Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
The European Union is Imperilled by Elites Who Ignore Legitimate Problems
Both the Euro Crisis (brought to the fore again by the recent Greek elections) and the anti-Islamic marches (originating in Germany but now moving around Europe) highlight two key problems facing Europe today: currency woes and immigration.
Let’s take the monetary crisis first. There are two competing narratives about who is to blame. One is that it’s Northern Europe’s (most conspicuously, Germany’s) fault for being too hard-working, productive, and thrifty. They keep their government spending in check and the people work hard enough to afford their social spending. In contrast, the Southern European countries—most conspicuously, Greece—are lazy, unproductive, and profligate. They produce very little but enjoy extravagant social programs courtesy of the German taxpayers. In order to fix their own predicament, the Greeks need to work harder and start living within their means.
The other narrative is that the Eurozone is a currency scheme set up for the benefit of the Germans. Germany is an export machine that needs to keep its currency down in order to maximize exports. By shackling its money to that of its weaker neighbours, it ensures that its own currency is weaker than it would be if it still had the deutsche mark, enabling it to export more. Moreover, because the currency of weaker economies is higher than it would otherwise be, Southern Europeans can buy more German goods than they could if all they had were liras and drachmas. So now the Greeks are told to cut government spending by the Germans because they bought too many Audis.
My take on this is that these two explanations are not mutually exclusive. Both contain an element of truth, but the underlying problem is not to be found in Paris, Athens, or Berlin, but in Frankfurt. The unified currency is one of the biggest economic mistakes made when the Berlin Wall fell. By now, this should be obvious to normal Europeans. But here’s the problem: it isn’t a problem for the the Eurocrat elites. They’re hell-bent on continuing the project regardless of the damage it inflicts. And if the public votes against it, then it will be the public that was wrong, not the unelected non-representatives in another country. The danger inherent in this arrangement is that if the legitimate parties ignore a serious problem, then illegitimate parties will take up the challenge. Take Greece. As a result of the January 25 election, two of the top three parties in Greece are The Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza) and Golden Dawn, a violent, overtly fascist party. But hey, what did you expect when the forces of legitimacy champion an austerity program imposed undemocratically on the national government by unelected foreigners?
The second issue, immigration, came to the fore after the latest terrorist attack in Paris. Starting in Germany, spontaneous, well attended, grass-roots, anti-Islamic marches have occurred throughout Europe. Again, the elites acted with moral outrage. Angela Merkel in particular, went out of her way to denounce her own citizens. Given all the problems that Germany has with Muslim immigrants—what with unemployment, crime, lack of assimilation, and the festering of a violent ideology—don’t you think your voters have a legitimate point in there somewhere? Sure, denounce the intemperate remarks and extremist participants if you must, but wouldn’t it be wise to also revamp Germany’s immigration policy, particularly with regard to Muslims? In what way has their presence in large numbers made Germany a better place?
But, as with the currency woes, if legitimate elites ignore the problem, illegitimate forces will fill in the resulting void. While some of these forces are fairly civilized, like UKIP in Britain (which doesn’t stop the elites from denouncing them vociferously), there are many genuinely fascistic parties growing in popularity elsewhere in Europe, a lot of which are funded by Vladimir Putin in order to destabilize his geopolitical foes. For this reason, many on the New Right are openly supportive of Putin and his evil schemes.
What the Eurocrats have forgotten (or ignored) is that European countries are not multicultural entities. They are nation-states, composed (in large part) of people from the same ethnic group, language, and culture. Because they ignore this basic fact, they don’t see the damage caused by scrambling these dissimilar people together. For an example of what can happen, take a look at Africa. A lot of Africa’s problems today originate from the fact that its national borders were drawn by colonialists with little regard to tribal boundaries. Such a mismatch is very conducive to conflict and war. Well, Europe is kind of like Africa in this regard, except that the tribes are called the French, the Germans, the English, the Spanish, the Italians, etc..
One place in Europe where national boundaries didn’t line up with tribal boundaries was Yugoslavia, an experiment to unite all the Slavic tribes of the Balkans under one leader. This worked fine under a crafty but iron-fisted ruler like Tito, but look what happened after he died: peace only returned when the Balkans “self-segregated” after a nasty civil war. No amount of central planning can turn the European continent into something that it is not. But a lot of damage can be done along the way.
With massive immigration from a traditional enemy of Christendom, the only end result for Europe I can see are vast unassimilable ghettos developing within Western Europe; ghettos that will still be festering cauldrons of resentment and violence centuries from now. Think Northern Ireland writ large. Who needs that?
