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How Europe Finally Lost the World's Respect (Except Canada) — Transcript

by Dr. Jonathan Tam · 6,687 words · 1,093 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00The US finally snapped at Europe. On
0:02February 14th, 2025, American Vice
0:05President J.D. Vance called Europe a
0:08free rider on one of Europe's biggest
0:10stages. Because since the end of World
0:12War II, America's been footing Europe's
0:14bill. And while Europe pontificates
0:16about climate change, human rights, and
0:19social welfare, it's becoming irrelevant
0:21fast. And the numbers are stark. In
0:242008, the EU's economy was about 10%
0:26bigger than America's. By 2023, it had
0:29fallen to 2/3 the size. Over that same
0:32period, the EU output grew only 13.5%.
0:37America grew 87%. For 2026, the US
0:41economy is on track to be about 1.4
0:44times the size of Europe's. So, I'm
0:46going to treat this like a legal case.
0:47And to build this case, I went through
0:49the EU's own reports, NATO's budgets,
0:52and studies that all landed on the same
0:54verdict from opposite directions. In the
0:57next few minutes, I'll cover the five
0:58charges that define Europe's drive
1:00towards civilizational suicide, and they
1:03build toward one urgent question. What's
1:06the positive vision for the future? Now,
1:08building this indictment meant reading
1:10tons of articles about Europe. And the
1:12same events kept arriving completely
1:14different depending on the outlet. And
1:16that's where today's sponsor comes in.
1:18Ground News gathers every outlet's
1:20coverage in one place, [music] with each
1:22source's political leaning, reliability,
1:25and ownership right beside their
1:27headlines. Take any topic coming up, and
1:30you'll see who's covering it, which way
1:31they lean, and their headlines side by
1:34side. One outlet's riot is another's
1:36protest. And whichever headline you read
1:39first often becomes your version of the
1:41story. In order to stay balanced, they
1:42have this whole feed called Blind Spot.
1:45And it does what its name says. It
1:46collects stories the other side of the
1:48media barely touched. Later in this
1:50video, you'll see exactly why that
1:51matters. Cross-checking coverage is half
1:54of this channel's job. And for me and my
1:56team, that used to mean 20 open tabs.
1:58Now, it's one. Subscribe at
2:00ground.news/tam [snorts]
2:02or scan the QR code on the screen, and
2:04you'll get 40% off their Vantage plan.
2:07That's unlimited access, and it's the
2:08plan that I use. The link's in the
2:10description and pinned comment as well.
2:12So, watch the headlines as we go
2:14because the first charge against Europe
2:16is on the economy.
2:19>> [music]
2:26[music]
2:27>> The GDP numbers actually understate how
2:29far behind Europe really is. Technology
2:32is the clearest proxy we have for
2:34innovation, for whether a society is
2:36still inventing or just maintaining.
2:38Now, on that measure, Europe is barely
2:41on the board. As of mid-2026,
2:44of the world's 25 most valuable
2:46companies, around 20 are American.
2:49Europe has one, ASML, a Dutch chip
2:52equipment maker that most people have
2:54never heard of. And it sits near the
2:56bottom of that list. That's it.
2:58America's biggest tech firms, the
2:59Magnificent Seven, are collectively
3:01worth more than $20 trillion.
3:04Europe's seven largest tech companies
3:05combined are worth a fraction of that.
3:08Apple alone is worth more than all seven
3:10of them put together. And Europe used
3:11[music] to be a tech powerhouse. Nokia
3:14held roughly 40% of the global mobile
3:16phone market at its peak around 2007.
3:19Then, the iPhone came along, and that
3:21was it.
3:23And the same thing is happening to the
3:24crown jewel of European manufacturing
3:26right now.
3:27Volkswagen announced its first ever
3:30factory closures in Germany in 2024,
3:33while Chinese EV maker BYD is selling
3:35cars in Europe for nearly a third less.
3:38And that's after tariffs. The single
3:40most qualified person in Europe to
3:42diagnose all of this was Mario Draghi,
3:44former head of the European Central
3:46Bank. He saved the euro in 2012 with
3:49three words, "Whatever it takes." In
3:51September 2024, the EU itself
3:54commissioned him to produce a report on
3:56European competitiveness. His verdict?
3:59An existential challenge. The numbers
4:01were brutal. EU gross value added per
4:04hour worked grew 0.7% a year between
4:072000 and 2019. In the US, it grew 1.2%.
4:12The US invests 5% of its GDP in tech,
4:14the Eurozone invests 2.8. American R&D
4:17spending is 3.5% of GDP, Europe's is
4:202.3. Half a percent a year sounds like a
4:23rounding error, but growth compounds.
4:25So, over two decades, that gap widens
4:28into a canyon. Europe didn't fall off a
4:30cliff, it lost a fraction of a step
4:33every year and never made it up.
4:37And the pipeline is weakening, too. In
4:39the 2022 PISA study, the biggest
4:42international test of student
4:43performance, nearly one in three EU
4:46students couldn't clear the basic
4:47proficiency bar in math. In 2018, it was
4:50one in five. Germany got hit worst of
4:52all. A 25-point drop in math in a single
4:56cycle. [music]
4:56That's equivalent to a full year of lost
4:59learning. And the newly released results
5:00show average maths and reading [music]
5:02scores falling further across the OECD.
