Does anyone still talk about the Three Rs in education? That would be reading, writing and racism ...whoops, my mistake, 'rithmetic.
It isn't difficult. Every weekend, my inbox fills up with readers demanding to know what I think about this or that news story, but in the end all the news stories are the same. Just from the last couple of days:
~At McGill University in Montreal, cute young predominantly female students in masks and keffiyehs take over the campus to demand "intifada until victory";
~At the University of Texas in Austin, a comedian attempts to point out to members of Trans 4 Palestine the internal contradictions of the rainbow coalition, and for his pains gets beaten up;
~At Châteauroux in central France, fifteen-year-old Mathis Marchais is stabbed to death by an Afghan "migrant" known to the gendarmes for two previous stabbings earlier this year but loosed on the public by an indulgent judge just last Monday;
~In Hamburg, over a thousand protesters march through the streets calling for an Islamic caliphate in Germany.
The Three Rs: Read the Writing on the wall - and do the 'Rithmetic. Like I said, it's not difficult - although it seems to be for some of the willing dupes who brought us the western world's new reality. Here is the Liberal Member of Parliament for Mount Royal, and Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board in Mr Trudeau's ministry, attempting to reconcile the scenes on the street with the policies he has supported:
I call on the @mcgillu administration to act. Final exams are coming up and all students need to feel safe on campus. pic.twitter.com/Wn8VLZA0TD
— Anthony Housefather (@AHousefather) April 28, 2024
Good luck with that. As Sheila Gunn Reid points out, Anthony Housefather belongs to a government that was happy to invoke war measures when Canadian truckers arrived in Ottawa and to freeze the bank accounts of any citizen who donated fifty bucks to the cause. The foot-soldiers of the new intifada need fear no such strictures. Mr Housefather chaired the House of Commons committee I testified before just five years ago, and seemed personally a polite and agreeable fellow. But he belongs to the "Official Jews" for whom mass Muslim immigration is less of a threat than those awkward types who point out the obvious consequences of mass Muslim immigration. The "Official Jews" are not confined to Canada: America is awash with them, as is the United Kingdom. And unless, as Kathy Shaidle used to say, they're "too stupid to be Jewish" what's happening cannot have come as a surprise. Me a zillion years ago:
Young Muslims do not like Jews: that is a simple fact, and it's a waste of everybody's time denying it. Where Muslims predominate, Jews vanish - as in Molenbeek, across the canal from downtown Brussels. I remember from my childhood the main drag, the Chaussée de Gand (or Steenweg op Gent, if you're Flemish, as my mum was), as a bustling strip with many Jewish businesses. But in the first decade of the 21st century they all disappeared, and their former owners chose to remain silent – because it was easier that way.
And thus the seeming paradox of the post-war era - that, as a certain "niche Canadian" has been saying for years, the principal beneficiary of western Holocaust guilt was Islam. The Canadian Islamic Congress and America's ADL and their European equivalents did not choose merely "to remain silent": they enthusiastically welcomed it, and did their best to crush those who disagreed. Having made his bed, Mr Housefather is now apparently a little squeamish about lying in it. He is a Jew whose family have been Montrealers for generations. But there will be no Housefathers in the city's future: that is the logical consequence of Liberal Party "multiculturalism".
This isn't about Jews, except insofar as they are presently at the sharp end of a convulsive cultural shift. About six months after 9/11, I took a little trip to Western Europe and the Middle East and, waiting for a friend in Vienna, I noticed that everybody going in and out of the maternity shop across the street appeared to be Muslim. That's just anecdote, as the bien pensants who dismissed my book as "alarmist" like to say. But two decades on it's borne out by statistics. Back then, Muslims made up of four per cent of Austria's population; now it's over eight per cent. Me, again years ago, from the expanded e-book edition of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade:
According to the Vienna Institute of Demography, by mid-century a majority of Austrians under fifteen will be Muslim. This is a country that not so long ago was ninety percent Catholic. But "not so long ago" is another country:
Salzburg, 1938, singing nuns, Julie Andrews — "How do you solve a problem like Maria?"
Salzburg, 2038: How do you solve a problem like sharia?
"Eight per cent" doesn't sound like a lot. But, in western societies of elderly native populations, they skew young, and make up an ever larger percentage of your youth - close to a majority in certain European cities. Jews, on the other hand, are old. So, for those cutesy coeds, young Muslims are all around and young Jews are very thin on the ground. Mr Housefather's concern for "all students" to "feel safe on campus" isn't going to be an issue for much longer.
And really, if "feeling safe" was such a big deal to him, why would he have supported transformative immigration policy? In The Spectator, Gavin Mortimer writes about a bigshot French celeb called Omar Sy. I'd never heard of him but apparently he was in X-Men 37 and was voted France's "favourite personality" a few years ago. A West African Muslim, he now lives in Hollywood, but returns to French soil every once in a while to berate the natives for their irredeemable racism:
Sy also indirectly attacked the French police, saying: 'When I talk about Adama or Nahel, it's for the group, it's for all of us'. Nahel was the 17-year-old with a lengthy rap sheet who was fatally shot by police last summer when he sped away from a vehicle checkpoint. Adama Traoré died in police custody in 2016, reportedly from heatstroke, though his family contest this version.