A fan of multiculturalism might object to this reasoning as fascistic, but it is quite the opposite. I am warning against the genuine fascism that is currently on the rise, and calling for a serious examination of what Europe needs to do to head it off at the pass. Through his schmaltzy sentimentality and strategic blindness, the multi-culti EU elitist is the jackbooted thug’s best enabler.
Published in General
VERY interesting take. I had to read some of it aloud to my husband. This view of the EU economies and currency was new to me and makes a lot of sense. And none of our leaders anywhere are listening to what is worrying their people.
I’m not so sure the U.S. isn’t immune from a similar fate. We have enormous cultural disconnects between 9 million illegal immigrants who will obviously fail to assimilate, the urban ghetto wastelands where a patois is spoken and a social culture exists that many of us will never comprehend and the ever-growing popularity of the “hyphenated American.”
Our only saving grace thus far has been the geographical size of our nation that has permitted us to co-exist. However, the luxury of living separate lives is drawing to a close; some of our most poignant fears are becoming reality:
1. NYC has become a war zone and the old adage “Manhattan makes it, Brooklyn takes it” isn’t funny anymore.
2. LA County proper is 48% Hispanic; 40% of that number is here illegally and represents 60% of the prison population in the state of CA.
3. Detroit proper is spilling into its affluent suburbs where gang crime has become a legitimate statistic in Bloomfield Hills (where the Mittster was raised). Childhood friends who still live there tell me that there is nothing left to steal in the Motor City so the ‘entrepreneurial’ have chosen to expand their sphere of commercial influence.
One can run but ultimately cannot hide- even in the USA.
Last time Europe unabashedly embraced ethnic nationalism it ended badly. Merkel is right to be wary.
That is a ridiculous reference. Hitler went after citizens who were not only second and third generation citizens but highly patriotic and pillars of their communities.
The OP is trying to make the point that if leaders like Merkel refuse to deal with the problems of unassimilated immigrants, other, less savory leaders will arise who will. And that will almost certainly end badly.
Hitler (and many before him) went after people because they weren’t ethnic Germans – especially if they were Jewish.
He also blamed them for all the country’s ills (unemployment, crime, whatever) but to be honest I think that was by the by.
Yes, fair points.
But I think it’s interesting that PEGIDA started off in Dresden, a part of Germany with very few migrants and almost no Muslims. (But also a part of Germany with high unemployment and relatively higher levels of poverty.)
The people are angry, but it’s hard to argue that the problem in Dresden is Islam or unassimilated minorities.
End badly, for who?
It seems that right now it’s ending badly for advocates of free speech, because islamists are killing them.
Leaders like Merkel plainly won’t deal with the problem, stop. That’s failure, period.
That failure cannot last. Either the islamists will triumph, resulting in further killing of the sort history has seen in other lands conquered by their ilk, or Europeans who embrace ethnic nationalism will triumph, resulting in defeat of the islamists.
I prefer the latter.
My daughter is in Austria right now and sent some interesting photos of graffiti, one spray-painted sign that said “Go Putin” and one that said “No Putin”. Boy oh boy, is there a lot of turmoil in Europe right now. Just as in the US, Europe needs to get a handle on its immigration. They don’t have to send everyone back because many are citizens now, but they should limit immigration severely, deport those with known ISIS sympathies, not allow neighborhoods to run out police, not allow some practices that are against the laws of their country, and do all this in concert with Muslim leaders. Together they must come up with ways to assimilate the population while allowing them to worship (mostly) as they please. Muslim leaders are worried too. Find a way to work together.
Liz, I don’t see these same problems with our immigrants. There are lots here in SoCal and they are very well integrated. We do need to control our border, but I’m just not seeing the kind of divide you mention. Where I see that divide is in the culture wars. In this nation I think that is far more divisive and worrisome.
You believe he really did not think Jews were to blame? Do you have any evidence?
I’ve seen a few European countries at more than a passing glance. I’ve seen people from a good number of them. I see no serious evidence of nationalism anywhere. Where does the population seem to you to care about their nation?
Which country is peopled by folks who think of themselves primarily as nation-bound & who entertain adversarial notions about their neighbors or about other peoples?
On my experience, I’d say, mostly, the young seem deracinated. They do not know much about their own history or politics, either.
Aside from that, I think there is a massive gap in your story–World War II, or the World Wars. You suggest they changed nothing or nothing significant & that inter-state war might return to countries who, not to put too fine a point on it, have no armies with which to fight them.
