Tribalism Returns to Europe
Is Europe's adventure in international living about to end?
At Potsdam, Germany, this weekend, Chancellor Angela Merkel told the young conservatives of her Christian Democratic Union that Germany's attempt to create a multicultural society where people "live side by side and enjoy each other" has "failed, utterly failed."
Backing up her rueful admission are surveys showing 30 percent of Germans believe the country is overrun by foreigners. An equal number believe the foreigners come to feed off German welfare.
Merkel had in mind the Turks who came as gastarbeiters, guest workers, in the 1960s. Some 2.5 million now live in Germany.
Arabs and East Europeans have come more recently. One survey puts the Muslim population at 5 million.
"Multikulti is dead," says Horst Seehofer of Merkel's sister party, the Christian Social Union of Bavaria. He wants no more immigration from "alien cultures." Turks and other Muslims are not learning the language, he contends, not assimilating, not becoming Germans.
Awareness of deep differences with Turkish neighbors became acute for Germans when, grieving in solidarity with America after 9/11, they learned that Turkish sectors of Berlin were celebrating Islam's victory with barrages of bottle rockets.
Like all of Europe, Germany grows nervous.
This summer, Thilo Sarrazin, who sat on the Bundesbank board, published "Germany Abolishes Itself," which sold 300,000 copies in seven weeks. Sarrazin argued that Germany's Muslim population is intellectually inferior and unable or unwilling to learn the language or culture, and mass immigration is destroying the nation.
No rightist, but a stalwart of the socialist party, Sarrazin was forced out at the Bundesbank. Half his socialist party stood by him.
Across Europe, there is a resurgence of ethnonationalism that is feeding the ranks of populist and anti-immigrant parties that are gaining respectability and reaching for power.
Austrian nationalists triumphed in 2008 when the Freedom Party of Joerg Haider and the Alliance for the Future of Austria together took 29 percent of the vote. The Swiss People's Party of Christoph Blocher, largest in Bern, was behind the successful referendum to change the constitution to outlaw minarets and prohibit the wearing of burqas.
Hungary's Jobbik Party, which to the Financial Times "sits squarely in Europe's most repulsive arch-nationalist tradition and which blames Jews and Roma for the hardships of other Hungarians," pulled 17 percent of the vote this year and entered parliament with 47 seats, up from zero seats in 2006.
The Sweden Democrats just captured 6 percent of the vote and entered parliament for the first time with 20 seats, joining right-wing folk parties in Norway and Denmark.
Geert Wilders, a rising figure in Dutch politics, was charged with hate speech for equating Islam and Nazism. In June, his Freedom Party swept past the ruling Christian Democrats, who lost half of their strength in parliament. "More security, less crime, less immigration, less Islam—that is what the Netherlands has chosen," said Wilders.
In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy—one eye on Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front, the other on the 2012 elections—rejecting cries of "Nazism" and "Vichyism," is dismantling Gypsy camps and deporting Gypsies to Romania. Milan is now following the French lead.
What is happening in Europe partakes of a global trend. Multiracial, multi-ethnic, multicultural nations are disintegrating.
Russians battle ethnic Muslim separatists in the North Caucasus. Seventy percent of Americans support an Arizona law to identify and expel illegal aliens. Beijing swamps the homelands of Tibetans and Uighurs with Han Chinese. India fights secession in Kashmir, Nagaland and the Naxalite provinces.
"Wars between nations have given way to wars within nations, " said Barack Obama in his Nobel Prize address.
Ethnonationalism tore Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet Union and Josip Tito's Yugoslavia into 22 separate nations, and is now tugging at the seams of all multi-ethnic states. Globalism is in retreat before tribalism.
But the awakening of Europe's establishment to the shallow roots of multiculturalism will likely prove frustrating and futile.
With her fertility rate below replacement levels for 40 years, projected to remain so for the next 40 years, Germany will lose 12 million of her 82 million people by 2050. Her median age will rise eight years to 53, and 40 percent of all Germans will be over 60.
Germany's problem is insoluble. She is running out of Germans.
Yet if her welfare state is to survive and her industries are to remain competitive, Germany will need millions of new workers.
Where are they to come from, if not the Third World? For not one European nation, save Iceland and Albania, has had a birth rate for decades that is not below zero population growth.
Baby boomer Europe decided in the 1960s and 1970s it wanted La Dolce Vita, not the hassle of children. It had that sweet life. Now the bill comes due. And the bill is the end of their tribes and countries as we have known them.
Old Europe is dying, and the populist and nationalist parties, in the poet's phrase, are simply raging "against the dying of the light."
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Entries(RSS)
Multiculturism will be touted by our scribbling set on the grounds that all-negro sports has improved the quality of games. Never mind the minor problems of clogged prisons, and illegitimate children. Oh, we also have an African president, and we pretend he doesn't smoke. The lies will continue until we undertake our own "3 strikes and you're repatriated" program.