5:05Germany's math score fell another 11
5:08points to a new low. And that's the
5:10country's lowest score it's ever
5:11recorded.
5:15And the countries at the top were
5:16Singapore, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. The
5:19same ones eating Europe's lunch in every
5:21other category. Draghi laid out 383
5:24recommendations. One year later, an
5:27independent audit found that only 43 had
5:29been acted on. Draghi himself admitted
5:31he was pessimistic.
5:33>> One year on, Europe is therefore in a
5:36harder place.
5:38>> Every single problem he'd flagged had
5:40only gotten worse since he flagged it.
5:42Now, in fairness, some analysts push
5:44back on the decline angle. Bruegel, a
5:47major EU-linked policy institute, points
5:50out that once you account for the lower
5:51cost of living, the gap between the EU
5:54and the US is only about 4%. [music]
5:56Americans simply work more, roughly 15%
5:59more hours than Europeans, who take the
6:02longer vacations and shorter weeks by
6:04choice. Per hour worked, Europe has
6:07roughly kept pace. Both sets of numbers
6:09are true, but only one of them explains
6:11why Europe hasn't built a single
6:13globally dominant tech company [music]
6:15this century, and why roughly 30% of
6:18European unicorns packed up and left the
6:20continent between 2008 and 2021.
6:23That's the first charge, [music] falling
6:25behind economically. But you can bounce
6:27back from that. Countries rebuild all
6:28the time. The second charge is harder to
6:30come back from because for almost a
6:32century, Europe's been on a streak of
6:35political embarrassments. Quick plug, if
6:37you like these sorts of deep dives,
6:38don't forget to like and sub.
6:49European failure goes back as far as the
6:51League of Nations folding before Italy's
6:54invasion of Abyssinia in 1935. But we
6:57actually don't need to go back that far.
6:59The last 30 years are damning enough on
7:01their own. In June 1991, as Yugoslavia
7:04tore itself apart, Luxembourg's Foreign
7:06Minister Jacques Poos, then chairing the
7:09European Council, declared, "This is the
7:11hour of Europe, not the hour of the
7:13Americans." He was catastrophically
7:16wrong. Europe couldn't stop wars that
7:18killed well over 100,000 people over the
7:20next 4 years. The lowest point came at
7:22Srebrenica in 1995, a UN-declared safe
7:26area where over 8,000 Bosniak men and
7:29boys were killed in days while 400 Dutch
7:32peacekeepers stood by and did nothing.
7:34The UN's own review admitted it failed
7:36to recognize the scope of the evil
7:38confronting us. In the end, it took the
7:41US bombers to stop the war and US
7:43diplomacy to broker the peace. A book
7:45about that era is literally called
7:47Triumph of the Lack of Will. And the
7:50embarrassing part is Srebrenica was no
7:52isolated failure because it kept
7:54happening. So now we go to Syria. From
7:562011, while the war went on for years,
7:59Europe managed sanctions and statements.
8:02And out of it came the refugee wave that
8:04would reshape European politics for a
8:06decade. More on the migrants later. And
8:08then the Sahel, the clearest case of
8:10all. Between 2022 and 2023, in 18
8:13months, France was thrown out of three
8:15of its former African colonies: Mali,
8:18Burkina Faso, and Niger, one after
8:21another. And all three turned to
8:22Russia's mercenaries to do the job
8:24France used to do. And to add insult to
8:26injury, on a stage in Russia, Burkina
8:29Faso's military leader, Captain Ibrahim
8:32Traoré, declared their break from France
8:35as a kind of coming of age, an end of
8:37being treated as anyone's junior
8:39partner. I know what some of you guys
8:41are shouting at the screen about right
8:42now. What about Ukraine? Because on
8:44paper, Ukraine is the comeback story.
8:47[music] Europe is now Kyiv's biggest
8:48backer, more than 200 billion euros in
8:52total support since 2022, [music]
8:54more than the 115 billion from the US.
8:56And while Washington's aid stalled in
8:582025, it was Europe that kept Ukraine's
9:01government running.
9:02>> Last but not least,
9:05I want to thank me.
9:06>> But look closer, and Ukraine reads like
9:08the case for the prosecution. [music]
9:10Europe couldn't stop the war. Crimea was
9:12taken in 2014. The continent answered
9:16with sanctions, and a full invasion came
9:18anyway. What's worse is since that
9:20invasion began, Europe has paid Russia
9:22more for the oil and gas than it had
9:25given Ukraine in aid. 231 billion euros
9:28to the Kremlin, 201 billion to Kyiv. And
9:31for the first 3 years, Ukraine survived
9:34on American weapons and intelligence. So
9:36when America steps back in 2025, the
9:39German Institute that tracks every euro
9:41of this aid delivered its verdict.
9:43European money could not replace
9:45America's weapons. Ukraine's Europe's
9:47biggest war since 1945 [music]
9:50on its own border, and the continent
9:52still can't fight it without American
9:53hardware. It just can't fight the war.
9:58>> I have no memory of this place.
