Thursday 10 September 2015

The Great Invasion

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The Invasion of 1910 was the name of William Le Queux’s 1906 bestseller warning the readers of cheap British thrillers of the danger from the Kaiser’s Germany. The Invasion of 2015 is the best way to describe what is happening in Europe today. Europe is being invaded - this is just the start – and refugees are likely to change Europe more than would have victory for the Kaiser.

Did I miss the moment when people in Europe decided that they wanted their countries to become immigrant societies like the USA and Canada?

Mrs. Merkel’s decision to admit 800,000 refugees from the Middle East may be that moment. It may therefore be much more significant than the opening of the Berlin Wall.

In fact there are two choices. European countries can remain ethnic states, the large majority of whose inhabitants are indigenous people whose forbears lived in that country since the Middle Ages, or they can become immigrant societies. The choice most politicians and business leaders in Western Europe want may be the latter, but they do not say so.

Instead people who want immigrants talk about economic growth and those who don't mention pressure on schools and hospitals. This would not make sense to Wellington or Napoleon.

Presumably, using this as a precedent, from now on Europe will accept scores or hundreds of thousands of refugees from every war in the Eastern hemisphere. The whole thing is a mass hallucination as rational as the outcry over Cecil the lion. But that outcry only hurt one dentist. This hallucination may transform Europe forever, unless people defeat the philosophical arguments for taking asylum seekers into Europe.

This week Romania has agreed to take 1,500 Syrians and the EU wants the country to take another 3,000

Romania should not and nor should any European country. This army of migrants worries me very much - it is symbolically and actually an invasion. David Cameron, were he a statesman possessed of authority and eloquence, which he sometimes is,  should explain that these boat people are not fleeing danger and that we can pay to house the people in camps, who have already fled danger, in various other countries. So should all the European leaders.

But instead soft headed, soft hearted people confuse the migrants trying to find refuge in Europe - the ones who have the money to do so - with the war refugees who in fear of their lives live in camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Sam Cameron does and so do opinion formers who have no excuse.

Why has Angela Merkel summoned up this invasion which, like the children’s crusade, winds across Europe forcing its way through international borders?

Nobody knows. 

I suspect it is something to do with political calculation - to appeal to idealistic German voters. It is certainly about Germans' admirable revulsion from the racial ideas of the Nazis. (The whole history of Western Europe since 1945 is a meditation on the Nazis.) Cynics think she needs immigrants because Germans have one of the lowest birth rates in Europe and congratulate her because she will thereby get the best ones, the most courageous and self-reliant. 

In fact if she thinks that she is an even bigger fool than it is manifest that she is. A British Pakistani friend of mine told me he knows from personal experience that those who make these tough and illegal journeys are not only the physically fittest ones, but also the biggest rogues, charlatans and chancers. Who can doubt it? 

And then there is the question of Muslim extremists, Islamists, admirers and members of ISIS. They exist in Europe already in sizable numbers and they are for sure among the refugees. An ISIS commander gloated about his to the press a couple of days ago.

Mrs. Merkel has just made herself the toast of the world's people traffickers. If she insists in taking 800,000 Syrian refugees, which is a huge mistake, she should take them from the camps in Jordan (as the UK is doing). By accepting those who turn up, she's creating a massive market in the illegal movement of people and will be responsible for many more drownings.

Most Eastern Europe people have very different attitudes from Angela Merkel’s, even though she is one of them. Most East Europeans do not want to allow large numbers of Muslims or non-Europeans to settle in their countries and become citizens. The question is why Western Europe does not feel this way and the answer is that they the majority, according to polls, do but their rulers do not.

I don't like Viktor Orban at all, a demagogue with worryingly undemocratic tendencies, but he is the only leader who is right about the refugees. He is a nasty piece of work but, since 1945, the nice people have been wrong about immigration and the nasty ones right. He sees what Eastern Europeans see, that Hungary’s and Europe’s identity is in danger from immigrants.

Eastern Europeans, at least the wiser ones, sees this as a Muslim invasion of the kind Eastern Europe fought and lost in the early modern era.  They ask why these refugees are strapping, young and exclusively Muslim men ready to fight their way to the welfare-rich lands of northern Europe? Where are the Christians? Where, if they are fleeing danger, are the women and children?

22 comments:

  1. Very well argued and I think you're quite right.

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  2. This is the voice of reason but Paul is making one capital mistake: he is using his brain to assess the situation. This psy-op was designed to be looked at with the western bleeding heart and not being rational. The media is showing us mostly children and women in distress. The only time I saw on Canadian CBC the Syrian (army dodgers) fighting the Hungarian police in front of the closed border gates was when they had to show how they were tear gassed. Immediately though they switched and showed fathers who brought their children to the confrontation knowing very well what is going to happen to exploit the event by filming it for the news networks. It is a technique perfected in the ME in the last 5-10 years. They understood the Western mind and are playing it. It’s for the children…

    Even in a country like Canada, immigrant society as Paul puts it, the discrepancy between the political class and the public opinion is clearly showing up. One of the causes is the majority of the Canadian emigrants went through the official refugee system, were vetted and accepted after long waiting periods. These guys are skipping all that process.