Mr. Buchanan may be right in his death notice for Europe...but he also may be premature. First, it is still not probable that all or even most of Europe will be overtaken by outsiders, particularly if you include Russia as part of Europe. For example, even though they have slipped below replacement fertility, countries like Poland may not experience or allow the mindless influx of foreigners allowed in The UK, Germany,etc. especially after seeing the now obvious war on these countries by same. Second, are "populist and nationalist parties" only raging against a dying light? Does anyone really doubt that a truly French or German nationalist government could not expel if it desired any alien population ? If any European nation so desires to fight back for their homeland then I am confident they have more than the numbers they need. Mr. Buchanan, a great writer, might be overlooking a devoloping resistance to foreign invasion in Europe he never fails to correctly see in Afghanistan or Iraq. Or so we must hope.
An excellent article by Mr. Buchanan, and that aside there are some things which need to be said.
I don't understand why Mr. Buchanan has repeatedly tried to draw connections and patterns between international events, where the differences are more important than the similarities.
The Jew-hating party in Hungary is not motivated by problems of cultural integration, but by the simple fact that Hungarians have hated Jews for a long long time. There have been plenty of reports of how Jews are beaten up by police in Hungary and when they are beaten up by other people, the police turns a blind eye. The Hungarian hatred of Jews is only an extension of their rabid ethnonationalist bent that has caused the deaths of many Germans and other central European groups. Let us not even compare it to Germany's modest demand for integration.
Those ethnic Muslim separatists in Russia don't kill Russians, because they want to save their homeland. They kill Russians, because they hate Russians. Yes, Stalin also killed hundreds of thousands of their people, and did as complete a genocide of their peoples as possible, who have fallen in number from 300,000 in the early 20th century to 100,000 now. But even old genocides aren't the exact motivators - the dwellers of Caucasus mountains just love the thrill of killing people, as they always have. Even the Russian friendly Azeris in Caucasus just love killing people, and they do it to random strangers on the streets.
India is not fighting secession. Mr. Buchanan gives the impression that India is defending from insurgency. It's the opposite. It's Indian soldiers who kill innocent civilians, and then label them as separatist insurgents. The attack is from India to territories it doesn't like. The attack is not from those territories to the Indian state. The reason the Indian state terrorizes those people is to uproot them, build their giant public projects there, and advance the national religion of Progress. In return, the poor illiterate villagers of those regions have given back a weak meager resistance that is heavily overplayed. Federal troops in India are mercenaries and thugs who don't mind chopping fingers of children. It's not the same.
In these three cases, it's not ethnonationalism or love for one's own people or country. It's just about killing people, because you like killing people. No rationalisation necessary.
"Germany’s problem is insoluble. She is running out of Germans."
82 million isn't exactly 'running out' in my estimation. Germany is actually rather full and doesn't have much space for more people. Another oft-given example of birth dearth, Japan, has the same problem only worse. National pensions do create a problem, but it would be much easier to simply reform these programs than to try to make Germany more crowded than it already is.
We refuse to learn from the European experience. Mosques in Tennessee. Oh how I wish God's lips to their ears in 1862.
I gave up hope when Poland cynically granted citizenship to a Nigerian footballer for the 2002 World Cup...
@3. Oh, and here was I thinking that the Indian army was only killing Maoist separatists whose tactics of assasination and terror remarkably mirror those of the Shining Path and some econuts.
RJ Rafferty, let me just summarize it in this manner: It's Third World people engaging in Third World behaviour.
You need not read beyond this point, but to further elaborate it.
The Maoists are violent and insane. So are the police. The Maoists are victimized sons of the poor. The police are also victimized sons of the poor.
The animalistic Maoist tactics include blowing a bus of civilians, just because there were a few police officers on it. The animalistic police tactics include chopping off a baby's fingers one by one, until the villagers talk.
Now, let's state it this way. This "Maoist resistance" is actually a low-intensity war, akin to skirmishes between native Americans and expanding Europeans. (Except there are no Europeans, but savages on either side.) Brutal things are done by the "Maoists", but they are ultimately just as feeble as Apache Braves when placed in front of well armed soldiers.
I put "Maoist" in quotes, because it's urban intellectuals who are the Maoists. Those fighters are tribals. My ancestral family is from those tribal regions. Genocide of those peoples has been done for a long time - they are not Hindus, and invading Aryans had been pushing them, the pre-Hindu peoples, for millenia. Now, it's still happening in a different setting. What actually happened was that urban Maoist intellectuals started giving them money and ideological support.
