The strange Death of Europe?

A while ago I started to read a book by an author named Douglas Murray. Thanks to my concerns about the civilisation we are building, or are in the process of, in Europe. The title is “The Strange Death of Europe”. A rather interesting title I would say, in the first place intriguing because the cover showed three words a lot of people do not want to know about. “Immigration, Identity, Islam”. It is quite evident that European peoples are divided. A small minority, mainly the ruling class versus the ‘normal’ population. The ruling class includes politicians, the judiciary, and academia. The author is clear in the idea that Europe is committing suicide. An interesting statement. He is talking about culture, also he finds that Europe ‘has little desire to reproduce itself or even takes its own side in arguments. Viz the problem with the eastern bloc, Russia in particular. Also that those in power and certainly so since the Second World War seem persuaded that it would not matter if its people and culture of Europe were lost to the world. It is evident he states that there is no single cause but there are two simultaneous concatenations from which it is impossible to recover.

The first is the movements of people into Europe. In all western European countries this began basically after WW2. Due to labour shortages. The nations, and this could easily see in the UK with flows from Jamaica (the Windrush transport ship) and from the Indian subcontinent, Pakistan in particular. Now whether one agrees with that view, it is again true that in the main places that had been Europe gradually became something else. As an example highlighted, laces where Pakistani people congregated became Pakistan in everything, eating the food of where they came from, speaking the language they knew, disregarding the language of their new home. And bringing their own religion. The problem was Europeans in the main mostly thought this could work. Most today pretend it has worked, that immigration is a normal thing to do. Also if integration was difficult with the new arrivals it surely would be fine with the offspring. Some even believe that it just doesn’t matter whether the incomers integrated or not. The second point Douglas made was Europe did lose faith in its beliefs, traditions and legitimacy. Worse, he quoted Zweig (The World of Yesterday) who said that everything you love, even the greatest and most cultured civilisations can be swept away by people who are unworthy of them. Wow, strong stuff, but I can easily see the point made, history is full of such occasions. As he also mentioned Europe is weighed down by a sense of guilt. Guilt of its past. Sure, the past was not particularly a nice period, but viewing the world and its excesses could anyone point out any particular area where things like slavery, mass extermination, genocide never occurred? Look at today, Ukraine, Gaza, certain parts of China. Not that long ago the Holocaust. Yes, slavery was a scourge, but also aided by indigenous tribes. It is humanity’s problem we still have the drives we were borne with. I found the book quite interesting, a proper try to bring the problem to the fore. We might think what ever we want but anyone who today thinks that immigration has done good needs an appointment with a psychiatrist .