    Another reason might be the government stand on other social problems confronting the Canadian society like homelessness, child poverty and poverty in general, health care and education funding, and the government excuse of lack of funds to address these issues. Now, all of a sudden there are money to help the refugees.

    If the precedent is created by accepting these refugees (army dodgers) who basically forced their way in the EU the news about the "sucker Europeans" will travel faster than the speed of light bringing even more of them into Germany and other rich welfare offering states. In Romania we have that saying about being too good is being stupid. This is a very good example of it.

    In the beginning everyone interviewed was saying they will to Germany and France (the signatories of the Minsk 2). I guess the ones who started it underestimated the French. I bet they will not hesitate to send the FFL at the border and those guys are no Hungarian police. Then all of a sudden Sweden became a destination then Finland.

    As far as these emigrants being the “biggest rogues, charlatans and chancers” all you have to do is to look at the shoddy characters that popped up after the “Revolution” as revolutionaries in Romania and took position of power to enrich themselves.

    I have the same question as Paul has: why the ruling classes of so many countries bought into this trance and why the media is playing the tune to soften the hearts of the common folk? Who is behind such a big operation? Is it Turkey’s payback for not being admitted into EU? After all Turkey is just another pawn on “The Grand Chessboard”...

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    1. The question is excellent: is there anyone behind this and if yes, who and why? I am very reluctant to blindly accept conspiracy theories, but the mass migration in EU just like the mass migration of 'unaccompanied kids' earlier this year in the US does seem to be orchestrated. The economic conditions in the ME have been dire for sometime now. Why have so many decided to move NOW? Where do they get the money to do so? All this travel costs, despite the images of 'on foot' exodus? If anyone had an agenda of destroying national identities and equalizing the human population across the globe this is what they would do. I have a hard time wrapping my brain around it, but the facts start to point in this direction. Will this equalization work; not without significant social unrest, that I am sure.

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  3. It is ironic to think of Orban as a latterr-day Matthias Corvinus protecting Europe against another invasion from the East.
    marc

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  4. The Hungarians had the right idea about the fence but as long as they are not willing to follow the full Israeli example their success will be limited. The Arabs learned how to look hurt in front of the cameras ...
    Two days ago a friend of a family shot a young father and kidnapped his 2 year old daughter who was found today killed in the forest. Why not the same outrage as the one triggered by the iresponsible Syrian father? Is Canada going to allocate money for children protection? No, apoarentely we do not have that kind of money. We are during electoral campaign here and we have our own Orban running the show here for 10 years. Everyone wants him out but he has the only reasonable plan about the "refugee" problem. Have our guys over there and check each of the ones asking to come here before approving their arrival in Canada. The rest compete about how many and how fast they want to bring them here. There was an uproar after the father blamed Canada for the drowning because he appatentely was refused. His sister is in Vancouver and was on every news channel crying about the drawing but said very clear he did not apply for a Canadian visa. The Canadian yahoo was on fire with people calling him all kinds.

    Anyway, I am afraid Europe is lost as it will be impossible to find one government to take the needed action required to stop the wave. In the long run the price paid for puting everyone on planes to Bagdad or letting them stay creating a new generation of people who refuse to integrate in the European cultural landscape and will be easy to be radicalized in the mosques Saudi Arabia is willing to finance and build in Europe is going to be way higher.

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  5. I understand if smaller countries worry about the sudden large influx of immigrants, but the 80-million country in the center of Europe won't give up it's identity so quickly - until now the neighbors felt rather annoyed by it. So, a bit of immigration is unlikely throw everything out of balance.

    Why mostly men? Because many families can't afford the escape for each family member. So they send their 'head', hoping he will be able to earn some money and get the rest of his family following. But more statistics is needed to understand their exact motivation and draw more specific conclusions.

    I partly agree with Orban's opinion about the refugee crisis. First stop the influx, then talk about distribution and how you further deal with this problem. I think, the 'valves' are gradually closing anyway.

    Christoph (Bucharest)

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    1. Viktor Orban said on Thursday that the wave of mostly Muslim refugees coming to Europe threatens to undermine the continent's Christian roots - and that it was only mathematics that Muslims would outnumber Christians 'if one allows many Muslims to come to Europe'. I don't like Orban at all, think him a dangerous demagogue, with authoritarian tendencies, but on this he is right of course. (I dislike Angela Merkel more than him.)

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    2. No-one asks what causes this influx? The war has lasted four years. And will every war lead to a million migrants from now one? I suspect yes.
      That heart wrenching picture of the drowned child was not quite what it seemed - it seems as if the body was moved - and did not look like a drowned body normally looks. The father may have been a people smuggler. In any event the children and their mother were not fleeing any danger. They were living in Turkey. It is at least possible that that the picture of the poor boy's corpse was used deliberately to heighten emotions, but I do not know by whom or for what purpose.

