The Strange Death of Europe is the internationally bestselling account of a continent and a culture caught in the act of suicide, now updated with new material taking in developments since it was first published to huge acclaim. These include rapid changes in the dynamics of global politics, world leadership and terror attacks across Europe.
Douglas Murray travels across Europe to examine first-hand how mass immigration, cultivated self-distrust and delusion have contributed to a continent in the grips of its own demise. From the shores of Lampedusa to migrant camps in Greece, from Cologne to London, he looks critically at the factors that have come together to make Europeans unable to argue for themselves and incapable of resisting their alteration as a society. Murray’s “tremendous and shattering” book (The Times) addresses the disappointing failures of multiculturalism, Angela Merkel’s U-turn on migration, the lack of repatriation and the Western fixation on guilt, uncovering the malaise at the very heart of the European culture. His conclusion is bleak, but the predictions not irrevocable. As Murray argues, this may be our last chance to change the outcome, before it’s too late.
Here are my notes on Murray’s August 11, 2006 talk to the Wednesday Morning Club:
“…Mexicans coming over our borders,” says Janet Levy and I snap to attention for a minute before receding into my carbohydrates-induced fog. Then there’s a terrible mix-up and the little Pommie clerk walks behind the lectern and starts mumbling about neo-conservatism.
He’s got a plumby upper-class accent and he swallows his words. Those of us not trained in lip-reading are in big trouble.
I finally realize that this bloke talking about going after terrorism on the front foot (a cricketing term) is author Douglas Murray.
He gets terribly philosophical for somebody born in 1979. He says Leo Strauss is the modern founder of neo-conservatism.
He says there are no Muslim countries where non-Muslims enjoy equal rights.
I jot down notes. “Israel builds bunkers to protect its citizens. The other side builds bunkers to protect its missiles.”
“Tuesday was all Ned Lamond. Where was Ned Lamont yesterday morning?”
“The four bombers [in London July 7, 2005] received collectively 250,000 pounds in welfare.”
“A few days after the bombing, there was a story about a man in full Muslim regalia carrying a backpack boarding a train in London. Everybody froze until a young man went over and pushed the Muslim off the train saying, ‘Not today, mate.'”
“The Brazilian who was shot by mistake July 21 is better known in Britain than any of the 54 victims of the July 7 bombing.”
Murray recommends bulldozing mosques that teach sedition.
He gets his only spontaneous applause of the day.
Douglas mentions a British communist party whose campaign slogan was, “Vote for us and you’ll never have to vote again.”
He said we are not in World War III. Sure, that feels dramatic and important, but even if you had a 9/11 every month, that would still be nothing like the conflict of 1939-45.
“There’s a vanity to be living at the end of time.”
“If we are only given guilt, and not given pride, we will build a demoralized generation.”
Douglas noted that due to fear of Islamic assassins, nobody is going to make fun of Mohammed to the degree Jesus is mocked. “And if you were to write about Mohammed’s sexual shenanigans, you wouldn’t even have to make them up.”
* Steve Sailer on why multicultural societies are less creative.
* Robert Weisberg: Bad Students, Not Bad Schools.
COMMENT: Kevin you’re a Canadian Catholic. Luke, you grew up as an Australian Christian, and then converted to Judaism. You’re both Anglo descendants. What do you two think about the idea of taking institutions like the Churches of England and Scotland and changing them so we celebrate the British people, our history, science, and philosophy, instead of (or in addition to) Abrahamic mythology? The new generations look at Christianity as a Roman derivation of Jewish folklore (see Caesar’s Messiah by Joseph Atwill). I can understand completely Luke why you left Christianity and simply became a Jew since that way, you’re getting at “the source” of the religion, and you actually get to have a nation and people celebrated through the faith. But that’s the whole problem with our civilization: the British ought to have their own unique nationalist faith and ethnocentric tribal centers to celebrate our folk.
