“When
in history have we seen a civilization turn on itself with such
savagery as we see in the West today? What civilizations of the past
or present have repudiated themselves and their cultural foundations
with such focused intent, then invited in masses of others who don’t
share the heritage?”
The
West Cannibalizes Itself
What
civilization has ever sought to repudiate its own culture and
traditions as we do today?
Robert
W. MERRY
1
April, 2018
Some
13 European thinkers issued an intellectual protest late last year
against the assault on the Western heritage that has been raging on
the Continent and in Britain for years. They called their 11-page
document “The Paris Statement” and gave it a title: “A Europe
We Can Believe In.” The Europe they believe in, write the 13
signatories (well-known in Europe, less so in America), is under
threat of destruction from the forces of globalization,
multiculturalism, and the EU managerial class, as well as growing
anti-Christian prejudice.
“These
lands are our home,” says the Statement, “we have no other. Home
is a place where things are familiar, and where we are recognized,
however far we have wandered. This is the real Europe, our precious
and irreplaceable civilization.”
The
Statement has received a smattering of attention in the European
media—broadcast television in Poland and the Netherlands; major
newspapers in Germany, France, Spain, and Poland; national weekly
magazines in Poland and Hungary; and opinion web sites in the UK,
Switzerland, Belgium, and Spain. But mostly it is an intellectual
statement written for and consumed largely by other intellectuals.
And
of course the assault on the Western heritage from within is a potent
phenomenon in Europe, fostered by nearly the entire elite structure
of the civilization. Thus it isn’t clear what a few highly
accomplished intellectuals, however eloquent or anguished, can do to
stem the erosion of the civilizational identity. But we are
witnessing the emergence of some powerful political currents within
the general European population, manifest in increasingly populist
voting patterns in France, Germany, Austria, and elsewhere. Hence the
Paris Statement could become a significant intellectual underpinning
for Europeans who are increasingly concerned about the direction of
things in their homeland.
The
threat to Europe, says the Statement, comes from “a false
understanding” of what Europe is and represents. This “false
Europe” is the product of people who are “orphans by choice,”
glorifying their vision “as the forerunner of a universal community
that is neither universal nor a community.” Believing that history
is on their side, these patrons of the false Europe have become
“haughty and disdainful, unable to acknowledge the defects in the
post-national, post-cultural world they are constructing.” The
false Europe, says the statement, is “utopian and tyrannical.”
The
true Europe, on the other hand, encompasses a number of fundamental
elements—a body of law that applies to all yet is limited in its
demands; a shared understanding of political and cultural traditions
and a fealty to those traditions; an appreciation of the nation state
as “the political form that joins peoplehood with sovereignty”; a
shared regard for the role of the Classical tradition in shaping the
Western mind; and an understanding of Christianity as the religious
bulwark of the civilization.
Now,
write the signatories, “all this is slipping away. As the patrons
of the false Europe construct their faux Christendom of universal
human rights, we are losing our home.”
In
place of the old Europe comes a culture of “libertine hedonism.”
Though the elites boast of unprecedented liberty, European life is
“more and more comprehensively regulated” than ever before. Work
relations, business decisions, educational qualifications, and news
practices increasingly are regulated by managerial mandarins
operating in darkened corners of the EU bureaucracy. “And Europe
now seeks to tighten existing regulations on freedom of speech, an
aboriginal European freedom—freedom of conscience made manifest.”
The Paris Statement continues:
Political
leaders who give voice to inconvenient truths about Islam and
immigration are hauled before judges. Political correctness enforces
strong taboos that deem challenges to the status quo beyond the pale.
The false Europe does not really encourage a culture of freedom. It
promotes a culture of market-driven homogeneity and politically
enforced conformity.
The
Statement decries the growing sensibility among Europe’s elites—and
many recent arrivals from other lands—that immigrants shouldn’t
be required to assimilate into the Western culture because the
Western culture doesn’t represent anything particularly special.
Says the Statement: “We are to affirm the very colonization of our
homelands and the demise of our culture as Europe’s great
twenty-first century glory—a collective act of self-sacrifice for
the sake of some new global community of peace and prosperity that is
being born”—but which, it could be added, will never become the
reality envisioned by Europe’s self-deluded elites.
Indeed,
some of the dire results of this experiment have become manifest. The
signatories write, “Some of our countries have regions in which
Muslims live with an informal autonomy from local laws, as if they
were colonialists rather than fellow members of our nations.”
*
* *
And
the emergence of this false Europe is robbing the European societies
of their self-respect and hence their cohesion and force. “Shorn of
higher ideals and discouraged from expressing patriotic pride by
multiculturalist ideology,” says the Statement, “our societies
now have difficulty summoning the will to defend themselves.”
This
is in part because of the indoctrination that has suffused European
academic life, where “cultural repudiation” has become a cheap
and easy way to demonstrate enlightenment and “spiritual election.”
As a result, says the Statement, “our universities are now active
agents of ongoing cultural destruction.”
If
readers of the Statement get a sense that what ails Europe is most
likely a terminal cultural pathology that ultimately will kill the
patient, that would be a reasonable interpretation. It’s difficult
to avoid the conclusion that the Paris Statement is not much more
than a cry in the cold, dark forests of history. And yet it’s worth
pondering: when in history have we seen a civilization turn on itself
with such savagery as we see in the West today? What civilizations of
the past or present have repudiated themselves and their cultural
foundations with such focused intent, then invited in masses of
others who don’t share the heritage?
The
Chinese civilization is experiencing a renaissance of
self-consciousness to go with China’s growing economic and military
might. The Magian culture of the Middle East, while struggling with
internal and external threats and challenges, is fiercely protective
of its lands and cultural identity. A willingness to fight and die
for them is widespread throughout those lands. Hindu nationalism is
on the rise in India. President Vladimir Putin’s popularity in
Russia is due in part to his devotion to his country’s Orthodox
identity and its cultural narrative dating back to the Tsars.
Only
in the West is there any perceived need to produce a document such as
the Paris Statement, a call for the kind of cultural devotion and
civilizational identity that are natural and well established in all
the other civilizations of the world today.
Still,
there is a populist backlash brewing in the West against this false
Europe. The Statement acknowledges this with some ambivalence. “We
have reservations,” it says, adding that Europe “needs to draw
upon the deep wisdom of her traditions rather than relying on
simplistic slogans and divisive emotional appeals.” At the same
time, it suggests that “this new political phenomenon” could be
“a healthy rebellion against the tranny of the false Europe, which
labels as ‘anti-Democratic’ any threat to its monopoly on moral
legitimacy.”
After
all, says the Statement, this new populism challenges “the
dictatorship of the status quo” and the “fanaticism of the
centre.” The Statement concludes: “It is a sign that even in the
midst of our degraded and impoverished political culture, the
historical agency of the European peoples can be reborn.”
Can
it? That is the fundamental question hovering over Europe in these
times, and it presages probably years of political conflict, maybe
even major civic unrest. The Paris Statement—signed by heralded
intellectuals from France, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland,
Norway, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium—goes a long
way toward setting the terms of that conflict from the perspective of
those who would protect and save the homeland of Europe.
theamericanconservative.com
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.