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Book Review: The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray
In the year that terrorist attacks in the UK start to resemble those suffered recently on the European continent, Douglas Murray’s new book, The Strange Death of Europe—Immigration, Identity, Islam, captures the zeitgeist perfectly. For those acquainted with Mark Steyn’s warnings in America Alone, Murray’s work is the bookend. Steyn and many others from Salman Rushdie to Pope Benedict were ignored, this is now the new reality. Murray discusses his book on the Mark Steyn Show for those interested and on a podcast with James Delingpole.
As Steyn notes this is not really a book about Islam, though it is in the subtitle. And while there is a quiet yet deepening anger which builds with Murray’s narrative, one never feels it directed at the immigrants themselves, Islamic or otherwise. It is aimed rather at the politicians, officials and intellectuals who blithely assured anyone who asked that there was nothing to worry about and that you are a bigot to even think about the subject. Murray argues that this is a cultural masochism due to existentialism and a guilt that has so permeated the continent that even neutral Sweden shares the blame for the crimes of the 20th century.
Having traveled all over Europe, speaking with both locals and recent arrivals from Lampedusa to Lesbos and from Malmo to Marseille, Murray writes a vivid account of how a long process culminated in a crisis. There is no lack of pathos for the migrants, refugee or not, but Murray’s main plea is for Europeans who are “losing the only place they have to call home.”
Murray points out that those who dared raise any alarm bells, most notoriously Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech, had their careers ended amidst the worst labels of bigotry and racism, but beyond that it made immigration a taboo subject. Yet had anyone gone so far as to predict the actual British 2011 census results, they would have been laughed at rather than vilified. The French novelist Jean Raspail, who in 1973 envisaged a future armada carrying a million of the Third World’s poor to the Mediterranean shore in Le Camp des Saintes, was similarly hounded from the public square. Murray points out that no matter how crass the novel might be, Raspail’s central point was obscured by the inevitable accusations of thought crime, leaving the unasked question of how would Europe respond? To turn them away would be to deny the humanity that is intrinsic to the European ideal, to accept them would inevitably destroy those ideals. The very question that was posed by the migrant crisis.
Though this book is about Europe, or at least Britain and Europe, it is also a warning to the United States. Murray charts similar feelings of civilizational self-loathing throughout the Western world. In Australia where guilt over the Aborigines has led to the undermining of the national character, a story with echoes in Canada. While Ricochetti will not need Murray’s documentation of similar phenomena in the US, on Jeanine Pirro’s program recently he stated his belief that Europe is much farther down this path and that American ideals still provides some bulwark.
In many ways, The Strange Death of Europe is analogous to Ann Coulter’s Adios America, though aimed at a different readership. While Murray’s refined style has little of Coulter’s chutzpah, they cover much the same ground: The official and media cover-ups, the sense of political correctness gone mad and the disconnect between elite policy and the people. But while Coulter’s contention is of a deliberate and long-standing Democratic Party scheme to change America dating back to Ted Kennedy’s 1965 Immigration Act, Murray argues that there was no equivalent policy in Europe; just a series of misapprehensions and mistakes, though he does show where more recent governments, such as Tony Blair’s, accelerated the process. It remains to be seen whether Murray’s work will have the seminal effect on British politics that Coulter’s supposedly had on American — Theresa May’s snap election coincided with the book release allowing no equivalent time for gestation.
Murray does ask what can be done but his fear, now evident in the Finsbury Park attack, is that we have moved beyond a soft landing. If one were to criticize Murray, and many on the left instinctively will, he makes little of the success stories Britain at least can boast of, especially from the Commonwealth, but this is not really Murray’s point. Whatever the merits of emigres from Jamaica or India, without a confident culture to assimilate into it is a small miracle they have actually managed to do so and a testament to the legacy of empire (sorry chaps but there were some good things, after all you took the best bits…). Murray’s underlying thesis is that with vast holes in the host cultures Islamic immigrants will not adapt to Western mores and Muslims inevitably will not assimilate, whether they are settling in former-colonizer Britain or non-colonial Sweden.
