embassy burning or the suicide bombings. Think of all the good things Muslim immigration is bringing us, the culture, the food. If the people don’t like sharia, let them eat kebab.

It’s easy to crack jokes about this, but the situation is in fact quite serious. Europe is being overrun by barbarians, and Europe’s political élites are spending all their efforts implementing a Frankenstein’s monster Constitution in the face of popular resistance. I smell a pre-revolutionary era that’s about to end. Let’s hope we can avoid Robespierre and the Reign of Terror this time.

The guillotineNow, we have the blogosphere, the virtual guillotine. We don’t chop the heads off stupid people, we just chop the heads off stupid people’s ideas. Maybe the world is making progress after all.

The problem is that if, or rather when, we get civil wars in Western Europe due to Muslim immigration, the front lines will not necessarily be between Muslims vs. Infidels or even Natives vs. Immigrants. There is a cultural and ideological civil war going on in the West that, combined with some Islamic fanaticism, could lead to physical civil wars. The battle is between those who believe in traditional Western values and nation states and those who believe in Multiculturalism, the UN, international law etc. The last group, which is especially dominant on the Left but which has penetrated deep into the Right, thinks that national sovereignty is at best redundant, at worst evil and “racist.” Many of them will genuinely believe that those who reject Muslim immigration are evil, racist bigots, and some of them may side with Muslims to fight for their own ideological project. There is no call for unity against the Islamic threat because our leaders no longer believe in childish notions such as “civilizations” or “nations.”

Global warming is man-made and must be fought at all costs. Multiculturalism, however, and the settlement of millions of Muslims in our largest cities “just happened,” a bit like a hurricane. Still, the fact that the very same people who have eagerly championed Multiculturalism are now distancing themselves from the Project and claim that “it just happened” is an indication that they know the experiment has failed and is about to collapse.

So far, our liberal élites have been more effective in breaking down the Old Order than in making a New Order. Their “creative destruction” could turn out to be much more destructive than creative. Instead of a new pan-European identity we will see a temporary return to some very old tribalism. I hope I’m wrong, but I fear that I’m not.

24 comments:

GraysonHill said...

Fantastic article. Thank you so very much for taking the time.

I have always been puzzled, however, by the idea that abolishing the independent European Nation-States would lead to a better world, or at least, a better Europe.

First, there's always the problem that all politics are local, in the sense that a larger state will be unable to address local concerns, and will therefore seem more tyrranical as time passes.

But more importantly, was anybody over there paying attention to the history of the Soviet Union? What on earth makes anybody think that sucking a bunch of smaller states into a larger one will lead to less death and misery? And since the European elite have had a long-standing campaign of disarming their citizenry, I don't see a civil war working out to well for the natives.

The barbarians will have access to illicite arms brought in from the South and East. All the arms in the hands of the more native stock will be in the hands of the State, whose main business will be in keeping it's own people down.

Two years ago I bet a friend that the European Union would experience massive civil unrest up to and including genocide within the next 15 years. I was just being the devil's advocate, but the more I learn, the more I'm horrified I might have been right.

KG said...

" Instead of a new pan-European identity we will see a temporary return to some very old tribalism. I hope I’m wrong, but I fear that I’m not."

I hope that in fact we DO see a return to some "very old tribalism" because that's all that is going to stop this project.
The disease is dug in deep, the cure will have to be drastic and near-terminal.
Whatever follows, *whatever follows* the breakdown of civil order should Europe erupt will be preferable to the present slow slide into totalitarianism and the destruction of national identities.

Bruce said...

I also wrote something called "The New Marie Antoinettes" a while back. I totally agree with exactly what you're saying. It's a case of people clammoring to be elite leaders who tell us what to do.

X said...

Grayson, the architects of the EU decided that the nation state was the casue of all wars. Monet actually came up with the idea in the aftermath of the great war, though he didn't get to implement it until after world war 2. His idea was simple: tie the nations together so that they all rely on others for the materials needed to fight a war, and so aren't able to do it. It's sort of an interesting idea but it was designed to solve the problems that caused the first war, those being the complex web of international alliances and treaties that obliged most of the continent to take part in what was really a very local dispute. In that sense the entire project is an answer without a question, which is why it seems to be so directionless at times. Now it appears that multiculturalism is the new question... yesterday it was phone tarrifs, and last month it was the prices charged by hairdressers.