When a French celebrity name-checks "Nahel", everyone knows who he's talking about. No one knows the names of Mathis Marchais, fatally stabbed on Saturday, or his fellow sacrifice on the altar of diversity, Thomas Perotto - or the even younger infants offered up to the multiculti gods at Annecy. When you read the coy, evasive media coverage, it's almost as if they're embarrassed to mention these stories.
And why wouldn't they be? Journalism, like showbiz, like university, like policing, is a young man's game. So Mathis and Thomas and the Annecy kindergartners can never become emblematic, because to designate them as such is to indict the new France - your France - and its particular demographic energy.
The salient feature of the demonstrations roiling McGill, Columbia and other western campuses is not that the pasty blonde trustiefundies are "pro-Palestinian" but that they're cool with being culturally Islamic. Oh, to be sure, it's mostly just keffiyehs and a few other fashion accessories; not yet full body bags and clitoridectomies. But why wouldn't it have a purchase on them that Mr Housefather's bleatings about how everyone should feel safe do not? The young want to belong, and what they most want to belong to is the future - and they grasp instinctively where the future's headed.
They also get that these guys mean it. It is not coincidental that white upscale females are now among the most enthusiastic proponents of Hamas. For two generations, their menfolk have made the mistake of believing all that What Women Want bollocks, and the result is legions of "new males", metrosexuals, soyboys - or, alternatively, depressive methheads chugging back Bud Light down in the man-cave. Me again: "We have made a world of men that women don't want and women that men don't want, and that doesn't seem likely to end well."
And suddenly there's Ahmed and Shahid doing their Sheik of Araby Xtreme Sports routine:
At night when you're asleep
Into your tent I'll creep.
This very day Yousef Humza resigned as First Minister of Scotland. But how does a man with such a name and no obvious talent for the job get to be First Minister in the first place in a country that is 95 per cent white and non-Muslim? Because, while still a minority, western Muslims punch above their weight - and the new "men" of the new west punch way below theirs.
Which is why, as that comedian at the University of Texas discovered, pointing out to Trannies 4 Pallies that Ahmed won't be too thrilled if he creeps into your tent and discovers there's more than one pole has no impact on the protesters. The LGBTQWERTY types also see the incoming tide and want to belong. Hard and cruel as it is, the future demanded by the caliphate crowd in Hamburg has its certainities. And certainty trumps the obvious delusions of poor Anthony Housefather and the multiculti set.
Eighteen years ago, my old comrade from The National Post, David Frum, reviewed my book America Alone:
I'm delighted to see that the book is finding its audience. I spotted a copy on the reading desk of a high German diplomatic official just the other day.
I have no idea of the identity of that bigshot Berliner. But prime ministers, princes, presidents and even some bona fide kings and queens (two of each) called me in to discuss the thesis of my book.
And then they did nothing.
Mr Frum continues:
As statisticians say, a trend is a trend until it bends... I for one would not bet the mortgage money that Europe's low birth rates of today will continue for very much longer. Nor would I place much confidence in the continuance of high birth rates among European immigrant populations.
Human reproduction is very influenced by economic incentives...
That is correct, up to a point. But there are cultural incentives, too: Whatever the respective charms of abortion or same-sex marriage, both are a biological dead-end. So, more obliquely, is the interminable prolongation of education and the impact of mass immigration on affordable housing. All four lead to later - and smaller - family formation. So men and women who would have been twenty-seven-year-old suburban dads and mums are now on the frontlines at McGill picking out their keffiyehs. Throw in open borders - and, as the icing on the cake, encourage your middle-school girls to prioritise "gender identity" and thereby render themselves infertile.
So the fertility-rate comeback that David Frum predicted almost two decades ago failed to materialise. Indeed, all that has happened since then is that America has joined Europe in the demographic death-spiral:
U.S. Fertility Rate Falls to Record Low
Two decades back, there was still time to change course. Instead, the governments of the west doubled down on the madness, and today averting the inevitable requires measures they have no stomach for. Anthony Housefather's Liberal Party comrade Warren Kinsella is now calling for mass deportations - which would get him kicked out of any European "conservative" party, or even most "far-right" parties.
Yet, even as their parents drone on with their multiculti bromides, our youth get the reality: Queers 4 Palestine may be a delusion, but not as insane a delusion as "diversity is our strength".
It's not difficult: Do the math.
~We thank you for all your kind comments this last grisly couple of months - and thank you especially to all those new members of The Mark Steyn Club, and those old members who've signed up a chum for a SteynOnline Gift Certificate or a Steyn Club Gift Membership. Steyn Clubbers span the globe, from London, Ontario to London, England to London, Kiribati. We hope to welcome many more new members in the years ahead. And Mark looks forward to bringing the UK state censor Ofcom into court on June 11th.
~We had a very busy weekend at SteynOnline, starting with Mark's Court Report on significant legal developments from Donald Trump to Harvey Weinstein via Tommy Robinson. Rick McGinnis's Saturday movie date examined the genre of the biker movie, and our latest Tale for Our Time continued Steyn's serialisation of The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie. Click for Part Eight, Part Nine and Part Ten. Part Eleven airs tonight.
Our marquee presentation was a special musical event recorded live at Hillsdale with Mark and his special guests looking at the relationship between Broadway and the standard song.
If you were too busy trying to shake off the peace protesters waiting for you outside the White House Correspondents Dinner, we hope you'll want to check out one or three of the foregoing as a new week begins.