The Strange Death of Europe is certainly popular, the publisher had to hastily order a second print run. Anecdotally I can report that while browsing in my local bookstore, the owner was constantly on the phone informing so-and-so that they’re copy was in and when I got to the counter the last copy was sold to the gentleman in front of me, this was already they’re second batch she told me. Always preferring a hardback, I picked one up about a month later and put it on top of the “to read” pile, returning to the captivating prose of Robert Tombs’s The English and Their History and Von Mises’s Socialism, incredibly relevant given recent British politics. I turned to Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe as a diversion at the end of a day last week and had finished it less than 24 hours later, and I am not the quickest of readers. Riveting, depressing and discombobulating but highly recommended.
Published in Immigration
Sounds familiar. There is a generational gap here in the UK too. The generation that rebelled in the 1960s at least knew the values they were rebelling against. As they aged they largely reverted to type, but their own children were raised without the moral systems to cope with the diffuse world their parents had created. Today civil society and social capital has declined just when working parents need surrogates to raise their children. Those snubbed grandparents are now off enjoying retirement and while friends would love to look after your kid on the understanding you would reciprocate, you are both too worried one of you will sue the other if a child stubs a toe. So the parents turn to expensive childcare. Meanwhile churches are empty, sports and the local parks are apparently too dangerous, boy scouts and girl guides have been regulated almost out of existence while military cadets belong to the era of the moon landings. Outside of the schools’ politically correct nonsense such as insisting girls under eight be taught about transgenderism, the young today are left with nothing but the faux classicism of Harry Potter as a value system. I’d rather not see how it plays out myself….
He makes an acknowledgment of something along those lines.
That’s a call out if I ever heard one – I thought the same thing, but to be fair to Claire, I think it will be similar to Mr. Murray’s book – she may surprise you.
Then she would going back against everything she has stood for the past year because all I have seen her do is advocate for Muslims and open borders.
Less than a week ago, I stayed a night at an AirBnb near the RER station of Drancy, in the Parisian suburbs. It was a nice flat, but clearly in a poor building. There were nearly-naked Haitian kids hanging out in the common area, and overall there was quite a mixed clientele.
All the windows were open (it was hot), and many apartments look into others.
As night fell, I heard a gorgeous solo tenor voice start to pray, with passion…”Allahu Akbar.” It was a growing cadence and varying, with real devotional fervor. I came to the window to better listen (as a fellow singer). It was truly beautiful, albeit a touch frightening. (I am a Torah Jew who travels “in disguise”, especially in France, where I have had stones thrown at me.)
When I came to the window, I saw a French woman in an opposite flat walk past, in conversation. She was not clothed.
It was such a discordant experience. My immediate thought: something has to give. A country cannot at once have devout muslims who comfortably pray for all to hear, in a building where women feel strongly about the right to walk around wearing whatever they choose to wear.
To top it off, my landlord was a (black) banzai-growing Friend of Dorothy. I cannot imagine how he lives there.
There was an attack just two days earlier at the Champs-Élysées.
That which cannot sustain will end. Sooner or later.
Technically forced exodus is ethnic cleansing rather than genocide.
My husband has family in Scotland, and last time we were there, I was amazed by some of the ideas they have about America: my mother in law had seen a show on TV about Americans lining up in some park somewhere to receive health care. She believed that this was a common occurrence. I never saw that show, but get the impression that its purpose was to show people how wretched life is in a country without single payer. My husband’s sister and her husband informed us that 50% of Americans are employed by the military; they both have PhDs. We tried to tell them that they were wrong, but I don’t think we convinced them.
When that level of ignorance is combined with an advanced degree, scary things happen. It’s too bad that so many in Europe are so anti-American, but many of them really don’t know any better. I find it far more difficult to forgive Americans who are anti-American. Well educated Europeans are going to sink their continent unless somebody slaps them out of it; well educated Americans who lick the feet of well educated Europeans are not helping matters, and any European with two brain cells views such Americans with derision.
