Islam versus Europe

This post is prompted by Ed West’s blog today which claims that the USA was England’s greatest gift to the world. I posted a reply to his article and thought I’d expand on my thoughts here.

First, let me say in advance that I’m not claiming the American example has been wholly negative. Far from it. There are many aspects of it, such as the protection for free speech or the right to bear arms (even though now heavily infringed) that I greatly admire and wish we had in Europe. America has undoubtedly had many positive effects on the world. But the positive aspects of the American example are celebrated almost everywhere. So there is no need to rehearse them again here. Instead, I thought I’d reflect on the role the American example has played in the unfolding of the European Genocide.

The American Revolution was undoubtedly a great rupture in world history. There are many different frames through which it can be seen. The usual ones are the emergence of representative democracy and the sweeping away of inherited privilege. But I prefer to think of it as the first attack on the traditional idea of the nation. Here were a group of people breaking with their ancestral kin group. As West notes, 80% of Americans at the time of the Revolution were of British ancestry. What’s more, they continued to see themselves as English. When they asserted moral claims, they did it, not so much by invoking abstract principles as the French revolutionaries did, but by insisting legalistically on the rights of traditional Englishmen, citing the English Common Law and the Magna Carta, etc.

Whatever the difference in their origins, however, both the French and American revolutions had the same basic result: nations that weren’t nations. In place of the nation in the traditional sense of a people with common ancestry (the word nation derives from the Latin natus meaning “born”) emerged a country or a state based on intellectual abstractions and the the idea of a government-allocated status called citizenship that granted membership of this collectivity. (A case could be made that it’s only with historical hindsight that we see the French and American revolutions converging on this same result; and that another America might have been possible had it not been for the defeat of the South in the civil war, etc., but that’s another essay).

These are the key ideas driving the European Genocide. And here the term European Genocide could be extended to include the European part of America itself, since the people of European origin who built the country up in the first place within the next few decades face the prospect of becoming a minority within it. Of course it’s possible that Americans of European origin don’t mind this; that they really do buy into the idea of a community based on the elite-promoted ideal of shared citizenship, regardless of culture or ancestral origin. The “White Flight” phenomenon from colonised areas like California and Texas suggests otherwise, however. About half this blog’s visitors come from North America. So perhaps some of the Americans would care to leave their thoughts.

Another baneful effect of the American example has been the Supreme Court and its ability to invalidate laws based on their conformity with abstract principles, as interpreted by the judges themselves. This can be attributed to the vaunted “Founding Fathers”’ mistrust of democracy. And Europe’s elites have seized on this device to suppress democracy in their own countries, using human rights courts modelled on the American Supreme Court to suppress democratic initiatives aimed at challenging the de-Europeanisation of Europe.

Why did the American model become so influential? World War Two seemed to affirm the potency and rightness of the American example. In large part, this was irrational. America benefited from WW2 largely because it was physically isolated from the fighting. Free from the threat of German invasion, its economy was actually enhanced by the struggle. And though it was really the Soviet Union that defeated Hitler (88% of German casualties were sustained on the Eastern Front), the Hollywood myth-making machine ensured that most people soon thought otherwise.

In the immediate post-war period, the elites of austerity-struck Europe were mesmerised by the spectacle of American power and prosperity. And the spell hasn’t broken since. (It’s clear, too, that the American government has deliberately cultivated ties with, and promoted the careers of, European politicians willing to favour its interests, so it wasn’t all accidental, but that, too, is another essay). Influence-wielders in Europe seem tragically incapable of grasping the fact that the American model is completely inappropriate for a Europe of historic peoples rooted in their ancestral homelands. Indeed, it is likely to have the same consequences on native Europeans that it did on native Americans. The islamisation of Europe is, in large part, the consequence of this epic failure of judgement. It could be considered almost a cargo cult-level effort aimed at imitating the American example.

And in the 50s and 60s, when Asian and African colonists first arrived in Europe in large numbers, the issue was viewed through the prism of race. This, too, was largely down to the example of America where the civil rights struggle was playing out. As Enoch Powell pointed out, though, the parallel was misleading. Negroes had been resident in America since before it had even been constituted as a separate country. There was simply no comparison with newly-arrived negro or Paki colonists in Britain.

In conclusion, then, let me wish our American cousins a happy Independence Day but note at the same time, as Breivik did, that we Europeans need an independence day of our own. And not just from the Muslims.