Douglas Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe

[1]10,216 words

Douglas Murray
The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam
New York: Bloomsbury, 2017

Many readers of Counter-Currents will be familiar with Douglas Murray, a white British conservative who has been an outspoken critic of European immigration policy for many years and who focuses primarily on the specific problems posed by Muslims. In this recent book, he generally tackles the subject in the manner one would expect from a conservative: sound analyses interspersed with discussions of a European “Judeo-Christian” tradition and a total avoidance of the central role Jews have and continue to play in the demographic war being waged against the indigenous peoples of Europe. This, of course, will surprise few reading this review. But Europe–and indeed the entire white world–is currently in a state of emergency and so anyone at this time who is working to dramatically slow or stop the unprecedented influx of non-white hordes into historically white countries needs to be given a fair hearing and treated with more sympathy than might be the case otherwise. There are obvious flaws with the book but it is nonetheless a highly readable, terribly frightening, and valuable contribution to the (fortunately) ever-expanding efforts to save Europe from what will most certainly be a disastrous chapter in its history if current demographic trends are not reversed in the immediate future. Perhaps the most important aspect of this book, however, is that, beneath the tragedy is a fundamental optimism which, by the end of the book, becomes apparent.

The book begins with language designed to shock those only mildly aware of the extent of the problem: “Europe is committing suicide. Or at least its leaders have decided to commit suicide. Whether the European people choose to go along with this is, naturally, another matter” (p. 1). These are simple but important statements. He clearly identifies the disconnect between the European peoples and European leadership and to some degree absolves those being ruled from responsibility for the policies of the rulers. And, crucially, he distinguishes himself from the ranks of doom-and-gloomers by suggesting that Europeans are not beholden to false notions of historical inevitability, that there is hope, that they can act to change course. However, a mere few paragraphs later the central weakness of his work becomes apparent when he writes that:

While generally agreeing that it is possible for an individual to absorb a particular culture (given the right degree of enthusiasm both from the individual and the culture) whatever their skin colour, we know that we Europeans cannot become Indian or Chinese, for instance. And yet we are expected to believe that anyone in the world can move to Europe and become European. If being ‘European’ is not about race–as we hope it is not–then it is even more imperative that it is about ‘values’ (p. 5).

White Nationalists who are well-versed in the codes and subtexts of implicit white advocacy might be tempted to read between the lines and come to the conclusion that Mr. Murray is “hiding his power level” here, but one is obligated to take him at his word if only because the overwhelming majority of his readers will do just that. If the author really believes that race is just skin color (which, of course, it is not), then there is absolutely no reason for him to conclude that a white European cannot become Indian or Chinese. But does the phrase “as we hope it is not” indicates a lack of commitment on his part to race-blindness? Certainly many whites do indeed hope that race does not matter. But hope and faith in racial equality is all they really have in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary. Regardless, Mr. Murray has chosen to deemphasize the fundamental problem of race and instead focus on the rather nebulous and shifting concept of values in his discussion. There is, however, a market for such talk on both the Right and the Left and can obviously be of some utility.

In the first chapter of the book, “The Beginning,” Mr. Murray provides a brief overview of European immigration policies and attitudes in the 20th and 21st centuries. He mentions the decline of Christianity in Europe (which will become a central part of his quest to prioritize values over race), the massive numbers of Muslims arriving in Europe, the celebration by British politicians of the fact that London is now majority non-white, and then goes back to earlier in the century to discuss those who predicted such things and how they were treated at the time. He begins by mentioning for the sake of juxtaposition that the Norman Conquest of 1066, a date that even schoolchildren (used to?) recognize as significant, “led to no more than 5 per cent of the population of England being Norman” (p. 13). Mass immigration into Britain really began following World War II from Commonwealth countries and this was only in order to fill labor gaps (pp. 13-14). It was not popular among whites but, as is the case today, the major political parties generally ignored their concerns. When the problem of criminality among immigrants became apparent, especially in the 1960s, it was handled clumsily in ways that often exacerbated the problem instead of reversing it such as the passing of anti-discrimination laws (pp. 14-15). By April 1968, 75 percent of the British public believed that the stricter controls on immigration were needed and that number soon grew to 83 percent (p. 15). Enter Enoch Powell.

In his now famous (or infamous, depending on one’s point of view) “Rivers of Blood” speech[1] [2], Powell conveyed the irrationality of the then relatively moderate immigration rate and the consequences it would have on the future of Britain. Despite voicing the concerns of the vast majority of Britons, the speech effectively ended his political career. It also made it very hard for frank discussion of immigration to continue because those who voiced concern were smeared as “Powell-ites,” (pp. 15-16) i.e. as paranoid, reactionary cranks. However, as the author points out:

. . .among the things most striking when reading his speech–and the reactions to it–today are the portions for which he was lambasted that now seem almost understated: for instance, Powell’s insistence that there was a street in Britain on which only one white woman was living. In subsequent interviews and discussions the case of this woman was widely dismissed as a fabrication because it was believed that no such street could exist. However, if anyone had suggested to Powell in 1968 that he should use his Birmingham speech to predict that within the lifespan of most people listening those who identified as ‘white British’ would be in a minority in their capital city, he would have dismissed such an advisor as a maniac. As was the case in each of the other European countries, even the most famous prophet of immigration doom in fact underestimated and understated the case (p. 17).

One is reminded of the denials over the past few years by those in the mainstream media about the “no-go zones” in Sweden and elsewhere which were later admitted to be scarily accurate all along as well as the current cries for help from horrifically brutalized white South Africans which are being smugly dismissed by those same media elites. What happened to Powell, Murray argues, “allowed politicians to excuse themselves from addressing the implications of their policy” (p. 17). Of course, this assumes that they needed an excuse and that they cared in the first place which is quite a stretch. Regardless, by the 1970s and 1980s, the few efforts at immigration reform that had been attempted proved useless because the immigrant community was simply far too large already (p. 17). And those whose interests were served by “anti-racism” continued to climb the social power hierarchy. In 1984, a headmaster who wrote a piece for a small magazine about the problems of running a school of children who were 90 percent immigrants or children of immigrants was fired and blacklisted permanently from a career in education (p. 18). The new language of “multiculturalism” took over and politicians such as Tony Blair further weakened restrictions on immigration. The author notes that the Jewess Barbara Roche, who was Blair’s Minister for Asylum and Immigration, “changed every aspect of the British government’s policies” because she thought they were racist, that deportation “took too long” and was too “emotional,” that her colleagues were “too white,” and that she felt “comfortable” in a diverse London (pp. 19-20). As one would expect, immigration rates increased. The author, to his credit, points out that Conservatives who had promised the public that they would restrict immigration once in power did not and, under their leadership, it increased to a record high.

