The Suicide of Europe | 5 Minute Video — Transcript

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1. 0:02The civilization born of Judeo-Christian values, ancient Greek philosophy and the discoveries
2. 0:07of the Enlightenment is staring at the abyss, brought there by its own hand.
3. 0:13To put it starkly: Europe is committing suicide.
4. 0:17How did this happen?
5. 0:18It’s a complicated story, but there are two major causes.
6. 0:23The first is the mass movement of peoples into Europe.
7. 0:26This has been going on steadily since the end of World War II but sped up massively
8. 0:31in the migration crisis of 2015, when more than a million migrants poured into Europe
9. 0:37from the Middle East, North Africa and East Asia.
10. 0:40The second, and equally significant, is that Europe lost faith in itself—its beliefs,
11. 0:46its traditions and even its very legitimacy.
12. 0:50Let’s take a closer look at both causes.
13. 0:53For decades, Europe encouraged people—mostly from the Middle East and North Africa—
14. 0:58to come as temporary workers.
15. 1:00Nobody expected them to stay.
16. 1:02Yet they did.
17. 1:04And nobody asked them to leave, even those who came illegally.
18. 1:07As one British immigration minister put it in 1999, “Removal takes too long, and it’s emotional.”
19. 1:14And, of course, why would they leave?
20. 1:17The economic opportunities were far greater in Europe than from where they came.
21. 1:21And if the work dried up, there were generous welfare benefits to be had.
22. 1:26For a time, immigrants were allowed—even encouraged, thanks to the European commitment
23. 1:30to “multiculturalism”—to pursue whatever culture they wanted.
24. 1:35But that didn’t work out well.
25. 1:37The leaders of Britain, France and Germany admitted as much in 2011, when David Cameron,
26. 1:43Nicholas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel dramatically announced that multiculturalism had failed.
27. 1:50So, the immigrants were then asked to assimilate and embrace Western values.
28. 1:55If that happened, European governments reasoned, all the financial costs, even the occasional
29. 2:01acts of terrorism, could be overlooked.
30. 2:05But it never happened.
31. 2:06And immigration just increased.
32. 2:09During 2015, Germany and Sweden added 2% to their populations in a single year.
33. 2:16By 2017, the most popular boys name in United Kingdom was Muhammad.
34. 2:22So, why did European leaders decide Europe could take in anyone in the world, whether
35. 2:27fleeing war or simply seeking a better life, no matter how different—or even opposed—
36. 2:32their values were to European values?
37. 2:35The one-word answer to this question is guilt.
38. 2:39Aren’t these refugees, the thinking goes, fleeing the consequences of European imperialism?
39. 2:44Didn’t we mercilessly exploit these unfortunate people in their home countries?
40. 2:49Aren’t we the cause of their misery?
41. 2:52Accepting them into Europe is meant to be a wiping-away of this guilt.
42. 2:56This is especially true of Germany.
43. 2:59In allowing one and a half million people into her country in 2015, Angela Merkel was,
44. 3:04in effect, proclaiming to the world that Germany, the great aggressor of the twentieth century,
45. 3:09the architect of the Holocaust, would be the humanitarian superpower of the twenty-first.
46. 3:16A noble sentiment, perhaps, but who pays the price?
47. 3:20The ordinary citizens of Europe, who have seen crime and terrorism increase exponentially.
48. 3:25Their fears and frustrations have been largely ignored—or worse.
49. 3:30In October 2015, the German government designated that 800 newly arrived immigrants were to
50. 3:35be housed in the German town of Kassel.
51. 3:38Concerned residents had a meeting to ask questions of their representatives.
52. 3:42As a video recording shows, the citizens were calm and polite.
53. 3:46Then, at a certain point, their district president informs them that the refugees are coming
54. 3:51regardless of their objections and anyone who does not agree with the policy
55. 3:56is “free to leave Germany.”
56. 3:58This official attitude—if there is a problem, it’s not with the refugees, but with the citizens—
57. 4:04reflects the sense of what I call “tiredness”—a feeling among the elite
58. 4:09class that the European story has played out: that we have tried religion and all imaginable
59. 4:14forms of politics, and that each has, one after another, led us to disaster.
60. 4:19We taint every idea we touch, so who’s to say that the world wouldn’t be better off
61. 4:25without us?
62. 4:26Of course, only people who have no idea how lucky they are could take this view.
63. 4:35Ironically, no one knows this better than those refugees who truly did assimilate
64. 4:40and who defend Western values.
65. 4:42Extraordinary people, like Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who left the Netherlands because
66. 4:47she believed in the principles of the Enlightenment more than the Dutch did.
67. 4:51Or Hamed Abdel-Samad in Germany, whose life is threatened by fellow immigrants because
68. 4:56he defends European values.
69. 4:59This is the stuff of suicide, the self-annihilation of a culture.
70. 5:06It is possible that ordinary Europeans will join their leaders in this pact.
71. 5:11But recent opinion polls suggest that they have no intention of doing so.
72. 5:16How they act on that intention will be the great story of the years ahead.
73. 5:22Are we about to witness the end of Europe, or its re-birth?
74. 5:28I’m Douglas Murray, author of The Strange Death of Europe, for Prager University.