Unruly Europe, Part Two

Part I described the threat to Europe of mass immigration, and the capitulationist response of church and state–institutions that traditionally defended Europe against invasion. Part II describes the current renaissance in nationalism.

Resistance to immigration

In the early days of European immigration, the Left did not want guest workers. At that time, some left-wing parties actually represented the working-class and did not want competition for jobs and downward pressure on wages. Unions opposed immigration. Things are much different now. The Left now sees immigrants as future voters, and it promotes multiculturalism.

The traditional right-wing parties backed the idea of guest workers because business interests like low-wage labor, and companies were able to convince governments that foreign labor was essential to the economy. Both Right and Left are therefore guilty of promoting the process that is destroying Europe.

During the 1990s there was very little open resistance to immigration, but that is changing. The terrorist attacks in the US in 2001, the Madrid subway attacks in 2004, and the London bombings in 2005 opened many eyes. Support for anti-immigration/nationalist parties is growing, and they have had successes in France, Austria, Greece, and the Netherlands. Nationalist parties also have a substantial presence in Ukraine and Hungary.

Germany still has a hangover from the Second World War and has no real anti-immigration parties. German Chancellor Angela Merkel famously said in 2010 that multiculturalism in Germany has “utterly failed,” but she has done nothing to stop or even reduce immigration.

In Britain, the British National Party collapsed after showing a flash of promise, but the subject of immigration can at least now be discussed. Large majorities of Britons have opposed the influx since at least the 1960s, and about three quarters now say they want less of it. Even the Labour party has admitted it was not “sufficiently alive to people’s concerns,” and the United Kingdom Independence Party is winning votes by promising strong border control. However, most elites are still enamored of multiculturalism and the media — especially the BBC — are parades of political correctness.

Sweden is probably the most political correct country in the world, though it is not clear why. It does not have any of the usual reasons for “white guilt:” It was never a real colonial power and had no part in the slave trade. Still, non-white immigration is soaring, and the arrival of 5,000 Syrians pushed the total number of immigrants in 2012 to 82,600 — a new record. The number of Muslims is expected to double by 2030. In 2010, popular anger over immigration finally propelled a genuinely restrictionist party into Parliament, and the Sweden Democrats now have about 8.5 percent support.

The breakthrough in Sweden led the old Right-wing parties to do what they always do when common sense finally gets a voice: They are edging towards sanity, though they still cooperate with the Left.

Southern Europe faces special challenges. Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece are particularly hard hit by the economic crisis. The EU is sending billions of Euros in bailout money, but there is much resistance to austerity measures. Unrest and strikes are common. There is a great deal of suspicion towards the EU, but governments are utterly fettered by EU aid.

Greece

Greece, which suffers the most, is a particularly interesting case. The unemployment rate is 26 percent, and one in three Greeks are officially poor. The country has already swallowed €240 billion of bailout money, but the crisis is far from over.

Adversity seems to have been boosted nationalism. There are approximately a million illegal immigrants in the country, a huge number for a country with a population of just 11 million. Most of them come from Africa and the Middle East, with a high number of Iraqis and Afghans. Illegal immigration has made many Greek neighborhoods unrecognizable.

The EU invested millions of Euros to build a fence along the Greece/Turkey border but it does not keep out the illegals, whom Greeks increasingly see as a serious threat to the nation. Immigration, combined with the economic crisis, led to gains by both the far Right and Left in the 2012 elections, with the nationalist party “Golden Dawn” entering parliament for the first time.

Golden Dawn is demonized in the media, but this has not held it back. It has solid backing in the police and the army, and is known for distributing free food and clothes — but only to Greeks. Its support comes from all classes of society, and it is helping to inject nationalism into the mainstream. Already, the conservative New Democracy Party is copying some of its positions. The EU is capable of taking harsh measures against Greece if Golden Dawn wins much more popular support, but nationalists hope that its success will stimulate similar action in the rest of southern Europe.

Violent reaction

Recently, non-white immigration has resulted in something new: violent reaction by whites. The most spectacular was Anders Breivik’s rampage in Norway that left 77 dead. The victims were mainly young members of the Socialist Party, which Mr. Breivik considered responsible for the Islamization of Norway.

Although not widely reported outside of Europe, between 2000 and 2007, a German group called the National Socialist Underground killed 10 people, mainly Turks. The group’s existence become known only in 2011, and Germans were shocked to learn that it had operated for so long without detection by the authorities.

In 2012 in Sweden, Peter Mangs was sentenced to life in prison for what became known as the Malmo shootings. Malmo is notorious for its large immigrant population, and during 2009 and 2010, Mr. Mangs shot at dark-skinned people as many 15 times, killing three.

Anders Breivik is prompting imitators. In 2012, police arrested a Polish university researcher named Brunon Kwiecien. He had accumulated several tons of explosives, which he planned to load onto a truck and drive into the parliament building. He was a passionate admirer of Mr. Breivik, and complained that the Polish parliament was run by foreigners. In August 2012, police in the Czech Republic arrested a man who had accumulated weapons and explosives in what was thought to be an attempt to imitate Mr. Breivik.