The second chapter is entitled “How We Got Hooked on Immigration.” Here he discusses the post-war guest-worker programs used to address labor-shortages. He suggests that the idea that these temporary workers never had any intention of leaving came as a surprise to European authorities, which seems a bit naïve. But stay they did despite, as usual, widespread lack of public support and “closed door” concerns voiced by European leaders such as Charles de Gaulle who “privately conceded that France could only be open to other races so long as these people remained a ‘small minority’ in France” (p. 24). Political parties across the spectrum spoke of tackling the immigration issue to get votes and then proceeded to nothing. Instead, the public began to be attacked for their opinions as racist and bigoted (a familiar and successful formula to stifle dissent, excuse inaction, and appease the big money donors whose interests are served by open borders). Along with this tactic came the “it’s too late now anyway” argument. Mr. Murray quotes the Conservative mayor of London, Boris Johnson: “We need to stop moaning about the dam-burst. It’s happened. There is nothing we can do now except make the process as eupeptic as possible” (pp. 25-26). Murray’s comments regarding such attitudes are perfectly stated. He writes that it seems to have never occurred to men such as Johnson that:

. . . there are those who may sustain a degree of anger about the fact that all the main parties had for years taken a decision so wholly at variance with public opinion. At the very least . . . there is something profoundly politically disenfranchising about such talk. Not only because it suggests a finality to a story that is in fact ongoing, but because it adopts a tone more ordinarily directed at some revanchist minority rather than towards a majority of the voting public” (p. 26).

And working in concert with the political establishment is the media, which in Britain as elsewhere, almost invariably presents only one side to the immigration debate. BBC panel discussions regarding immigration are designed to drive home the point that immigration is a good thing. The gang-rapes perpetrated by Muslim men against white girls and women were covered up for years by the government and the media for no reason other than fears of racism and anti-immigration backlash. The author writes: “Instead of carrying out their jobs without fear or favour, police, prosecutors and journalists behaved as though their job was to mediate between the public and the facts” (p. 29).

He also notes that, as in America, the “nation of immigrants” rhetoric has increased in recent years, although he wrongly concedes without any qualification that American is a nation of immigrants (p. 30). He does correctly observe that this line of thought is a mere cover for the clearly observable radical demographic and cultural shift happening in Britain and elsewhere. Whatever trickle of movement of peoples in and out of European countries in the past occurred, what is happening now is “of an entirely different quantity, quality, and consistency from anything that had gone before” (p. 31). Generally following such an assertion is the related idea that “the country or arrival does not have a culture, or that its culture and identity are so especially weak, worn out or bad that if it did disappear then it could hardly be mourned” (p. 31). Also related is the notion of immigration troubles as karma, a particularly bad line of attack in that it is an implicit acknowledgement of the problems caused by immigration. Mr. Murray quotes the terrible novelist, professor, and Jew, Will Self: “Up to the Suez crisis . . . most people’s conception of what being British involved was basically going overseas and subjugating black and brown people and taking their stuff and the fruits of their labours. That was a core part of British identity . . .” (p. 33). As the author points out, “in these comments one can hear the authentic and undisguised voice of revenge” (p. 33). Whatever one thinks of the British Empire or imperialism, the author is correct in hearing a tone of vengeance coming from this Jew. Indeed, anyone who has spent any amount of time engaging in debates on immigration knows how quickly revenge and hostility is revealed to be the obvious motivating factor behind pro-immigration advocacy. Only whites who advocate for immigration will do so out of misplaced humanitarian concerns. The rest are out for blood and bounty.

In chapter three, “The Excuses We Told Ourselves,” the author addresses the justifications for immigration. He begins with economics. We are constantly told that immigration is good for the economy with a regular parade of “experts” explaining to us why both what we can easily observe as well as what even the most basic understanding of economics indicate is true is actually false. The truth is that it is not good for the economy: immigrants take advantage of welfare systems and social programs into which they have not paid; open labor markets with an influx of workers willing to accept low wages will hurt native workers; and education, health care, and housing programs are stretched thin to accommodate immigrants. Mr. Murray points out that in the United Kingdom, the equivalent of a city the size of Liverpool needs to be built each year to keep up with the demand placed on the system by immigrants and that the National Health Service now spends £20 million yearly just on translation services (p. 39). In order to continue to make the ridiculous claim that immigrants are good for the economy, deception is required. He points to one study from the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration at University College London which stated that immigrants are less likely to be a fiscal burden than the natives of the receiving country. It turns out, however, that the study focused on “highly-educated immigrants . . . from the European Economic Area (the EU, plus Norway, Iceland, and Lichtenstein” (pp. 40-41) while discussing immigrants generally. In fact, the only immigrants for which this claim could be made were this particular group. Moreover, the study’s own data indicated that between 1995 and 2011, immigrants as a group “had actually taken out £95 billion more in services than they had paid in taxes . . . Mass immigration, in other words, had made the country significantly poorer over the period in question” (pp. 41-42). Another common technique used in efforts to justify immigration in this way is to dismiss data which does not support the correct conclusion with trivializing phrases such as “anecdotal evidence” or to suggest that only “in theory” could there be some problems with immigration (pp. 42-43). “The reality is that whatever its other benefits, the economic benefits of immigration accrue almost solely to the migrant” (p. 43).