Either the islamists will triumph, resulting in further killing of the sort history has seen in other lands conquered by their ilk, or Europeans who embrace ethnic nationalism will triumph, resulting in defeat of the islamists.
Or maybe they’ll somehow figure this out…(she said, with her usual, naive optimism…)
Here’s the basic problem they face: If a Dane is brown, speaks Hindi (Hindish?) at home and eats chapatis instead of brown bread and herrings for breakfast, is he still Danish?
He could easily be American…maybe the governor of Louisiana, in fact… but it’s been a long, strange, painful trip to get to our state of relative resilience, and we have the advantage of being rooted in what turned out to be a set of really good ideas rather than on ethnic nationalism. Ethnic nationalism—both morally dubious and practically untenable— will, at best, be a temporary solution (at worst, a “final” one).
Our only saving grace thus far has been the geographical size of our nation that has permitted us to co-exist. However, the luxury of living separate lives is drawing to a close; some of our most poignant fears are becoming reality:
We have more saving graces than that. I’ve got a friend whose (white, American) parents were discouraged from marrying, back in the ’50s, because his family was from Sweden and hers from France. Today, ten percent of American marriages are inter-racial and that’s not even counting the number of people who are shacking up with folk their grandparents couldn’t share a water-fountain with. Between the weddings and the adoptions, it’s becoming hard to find an American family that doesn’t have at least one close relative who is of what would once have been considered a completely other kind of human (assuming they were counted as human at all).
We can try to control immigration and fret about our minority sub-cultures for all sorts of legitimate reasons, but we don’t have to have (thank God and two hundred years of pain and struggle) Europe’s existential crisis. A quarter of babies born in the Netherlands are Muslims, but the Dutch still haven’t figured out the model by which those babies can grow up to be “Dutch.” Meanwhile, not only have we figured out (and forgotten) the Swedish/French thing, but Bobby Jindal’s in-laws are Hindu, Jeb Bush’s wife was born to Mexican parents, John McCain has a Bangladeshi daughter, the Tea Party governor of my state has a black son, the Obama girls have white Christian relatives and black Muslim ones… and these aren’t counter-cultural, PC outliers but just your basic, normal, mainstream Americans. Is it American chauvinism to hope the Danes and Dutch can jump at least this far … fast?
No, it’s wishing the best for them.
And the fact is, those Muslim babies (?) are going to grow up Dutch – just like their earlier counterparts grew up British or French. And this will change Holland, just like it changed Britain and France. Sometimes for the worse, but often for the better.
I am utterly convinced (no data, just a hunch, disagree if you wish) that this was not a belief based in reason or rationality. Basically I think it was crazy.
Iow, you could have taken Hitler, and debunked each individual anti-Semitic claim (using statistics, facts, documentation, whatever) and it would have made no difference to how he felt about Jews or to his strong belief that they were responsible for the bad things that happened to Germany.
When you get a group of disgruntled people marching in Dresden because they think they’re being over-run by Muslims, although Dresden has a low proportion of immigrants and an almost non-existent proportion of Muslims, then I think you’re dealing with something that is similarly just not rational. And if it isn’t rational, you cannot reason with it.
I am utterly convinced (no data, just a hunch, disagree if you wish) that this was not a belief based in reason or rationality. Basically I think it was crazy.
Iow, you could have taken Hitler, and debunked each individual anti-Semitic claim (using statistics, facts, documentation, whatever) and it would have made no difference to how he felt about Jews or to his strong belief that they were responsible for the bad things that happened to Germany.
Zafar, your hunch is correct. I’ve read a lot of books about it…Lord knows why…and come to exactly the same conclusion: Crazy.
“Here’s the basic problem they face: If a Dane is brown, speaks Hindi (Hindish?) at home and eats chapatis instead of brown bread and herrings for breakfast, is he still Danish?”- Kate Braestrup
I’m sorry Kate but think you’ve mistated the problem. The immigrant groups that Europe is having a problem with are all Muslims. France absorbed a huge number of Vietnamese people: the Germans Italians, the British Poles and Sikhs and Chinese. It seems to be only Muslims that don’t assimilate.
Maybe Dresdeners don’t want to be overrun by Muslims, and they’re taking action before they’re in the same shape as the rest of Germany/Europe. Maybe they’ve seen the problems in other cities and they’re saying “Not here. Not in my back yard.”
I realize it’s rare for people to be proactive about a potential problem, but if more people got concerned about more problems before they became big problems, the world might be a better place.