I'm 100% behind fjordman, but I'd go further. This thing needs to be brought down immediately, if not sooner, but our politicians and "leaders" are quite happy to let it keep going, as it removes any responsiblity of trust from their shoulders whilst giving them the trappings of power. It all needs to go. Question is, how?

Wally Ballou said...

A lot of people, like kg above, believe that any change is preferable to the current mindless slide. It's not really true - there are other possible horrors waiting in the wings. One of the persistent illusions of popular belief is to think that when things get really bad, to the point of collapse, they are "bound" to get better. History does not bear this out. When things collapse, they tend to get a lot worse.

It would be preferable if there were a collecion of democratic nationalist movements that could make the case for a restoration of national identities under the aegis of consitutional, republican forms of government, but these movements seem to be missing in Europe (and to a lesser extent within the USA, with our two comfortable, establishmentarian parties). Instead, the only outspokenly nationalistic and "anti-immigrant" forces seem to be those who carry a lot of unpleasant baggage (actual racism, anti-semitism, notions of state socialism, a frustrated elitism).

"Creative destruction" is no more likely to produce the desired results for would-be nationalists than it ultimately will be to bring about the goals of the multicultural deconstructionists. I think that's why Fjordman isn't cheerleading for the civil wars to commence.

Scott S said...

That ruined my week. Best read of 2006, though.

Georg Felis said...

The first step to solving a problem, is identifying it, as Fjordman has done so well. The second step is to propose solutions, as Exile…didn’t.

If you’re going to complain about the lack of suggested solutions, suggest one please. Personally I believe much of this would be alleviated by the rise of a concerned citizen-voter class who would actually vote for, nominate, and run elections based on a strong belief in the rule of law, freedom and democracy. Think of them as the Anti-Socialists. They would have to be supported by a neutral press who didn’t run screaming after every sob story and unconfirmed rumor that fit their political agenda. Think of them as the Anti-New York Times.

Ok, I’m an idealist. But I’m posting to a blog, so what do you expect? :)

Evan said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Evan said...

If massive immigration is the inevitable result of technological globalization, how come Japan hasn’t been overrun by millions of Muslims the way Western Europe has, or how come a country such as Finland has received a lot fewer immigrants than neighboring Sweden?

Interesting. Japan has more Muslims than you might think; not far from the Nagoya train station there is a Turkish cultural center, for example. There are definitely noticeable numbers of Pakistanis and Iranians in the underground economy in Japan.

But it is true that Japan has resisted the tide of immigration, and they have done it largely in the name of preserving their culture (which, like any, has strengths and weaknesses).

And yet...Japan has worse demographic problems than any EU state. The optimists say that after one difficult generation, the country will be much better, especially less crowded. But the pessimists say the country will be left dessicated and ripe for the filling up that tends to take place in empty human spaces. For them it is not just an economic problem but a national-security one. There is no free demographic lunch.

Exile said...

Georgfelis..

I agree. I didn't offer a solution, but that is my point. Fjordman doesn't either.
I do have one, but it will take a while to sell to the leftist idiots that govern Europe at the moment. We could however, start rounding up the obvious candidates that won't integrate, those that are members of the radical groups, and send them back to the despotic lands that they so dearly love.
For my part at the moment, I do take the discussion here at home, and p**s a lot of people off by doing just that. But hey, you gotta start somewhere...!

Well, at least it's a suggestion. Any other bright ideas?

KG said...

Cato, I concede your point. But I wrote the above out of a sense of deep frustration and anger.
The current situation isn't going to be fixed by democratic means--in Britain, for example the Tories are simply "nu-Labour lite", fighting for the middle ground and afraid to offer any meaningful solutions.
EU bureaucrats aren't going to be removed or reformed, idiot regulations aren't going to be repealed, the multicultural project isn't going to be dismantled and pc madness and assault on free speech will continue.
The vote won't fix anything. The vote got us to this point in the first place, after all, lending a spurious air of legitimacy to the takeover of society by bureaucrats and academics.