The next common argument for immigration he tackles is that it is needed to replenish aging native populations. Like the economic argument, this too would quickly fall apart in the minds of average people with even a bit of common sense without being strategically preempted by a parade of “experts.” It is true that white Europeans are not reproducing at replacement rates. The first thing that should come to someone’s mind when hearing this is the half century’s worth of environmental concerns related to overpopulation. As Mr. Murray points out, overpopulation used to be a major concern among Leftists and environmentalists. He writes: “It is a point of minor interest that as third-world immigration to Europe has swelled, the Green movements have ceased to argue for population caps or to campaign for restrictions on reproduction” (p. 45). This is hardly a point of minor interest. He goes on: “While happy to tell white Europeans to stop breeding, they become somewhat reticent about making the same request of darker-skinned immigrants” (p. 45). The same is true in all historically white countries and the reasons are the same: no cause–even one regularly presented in terms as urgent as the life or death of our planet–is more important to the globalist elite than the marginalization (even to the point of eradication) of whites.[2] [3] In any case, as the author notes, there is no reason to assume that population growth needs to continue: it does not necessarily improve the quality of life for native populations. Immigrants flock to already heavily-populated areas thereby increasing the stresses on already stressed infrastructures. “Anybody concerned about quality of life for Europeans would wonder about how to lessen their populations, not substantially increase them” (pp. 45-46).

But, the author asks, what if immigration is required simply to maintain current population levels? The sensible thing would be to determine whether the native population was not having children because they did not want to or because they couldn’t. Evidence indicates that the latter is the case. It seems as if Europeans are not having many children because they cannot afford to do so (pp. 46-47). The author adds that it is possible that part of the concern is that would-be parents “may not appreciate the endless amount of ‘diversity’ in their local schools and may want their children educated around people from a similar cultural background” (p. 47). If they cannot afford to live in such an area, they forgo having children. They also forgo having children when their vision of the future is bleak. Mr. Murray writes:

If European governments are really so worried about population decline that they would contemplate bringing in higher-reproducing populations from other parts of the world, it would be sensible for them first to work out whether there are policies that could encourage more procreation among their existing populations. In Poland, for instance, the Law and Justice Party has in recent years raised child benefit in order to raise the native birth rate and diminish any reliance on immigration. At the very least, governments should examine whether there are things they are currently doing that are making things worse (pp. 47-48).

As for the graying population needing support due to longer life-spans, the author says there are numerous ways a government could handle this problem (i.e. elderly retirees taking out of the system more than they put in). He suggests raising the retirement age, as some countries have already done. One can think of numerous other policies to remedy this problem that do not involve forcing people to work when they should be enjoying the fruits of their earlier labors but, as he suggests, “perhaps some people will see working longer in a society they know to be preferable to dying in one in which they feel a stranger” (p. 49). What wonderful options global capitalism has given us! He ends this section by pointing out the blindingly obvious fact that immigrants get old too and that this argument is little more than a pyramid scheme which will require more and more immigrants to sustain it.

He then moves on to that old warhorse, the “diversity” argument which “takes it as read that European societies are slightly boring or staid places, a presumption that would not go down as well in many other societies” (p. 51). But, of course, this is not really what “diversity” implies. It means only that some space (physical or intellectual) contains too many white people and/or the products of white creativity, intelligence, and hard work. He continues:

The suggestion goes that whereas the rest of the world does not need the mass migration from other cultures in order to be improved, the countries of Europe do, and would benefit from such improvements. It is as though it is agreed that there is a hole at the heart of Europe which needs filling and without which we would otherwise be poorer. New people bring different cultures, different attitudes, different languages–and of course the endlessly cited example of new and exciting cuisine (p. 51).

While he grants some truth to this–“who would not want to increase their knowledge of the world and its cultures” (p. 51)?–he argues that it too is a bad argument. First, he humorously comments that it rests on the assumption “that the best way to learn about the world and its cultures is not to travel around the world but to encourage the world to come to you–and then stay” (p. 51). Second, he argues that because a few migrants may provide value, it does not mean that more value will be had with increasing numbers of migrants: “. . .the amount of enjoyment to be got from Turkish food does not increase year on year the more Turks there are in the country. Every 100,000 extra Somalis, Eritreans or Pakistanis who enter Europe do not magnify the resulting cultural enrichment 100,000 times” (pp. 51-52). But diversity complements nicely the contemporary enthusiasm for deemphasizing national identity and can be used casually without ever having to define it or justify oneself. Indeed, those who ask for definitions and justifications can be silenced easily with accusations of racism.

Even when the diversity of immigrants is a direct threat to liberal values, they will not rethink their position on immigration. For example, Muslims overwhelmingly believe that homosexuality is morally unacceptable and most believe it should be illegal; African and Pakistani Muslims are known to have raped at least 1,400 white girls between 1997 and 2014 in Rotherham alone; and in 2009, police in Norway revealed that “immigrants from ‘non-Western’ backgrounds were responsible for ‘all reported rapes’ in Oslo (pp. 53-56). There are countless other examples one could add but the point is that when it comes to any number of supposedly very important issues for liberals, it turns out that non-whites are given a pass to think and behave in ways contrary to these beliefs (compare the news coverage of Donald Trump’s “locker room talk” to that of female genital mutilation cases in Minnesota’s Somali community) and they even plead and agitate for more of them while calling those who might not want to import child-rapists into their communities racists.

Finally, Mr. Murray arrives at the argument for immigration based on its inevitability, one that he seems rightly to find especially reprehensible. There are a few ways in which this line of thought tends to go: insistence that it is Europe’s duty to improve living standards for those in other countries who want to come to Europe (despite numerous studies demonstrating that the very poor tend not to migrate because they cannot afford to pay the smugglers); another is that migration controls actually increase rather than decrease immigration–an assertion, the author notes, which is somehow only ever made by open-borders advocates (p. 58). The most common form this argument takes, however, is in the form of globalism as a new and permanent paradigm in which the free movement of peoples across the world cannot be stopped. This, Mr. Murray believes, can be refuted by the example of Japan. He writes:

. . . if globalisation really has made it impossible to prevent people travelling to Europe from across the world, it is worth noting that this global issue does not affect other countries. If the cause is economic pull, then there is no reason why Japan should not currently be experiencing unparalleled waves of immigration from the West. In 2006 the country was the world’s third largest economy if measured by nominal GDP, putting it ahead of Germany and Great Britain. But of course, despite being a larger economy than any in Europe, Japan has avoided a policy of mass immigration by implementing policies that stop it, dissuade people from staying there, and make it hard to become a citizen if you are not Japanese. . . it is obviously possible for even the richest countries not to inevitably become points of attraction for migrants from all over the world (pp. 58-59).