10:00>> So, this is a 30-year pattern. Europe
10:03talks, America walks, and the rest of
10:05the world quietly stops respecting
10:08Europe. And the most embarrassing part
10:09is public. Europe doesn't even pay for
10:10its own [music] defense. The United
10:12States covered 68.7% of all NATO
10:15spending in 2023, around $860 billion.
10:19The continent that lectures the world
10:21can't fund the army that protects it.
10:23There's a word for it, one Europe's own
10:25leaders have finally started saying out
10:27loud. In July 2025, German Chancellor
10:30Friedrich Merz, the leader of Europe's
10:32largest economy, admitted in public that
10:34Europe has been a free rider on American
10:37defense.
10:37>> We had been free riders in the past, and
10:41the Americans guaranteed our freedom and
10:43our security.
10:44>> Belgium's Defense Minister Theo Francken
10:47went further. In April 2026, he said,
10:49"Being a free rider in Europe and having
10:51the security guarantees from the
10:53Americans and the Americans paying all
10:55the bills, that's very frustrating for
10:57the American people." And then he
10:58compared the US and NATO to an old
11:00married couple desperately in need of
11:03counseling. But sit in that marriage for
11:04a second, because it's worse than
11:06Francken meant it. Picture a couple
11:07where one partner complains that the
11:09other never helps around the house, but
11:11the only reason they have time for
11:12housework instead of a real job is that
11:15the other pays every bill in the
11:17building. That's the EU and the US.
11:19Europe can afford its generous welfare
11:21states, long vacations, and short work
11:24weeks partly because it never had to pay
11:26for its own defense, not since World War
11:28II. America did. Going back to the
11:30Marshall Plan, when it rebuilt the
11:32shattered Europe and then stood guard
11:34over it for 80 years. Europe has lived
11:36off that arrangement for three
11:38generations and now lectures America
11:40about not looking after its citizens,
11:42while America funds the umbrella that
11:44makes lecturing possible. So, two
11:46charges down. The third charge is the
11:47one that reshaped European politics more
11:50than any other and it comes from the
11:52inside.
12:02In 2015, over 1.3 million people claimed
12:06asylum in the European Union, the
12:08largest wave of migration since World
12:10War [music] II. Most came from Syria,
12:12Afghanistan, and Iraq. Germany alone
12:14took roughly 1.2 million under
12:17Chancellor Angela Merkel's "Wir schaffen
12:19das." We can manage this. But, 2015
12:22wasn't the start, it was the spike.
12:24Europe had pulled in migrants for
12:26decades. Guest workers from Turkey and
12:29North Africa in the 1950s and '60s,
12:31waves from the former colonies after
12:33that. Then refugees from the Yugoslav,
12:35Iraq, and Afghanistan wars in the 1990s.
12:38Each wave built the roots and the
12:40networks the next one would follow. So,
12:42when Syria collapsed in 2011, the
12:44pathways were already carved. 2015 was
12:47just the year they overflowed. And
12:49that's the legal side. Running alongside
12:51it was an [music] illegal one. People
12:52entering without papers, many never
12:55counted or sent back. The real number
12:57was higher than any government admitted
12:59and nobody had a grip on it. Almost
13:01every arrival, legal or not, plugged
13:03into Europe's generous welfare systems:
13:05housing, health care, cash support. And
13:08the incentives to stay were stronger
13:10than any pressure to leave. EU rules
13:12said asylum seekers had to be processed
13:15in the first country they reached. So,
13:16the burden piled onto Greece and Italy
13:19to wave people north while everyone
13:21argued about whose problem it was. I
13:23missed the part where that's my problem.
13:25And the political fallout was seismic.
13:26Germany's AfD entered Parliament in 2017
13:29as the largest opposition party. Meloni
13:32took Italy in 2022. Le Pen reached the
13:35final round of France's presidential
13:37election more than once, only to be
13:39blocked each time by a wall of
13:41establishment voters uniting against
13:43her, left and right. By 2026,
13:46nationalist parties were leading
13:47governments in Italy, Hungary, Slovakia,
13:50and Austria, and holding the balance of
13:52power in five more. A third of the EU
13:55now governs with the parties the
13:57establishment spent decades calling
13:59dangerous. What they all share is the
14:01issue that supercharged their rise,
14:03immigration, the thing the establishment
14:05called a strength. And the backlash
14:06hasn't cooled. And there's data behind
14:08that backlash, the kind of data most
14:10European governments didn't want to
14:12publish. Denmark did it anyway. The
14:14Danish government tracks employment,
14:15income, and welfare use by country of
14:18origin, and the gap is steep. Among
14:20immigrants from what they call MENAT
14:21countries, Middle East, North Africa,
14:24Afghanistan,
14:25>> [music]
14:25>> Pakistan, and Turkey, the employment
14:27rate sits at around 61% compared to 80%
14:31for ethnic Danes. Non-Western immigrants
14:33in their peak earning years make roughly
14:3540% less than Danes the same age. And
14:37Denmark tracks [music] crime the same
14:39way, by country of origin, corrected for
14:41age. On that index, where 100 is the
14:44national average, male descendants, men
14:47born in Denmark to immigrant parents,
14:50sit at 386 for Lebanese origin,
14:53Somalia's 316, Syria's 312, [music]
14:56while immigrants from India and China
14:58sit at or below the Danish average. In
15:01other words, the second generation, born
15:03there, [music] schooled there, is more
15:05convicted than their parents'
15:07generation. Sweden told an even sharper
15:09story, because Sweden tried harder than
15:11anyone and still [music] reversed
15:13course. In 2014, Prime Minister
15:15Reinfeldt told Swedes to open your
15:17hearts. By 2015, the country had taken
15:20in 163,000
15:22asylum [music] seekers, the highest per
15:23capita in Europe. A decade later, 20% of
15:27Sweden's population was born abroad.
