The decline in the European birthrate has joined with the mass immigration of Muslims into Europe to produce a demographic time bomb. If present trends continue, the future of the EU is “Eurabia”: a collection of welfare states in which an increasingly geriatric native European population is maintained in its comparative luxury by a Muslim underclass. France could have a Muslim majority before the end of this century.
The big question is: Will Europe go gentle into that good night? If the emerging Muslim communities obey certain niceties – stick to their neighborhoods, abuse their women only behind closed doors, practice terrorism in other countries only – perhaps their encroachment can be tolerated. France and Germany have in effect paid protection money to terrorists. In some cities in Scandinavia whole districts of large cities are effectively closed to non-Muslims; it is said that Muslims rule Malmø. If the water of jihad boils gradually enough, the European frog may not notice the heat of dhimmitude until it is too late.
If the Muslim communities in Europe remain quiescent, one can envision a future in which their numbers become large enough to influence political outcomes, with Islamic parties forming and joining coalitions with the left to introduce sharia slowly, in piecemeal fashion. By the time Europe’s demographic decline reached its extremity, the component states of the EU would already be effectively Islamic.
But it seems unlikely that Islam in Europe will remain quiescent. The death of Theo Van Gogh seems a harbinger of what is to come. The reaction of the Dutch is a hopeful sign that Europe is waking up and throwing off the multicultural dream.
And in other parts of Europe, such as Italy, there are signs that the tide of extreme secularization is turning. If Europe were to recover some of the spiritual values and energy which gave birth to the glories of Western civilization, it may yet find the cultural nerve to stem the demographic jihad.
An optimistic, outward-looking, spiritually grounded culture may even produce a rise in the birthrate and stem the population crash in Old Europe. Stranger things have happened.
Hello guys. Just wanted to let you know I dropped in. I have some reading to do…not the least of it right here…got some catchin’ up to do.
Oh…& I love your template. Wise choice. (Tongue planted firmly in cheek.)
Only if a dynamic portion of old europe’s citizenry discover they do have moral courage will there be any kind of a shift in their laid path of dhimmitude.
Otherwise all of the courage and sacrifice from the crusades through two world wars will have been in vain.
I don’t like the idea of knowing we’ve got several thousand lying in eternal sleep in european soil if this is the ultimate end.
I’m not holding my breath, as so far they’ve been a disappointment.
applesweet — think of it this way: we left our dead in Europe so that Europe would be free for long enough to send its best to emigrate to America!
It’s still happening — the best & brightest from Old Europe tend to end up here, where their dynamism has a chance of bringing reward.
Hmmm, Europe…I love how this monster of the left’s nightmares goes from being the evil cancer spreading colonialism all aroung the world to some wiser, older dignified gentleman/woman (err, ‘lady,’ 🙂 sorry Dymphana) virtually overnight.
If only things were that simple. Europe is shell-shocked, the last war scarred them badly, the Cold War was at least as real for them, if not much colder, than for us. The last century was their time of great ascension, when European ideals ran surpreme; and seized the unsuspecting proletariat to drown him in a bath of blood. They’ve done so well in destroying the West that they are struggling for any hope, any soporific to keep the nightmares away.
Europe, quiet? A peaceful Europe? A tolerant Europe? No, I think not. I think she is merely sleeping comfortably. She will wake up and the Rest of the West had better be aware of her wrath.
As America begins to be stronger and harder to hit (‘Don’t shoot the crazy Yellow Legs. They shoot back,’ as the North Koreans said about our Marines), Europe will be a convenient target. They may be hit harder than we ever have. Then it is Europa reborn.
I have a theory that Europe, in a Darwinian selection process, lost its collective cojones in the two successive World Wars of the 20th century. By the time the survivors emerged into the smoking ruins in 1945, hardly anyone was left who had the courage or martial virtue to act on principle and be willing to take the consequences. Anyone with any grit had been wiped out by the Gestapo or died on the Eastern Front trying to stop the Red Army.
The children of the survivors are the spineless and appeasing bunch running Europe today, with the possible exception of Britain.