In response to events of this kind, a lefty British group has set out to monitor “Right-wing extremism.” The Policy Network will keep an eye on nationalist political parties and try to figure out “what influences the transition of a politics of hate into one of violence.”

The arrival of large numbers of non-whites has clearly planted the seeds of violence — mainly by immigrants against European natives — but there are signs of violent resistance to their incursions.

Regional sentiment

The turmoil in Europe has sparked a renaissance in regional sentiment. As the European Union wipes out ever more national distinctions, people are returning to local roots. Many regions now want autonomy and even independence.

The Basques, who straddle the border between Spain and France, have long wanted their own country, and for many years the independence movement in Spain fought a low-level guerrilla war. They’ve since been granted a degree of political autonomy. To the east, the Catalan people have similar ambitions, and their influence is growing through peaceful means: A Catalan separatist was actually elected mayor of Barcelona in 2011.

In Belgium, the Vlaams Belang and its predecessor party, the Vlaams Blok have long fought for an independent Flanders. A more “moderate” independence party called the New Flemish Alliance was established in 2001. It has gone from strength to strength and is now in coalition government in the Flemish parliament. If Flanders were ever to become independent, it would be a headache for the EU because its capital, Brussels, is in Flanders.

Scotland and Wales have independence movements, and approximately 30 percent of Scots say they want an independent Scotland. In Italy, the Lega Nord has long promoted independence for northern Italy, and has seen considerable electoral success. Many eastern European countries have sizable ethnic minorities — such as the Hungarians in Romania — and if any western European independence movement succeeded, it would probably set a pattern.

The parties that promote regional autonomy run the gamut from Left to Right. Some of the leftist parties think strictly in terms of territory rather than people, and pretend to believe that anyone living in Scotland, for example, is a Scot. Separatism is inherently exclusive, however, and many regional parties strongly oppose immigration because it dilutes local character. Regionalism makes it much harder for the EU to impose its uniform federal state, but unless regions gain full control over borders and immigration, they cannot solve the demographic problem — and then, only for their own region.

Fleeing Europe

One regrettable but understandable tendency of today’s Europeans is to leave the continent entirely. It has long been popular for pensioners to retire elsewhere in search of a better climate, but now working-age European families have begun to emigrate. Mass Third-World immigration is unquestionably helping push some out. The loss of workers, in combination with the increase in old folks, will give the Left an excuse to push for more non-white immigration.

Popular destinations for young Europeans are Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Many young Spaniards and Portuguese who cannot find jobs go to former colonies such as Brazil and Angola. The flight of these people, especially those with college degrees, will certainly damage the labor force. Here are examples of what is happening:

An estimated 130,000 Spaniards left Spain in 2010, and another 150,000 in 2011. A total of 1.7 million are now living abroad, and the hard times are likely to drive yet more overseas.

More than five and a half million Britons are expatriates, and including people who live or work abroad part time raises that figure to six million. That is about 10 percent of all British citizens. Every year for the last 40 years, an average of 67,500 more Brits left Britain than returned to it. In 2011 the figure was 107,000, or 2,000 people every week.

In the first five months of 2012, 52,000 Dutch citizens left the country, up from 47,000 the year before. Many European Jews are leaving the continent and buying homes in Israel. The outflow has been especially great in France due to high levels of Muslim immigration and rising anti-Semitism.

In Holland, the annual Emigration Fair is a big event. It is staffed by immigration officials from popular destinations, and attracts people from all over Europe.

We must assume that southern Europe, which has been losing the most people, will eventually solve its economic problems, but many of the people who have left will probably never return. If they marry in their new home or have children there, they will be very reluctant to return.

Aside from Jews who say they are leaving because of anti-Semitism, only a few Europeans admit openly that they are forsaking their homelands because of non-white immigration. In this respect they are like American whites who move from southern California to the northern counties but say that it is because of “traffic congestion” or “pollution.”

What Future for Europe?

We thus have a combination of forces that make this a very difficult and complex time for Europeans. In general, Europe has lost any awareness of the need to survive as a homeland for whites. Europeans have a supranational government that wants immigrant-friendly uniformity, and national governments that, for the most part, also promote immigration. Europeans face a low birth rate and are seeing their country — especially their great cities — transformed by prolific non-white immigrants.

Southern Europe, especially, suffers from a terrible economic crisis. This has demoralized Spaniards and prompted many to leave their homeland, but in Greece, it has stiffened the will to survive. All over Europe, we see the slow but unmistakable rise of “far-right” parties that stand, if not in so many words, for a Europe for Europeans. These parties can only increase in influence as they gain respectability, power, and experience, and as the savage consequences of dispossession become ever clearer.

But they will have to work hard. As Guillaume Faye has written, “If the generation of native Europeans that turned 20 between 2000 and 2010 doesn’t act, everything will be lost — forever.”