Happy Thanksgiving to our Canadian readers and Happy Columbus Day to our American readers. As to whether Canadians will have much to be thankful for in a week's time, we'll address the election polls momentarily.
~On this Columbus Day, it's the Old World that's being re-made into a New World. Bruce Bawer writes:
Few readers of this website will be unaware that over the last several years plenty of books, including my own While Europe Slept, have warned about the present and future effects of the rise of Islam in Europe. Some writers, notably Christopher Caldwell and Mark Steyn, have gone into considerable detail about the now widely recognized fact that the low birth rate among ethnic Europeans, the high birth rate among European Muslims, and the steady arrival of new Muslim immigrants on the continent will mean an increasingly Muslim Europe in the decades to come and, ultimately, a majority Muslim population in one country after another.
Just so. It's nine years since my bestselling America Alone (personally autographed copies of which are exclusively available, etc, etc) was first published, and it's proved so influential that since then the Islamization of the Continent has, er, accelerated. Mr Bawer continues:
On August 8, for example, Britain's Daily Telegraph actually permitted into its pages an article reporting that "Britain and the rest of the European Union are ignoring a demographic time bomb: a recent rush into the EU by migrants, including millions of Muslims, will change the continent beyond recognition over the next two decades, and almost no policy-makers are talking about it." According to the Telegraph, Spain's foreign-born population rose from 3.2% in 1998 to 13.4% in 2007, and in Brussels, "the top seven baby boys' names recently were Mohamed, Adam, Rayan, Ayoub, Mehdi, Amine and Hamza." The Telegraph cited the highly euphemistic conclusion of a recent report by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life that the rapid introduction of large numbers of Muslims into Europe results in "a difficult social fit."
That "difficult social fit" will get easier once certain people leave and those who are left "submit", as Michel Houellebecq's novel has it. (By the way, remind me to write a longer piece on the Houellebecq book, because the reviews in the anglo press prove his point as much as anything in the novel.)
As to the Telegraph's observation that "almost no policy-makers are talking about it", that's because talking about it lands you in a big heap of trouble. The duplicitous skunk Merkel is demanding Facebook crack down on those who wonder if her non-stop housewarming party for millions of fit, healthy, young, male, Muslim "refugees" is in what we used quaintly to call the national interest.
But look, here's an actual bigshot EU politician willing to take issue with Chancellor Merkel. The British Home Secretary, no less:
Theresa May's Speech Vilifying Migration Sparks Outrage
Oh, my! Outrageous vilification-a-go-go. So what was it she said?
When immigration is too high, when the pace of change is too fast, it's impossible to build a cohesive society. It's difficult for schools and hospitals and core infrastructure like housing and transport to cope.
That's it? A few bland remarks about infrastructure challenges? Nothing about cultural incompatibility, just some general acknowledgment that "schools and hospitals" find it hard to "cope" when you suddenly have to add a clitoridectomy wing or deal with genetic birth defects caused by everyone in Bradford marrying first cousins, or when the teacher has to amend hastily the curriculum to nix all that unhelpful stuff about the Crusades and the Holocaust. Not that there's anything wrong with Jew hatred and female genital mutilation, perish the thought; Mrs May is just saying that when "the pace of change is too fast" it can be hard for schools and hospitals to get up to speed on all these exciting new changes.
This is about as milksoppy as you can get, but even so it's apparently beyond the pale. In the Speccie, my comrade from Copenhagen the other week, Douglas Murray, rises to the defense of Mrs May:
Of course there aren't very many people who want more mass immigration (a recent poll suggested a mere seven per cent in the UK). But those there are seem disproportionately represented among the political and media class. Such people want to push back against any and all negative observations about the consequences of mass immigration into the UK. They insist, for instance, that a city like London is successful only because of its diversity and multiculturalism. Ergo every city in the UK should be made to be like London. They have no answer to the point that London was in fact quite a successful city even before the era of mass immigration.
That London's success is due only to its "diversity" is such received opinion now that it was the obligatory not-so-subtle subtext even of the recent Paddington movie. Because everyone knows that before "diversity" and "multiculturalism" London was just a moribund backwater. Sure, it was a moribund backwater that governed a quarter of the world's population, but other than that, it was a total flopperoo.
As Douglas notes, the UK's diversicrats have adopted their own version of the US "nation of immigrants" shtick:
The real attitude of most politicians for two decades, with much of the commentariat as a backing chorus, has been to ignore the polls, rub the public's nose in 'diversity' and ensure that anybody who doesn't suck it up is called a racist.
To pull this off it seems you only need a sprinkle of misrepresented history. Within seconds of any criticism of multiculturalism you can always find someone who will talk about earlier waves of immigration, usually starting with the Huguenots. But as anybody who is concerned about the facts rather than pro-mass immigration propaganda can tell you, this country saw the arrival of around 50,000 French Huguenots from the 1680s. This was such a large movement of people that we still talk about it. But that historic number is equal to only about six or seven weeks of average immigration from the Blair era onwards, up to and including this glorious era of heightened immigration over which David Cameron and Theresa May (against all their promises) now preside. Of course it took centuries for the wave of Huguenot immigration to be fully absorbed – and these were people who shared much of the religion and culture of the existing populations of these islands. The same number who now arrive once every couple of months now – rather than just once – are not French Protestants. Nor are they the incomparably cultured and educated Jews who had to flee from Hitler's Germany. They are people who mostly have no connection with our existing country or culture and often have a very different view of how a country and culture should be run.
Actually, the striking feature of much of the Muslim world is how, other than the mosques and madrassahs, their countries barely run at all. The German reputation for efficiency will not survive Chancellor Merkel mortgaging it to Islam. So I suppose Mrs May is right: it is an infrastructure challenge.
Whoops, sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that Egypt or Yemen is in any way dysfunctional. I meant, of course, that taking in large numbers of immigrants in a short space of time can cause problems for transportation infrastructure as it's hard for an infidel whore to get a cab in Rotherham late at night when they're all ferrying the 11-year-old schoolgirls to the grooming gangs.
~A week to go in Canada's interminable 11-week election campaign. Here's the roly-poly update from CTV:
Liberals 35.7 per cent;
Conservatives 28.9 per cent;
NDP 24.3 per cent.
And from the CBC:
Liberals 33.6 per cent;
Conservatives 31.8 per cent;
NDP 23.8 per cent.
On those numbers, the devil is in the decimal points, particularly with the resurgence of the Bloc Québécois. It's riding-by-riding warfare, where a momentary lapse in concentration here or a bit of complacency there will cost crucial seats. There could still be the traditional final-week swing that opens up a real lead, but even that's a bit wacky to predict on this political map: so far this campaign, in English Canada, the left-of-centre vote has swung away from the NDP to the Liberals, which is good for the latter; but in Quebec it's swung away from the NDP to the Bloc, which could be good for the Tories. Don your niqab and vote early and often.
~"A Disgrace to the Profession" has been doing such boffo business at Amazon that they've sold out. Should be back in stock there in a day or two, but, if you're hungry for it right now, it's available personally autographed by yours truly exclusively from the SteynOnline bookstore.
While you're cruising our aisles, don't forget the brand new book from me and my pals at the IPA on the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. On present demographic trends in Britain, there won't be a 900th anniversary, so order your copy today.
Oh, and if that's still too long to wait for "A Disgrace to the Profession", it can be yours in seconds via Kindle and Nook.