I know such wonderful people in Scotland; the wonderful people there are hopelessly naive and usually not well educated. The well educated ones are so arrogant, and so ignorant at the same time. My husband isn’t in either category, but he moved to America. When I think of the people I know in Scotland-both the good people and the bad people, the thought that goes through my mind is “This will not end well”. I hope that I am wrong.
I believe, though, that those who think America will go the same way as Europe are wrong. My theory is this: upper class liberal Americans have a great deal in common with upper class liberal Europeans, and if they could turn us into Europe, they definitely would, but the lower class Americans I know (in Massachusetts) are radically, radically different from the lower class Europeans I know. Radically different. Butter doesn’t melt in the mouths of most Americans, and most Americans can read the writing on the wall, whereas most Europeans apparantly can’t. They are such nice people, but their naivety is so dangerous. The lower class Americans I know are the opposite of naive: they are jaded and cynical almost to a fault, which means, they are far less likely to follow the leader. That is a good thing.
Technically not genocide. Still lots of Arabs/Muslims around the world. More accurately ethnic cleansing.
Well, hope you come back and stay. There’s a core of what I’ll call traditional conservatives here, and we’d like more company.
What a great comment Judith. I wish I could give you a thousand likes for it. I highlighted in bold what I thought was particularly brilliant. I haven’t had much contact with my Italian relatives in a number of years, but they too had some distorted views of Americans.
The Russians had problems before they conquered the steppe (along with Buddhist and animist tribes). If you’re really interested, I highly recommend Russia’s Steppe Frontier by Michael Khodarkovsky.
It helped Russia in that the country had vast amounts of sparsely settled territory with vast resources. Many (if not most) of the people on the steppes who are still in Russia were converted to Christianity. The problem is down in the Caucuses where they did not – or even more often floated back and forth. All of the -stans are now independent.
Very informative, thank you.
Wow iWE! How bizarre – it’s like Rear Window in the future! It’s also equally bizarre that in a Paris suburb, you would hear a loud Muslim call to prayer as normal, yet you have had stones thrown at you and have to cover who you are – not normal. I didn’t hear about another attack 2 days ago – what happened? Did you have a chance to meet up with Claire? Interesting topic to get her thoughts since she’s writing right now.
It was not a call to prayer – it was a single person singing at the window of his apartment in a cluster of 5-story apartment buildings. He was loud and proud, but not aggressive. I am sensitive to soulful prayer, and he was deeply engaged in it.
Actually, it has been that way in Paris for quite some time. Throughout all of Europe Jews are very careful – with one exception: I feel perfectly comfortable and safe in Prague (and the Czech Republic generally) being openly Jewish.
A car loaded with weapons rammed a van, but failed to detonate or kill anyone else.
Not this trip. The Paris Air Show is so exhausting that we do not even get into Paris.
As mentioned elsewhere, Claire is a sweet and wonderful person, but she is a Big Government Conservative, with substantial muslim-apologetic tendencies.
@manny: Thank you :)
@henrycastaigne and @kozak, you both made the same good point – I used the wrong word.
I don’t want to read it. I see it, and it makes me sad beyond almost anything. The only reason to visit Europe is the history.
Except Spain.
Franco kept Spain hostage for the guilt formative years, and now they seem to be somewhat immune to the European guilt trip. They proudly announce practically everything as the best in the world… it’s funny actually, who knows they might be right, but they seem very proud to be Spanish, and still extremely mad at Franco, who ironically may have saved their national identity.
They do have some white washed versions of Spain under Islam, like that the natives and jews were treated well, but that is a lie of course. The natives were killed and the jews were enslaved and made to pay tribute.
Isabel and Ferdinand had to import Northerners to southern Spain to repopulate, so many natives were killed.
Got it for Kindle. Thanks for the recommendation.
On the other hand, Spain is a country with a massive (and well-earned) inferiority complex, populated entirely by welfare-recipients, with no national capability to do anything well: everything Spanish is second-rate at best.
They still have not recovered from the loss of the Spanish Armada, and they consider Gibraltar the cause celebre of the millennium. Want to watch a Spaniard go ballistic? Mention Sir Francis Drake.