Wally Ballou said...

kg - as you say, it may be that "The current situation isn't going to be fixed by democratic means". However it will certainly not be _fixed_ by non-democratic, revolutionary means. For one thing, the Communists are a lot better equipped to practice and prevail in that kind of politics than any one else in Europe.

I agree that the prevailing disconnect between the elite leadership and the masses of citizens may lead to the politics of the street (or outright civil wars) - I just don't see that road leading anywhere we want to go. As Fjordman said, "Instead of a new pan-European identity we will see a temporary return to some very old tribalism". Personally, I think even that assessment may be optimistic.

Unknown said...

Exile: I haven't given up on Europe yet, but I must admit that we are bound to go through a prolonged, painful and difficult period, no matter what the end result will be.

I will try to make a sketchy outline of suggested solutions, but not until a few weeks from now. I haven't finished analyzing the problem yet, and will write some more essays during the coming weeks.

I think it depends partly upon how long the welfare state system remains afloat. What most Europeans don't understand is that the welfare state isn't sustainable in the future. It doesn't provide "security," in fact it provides insecurity, since it is financing our own, Islamic colonization. It is used to pacify the general populace by the Eurabian elites.

Sooner or later, the welfare state is going to break down, and that's when the explosion will come. Countries such as France and Sweden are not too far away from this point.

I sometimes wonder whether the welfare state, on some deep, psychological level, in Europe is a substitute for God. Europeans lost belief in God in Auschwitz and the trenches of WW1. We no longer trust in God, so we put our trust in the welfare state, to create a small oasis of security on a continent that has had such a turbulent history.

It will do nothing to "provide security" in the face of Islamic Jihad, however. In fact, it gives us a false sense of security that is deeply damaging. Not only will the welfare state collapse, it probably must collapse.

I was one of the few commentators who said quite early that the cartoon Jihad business could be excellent news for Europe. It really did wake up millions of people, probably more so than all the bombings and terrorist attacks combined. It woke people up precisely because it was so silly. It was Islam's "Pearl Harbor moment," where Muslims were bragging about a great victory while they may in fact have made a serious strategic blunder that could lose them the war.

It was our stupidity and arrogance that brought us into this mess in the first place. Wouldn't it be ironic if it is the stupidity and arrogance of our enemies that will save our butts?

Islam's greatest flaw is the aggressive arrogance of its Believers. This flaw is what will eventually bring it down. Hard.

eatyourbeans said...

I would like to ask Fjordman if his solutions might include placing what is now the EU under the leadership of Moscow? I don't intend this as a warning, but rather as something to wish for. You're already dependent on Russian energy; perhaps Czar Vlad would be willing to clean up your problem, in the old fashioned Russian way. Your brains and wealth, Russian ruthlessness. You could do worse, I think. In fact, under your present leaders you surely will.

Exile said...

Fjordman:
Thankyou for this response. I hope I did not upset or provoke with my comments. I look forward to reading your proposals, I am sure you will do us justice with you usual eloquence.
The welfare state is also under attack here in Denmark. Not just by the sheeer expense of it, but by the people who have been able to do reasonably well, the ones who are paying the extremely high taxes. We are questioning the validity of constantly pouring our hard earned cash into bottomless pits....
I agree. At some point it must collapse. Perhaps then, a new entrepreneureal mentality will rise from the ashes of social democratic idiocy and that may turn the tide. I also agree, that at some point Islamism may defeat itself, just as communism and fascism have done in the past. One can only hope and pray that it does so quickly, before it is indeed too late. The ideology is flawed, and as you say, this may well be the one redeeming point.
Again my thanks for your comments and my congratulations on your post. It was, as always, gripping.

bernie said...

European leftists and Muslim immigrants are on a tear to destroy the old culture and institute Islam throughout Eurabia.