It's the urban intellectuals who are warping those fighter's minds with strange, hideous notions. Many of them are rich elite with a great hatred of rich elite. They have a skewed view of life developed from reading too much of dialectical materialism. While these villagers once had some notion of moderation, it's urban Maoists who have removed all sense of morality from them. "Morality is just a vain ideology!" they will tell them. When the tribals ask if it is right to kill the poor in the name of saving the poor, they tell them, "Do you think the bourgeoisie care for them? The poor are their meat shields. When they kill them, it's for their power. When you kill them, you did it to cut a path through the rich who oppress our society and the police who protect them!"
So even though these people would have otherwise thought twice before raising their hands even against abusive police, it's well-off Indian anarchists who tell them not to think at all. I had a chill run down my spine when I heard of how they reassure tribals of their civil disobedience - by telling them, "Once you put a gun to a man's head, he will be a communist."
I know all of this, because I read Marxist magazines like Frontline and I see what Indians are posting on RevolutionaryLeft.Com, to be up to date on what attacks they may be planning. Indian communists tend to be more intelligent and well read, and they have good enough standards of journalism to show a little bit of what the government does - like burning down 640 villages to deny the jungle fighters a secure haven.
testing 2
Prateek Sanjay paints a bizarre picture by comparing non-assimilation of Muslims in Russia with those in Germany. The key distinction is that Russia's Muslims have lived there for centuries and are as indigenous to their corners of the land as Russians are to theirs. Whether they despise one another not the point.
In Germany, Turks and other "strangers" are there by invitation, an invitation extended with the expectation they will assimilate. Note that there can never be a "must" imposed by the benevolent host, only a not unreasonable expectation.
The concept of "guest worker" was always a furphy, a disingenous gesture to placate a minority of suspicious Germans and to give the entirely false impression that if things became a bit tricky the "guests" could always be disinvited and sent home.
The greatest virtue of the United States, although now showing signs of brittleness, is that it was and to a large extent remains a place where new arrivals willingly subjugated previous disparate identities in favour of the amalgamated singularity that is the American citizen.
Regrettably, the whole concept of multiculturalism is fatally flawed because its very nature demands, as a right, retention of ones "mother identity" and that identity shall maintain ascendancy in perpetuity over any form of "inferior" assimilated hybrid that might otherwise be allowed to flourish.
http://www.tgtnews.it/index.php/11/Firenze/5365.html
Robert (#11)-- that video is pretty sickening-- but what was almost worse than the fool's actions was the fact that no one in the large crowd lifted a finger to stop him (it looked like some even shook his hand as he was hustled out).
I think that this lack of courage (or convictions, or both) on the part of Westerners is what allowed the situation to develop in the first place, and is certainly compounding the problems with multiculturalism that Buchanan addressed in his article.
The Rev.Jimmy Swaggart always struck me as a Christian who would have probably done something about such a sacrilege,..-- even if it was in a Catholic Church. I believe he is still alive but am not sure. But most of the christian leaders I know today are either ecumenical types who have grown cold and indifferent to their religious traditions, or else are from the old, yankee-polecat stock who never was acquainted with true religion.
Prateek, good points as always but one thing about the Muslims in Russia is that they are natives and the Russians are foreigners, though I'm all for a strong Russia.
@11 & 12
That video was just a precursor to the following...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fiw2Dntuh8Q
Why won't Pat Buchanan talk about Building 7 and 9/11 like Constitution Party Senate candidate Jeff Becker from West Virginia?
#10
But I am in agreement with you.
What you are saying is the exact same thing as I was saying.
There is no comparison between Russians v. Chechens and Germany v. guest workers.
I merely objected to Pat Buchanan drawing the pattern of ethnonationalism around the world, when those issues are completely different.
#15 Daniel,
Thank you for the link. Our culture is under attack today by both those who want to kill our body and those who want to kill our soul. In a happier age an exuberent moslem on top of our Orthodox Churches, pulling down our Christian symbols to a cheering rabble, would have recieved a rocket propelled grenade to help him down.
Today we have folks like the Clintons and Bushes telling us that in the long run, this is the road to true peace. Justin Raimondo wonders aloud this morning in his weekly column why war and foreign policiy is not being discussed among tea-party or democratic candidates in any of the upcoming elections.
Anyone who must ask the question in public is not qualified to receive the honest answer.
Recently I had the privilege to converse with a gentleman from South Korea. I asked him does multiculturalism exist in any shape or form in South Korea? His response: it does not because Koreans love their culture and take pride in being Koreans. They have no interest to see their culture dissolve into a mishmash of a fantasized plurality.
Surprise! The world is black and white. The solutions to all the world's problems are known; most people, however, are afraid to make the difficult decisions.
#20
No, nobody knows the solution. As if there is one single sweeping thing to do that will solve a problem completely.