Though this is an over-simplification to say the least, it is fundamentally true. There is absolutely no reason why European countries could not implement policies similar to those of Japan, other than the impediment of traitorous leadership. He ends this discussion by warning that when concerns of the public are not addressed, resentment grows. And immigration has been a major concern of the European public for many years. “If the response is not just to ignore the concern but to argue that it is actually impossible to do anything about it, then radical alternatives begin to brew” (p. 60). Indeed.

The next two chapters give accounts of the events that transpired at the beginning of the immigration crisis of the 2010s and the situation on the ground at two major arrival points for migrants, Italy and Greece. What he describes is horrific chaos. Following the “Arab Spring” of 2011, the Italian island of Lampedusa began to be flooded with hundreds and even thousands of people per day, arriving from North Africa. The vast majority were young men who came from all over the Middle East and Africa, even China and the Philippines. The refugee center was overflowing, fights and riots broke out between migrants (he notes that among migrants there is a distinct racial and ethnic hierarchy, with sub-Saharan Africans being considered the lowliest–even being made to stay in the holds of the boats in which they travel), and the Italian residents of the island who initially had been very welcoming began to grow increasingly nervous. The situation was similar in Greece. But the migrants quickly learned how to play the game more effectively, thanks in part to NGOs who provided advice on what to do and say when they arrived (pp. 62-72). Migrants, for example, now know that it is better to arrive without papers and they know that certain nationalities are prioritized over others so, for example, claiming to be Syrian even if one is not is beneficial. “The truth is that once you survive Lampedusa’s waters you are in Europe for good” (p. 72). He also discusses Angela Merkel’s devastating impact on the problem with her call for the acceptance of these people into Europe and the support she received from the media and political elite, as well as how these elites began to propagandize for war in Syria using the “refugee” crisis as a pretext (p. 82).

Chapter six is entitled “Multiculturalism” and in it the author details some of the problems caused by this concept. He begins by quoting Angela Merkel’s well-known response to the immigration crisis, “Wir schaffen das,” which translates to “We can do this” (p. 94). He asks what precisely the “this” in her statement means and who the “we” is of whom she speaks. Such statements are supposed to be meaningful, motivating, and profound in their simplicity and the presumed obviousness of their implications. In this case, however, it unintentionally highlighted the question of European identity and related questions. Why are Europeans allowing Muslims to radically change their societies? The majority of Europeans have never wanted them there, and few can argue with a straight face that they are integrating successfully. Yet criticism of their presence inflicts terrible social costs on people. As honest, two-sided discussions of race became taboo in the last century and concerted efforts by fraudulent academics and ideologues to delegitimize the scientific foundations of race triumphed over fact, the notion of multiculturalism caught on as a safe substitute for everyone. Mr. Murray writes that “if its intentions were to unite people under one national umbrella, [the idea of multiculturalism] ended up having the opposite effect” (p. 100) by encouraging interest group competition. “Complaints against society presented an opportunity to grow. Satisfaction was a dying business” (p. 101). He writes that “while any and all other cultures in the world could be celebrated within Europe, to celebrate even the good things about Europe within Europe became suspect” (p. 101).

Mr. Murray next describes the seemingly bizarre phenomenon of the rewriting of history in order to accommodate the presence of immigrants. It has become unacceptable to demand that immigrants conform to their hosts’ cultures and so the host cultures must conform to them. He observes that in the wake of Muslim terrorist attacks, the significance of Islamic science is stressed and that the Muslim Caliphate in Spain has been moved to the forefront of historically-important events in Europe and portrayed, contrary to reality, as “being the great exemplar of tolerance and multicultural coexistence” because “people needed them to be true and ceased challenging all such claims” (p. 106). Accompanying this is often the denial of indigenous European cultures altogether.

He then writes about the situations in some neighborhoods of major European cities which are now mostly Muslim or African and how they function as parallel societies with little relation to their respective host societies due in large part to self-segregation for which Europeans are blamed. And yet to suggest that these people are simply not European as the basic explanatory factor is to potentially ruin one’s life and so for this reason the majority of the people in these countries simply pretend that these situations are normal. No one is supposed to notice that these people are simply not European. He writes:

After the suicide bombers of the July 2005 attacks on London Transport were identified as British-born Muslims, it was discovered that one of them had worked in a fish-and-chip shop and had played cricket. Much was made of this, as though the hijacking of this perfectly English individual by a terrible hatred remained the main mystery. The idea that an entire culture had been transmitted to him through the medium of fish and chips was a way to delay facing up to the unpleasant discussions that lay beneath (p. 113).

This is the same tactic used everywhere. And, of course, it is all pretense. It is all a delaying tactic. The elites want white people too scared to speak up until they believe it is far too late to do anything about it.

In chapter seven, “They Are Here,” the author discusses the initial European reaction to the immigration crisis as well as one of the major pre-immigration crisis events in Europe that should have served as a warning sign about Muslims on the continent–the publication of The Satanic Verses. He begins by noting that Germany was already struggling with around 50,000 migrants a year in 2010 and that, according to “leaked internal estimates from the government,” only five years later was accepting 1.5 million per year (p. 123). Somewhat amusingly, he relates that Merkel at one point phoned Benjamin Netanyahu for advice because “Israel is the only country in the world to have successfully integrated a comparable number of arrivals in an even slightly comparable timescale, namely Russian Jews . . .” (p. 124). He goes on to say that “diplomatic discretion might have prevented” him from addressing the fact that “nearly all of the arrivals into the country for decades had a common link in their Jewish heritage–whereas few of the people [Merkel] let in during 2015 were German Lutherans” (p. 124). But one suspects that the conversation involved nothing of the sort. Whatever their faults, these people are not stupid. They know what they are doing, why they are doing it, and how it is effecting their countries.

