In my review of Michel Houellebecq’s Submission, I asked:
Can a novel wake up a civilization? And my answer was
- I certainly hope so.
But perhaps a non-fiction book can do even more? The
reaction Submisson created in France when it was originally published
is now being matched by Douglas Murray’s non-fiction The Strange Death of
Europe. Not only it is on The Sunday Times bestseller list but the interview
with the author got 96661 hits in one day!
What is it that Douglas Murray has done right? To quote Orwell
- in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a
revolutionary act. Douglas Murray has told the truth eloquently and
with the knowledge of the subject unmatched by anybody else, so that after
having read the book one can only say – this is so clear, how come no one had done this before?
The ‘tiredness’ felt by Europeans who have lost faith in their own
values creates a passivity and a vacuum easily filled by immigrants whose
belief system is completely incompatible by the values Europeans once used to
have.
To me living in Israel this European passivity and the belief that
nothing can be done is truly shocking. Despite all its daily
problems, we here feel we are alive and masters of our own fate despite the
opprobrium by the rest of the world.
There were times in the book that I gasped and asked myself, how
is this possible? Here is one of them:
In the meantime elected
officials and bureaucrats continue to do everything they can to make the
situation as bad as possible as fast as possible. In October 2015 there was a
public meeting on the small city of Kassel in the state of Hesse. Eight hundred
immigrants were due to arrive in the following days and concerned residence had
a meeting to ask questions of their representatives. As a video recording of
the meeting shows, citizens were calm, polite but concerned. Then at a certain
point their district president, one Walter Lübcke, calmly informs them that
anybody who does not agree with the policy is ‘free to leave Germany’.
You can see and hear on the tape the intake of breath, amazed laughter, hoots
and finally shouts of anger. Whole new populations are being brought into their
country and they are being told that if they don’t like this they are always
free to leave? Do not politicians in Europe realise what could happen if they
continue to treat European people like this?
How come Eastern Europe is different? Having lived in the USSR and
Yugoslavia, I knew the answer.
"Why is Eastern
Europe so different? Why has its attitude throughout the migrant crisis,
towards borders, natural sovereignty, cultural cohesion and many other
points besides been so much at odds with that of Western Europe?
"
"Chantal Delsol
noticed the seeds of this difference in the mid-1990s. Spending time in Eastern
Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall, she saw that Eastern Europeans 'increasingly considered us as creatures from another planet, even while at a
different level they dreamed of becoming like us. I later became
convinced that it was in these eastern European societies that I should seek
some answers to our question -- the divergence between us and them led me to
the belief that the last fifty years of good fortune had entirely erased our
sense of the tragic dimension of life'. That tragic dimension of life had not
been erased in the East. And nowhere have the consequences of this been more
clearly displayed than in the attitudes of Eastern European leaders, with the
support of their publics, to the migration crisis."
Douglas Murray is not very optimistic about the future. The last
chapter, What will be, is pretty bleak. I, on the other hand, am a
bit more optimistic. It seems that the awakening has finally begun and this
book is the perfect vehicle to help it accelerate
***
Update July 14
I just got a link to the trailer for Darkest Hour (2017)
where Gary Oldman plays Winston Churchill
during the 1940 War Cabinet Crisis between May 25 and May 28 when Churchill stood
up to Lord Halifax and saved the West.
Churchill on May 28, 1940:
"I have thought carefully in these last days whether it was part of my duty to consider entering into negotiations with That Man [Hitler]. But it was idle to think that, if we tried to make peace now, we should get better terms than if we fought it out. The Germans would demand our – that would be called disarmament – our naval bases, and much else. We should become a slave state, though a British Government which would be Hitler's puppet would be set up – under Mosley or some such person. And where should we be at the end of all that? On the other side we have immense reserves and advantages. And I am convinced that every one of you would rise up and tear me down from my place if I were for one moment to contemplate parley or surrender. If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground."
We have reached a very similar point today.
And here is my comment after having seen the movie and read
the book:
In my review of Michel Houellebecq’s Submission, I asked:
Can a novel wake up a civilization? And my answer was
- I certainly hope so.
But perhaps a non-fiction book can do even more? The
reaction Submisson created in France when it was originally published
is now being matched by Douglas Murray’s non-fiction The Strange Death of
Europe. Not only it is on The Sunday Times bestseller list but the interview
with the author got 96661 hits in one day!