What's happening in Europe will soon happen here. My only hope is that Europe wakes up and bans Islam and throws all their lefties out as well. Being a Muslim and a leftist is indeed legal in Europe, but there is no doubt by most who live there that they are enemies of their nations.

From Planck's Constant: Legal but Dangerous

billo said...

It's not necessary to lose your heritage in the process of assimilation and reconciliation, as any reinactor will happily tell you. Each year, thousands of Americans reinact battles on American soil from the Revolutionary War to the War of 1812 to the War of Northern Aggression Civil War(otherwise known as the War Between the States). I remember having an interesting conversation with my boss recently. One of my ancestors rode with Quantrill as a Missouri Partisan Ranger (Quantrill's Raiders). One of his ancestors was a Jayhawker from Lawrence, Kansas. We spent an entire afternoon drinking coffee and trying to figure out whether my great great grandfather shot his great great grandfather.

This idea that we have to destroy our history in order to live together is pretty silly.

Deuce ☂ said...

This is quite a simple concept. Islam is the problem. Not maybe. Not possibly, No if's, no whys, no on the other hands. It is a violent ugly blotch on human development. It is no different than man other missteps including Nazism, Communism, and slavery. It was not noticed until Islam moved into the western countries.

Swedes, like so many others, thought it would be nice to have these quaint morally and religiously equivalent people do their dirty work so that they could enjoy their six week vacations. Now they have come to realize that they rented the attic to a mentally deranged person. Eviction is around the corner.

Fred Fry said...

Great read.

Sweden seems to be full-speed in this process which makes it even stranger that they missed the boat on the Euro. I would think that the Euro is an important part of the plan.

Also, the recent story from France complaining about the US and their "flag epidemic" back here at home makes much more sence when put into this concept of braking apart the nation-states.

So my suggestion to fight this trend is many more flags and diplays of national heritage. If that means putting a viking helmet on your head, then so be it!

David Foster said...

"We must be open and tolerant...because when we become a minority, they will be so towards us"...this idiotic statement points out very neatly a major conceptual flaw in the attitude of many liberals--especially liberal intellectuals--toward ethics.

Concerning ethical decisions, everyone was taught to ask "what if everyone did this?" The other question that needs to be asked, though, is "what if *not* everyone did this?" An ethical system that can succeed only if *everyone* follows its precepts is what engineers call "brittle"; it is subject to failure at the first emergence of human imperfections.

The moron in question believes it is sufficient to announce "tolerance" as a value; he never considers what will happen if some number of people refuse to adopt that value.

William Harvey said...

(I am not William Harvey, but rather his brother Theodore, using his blogger account as one is apparently necessary to comment here and I do not have my own.)

Good article, but as a royalist I must protest the title. It is a fact (not merely "claimed" by "some") that the real Marie Antoinette was genuinely concerned for the welfare of her husband's subjects and certainly never said "let them eat cake."

The multiculturalist insanity currently plaguing Europe is the direct result of the evil French Revolution, and we cannot fight it unless we thoroughly reject the underlying ideology of anti-traditional egalitarianism that murdered Marie Antoinette long before it opened Europe's gates to millions of Muslims.

Whatever its flaws, the ancien regime would never have allowed the Islamization of Europe. I resent the attempt to link the despicable EU elites with the old legitimate elites destroyed by the French Revolution. What Europe needs is not "democracy," but a return to the values of the hierarchical, monarchical, Christian civilization that shaped the continent for a thousand years. Vive le Roi!

Guessedworker said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Unknown said...

Guessedworker: I got to the part where it said: Usually there is a Jew to oversee the Tory Right.

I lost interest rather quickly.....

Baron Bodissey said...

Guessedworker --

Please make long URLs into links; they mess up the post width in single poswt-view.

Guessedworker said...

Scruton is no defender of the European people, and what little he said to his VB audience that was of use in that direction was outweighed by what he said against it. He is a right-liberal with all the shortcomings one would expect, the most eggregious a complete lack of racial consciousness.

His shortcomings are discussed in the thread to this MR post:-

Link