15:28Gang violence had reached levels that
15:30shocked the rest of the continent, and
15:32the government [music] announced a
15:33paradigm shift, partnering with the same
15:35nationalist party it had spent years
15:37calling dangerous.
15:38>> You son of a
15:41>> By 2024, asylum claims had fallen to
15:44their lowest level since 1997. And among
15:47residents born in Iraq, Somalia, and
15:48Syria, more people now leave Sweden than
15:51arrive. The immigrant minister called it
15:53victory. Sweden's own crime council had
15:56the numbers. People born abroad
15:58suspected of crimes at two and a half
16:00times the rate of those with
16:01Swedish-born parents. And adjusting for
16:03age, sex, and income explains about half
16:06of that gap. The other half doesn't go
16:08away. And the pattern repeated across
16:10continent.
16:12launched its own integration reviews.
16:14France tallied [music] the fiscal cost.
16:16And in every case, the same divide
16:18appeared. Immigrants from East Asia,
16:20Eastern Europe, and parts of Latin
16:21America integrated at rates close to the
16:24native population. Immigrants from
16:25Muslim-majority MENA countries
16:27consistently lagged in employment,
16:29[music] in income, in language
16:31acquisition, in crime, and in values
16:33around gender equality and religious
16:35authority. Those are the findings
16:37Europe's own governments produced. the
16:39outcomes depend on who comes. Skill
16:41level, language, cultural distance,
16:44religion, they all shape whether
16:46integration works or doesn't. So yes,
16:48the doctors and engineers are real, but
16:50most of the illegal migrants aren't
16:51[music] that. The most distinctive voice
16:53in this debate came through the system
16:55herself. Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in
16:57Somalia, fled an arranged marriage,
17:00sought asylum in the Netherlands, and
17:02rose to become a member of its
17:03parliament. In 2004, her collaborator,
17:06filmmaker Theo van Gogh, was murdered on
17:09an Amsterdam street by a Dutch-Moroccan
17:11Islamist for a film critical of how some
17:14Muslim communities treat women, with a
17:16death threat to Hirsi Ali pinned to his
17:18body. She has lived under armed
17:20protection ever since. Her argument
17:22carries weight because she isn't
17:24speaking [music] from the outside. She
17:25underwent genital mutilation as a child
17:28and was raised to believe questioning of
17:30faith was unthinkable. [music] Her own
17:31transformation, leaving Islam,
17:34discovering enlightenment philosophy,
17:36the realization that conscience could
17:38override religious authority took years.
17:40And she argues that expecting that to
17:43happen on its own to newcomers without
17:45anyone asking it of them is a fantasy.
17:47Tolerance without standards, [music] she
17:49says, is self-defeating. And the
17:51pressure behind all of this is bigger
17:52than anyone crisis. Back in 2000, Africa
17:56already had a slightly bigger population
17:58than Europe. By 2100, there could be
18:00around six Africans for every European.
18:02[music]
18:03Think about what that means. Just across
18:05the Mediterranean, a young,
18:07fast-growing, largely Muslim population
18:09sits next to an old and increasingly
18:11secular one with very different values
18:13around faith, family, and the role of
18:15women. And demographics alone will keep
18:17pulling people north for the rest of the
18:19century. So, 2015 [music] was a warning
18:21of what's coming, wave after wave, for
18:24the rest of the century. And Europe
18:26still has [music] no real answer, which
18:27is why the politics keep getting uglier.
18:30>> SOMETIMES MAYBE GOOD, SOMETIMES MAYBE
18:33>> A WHOLE GENRE of decline literature grew
18:35up around this. Douglas Murray's 2017
18:37bestseller, The Strange Death of Europe,
18:40made the sharpest version of the case
18:42that Europe is committing a kind of
18:44civilizational suicide through mass
18:46Islamic immigration plus an elite too
18:49guilt-ridden about its own colonial past
18:51to defend its present. In 2026, Gad
18:54Saad's suicidal empathy gave the
18:56mechanism a name, the same phrase he'd
18:58been refining for years, that a society
19:00can be so committed to tolerance [music]
19:02that it tolerates the things destroying
19:04it. And in June 2026, the European
19:07Parliament voted 418 to 218 to approve
19:10the toughest deportation rules in EU
19:13history. Return hubs outside of Europe,
19:15cross-border entry bans, faster
19:17removals. The continent that spent a
19:19decade lecturing the world about
19:20welcoming refugees couldn't take it
19:23anymore and voted to start building the
19:24machinery to send them back. The world
19:27will watch on to see if they stick with
19:28it.
19:29>> I don't believe this.
19:31>> [clears throat]
19:31>> I don't believe you.
19:32>> Three charges in. Each one is about what
19:35Europe can't do anymore. The fourth
19:37charge is different. It's about
19:38character. The gap between what Europe
19:40[music] preaches and how it behaves at
19:43home. And it might be the one that does
19:45the most damage.