As anti-immigrant sentiment grew even higher, the usual suspects began pumping out studies and editorials with the same tired arguments in order to brainwash the population. Eugenio Ambrosi, the EU head of the International Organisation for Migration, for example worried in the pages of the Wall Street Journal (Europe) about Germany’s labor shortage and argued that non-European immigration was necessary but, strangely, notes Mr. Murray, the huge numbers of unemployed young people in Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece did not occur to him as a possible solution (pp. 126-27). But despite the propaganda, it became harder to avoid the problem of Muslims in Europe. And it was not as if any of the atrocities which were becoming regular occurrences were without precedent, as the controversy surrounding The Satanic Verses demonstrated. After it was published in 1988 and had infuriated the Muslim world, politicians of the Right and Left, celebrities, academics, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain and others were quick to denounce Rushdie (p. 130). But while John le Carré was smugly announcing his progressive (?) bona fides by saying that “there is no law in life or nature that says great religions may be insulted with impunity” and the black MP Bernie Grant was stating that “burning books . . . was not a big issue for blacks” (p. 130):

In 1991 Rushdie’s Italian translator was stabbed and beaten up in his apartment in Milan. In 1993 the Norwegian publisher of The Satanic Verses, William Nygaard, was shot three times outside his house in Oslo. In Britain to bookshops were firebombed for stocking the book. Other shops, including a London department store that housed a Penguin bookshop, had bombs planted in them. And in 1989 a young man called Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh blew himself up and destroyed several floors of a London hotel while priming a bomb intended for Rushdie (p. 130).

What were the effects of this terror campaign against free speech? An increase in the number and strength of Muslim organizations in European countries, often with the encouragement of their governments, and an increase in self-censorship over concerns about blaspheming the prophet of the religion of the violent, brown “new Europeans.”

In chapter eight, “Prophets Without Honor,” Mr. Murray continues to detail the changing social scene of the new Europe. He takes the reader to the quintessentially liberal European country of the Netherlands. Following a 1990 interview on a state-sponsored radio program in which a Muslim leader stated that it was permissible to murder those who opposed Islam, which was by then the fastest growing minority group in the country, already prevalent concerns about its incompatibility with Dutch culture increased. Those who spoke out, including Leftists, were accused of insensitivity and racism (pp. 134-35). One particularly well-known figure who decided to take a stand was the gay, Marxist professor, Pim Fortuyn. He critiqued Islam as entirely at odds with the progressive values that the Netherlands had grown to embody–an inarguable fact regardless of one’s feelings about either Islam or liberalism. Yet he was expelled from his political party, called a racist, compared to Hitler and Mussolini by mainstream politicians and then shot in the head by a “far-left vegan activist who at his subsequent trial explained that he had killed his victim because he felt Fortuyn was targeting Muslims” (pp. 137-38). Perhaps he was unaware of halal (or, for that matter, kosher) slaughter methods.

But Fortuyn was not the only one who suffered for his anti-Muslim stance. The filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who made a film about Muslim mistreatment of women which had been written by a Somali immigrant, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, had his throat slit and chest stabbed by a Muslim. In tragically and typically white fashion, his dying words to his attacker were “Can’t we talk about this?” (pp. 138-39). In France, Brigitte Bardot was prosecuted for speaking out against halal slaughter practices (p. 146) and the author Michel Houellebecq was subjected to a lawsuit attempt by Muslims for speaking ill of the Koran (pp. 146-47). In Italy, the author Oriana Fallaci also faced prosecution attempts for offending Islam. And when Pope Benedict quoted a Byzantine emperor speaking unfavorably of Islam in a speech at the University of Regensburg, the global Muslim switchboard lit up resulting in riots and a murdered nun in Somalia (pp. 147-48). Mr. Murray also describes instances of former Muslims suffering for speaking out against Islam, as well as stonings and female genital mutilation happening on European soil. He also spends some time dealing with anti-Jewish attacks (both here and throughout the book) which need not concern us.

In chapter nine, “Early-warning Sirens,” the author continues his list of hypocrisies and horror stories. He begins with Bruce Bawer, the American gay rights activist who left America due to what he thought was rising anti-homosexual sentiment among Christians only to find in Europe the situation among European Muslims much worse. As will come as no surprise, “the gay-rights groups that had been so virulent in their attacks on the Catholic and other Christian churches seemed willing not only to sit out this sharper problem, but to attack people like Bawer for raising the facts” (p. 149). In 2005, a Danish newspaper editor learned that a children’s book publisher could not find anyone willing to draw cartoons related to Islam for a book on world religions so “the newspaper tested whether that taboo was breakable” (p. 150). This experiment caused riots and left burnt embassies in its wake. Several attempts were made on the life on one particular cartoonist until finally a Muslim with an axe made it into his apartment in an effort to decapitate him. He was saved only because he had installed a safe-room (p. 150). Similar incidents occurred in Norway in 2006. In 2011, the offices of Charlie Hebdo in France were firebombed. In 2013 a Danish journalist critical of Islam was shot twice in the head but survived, although his attacker escaped to Turkey (pp. 150-51). In 2015, Charlie Hebdo was attacked again, this time resulting in a massacre. The next month a Danish meeting organized in support of Charlie Hebdo suffered the same fate (pp. 150-51). And, of course, in the meantime Europe experienced regular large-scale terrorist attacks as well numerous other atrocities which do not get mentioned in the book, after which the public was invariably reassured by the political and media elite that none of these things had anything to do with Islam and that the real dangers were creeping Islamophobia and that Europe might become an unwelcoming place for Muslims.