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    3. Is Orban Christian? Most Hungarians are not I thought. And most East Germans are either. So the religious arguments are a bit thin. I think it's simply fear of novelty.
      Christoph

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    4. It's partly fear of Muslims, understandable after the London tube bombings, Hebdo murders etc but mostly a wish to keep their countries the way they are, rather than share them with uninvited foreigners and especially foreigners from non-European cultures. Asylum seekers would not be a problem if they left after two years but they will stay and become citizens. Poland etc became nation states very painfully, after ethnic cleansing ordered by the Potsdam conference (which was acutely aware that ethnic minorities sharing territory can lead to war). Being, after many centuries, an ethnic state the Poles do not want to cease to be one. I fully agree with them.

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    5. “It is in Christianity that our arts have developed; it is in Christianity that the laws of Europe--until recently--have been rooted. It is against a background of Christianity that all of our thought has significance. An individual European may not believe that the Christian faith is true, and yet what he says, and makes, and does will all spring out of his heritage of Christian culture and depend upon that culture for its meaning...I do not believe that culture of Europe could survive the complete disappearance of the Christian faith. And I am convinced of that, not merely because I am a Christian myself, but as a student of social biology. If Christianity goes, the whole culture goes.”

      T.S. Eliot, Christianity and Culture: The Idea of a Christian Society and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1940)

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    6. The ordinary Muslim fears the extremists too.

      Poland is a 40-million country: even 5 million immigrants wouldn't change a thing. At least in Germany, there's no cultural change by the immigration. In France and Britain perhaps?
      Christoph

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    7. Of course ordinary Muslims dislike extremists. That goes without saying. But countries with tiny numbers of Muslims probably don't have to worry.
      5 million non-Poles, Muslim, from an entirely different culture, wouldn't change a thing? This is too silly to discuss.

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  6. Erdogan and Davutoglu have always been open about wanting to spread Islam -- and trouble -- in Germany. Maybe this is an easy way to do it.

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    1. Just when it should be clear that the EU - regrettably - has to leave the 1951 Convention on Refugees this huge migration happens, an outbreak of sentimentality among some people (though opinion polls show not with most voters in the UK at least) and Mr Orban is attacked for pointing out that if refugees in numbers continue to be accepted Europe will eventually have a Muslim majority. This is a turning point more important than September 11th and comparable to 1989 and to 1979 - 1979 being the Iranian revolution.

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  7. In addition to all of the above, it is reckless and irresponsible to ignore the high likelihood that ISIS have successfully infiltrated terrorists among the refugees. They have boasted as much. The grim reaper is sharpening his scythe.

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    1. A black American friend just sent me a message that this is much worse than 9/11 in the long run.

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  8. If the people seeking to arrive are good then you have no case - no case to keep the gates of the city closed against them, and no case against such things as the Iraq War. After all if they are good - then it is, as Mr Blair and Mr Bush declared, just a matter of a few nasty dictators and a handful of "extremists" who should be removed. Once the assumption of their goodness is made (the assumption that all cultures are equally valid) then there is no logical argument against either "liberal interventionism" or "open borders". One is in the place of the Economist magazine - with their support for Islamic immigration to the United States and their horror that a "boy inventor" was arrested for "bringing a clock to school" (the bomb threats of his sister are left out of the article, and the murders of other people in the South by the followers of Islam, are treated as an unrelated matter).
    Paul

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  9. If there is a choice (guess there isn t one, unfortunately) I'd rather be governed by British instead of Muslims, thank you very much. Eastern Europe already had its fair share of fighting the Turks and Tartars so it should be enough for them (us). Not so for the big boys club - the ones who decide and create Novo ordo seclorum.
    Let the yanks have them all imigrants - they don/t have any history nor great culture anyway. But NO - they"ro too smart for this. Theu bomd Libya< Iraq? Afghanistan..and other stans if there's an interest in it , but accepting immigrants - thank you but no, thank you.
    Don't particlarly like Orban as well, but he has a point - aome of us want to stay Europeans and Christians. Forget EU and Schengen - thses are another form of occupation givinf eastern Europeans the only chance to be EU's slaves, as employees of Auchan and Carrefour.
    Pitty we're all late - dead late.
    The big game plan has long ago been approved and implementation started, like it or not. Of course we can and must have an aoppinion - and protest and against it, otherwise we're doomed...

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  10. But why are these politicians listening to the "EU" (whoever that is) instead of their own people?
    Father Michael

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    1. Filthy lucre and self interest are the usual drivers of politicians. Let us not forget that without Vlad Dracul Europe would probably have fallen to Islam centuries ago.
      It may be that in a more civilized Vladimir we may yet stand a chance! As for that pusillanimous cretin occupying, in every sense of the word, the White house, I see that after Turkey he is off to his Saudi masters for debriefing and further orders. 111-

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