Maybe so, My Baron, but I would not put the emphasis on the extinction of genes so much as in memes, adapting the sociobiological term. Those left can still fight, but those who embodied the very principles, that cherished the ideals of nationalism, with the strength and debilitating inhumanity that follow in trail, they are now the refuse for maggots (a little harsh but accurate).
Still, groups do exist. Neo-Nazis in Germany, Communists, Fascists, etc. I fear that Europe has lost her very best, those who would love and die for their nation, and kept only the treasonous cowards, the effeminate intellectuals, and the truly barbaric.
The intellectuals can justify anything and the barbarians inside the citadel might just offer it. Woe to the world when the tolerant finally oppose the intolerant and raise a champion from their midst that is truly demonic.
As I have pointed out elsewhere, the demographic situation in Europe (or perhaps Eurabia is more accurate) is worse than it seems. This is because even though every European country is well below replacement, the Moslem immigrants to those countries appear to be having more than 2.1 children/woman.
The EU has been constructing a mandarinate for years. If Bat Y’eor is correct in the introduction of Eurabia that I read last night (in pdf form) then the EU leadership fully a generation ago expected to be able to manage large Moslem populations, in a manner similar to the way ancient China managed sub-populations. It seems to me that perhaps the Left in general might be expecting to manage Islam as they have managed Christianity with varying success. This is a mistake, as reading the Koran and the history makes abundantly clear, but Leftists and even liberals I have discussed this with do not seem to even understand the problem. One cannot deal with a situation one does not understand!
The Orthodox Secular EU bureaucrats did not anticipate, however, the effects of Moslem refusal to acculturate. The condition of Malmo has been noted by Baron. Similar conditions hold in parts of Copenhagen, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Paris (indeed, in every major city in France from Marseilles to Lille) and Spain, etc.
The influx of legal and illegal immigration has created pockets of Arab culture within Europe. Demographic trends will lead these pockets to expand.
The EU as it is constructed is a cumbersome instrumentality that seems to combine the worst of Imperial Chinese and Holy Roman Empire; the credentialism of ancient China with the cumbersome decision-making of the Empire.
It is not an organization that will be given to making decisions that are not popular with the reigning Orthodoxy (or the United Nations). Nor will it make decisions quickly, in general, although the banning of the Vlams Blok party in Belgium was expedited…but, then, Vlams Blok was a threat to the Orthodoxy.
The EU increasingly resembles a retirement home where the greatest crime is to make too much noise.
It is an open question, therefore, whether those who desire to resist the Jihad will find any political avenue open to them. Emigration may be the solution at the individual level; this is already happening in Sweden and the United Kingdom, where the natives are actively moving away from cities (London, Birmingham, Malmo, etc.) with large immigrant populations. When there isn’t a place in their country to move to, then what? The web log Zacht Ei reported a number of statements of the “I’m leaving for America!” in the days after the assassination of van Gogh. Anecdotal evidence is thin, but there it is.
However, the demographic trend in Europe also points to some form of bankruptcy in the future. European state pensions are generous, but predicated on at least a stable working population to tax. Since a declining work force and expanding pensioner cohort is a given for at least the next 20 years, European governments will find themselves paying ever larger sums to ever older people, from a shrinking tax base. The largely poor immigrants from the Moslem world are not going to make up the difference, in the aggregate they tend to not take the advanced apprenticeships or degrees necessary to provide them with high paying skills.
European governments can attempt to square the circle as the Americans are, with stunning growth of their fiat money systems, but in doing so they will shred the Euro agreement.
However, if they do not do so, they will have to either raise taxes to eye-popping levels (even by European standards) or cut benefits to pensioners, quite possibly both.
The CIA recently claimed that fiscal issues will doom the EU in less than 20 years, and while I am not one to put much stock in CIA analyses in general, this one aligns with the facts on the ground as I have seen them.
If the Brussels mandarins find that their writ doesn’t extend much beyond, say, Antwerp, then many questions that are currently closed could be re-opened. Including the status of such parties as Vlams Blok.