With chapter ten, “The Tyranny of Guilt,” Mr. Murray begins to drift away from a primary focus on descriptions of the situation and towards what he believes are the causes. He begins by asking why Middle Eastern, African, and Asian Muslim countries have taken in no refugees. The answer is that their leadership understands that it would be disruptive to their societies and have explicitly stated so. He writes: “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. 158-59). This, he believes, is a result of “a unique, abiding and perhaps finally fatal sense of, and obsession with, guilt” (p. 159). It will come as no surprise that the Holocaust is mentioned very soon in this context. Mr. Murray describes scenes of migrants arriving in Germany “as though they were the local football team returning triumphant, or heroes returning from a war” (p. 160). For Germans the arrival of hordes of brown people was like penance: “Instead of being a country people fled from because their lives were in danger, Germany had become a place where people escaping war and persecution were actually fleeing to” (p. 162). But although the Holocaust is the sharpest emotional blade dangling over the collective neck of white people everywhere, it is certainly not the only one. Every brutal aspect of human history is portrayed as uniquely white and European in origin. And this is not unique to Europe itself because it is ultimately not Europeans as such who are targets but whites. Australia has even made a national holiday out of guilt: National Sorry Day, celebrated since 1998 (p. 164). And in Australia, as elsewhere in the Western world, the scale of these so-called crimes of white pioneers, explorers, and conquerors has been exaggerated and de-contextualized for proper emotional effect. He writes: “Anybody standing before a real court for real crimes who boasts of having performed worse crimes than those for which they were on trial would be deemed unfit to stand trial” (p. 165).

The author believes this to be a “specific and common European mania” (p. 165) and lists the consequences of such a mania: the lack of a national will; the danger of being overtaken by stronger countries who have not succumbed to this mania; and the transformation of patriotism into shame or ambivalence (pp. 165-69). These are certainly true and stem, he argues, from Europeans having been imbued with a sort of original sin which must lead to perpetual atonement. He refers to Pascal Bruckner, from whom he presumably took the title of the chapter, who has suggested that that guilt “has become a moral intoxicant” (p. 174). Evidence for this abounds. High-quality groveling before brown people, even when they just snicker at the spectacle and think of what to demand next, is like heroin to liberals. He relates the story of Andrew Hawkins, a theater director, who learned he was descended from a slave trader and so joined a tour to Gambia organized by a group who specializes in “sorry trips” in which participants are chained, yoked, and paraded through the streets with t-shirts which read “so sorry” while crying and finally begging forgiveness on their knees in front of a stadium filled with blacks (p. 174). Can such a creature be called a man in anything but a strictly anatomical sense after such a pathetic voluntarily renunciation of his historical function? Mr. Murray writes that “modern European liberal societies [are] the first societies in human history who, when they are hit, ask what they did to deserve it” (p. 175). He believes there is a more than a touch of masochism in all of this as well and that “Europeans are happy to be self-loathing in an international marketplace of sadists” (p. 176). As we can see, he locates these problems internally. For him, it is a sickness within European peoples. If these symptoms were to be found in an individual, one would probe deeper for underlying causes: abusive situations in which he might be currently living, childhood traumas, or the presence of disease. He deals with the first masterfully but the only “childhood trauma” he is really comfortable handling is the decline of Christianity and the idea of Europe having a “disease” in the form of a parasitic race which has weakened its immune system is seemingly inconceivable to him.

The author criticizes the various European Union responses to border policy in chapter eleven, “The Pretence of Repatriation.” He begins with the Schengen Agreement, claiming that its fundamental flaw is that it was founded on the false historical assumption that borders are a primary cause of war, but that its practical failure was in its implementation. The “front-line states” (p. 180) of Italy, Spain, and Greece were put in the terrible position of having to deal with the migrant crisis alone, a problem that was exacerbated by further regulations which forced the state to which a migrant applied for asylum to be legally responsible for processing him. These countries were then forced to choose between handling all of the asylum seekers properly or allowing them to pass north undocumented in order to keep them out of their lands (pp. 180-81).

When some countries began to react to the massive influx of unwanted migrants by reinstituting border controls, including the building of border fences, Merkel began to resist this clear rejection of the new state of affairs she and the EU had caused by trying to force EU member states to commit to quotas, which they refused to do (p. 184). This refusal, of course, was precisely what the citizens of these states desired which is why the Jew George Soros and his Open Society foundation, which “openly advocated ‘resistance against the European border regime'” (p. 184) began to ramp up their propaganda efforts as well as their aid to immigrants.

With tensions heightening between the open borders contingent and sensible political leaders such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, who criticized Soros specifically and openly, the Bataclan massacre occurred during which 130 people were killed and 413 more were injured by Muslim immigrants, one of whom was able to escape easily to Belgium from France due to lack of border controls. The public mood for open borders soured even more, yet, as Mr. Murray relates, “two days after the Paris attacks Jean-Claude Junker insisted at a press conference [that] ‘There are no grounds to revise Europe’s policies on the matter of refugees'” (p. 186) and referred to the attackers as “criminals” and not “refugees or asylum-seekers” (p. 186), as if membership in one category precluded membership in the other. In France, politicians spoke of curbing immigration–something that they had often done in the past in order to gain public support but which they never did–while focusing instead on relative trivialities such as burkini bans, as was the case in Nice in response to another Muslim attack that had killed 86 people (p. 191).

He turns again to more horror stories in chapter twelve, entitled “Learning To Live With It.” He describes just a glimpse of the new normal in Europe including regular knife attacks, shooting sprees, machete attacks, bombings, the executions of priests, rape epidemics (including rapes of the elderly, young girls, and young boys), and what are now almost commonplace terrorist attacks. The perpetrators are often Muslims of some race or other but also, unsurprisingly, there are high rates of crime among black African immigrants. And these are covered up by governments and their police in order to combat the rise of racism, nationalism, and to ensure adequate compliance with the push for the further opening of borders.