19:56In 2022, Europe's top diplomat told a
19:59room of young ambassadors that Europe
20:01[music] is a garden and the rest of the
20:03world is a jungle that could one day
20:05invade it. That was Josep Borrell, a man
20:08whose job was to make the world respect
20:10Europe. Instead, the world heard a
20:12colonial mindset in a new suit. That
20:14whole speech rested on one [music] idea,
20:17that Europe holds the moral high ground,
20:19that whatever else is going wrong, it
20:21still stands for something. Freedom,
20:23fairness, and equal justice. This charge
20:26is about what happens [music] when a
20:28continent's own people stop believing
20:30that. And across Europe, people are
20:32losing faith in their own governments.
20:34They see the hypocrisy. Trust in
20:36national governments fell sharply in
20:37[music] a single cycle of the
20:39Eurobarometer, the EU's own public
20:41opinion survey conducted twice a year
20:44across all member states. Down 13 points
20:47in the Netherlands, 11 in Finland, seven
20:49in France. Britain's own government won
20:52power in 2024 on under 34% of the vote.
20:56And in a system with [music] five or six
20:57serious parties that form coalitions,
21:00it's the weakest mandate any majority
21:02government has ever had in British
21:03history. [music] Seven in 10 Europeans
21:06now say corruption is widespread at home
21:09and that the powerful get away with it.
21:11That's according to the Eurobarometer's
21:12own Poland. And here's [music] what
21:14makes us worse. Europeans may still like
21:16the idea of Europe, but they
21:18increasingly can't control [music]
21:19what their own governments do with it.
21:21The EU is a supranational body. It sits
21:24above national governments and sets
21:26rules they have to follow. Countries
21:28like Italy, Hungary, and Poland elected
21:31conservative right-leaning [music]
21:32leaders partly to push back on
21:34immigration and EU overreach. And their
21:36hands got tied by Brussels anyway. And
21:39that distrust [music] drives everything
21:40else. Into the vacuum pours a flood of
21:42stories, some true, some exaggerated,
21:45some made up, that all say the same
21:47thing. Your leaders won't protect you
21:49and won't be honest with you. The thing
21:51is, crowds [music] move on perception,
21:53not facts. Take the one that lit the
21:55fuse in Britain. In 2026, a report
21:57overseen by British MP [music] Rupert
21:59Lowe tying the organized abuse of minors
22:02to UK immigration reignited a fury all
22:05over. [music] And days later, Elon Musk
22:07streamed a German-made film called
22:09Citizen Vigilante that was about a
22:12vigilante hunting down migrant
22:14criminals. It got banned in Germany. So,
22:16Elon made it free on X for 48 hours to
22:19his 240 million followers, and it got
22:21over 25 million [music] views in a week.
22:24The appetite for it said everything. I
22:26am telling you
22:28the reason why this movie is getting so
22:30much traction is because that's exactly
22:33a lot of people feel right now in
22:34Europe. All of these blamed decades of
22:36inaction by police, social [music]
22:38workers, educators, and the government.
22:40All the people whose job was to protect
22:42the country's children. It's hard to pin
22:44down scale from stories alone, but
22:46that's the point. It didn't matter. The
22:48fury was instant and political because
22:51it landed on decades of stored up
22:52distrust. When people are already sure
22:55their government is lying to them, they
22:57don't wait for the footnotes. And for
22:58millions, it confirmed a suspicion that
23:01the same culture that taught them to
23:02believe women and victims [music]
23:04had gone silent when the accused didn't
23:07fit the script. And every so often, real
23:09cases blow up on top of all that
23:11distrust. Europe's most beloved winter
23:13tradition of Christmas markets now sits
23:16behind concrete barriers and armed
23:17police. It has since 2016 because of
23:20many incidents like these.
23:22>> [music]
23:22>> A tractor trailer mowed down shoppers
23:25gathered at a Christmas market
23:26yesterday. Police arrested a man they
23:28believed was the driver having
23:30reportedly [music]
23:31fleeing from the market just after the
23:33attack.
23:34>> In June 2026, in Belfast, a Sudanese
23:37asylum seeker who'd entered through
23:39Dublin [music] and been granted leave to
23:41remain was charged with attempted murder
23:44after a knife attack on a local man.
23:46Around the same time, the death of a
23:48young man named Henry Nowak became a
23:50national flashpoint. The police response
23:52went under independent investigation and
23:55the case turned into an argument about
23:57[music] whether justice in Britain is
23:59still applied equally. All these put
24:01together now feed the accusation that
24:03Europe now runs a two-tier system
24:05[music] of justice, policing its native
24:07population hard and its newcomers
24:09gently, less out of fairness than out of
24:12a fear of being called racist.
24:14>> [music]
24:14>> The truth is that many white people in
24:16this country feel that the police are so
24:18terrified of being called racist that
24:20either they under-react in the case of
24:23the appalling grooming scandal [music]
24:25or they over-react in this case.
24:27>> And whether each of these stories holds
24:28up barely matters. Britain's own Home
24:31Affairs Committee looked into two-tier
24:33policing and rejected it. And plenty of
24:35the viral claims fall apart on
24:36inspection.