Lebanese people used to think that cutting out Muslims from their system and killing them would ensure that Lebanon would stay a Christian western nation and this status would not be hindered by foreign Arab elements. This little combined trick of disenfranchisement, ethnic genocide, and a little deportation backfired when they put themselves into a very long civil war, faced a huge backlash from Muslims from neighbouring countries, and found themselves being forced to flee in terror from their own country. As rich people, the Lebanese did not have the nerve to outlast even a single district turning to rubble from fighting, and all the Lebanese ran away. For even richer and more secure people in the western world, once a radical solution backfires, they will have less of a nerve than the Lebanese did.
The foreigners are already there. That problem has already happened. Such radical solutions don't deal with the Now.
Better to be a little cautious and see the costs of a decision than to exalt the benefits. You say being afraid, I say prudence.
The effort of historic peoples to save themselves is not "tribalism." That is a Marxist scare term.
@18
I should think it is obvious Raimondo is asking a rhetorical question...
I second Clyde Wilson at 22; why must everything be an 'ism' these days?
23#
Maybe it is the obvious thing I did not see, but Justin is one tough hombre when it comes to speaking his own mind. He usually doesn't mince his own words but those of his detractors. But yes, I would agree with you that he knows why, "he just ain't saying." As in the old cowboy dialect :
Them that knows,
Won't say!
Them that says,
won't know!
I read somewhere a suggestion that Europe should invite immigrants from Latin America, which peoples share much of Western culture with Europeans.
Conservatives in the USA ought to be targeting multiculturalism. It's interesting how so many conservatives can take on "liberals" when it comes to economic issues (e.g., taxes); but are unable to take up the fight when it comes to cultural factors. Yet it is the cultural factors which drive the train on so many other issues (e.g., illegal immigration).
It is time for American conservatives to start fighting the Culture War.
It’s the urban intellectuals who are warping those fighter’s minds with strange, hideous notions. Many of them are rich elite with a great hatred of rich elite.
Similar to the situation in the USA where we see corporate foundations giving monetary grants to every manner of left-of-center organization. There is a history of elites in capitalist societies using an alienated underclass as cannon fodder against rivals, as well as to keep the middle class on the defensive.
#27. American "conservatives" can't fight the culture war because it would not be "respectable," and they crave above all else to be respectable. The two most profound foreign observers, Tocqueville and Solzhenitsyn, pointed this out as the great American character flaw.
Any one here ever read THE CAMP OF THE SAINTS? It may not matter what anyone in Europe wants. Utlimately, it may not matter what anyone in the United States wants. It may simply come down to demographic realities.
Why would any ethnic group give up their culture to assimilate into another culture when the PC illusion tells us that all cultures are equal? If German culture does not surpass Turkish culture in any measurable way, then why would any Turk living in Germany abandon his culture and make an effort to adopt a new alien culture?
Only Germans could have IQ's high enough to believe that the Turks would learn German and become German. Germany is blood, not something that can be transmitted through words.
Germany gave us the universalism of Kant, so Germany would have given us the Multicult Faith, and it did.
I admire those who aren't smart enough to get into college, because they are smart enough to not believe what their college educated peers are learning.
I spend most of my time while reading Chronicles wishing I had known about it during college. I never did fall for the liberalism, but I did sense its presumptive altruistic tug. The Agrarian descendants are as good an antidote as can be had. The only cure I had was innate prejudice (a virtue, for sure) of the Burkean kind, and since that was in my blood, my professors could never wash it out. Those who tried hardest were a separate tribe and foreign to me. I always knew they were different from me and my family, and I never trusted their urgings to transcend what had nurtured and privileged me all my life. What did they have to offer in exchange, other than status with those whom were intolerable company?
In memory of Up from Liberalism by Richard Weaver.
An excellent article by Mr. Buchanan, again exposing multi-culturism for the top-down societal value that it is. Very few ethnic populations collectively say "Gee, we need more people who aren't like us at all."
Such policies are imposed from above, either through legislation, court decisions, big business or media/celebrity persuasion. Rank and file humanity wants nothing to do with it (though it's sometimes an unavoidable reality.) The notion that most Americans or Europeans embrace it is a lie.
Imagine the happiness and joy the Plains Indians must've felt to see all those white wagon trains moving west 150 years ago. "Oh good!" they cried, "DIVERSITY!"
@29: It does indeed matter what we want. The whole point of Le camp des saints was that Europe didn't want it badly enough to keep itself alive. Like the "respectable" folk, they just wanted to get by without being called "racist."
If German culture does not surpass Turkish culture in any measurable way, then why would any Turk living in Germany abandon his culture and make an effort to adopt a new alien culture?
Probably because it prevents them from being ghettoed off into a 'foreign' area. Even if cultures aren't superior in some way to each other, it makes sense to fit in to wherever you are. I'd wager most immigrants are interested in assimilating to a new environment; if they were that attached to their old ways they'd have stayed in their old country.