Only on the local level do any officials seem concerned to any degree with the safety of whites. In Bavaria, for example, officials have had to warn parents not to let their daughters dress in revealing clothes because such behavior could “lead to misunderstandings” (p. 196).Warnings against women and children venturing outside alone have occurred as well (p. 196). The situation got so bad that even the New York Times reported on the classes given to immigrants in Norway about how to treat women, including, “for instance, if a women smiled at them or dressed in a way that revealed some flesh, this did not mean they could rape her” (p. 196). Yet even as the mass sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year’s Eve in 2015 by approximately 2,000 North Africans and Middle Easterners came to light, anti-racist groups worked hard to suppress the release of crime statistics throughout Europe (pp. 197-98). When presented with actual rape culture instead of the fictional version based in white patriarchy, the Left sides with the non-white rapists every time–at times even trying to pressure open-borders activists who have been raped to keep silent so as not to hurt the cause (p. 198).

Still, next to nothing is being done. Even failed asylum-seekers are rarely deported and some of these count among those who have committed terrorist attacks (p. 202). Additionally, those whose asylum has been denied often get state financed legal aid to fight repatriation “making European societies among the first in history to pay people to attack them” (p. 204).

So, after over two hundred pages of mostly lists of symptoms, the turn he began towards a causal analysis in chapter ten becomes the primary focus of chapter thirteen, “Tiredness.” We see, as he had previously, that he places an inordinate amount of blame Europeans themselves: an “existential tiredness” or a “Europe-fatigue” which he mentions can be found in the writings of Freud, Rilke, Mann, and Nietzsche and which is present in the contemporary concept of “burnout” (p. 208). The scale of capitalism and technology and the speed at which change occurs have simply overwhelmed the capacity of man to handle it all. Combined with the loss of Christianity, Europe has grown weary of history through a loss of meaning and purpose. He is also quick to blame German philosophy and German art: the former for its “weightiness that too easily translated into weariness and even fatalism” and the latter (Wagner in particular) for its insistence that “culture on its own [could] make anyone happy or good” (p. 214).

Though this is an extremely condensed and simplified version of his arguments regarding European “tiredness,” any further description would not really help his case because the main objection is that Mr. Murray fails to account for the radically different historical context between the late 19th /early 20th century and now. The critiques of religion, of philosophy, of politics, and of Europe itself going on a century or so ago took place in a Europe populated almost exclusively by whites with far fewer–at the very least different–social controls on thought. And the social controls that were in place were not ones that limited discussion of literally existential matters. Such is not the case now. In contemporary Europe, individuals can be jailed for questioning the prevailing egalitarian and deracinated political orthodoxy, and can lose their jobs or otherwise be socially ostracized. Furthermore, as he points out numerous times, there is a massive cover-up of the facts on the ground. Average Europeans (like whites everywhere) are not fully informed of the actual broader situation because they are living under a veil of secrecy maintained by a system of government and media collusion. It takes an extraordinary degree of independent investigation to uncover the facts behind the headlines, let alone to find out about the things that never make it to the headlines. There is, in fact, nothing in European history to which he could point that would explain the current situation unless he qualified his particular example by saying that it specifically paved the way for the hostile take-over of European governments by foreign peoples and European peoples by foreign ideologies. He also does not take into account evidence for the lack of European “tiredness” which he has already provided–the obvious desire for European survival in the form of overwhelming hostility towards liberal immigration policy but also the numerous examples from this book alone of people who have risked much to reverse the trend. As is almost always the case with conservatives, it is simply far easier for them to blame suicidal tendencies among whites than it is to acknowledge the reality of Jewish power and the deception and coercion which it entails.

Interestingly, he notes later that those outside Europe usually “share none of these fears, distrusts or doubts . . . do not distrust their own instincts or their own actions . . . do not fear acting in their own interest or think that their own self-interest or the self-interest of their own kind should not be furthered” (p. 225). He rightly wonders what effect such self-assured people will have within Europe but does not ask what it is that prevents these other peoples from being in this less self-assured position. Such a question is surely of great importance to any discussion of Europe’s future. One line of inquiry might be whether societal self-assuredness rises after the chains of colonial rule are broken–a question which directly relates to the de facto colonialism of the international Judeo-capitalist elite under which Europe suffers. He does, however, ask why Eastern Europe is far healthier in terms of things such as “borders, national sovereignty, and cultural cohesion” (p. 227). He suggests that it might that they lack the same level of guilt as Western Europe, lack the same tiredness, or, having been spared post-war immigration, were able to remain cohesive societies. It is also possible, he writes, that “[t]hey knew that everything they had could be swept away from one direction and then just as easily swept away from another: that history does not give any people time off even when they feel they deserve it” (pp. 230-31).

Mr. Murray turns his attention in chapter fourteen, “We’re Stuck With This,” to the dynamics of public antipathy towards Islam, organized reaction to it, and governmental and media reaction to these organizations. As more Muslims moved into Europe polls indicated that Europeans began to disapprove of their presence even more but “the response of the political classes . . . has been not to clamp down on the thing to which the public are objecting but, rather, to the objecting public” (p. 237). Mr. Murray describes the governmental harassment of Tommy Robinson of the moderate English Defence League (EDL), including an arrest when a speech he was giving went three minutes long and prison time for a mortgage irregularity while “anti-fascist” groups who regularly committed violence against the EDL received praise from politicians (pp. 238-39). Similar things occurred in Germany with the rise of Pegida, another moderate group simply concerned with rising Muslim immigration. Called anti-Semites despite being a provably false charge, the government and media worked tirelessly to marginalize them. In one of the most embarrassing lines ever spoken by a world leader, Merkel warned of such movements: “Do not follow people who organize these . . . for their hearts are cold and often full of prejudice, and even hate” (p. 240). But what “does a political class and the media do when they discover that the views they have tried to make beyond the pale are in fact the views of the majority of the public” (p. 244)? This is the topic of the next chapter, “Controlling the Backlash.”