24:38But part of that distrust is
24:39self-inflicted because the numbers
24:41existed and the government sat on them.
24:43Sweden's Crime Council went 16 years,
24:46from 2005 to 2021, without publishing
24:49crime data by background. France made
24:51[music] collecting statistics by origin
24:53effectively unconstitutional. Germany
24:55counts passports, not origins, so the
24:58second generation disappears into the
24:59word German. Britain only began
25:02publishing offender nationality in 2025
25:05after the Southport [music] stabbings
25:06forced its hand. Denmark publishes
25:08everything every year. So, kudos to
25:10Denmark.
25:12>> [cheering]
25:16>> All right.
25:17>> But, the government hasn't done anything
25:18useful to address people's accusations.
25:21Instead, it chose to shut people up. In
25:23one year, British police arrested more
25:26than 12,000 people over things they
25:27posted online. That's over 30 people a
25:29day. Most never end in conviction, but
25:32you're still detained for a post. A
25:34daycare worker is serving more than 2
25:36years for a single message she wrote and
25:38deleted after the Southport murders. The
25:40US State Department flagged serious
25:42restrictions on freedom of expression in
25:44Britain, the kind of line the West
25:46usually writes about other countries. A
25:48continent that lectures the world on
25:50free speech jailing its own citizens for
25:52what they type and calling it safety.
25:54>> Congratulations. You are being rescued.
25:58Please do not resist.
26:00>> And the one place that pressure escapes
26:01is X, where the clips of arrest and the
26:03stories governments would rather bury
26:06now travel faster than any official
26:08denial. And it's not just [music]
26:09Britain. In Germany, police run
26:11dedicated units that raid homes over
26:13online posts. In one case, a 64-year-old
26:16retiree had his tablet seized for
26:19reposting an insult aimed at a
26:21politician. The country logged over
26:2210,000 criminal hate posted cases in a
26:26single year. In France, a Paris court
26:28convicted 10 people for mocking the
26:30president's wife online.
26:31>> Yeah, she's the wrong dog. The man who
26:34[ __ ] slapped him in a private jet.
26:36>> And the EU's Digital Services Act now
26:38hands Brussels sweeping new power to
26:41police what platforms allow. Every
26:43country has its own version. Every clip
26:45of someone cuffed for a post becomes
26:47fresh proof for the very distrust it was
26:49meant to contain. And I'll admit it,
26:51reading about home raids over posts
26:54pushed me to take a hard look at my own
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27:52are in the description and pinned
27:53comment. So, the Swiss are holding the
27:55line on privacy, but let's go back to
27:57the charges. And the hypocrisy isn't
27:59only limited to migrant crime and
28:01criticism. There's also climate
28:03posturing. In 2022, Germany faced an
28:06energy crisis and chose to ramp up
28:08lignite, the dirtiest coal on Earth,
28:10while proceeding with a final shutdown
28:12of its nuclear reactors, its most
28:14reliable low-carbon power source. The
28:17result, Germany now pays some of the
28:19highest electricity prices in Europe,
28:21and its industrial base is bleeding out
28:23because of the high energy bill. Even
28:25Chancellor Friedrich Merz later called
28:28the nuclear phaseout a serious strategic
28:30mistake.
28:31>> It was quite simply a serious strategic
28:34mistake to phase out nuclear energy. If
28:36you were going to do it, at the very
28:38least, you should have kept the last
28:40remaining nuclear power plants in
28:42Germany online 3 years ago.
28:43>> In the summer of 2026,
28:45>> [music]
28:45>> record heat waves hit the continent.
28:47Europe's response was regulations
28:49phasing out refrigerants, building codes
28:51blocking installations, and politicians
28:54telling people to buy fans. One in five
28:56European homes has air conditioning. In
28:59Germany, it's at most 6%. [music] And
29:01this has already killed over 1,000
29:03people in France alone, mostly elderly,
29:06mostly at home. In a country where four
29:08out of five homes don't have air
29:10conditioning. It didn't help that the
29:11World Cup was in North America and the
29:13luxury of AC was on full display, making
29:17Europeans question the sanity of their
29:19own restrictions. And the research on
29:21what indoor heat actually does to people
29:23is damning.
29:24>> [music]
29:24>> From 23° C, sleep duration drops
29:27sharply, worker productivity falls by
29:30double digits, and children lose over a
29:32full percentage point of annual
29:33learning. Air conditioning is
29:35productivity infrastructure. With my
29:37roots in Asia, we know this for a fact.
29:40And the EU is actively [music]
29:41dismantling access to it, phasing out
29:44the most effective refrigerants under
29:46its own F-gas regulation right as heat
29:49waves intensify. [music] And Europe's
29:50old building codes make installation a
29:52nightmare. A continent that already
29:54can't compete with the US [music] or
29:55China on growth is choosing to make its
29:58workers sleep less, its children learn
30:00less, and its elderly die.
30:02And while Europe pats itself on the back
30:04for sabotaging itself for marginal cuts,
30:07China added 78 gigawatts of new coal
30:09[music] capacity in 2025 alone, enough
30:12to erase years of European effort in
30:14weeks. Europe also outsourced its
30:16factories [music] to Asia, shipped the
30:18products back across oceans, and called
30:21the smaller number on its end climate
30:23leadership. The hypocrisy is the deepest
30:25cut in the whole indictment, because
30:27everyone can see the emperor has no
30:29clothes. But the most embarrassing
30:30charge [music] hasn't been made yet.