What is it that Douglas Murray has done right? To quote Orwell
- in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a
revolutionary act. Douglas Murray has told the truth eloquently and
with the knowledge of the subject unmatched by anybody else, so that after
having read the book one can only say – this is so clear, how come no one had done this before?
Murray shows that the utter mess Europe has got itself into
through massive immigration is not the result of some conspiracy, but of
politicians never fully understanding the consequences of their actions and
then once realizing that something was amiss, doing everything but confronting
the truth, constantly lying to everyone and themselves, in order to safeguard
their own short term goals, even if it ultimately meant the death of the whole
continent, or at least Western Europe.
The ‘tiredness’ felt by Europeans who have lost faith in their own
values creates a passivity and a vacuum easily filled by immigrants whose
belief system is completely incompatible by the values Europeans once used to
have.
To me living in Israel this European passivity and the belief that
nothing can be done is truly shocking. Despite all its daily
problems, we here feel we are alive and masters of our own fate despite the
opprobrium by the rest of the world.
There were times in the book that I gasped and asked myself, how
is this possible? Here is one of them:
In the meantime elected
officials and bureaucrats continue to do everything they can to make the
situation as bad as possible as fast as possible. In October 2015 there was a
public meeting on the small city of Kassel in the state of Hesse. Eight hundred
immigrants were due to arrive in the following days and concerned residence had
a meeting to ask questions of their representatives. As a video recording of
the meeting shows, citizens were calm, polite but concerned. Then at a certain
point their district president, one Walter Lübcke, calmly informs them that
anybody who does not agree with the policy is ‘free to leave Germany’.
You can see and hear on the tape the intake of breath, amazed laughter, hoots
and finally shouts of anger. Whole new populations are being brought into their
country and they are being told that if they don’t like this they are always
free to leave? Do not politicians in Europe realise what could happen if they
continue to treat European people like this?
How come Eastern Europe is different? Having lived in the USSR and
Yugoslavia, I knew the answer.
"Why is Eastern
Europe so different? Why has its attitude throughout the migrant crisis,
towards borders, natural sovereignty, cultural cohesion and many other
points besides been so much at odds with that of Western Europe?
"
"Chantal Delsol
noticed the seeds of this difference in the mid-1990s. Spending time in Eastern
Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall, she saw that Eastern Europeans 'increasingly considered us as creatures from another planet, even while at a
different level they dreamed of becoming like us. I later became
convinced that it was in these eastern European societies that I should seek
some answers to our question -- the divergence between us and them led me to
the belief that the last fifty years of good fortune had entirely erased our
sense of the tragic dimension of life'. That tragic dimension of life had not
been erased in the East. And nowhere have the consequences of this been more
clearly displayed than in the attitudes of Eastern European leaders, with the
support of their publics, to the migration crisis."
***
Update July 14
I just got a link to the trailer for Darkest Hour (2017)
where Gary Oldman plays Winston Churchill
during the 1940 War Cabinet Crisis between May 25 and May 28 when Churchill stood
up to Lord Halifax and saved the West.
Churchill on May 28, 1940:
"I have thought carefully in these last days whether it was part of my duty to consider entering into negotiations with That Man [Hitler]. But it was idle to think that, if we tried to make peace now, we should get better terms than if we fought it out. The Germans would demand our – that would be called disarmament – our naval bases, and much else. We should become a slave state, though a British Government which would be Hitler's puppet would be set up – under Mosley or some such person. And where should we be at the end of all that? On the other side we have immense reserves and advantages. And I am convinced that every one of you would rise up and tear me down from my place if I were for one moment to contemplate parley or surrender. If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground."
Churchill on May 28, 1940:
"I have thought carefully in these last days whether it was part of my duty to consider entering into negotiations with That Man [Hitler]. But it was idle to think that, if we tried to make peace now, we should get better terms than if we fought it out. The Germans would demand our – that would be called disarmament – our naval bases, and much else. We should become a slave state, though a British Government which would be Hitler's puppet would be set up – under Mosley or some such person. And where should we be at the end of all that? On the other side we have immense reserves and advantages. And I am convinced that every one of you would rise up and tear me down from my place if I were for one moment to contemplate parley or surrender. If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground."
We have reached a very similar point today.
And here is my comment after having seen the movie and read
the book:
Update Sept 6 , 2017
Week 18 on the Sunday Times bestseller list