The author observes that at the very least condemning those who raise concerns over immigration without acknowledging the “coldness and hatred” in the hearts of even certain groups of Muslim radicals was a political blunder by Merkel. But this is a pattern we see throughout the West. Pieces concerning the rise of the Far Right and “the alleged prevalence of European racism” (p. 246) appear regularly in the media designed to frighten average people and encourage sympathy for those of whom they should actually be afraid. Despite these propaganda efforts, even in liberal places such as Sweden the majority of people consistently express a desire for less immigration into their countries. In order to combat this, the media have simply decided to spread lies, half-truths, or simply not report on relevant information. When, for example, the media in Sweden (which has become one of the rape capitals of the world due to immigration) reported on the gang rape of a Swedish girl, “it was reported that the culprits were ‘Swedish men’ when they were in fact Somalis” (p. 251). Additionally, efforts to disparage and deny European heritage altogether have increased. Again, he uses Sweden as an example: in the same year it had become known that the Swedish press had for years covered up rapes and sexual assaults by immigrants at various public events, “the then ex-PM gave a television interview in which he said that the Swedish people themselves are ‘uninteresting,’ [and] that borders are ‘fictional constructs” (p. 251).

In the last four chapters, Mr. Murray tries to frame immigration in a broader social and philosophical perspective as he considers the future. In chapter sixteen, “The Feeling That The Story Has Run Out,” he returns to a few topics he touched on earlier: meaninglessness in European liberal democracies, a collective lack of purpose among Europeans, and the question of from what do European values arise and whether or not they can be sustainable with massive numbers of new residents of Europe for whom they mean nothing. He sees in the seemingly flaccid contemporary European spirit a sense a denial of history, the idea that “what we have is normal” (p. 261). He writes of 20th century Europeans:

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. All the time a new orientalism grew up around us: ‘We may think badly of ourselves but we are willing to think exceptionally well else’ (p. 261).

Again, he blames such attitudes on the relatively quick and dramatic weakening of Christianity, which, for many if not most people, found its substitute in liberalism–a universal system that provides meaning, purpose, and organization to one’s life and, instead of an afterlife, “a veneer of immortality suggested by the admiration of your peers” (pp. 270-71). Because liberalism “shares the same irreplaceable advantages,” Mr. Murray believes that it will be very hard to alter the attitudes of believers, but “the moment when such beliefs harm the lives of everyone else is perhaps the moment when a less generous and ecumenical attitude towards such believers will arise” (p. 271). He is correct. This is precisely what is beginning to happen across the white world, although only those participating in the reaction and the elites seeking to suppress it are aware of it. The average liberal is oblivious to the magnitude and profundity of the changes occurring around him, both by inclination and by design. As confident, uncompromising, and hostile non-white peoples move into Europe in even greater numbers the fragility of this type of European and this vision of Europe will become brutally evident.

Once the immigration crisis began to be too large to not acknowledge as at least somewhat problematic, the responses from politicians and the media were tepid and disingenuous; emphasis was placed on platitudes instead of substance and avoidance of the major questions instead of honest confrontation. The author provides a brief account of some of these responses in chapter seventeen, “The End,” before moving on to the next chapter, “What Might Have Been,” in which he offers his ideas on how European leaders could have handled the immigration crisis differently and more effectively. Among some logistical proposals (such as temporary asylum and foreign aid for refugee centers outside of Europe), he believes that they should have considered more seriously whether Europe should be open to anyone in the world, whether it should be a refuge for anyone fleeing war, and if it is the responsibility of Europeans to provide anyone who desires it access to their standard of living (p. 294). These are not necessarily simple questions (particularly for those who accept the premises of popular sociopolitical discourse) but, as he points out, concerns for justice undergirded all such discussions and were always one-sided: “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” (p. 295). Had they listened, had they incorporated a broader historical understanding into their policy discussions before moving ahead perhaps the situation could have been averted or handled better. Of course, Mr. Murray is assuming that things did not go precisely as planned.

In the final chapter, “What Will Be,” Mr. Murray issues a warning to elites that sounds rather different from what one normally hears from conservatives:

The public may want contradictory things, but they will not forgive politicians of–whether by accident or design–they change our continent completely. If they do so change it then many of us will regret this quietly. Others will regret it less quietly. Prisoners of the past and present, for Europeans there seem finally to be no decent answers to the future. Which is now the fatal blow will finally land (p. 320).

His tone and word choice are important. Only superficially is this statement reminiscent of the “tiredness” of which he wrote. It is, in fact, bursting with fighting spirit: there is no ambiguity, no assumption of compassion for the traitors, and a frank admission that for many Europeans complacency will not be an option. There will be consequences. And what about the “fatal blow?” Is he speaking of Europe as Europe or Europe as a collection of liberal democracies? Judging by the context–the clear expectation of resistance–it seems probable that he does not mean Europe as Europe but rather the Europe that is now conceived as a collection of proposition nations and as a repository for the unsustainable ideologies that make up the liberal/Left side of the political spectrum. The title The Strange Death of Europe suggests that Europe is already dead but it is reasonable to assume that he is not referring to either the European spirit or the European peoples but rather to the sick, modern Europe contaminated by various virulent strains of liberal, neoliberal, and Leftist thought which have dominated popular politics on the continent for the past century and which, from a historical perspective, will be associated only temporarily with Europe.

Although for White Nationalists this book will be frustrating at times for its failure to address the problem of Jews as well as a regular reliance on illustrations of Muslim anti-Semitism as emblematic of a Europe gone wrong, it is extremely valuable and important. It should be purchased and shared with as many people as possible. Other than for those who travel in White Nationalist circles, most of the information in this book will be new, thought-provoking, and probably shocking. It will certainly change minds. Mr. Murray is an eloquent writer, has a firm grasp on the Muslim problem, and, most importantly, despite the ominous subject matter, does not ultimately present the reader with an epitaph but rather a reminder that Europe will fight back. It has, in fact, already begun.

Notes

[1] https://archive.org/details/EnochPowellsriversOfBloodSpeech [4]

[2] [5] See: Gregory Hood, “The War On Whites Is All They Have,” Counter-Currents Publishing, August 5, 2014, https://counter-currents.com/2014/08/the-war-on-whites-is-all-they-have/ [6] (accessed May 5, 2018).

Also see: Brenda Walker, “The 2005 Sierra Series” Vdare.com, February 2, 2005, https://www.vdare.com/articles/the-2005-sierra-series-by-brenda-walker-0 (accessed May 5, 2018).