30:43Start with South
30:4452 million people, smaller than Italy, a
30:46fraction of Germany, a rounding error
30:48next to the EU's 450 million. And yet,
30:51ask a teenager in Jakarta, São Paulo,
30:53Lagos, [music] or LA to name something
30:56they love from East Asia, and it pours
30:58out. We're talking K-pop, K-dramas,
31:01anime, Japanese mobile games. Ask them
31:03to name a European cultural [music]
31:04export from the last decade, and the
31:06room goes quiet. And the cultural
31:09capital is overwhelmingly East Asian
31:11now. The global anime market hit nearly
31:1340 billion in 2025, on track to roughly
31:16double by 2033. South Korea's music
31:18industry pulls in around 9 billion a
31:20year, and a single BTS [music] concert
31:22at home can generate close to 860
31:24million dollars in knock-on spending
31:27once you count the tourism. China's
31:29gaming giants quietly owns chunks of the
31:32West's biggest studios, while one
31:34Chinese game, Genshin Impact, became
31:36among the highest-grossing on Earth.
31:38East Asia culture became the default
31:41cool, a thing the whole internet borrows
31:43from.
31:44>> We are
31:45>> Now, the counterargument writes itself.
31:47Europe's cultural influence runs deeper
31:49than pop songs and video games. It's
31:51institutional. So, we're talking
31:53universities, legal systems, language,
31:55literature, and orchestra. And that's
31:57true, but it misses the point. Europe
31:59built those institutions, yes, and it
32:02also owned the creative frontier.
32:04Classical music like Bach, Mozart,
32:06Beethoven was European. Modern art was
32:08European. Cinema was arguably European
32:11before [music] Hollywood took it, and
32:12popular music ran through London and
32:14Stockholm. The Beatles, the Stones,
32:17ABBA, all of it was innovation, culture
32:19Europe made that the rest of the world
32:21wanted. But all that cultural gravity's
32:23vanished.
32:26It's been years since a European artist,
32:28film, or movement shaped global youth
32:31culture at that scale, the way East
32:33Asian pop culture now does by default.
32:35What Europe no longer has, at least not
32:37at the same scale, is East Asian
32:40cultural products that billions of young
32:42people around the world actively choose
32:43to consume and make part of their own
32:45identities. [music] What's holding
32:47Europe back is structural, and it starts
32:49with a number, 24. That's how many
32:51official languages the EU [music] has.
32:53South Korea has one, Japan has one, and
32:56in the streaming era, that difference
32:58became fatal. [music]
32:59>> Goralame.
33:01>> Excusez-moi, mais
33:04>> Goralame.
33:05>> Korean content now accounts for almost
33:069% of all non-English viewing on
33:09Netflix, more than French, German, and
33:11Portuguese content combined. Over 80% of
33:14Netflix's 300 million subscribers have
33:17watched at least one Korean title. And
33:19Netflix didn't just distribute Korean
33:21content, it solved Korea's one
33:23disadvantage, language. While I'm not a
33:25dub guy myself, dubbed content
33:27viewership on the platform grew 120% in
33:30a single year. A Korean drama gets
33:32dubbed into 30-plus languages and
33:34reaches Brazil, Egypt, and Nigeria in
33:36the same week. A Danish series stays
33:38Danish. The platform turned Korea's
33:41single-language market into a global
33:43export engine and left Europe's
33:4524-language market exactly where it was,
33:48fragmented. The European Commission
33:49calls its creative sector highly
33:51fragmented and often economically
33:53vulnerable, struggling to scale up. Its
33:56flagship program, called Creative
33:58Europe, runs on 2.44 billion euros
34:01across 7 years. The entire EU cultural
34:04budget is 0.2% of the total EU spending.
34:08South Korea's content investments dwarfs
34:11that on a per capita basis and is brand
34:13commercially, not as heritage
34:15preservation. Europe funds culture the
34:17way it funds museum, carefully,
34:20publicly, with no expectation that it
34:22competes.
34:24Europe still has the heritage, the
34:26orchestras, the galleries, and the
34:27cathedrals, [music]
34:28when they're not left to rot, burn, or
34:30sold. It still owns the top of luxury
34:32and fashion and football, the most
34:35[music] popular sport on the planet. But
34:37notice what all of this is, it's
34:39inheritance, [music] prestige built
34:40generations ago, not new innovation.
34:43Heritage is what you have when you've
34:45stopped creating. The chateau is still
34:47beautiful, it's just [music] old,
34:49drafty, and nobody really wants to live
34:51in it anymore.
34:56>> [music]
34:59>> February 14th, 2025, the Munich Security
35:02Conference. The room where Europe's
35:04defense establishment [music] has
35:05gathered every year for six decades. And
35:08the Vice President of the United States
35:09walks on stage and tells them that the
35:11biggest threat to Europe [music] isn't
35:12Russia and it isn't China, it's a threat
35:15from within.
35:16>> The threat that I worry the most about
35:18vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, it's not
35:21China, it's not any other external
35:23actor.
35:24And what I worry about is the threat
35:26from within.
35:27>> J.D. Vance spent 20 minutes lecturing
35:30Europe's leaders on free speech,
35:32immigration, a retreat from democratic
35:34values on European soil at their own
35:36conference. The room sat stone-faced.
35:38[music]
35:39One official called it total BS.
35:41Germany's Defense Minister, Boris
35:42Pistorius, shot back that it was
35:45unacceptable to compare Europe to
35:46authoritarian regimes and that democracy
35:49does not mean that a vociferous minority
35:51will automatically be right. [music] And
35:53the Europeans had a point. Lecturing an
35:55ally about democracy in their own house
35:57is its own kind of arrogance. The very
35:58arrogance Europe's accused of. But the
36:00US bought the right to speak with the
36:02money it pours into the alliance and
36:04Europe's defense. After all, Europe
36:06could have just rejected the money, but
36:08they didn't for 80 years. And buried in
36:10J.D. Vance's insult was a question
36:12Europe couldn't easily answer.
36:19That's the question this whole video has
36:20been circling. Five charges describing
36:23what Europe is defending itself from.
36:25Vance asked what it's for. And a room
36:27full of Europe's most powerful people
36:29didn't have a ready answer. One man has
36:32spent years answering that [music]
36:33question, and it's not the answer Vance
36:34wanted. Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore's
36:37former UN ambassador, argues Europe has
36:40no confident vision because it no longer
36:42holds the position that used to supply
36:44one. For most of history, China and
36:46India were the world's largest
36:48economies. [music] Europe's two
36:49centuries on top were the exception, and
36:51what looks like decline is the rest of
36:53the world catching up using the ideas
36:55[music]
36:55Europe gave it. A civilization at the
36:57front of the pack has a story to tell
36:59about itself. One watching the pack
37:01close in goes quiet. That's why the
37:03question landed in silence. And here's
37:06the thing.
37:07The world hasn't given up on Europe. Pew
37:08found a median of 66% viewing the EU
37:11favorably in 2023, still 62 in 2025,
37:15well over half in most [music]
37:16countries, including America. The people
37:18giving up on Europe are Europeans, and
37:21they have a reason. The most powerful
37:22office in Brussels has never faced a
37:25single voter. Ursula von der Leyen was
37:28picked in backroom negotiations and
37:30confirmed by a parliament most Europeans
37:32can't name the representative in. While
37:34the EU keeps taking on more power
37:36[music] over trade, migration, speech,
37:38and defense. So, when Vance asked what
37:41Europe is defending itself for, its own
37:43citizens asked a darker version, who
37:45asked us?
37:46>> So, nobody cares?
37:48>> On September 6th, 2026, [music]
37:50Saxony-Anhalt
37:51in Eastern Germany gave its answer.
37:54About 44% picked the AfD, and it fell
37:57three seats short [music] of a majority.
38:00This is the AfD's platform.
38:02Germany leaves the Euro and the EU, too,
38:04if it won't hand power back [music] to
38:06its member states. They push
38:08remigration, which means deporting
38:10illegal migrants. Nuclear's turned back
38:12on, and coal expands. [music]
38:14Nord Stream gets repaired, and the CO2
38:17tax and the ban on gas cars go.
38:19Taxes fall, police get more power,
38:22>> [music]
38:22>> and the laws for wrong speech online get
38:24scrapped.
38:25Islam, in the party's words, "doesn't
38:27belong in Germany, and German culture
38:30[music] and language should come first,
38:32with parents paid to raise their kids at
38:34home."
38:35That's what the state and press now call
38:37the far [music] right.
38:38But most of these policies were
38:39mainstream less than a decade ago.
38:42And some Europeans are beginning to
38:43answer Vance's question with money and
38:45policy. Poland now spends 4.7% of GDP on
38:48defense, more than the US as a share of
38:50its economy, and it's building towards
38:52the largest land army in Europe, with a
38:54target [music] of 300,000 troops by
38:562030. Italy's illegal Mediterranean
38:58crossings dropped 60% in a single year
39:01under Meloni's border deals, and the EU
39:03Parliament voted to adopt her offshore
39:05processing model continent-wide. France
39:07never abandoned nuclear and runs [music]
39:09a grid six times cleaner than Germany's.
39:11And in September 2025, Mersch signed an
39:14agreement with Macron to finally
39:16recognize nuclear power as part of
39:18Europe's energy future. All these are
39:20real moves, but everyone came late.
39:23Poland rearmed after Russia invaded.
39:25Meloni's border deals [music] came after
39:27a decade of electoral losses. The
39:29nuclear reversal came after an energy
39:30crisis. Every one of these reforms came
39:33from pain, and every one of these
39:34answers what Europe is defending itself
39:36from. None of them answer what it's
39:39defending itself for. The verdict stays
39:41open, and what settles it isn't GDP or
39:44[music] armies or what the world thinks
39:46of Europe. A civilization fades when the
39:48people inside it stop believing [music]
39:49its worth defending. Borrell called
39:51Europe a garden. A garden fails when the
39:53people who tend it decide it's no longer
39:55worth the work. If you liked this video,
39:57like this one, and don't forget to like
39:59and [music] sub.

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