Is Europe still European?

I have been silent for a while, because there were not much news worth reporting, aside from the usual Italian obsessions with Sex and Politics, such as "Have the new pretty and young female Ministers of the Berlusconi Government bartered their professional position for those of a sexual nature with the Boss?"

These questions seem far from the tragic reality of the moment (or maybe a welcome and psychologically needed diversion), reflecting a desire to score points - for sex equality, justice, integrity, etc.- by whoever is NOT in power.

However, going through the site www.italianiliberi.it, an association whose objective is to preserve the identity of Italian unique culture and historic memory, against the European Union power, I came across some pertinent articles that I would like to share with you.

We, at Candobetter, may be familiar with the genre, and this is a variation on the theme of a wholesale loss of European identity and of national territory to an apparently non-stop alien invasion. The main sufferers are the countries that have created the European Union, not knowing that they were to renounce their cultural heritage.

I have chosen for your attention, two articles that express anguish at the process of collapse of a cherished traditional way of life.

They are the Italian paleontologist Ida Magli and the French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, some of whose ideas are convergent, though Magli, called the successor to the late journalist and writer Oriana Fallaci, is more virulent in her judgement. Her more Italo-centric article is entitled:

"Why the left wishes the end of Italians?"

Here we need some clarifications. The Left Parties in Italy are all pro-immigration, and they assume that all the anti-immigration stances are motivated by racism, while most of the times are a reaction to real economic distress and just as real social insecurity brought about by unseemly and unlawful customs.

Magli tries to analyse the reason why the Italian "left" so much hates its traditions, its ancestors, it history, its language, to the point of wishing their annihilation.

The policy of what in effect should be described as "open borders" or "open season on Italian soil, security, education and cultural heritage" is anti-economic and destructive. But rationality is not something that animates politics:

"The violence with which the Left insists on an immigrant invasion, will have only one result: the future end of the Italian civilisation. They know it, even if they pretend not to know it....The social sciences, such as anthropology, sociology, psychology, ethnology, etc., have definitely demonstrated that what guides the behaviour of people and of individuals is determined by a complex environmental web, where language, customs, religion, tradition, history, are united in what we brazenly call "culture"...But this understanding has been suddenly erased, when it was decided to formalise the old project of an European Union, which has actually eliminated the awareness of its own history, to substitute in its place the fusion of every existing population on Earth... But we know that only "the people"are responsible for passing on their culture to keep it alive. The immigrants will keep and transmit their own, and rightly so."

If Magli asks herself why the Left is so keen on destroying our culture to introduce Multiculturalism - and the resulting chaos - Finkielkraut gives a convincing answer, coated in ironic terms:

"Do Europeans still live in Europe?"

We all have the same sensation: sorting out the question about what is Europe, nobody seems to know anymore.

"...an impressive number of opinion makers, journalists, citizens, politicians, affirm that there's no answer, or, better still, no answer is required. Europe, they say, is nothing tangible, and this Nothing is not an handicap, but its destiny, its vocation, its latest and cardinal virtue.

The French philosopher Jean-Marc Ferry defines Europe as an identity whose principle is to be open to other identities..."

He is saying that its identity is not to have one. To be stranger to itself. Unknowable and unloved.

"This way of thinking" continues Finkielkraut " is due to the trauma of Auschwitz. The apocalyptic form that has assumed the exclusion of the Other in death camps, has to be rescued by the birth of a different idea of humanity, which cannot be divided by any interior dissension. And Europe, the very place of origin of the crime, must give an example and atone for it by destroying that place ..."

This thesis is very interesting and it may have truth in it. It explains also the furious debates over any type of laws regarding normal duty by foreigners required to adapt to the host country (the obligation to remove the veil for identification purposes, special language classes for children of immigrants, regulation of gypsy camp sites and the measures against gypsies who force their children to beg and steal, etc.,) criticised as human rights abuses and latent xenophobia, when not openly accused of racism. In this case, the rhetoric raises its ugly head and we hear screams of: Nazis! Fascists!"

Another example is the ideological debate on admitting Turkey into the Union, debate which assumes a surreal character, as it refers to a country that has, in past centuries

been an enemy of Europe and its ideals.

"To ask if Turkey is part of Europe - or if this country is at its margins or been part of the experiences that have moulded the Old Continent and given its particular physiognomy: Christianity, Renaissance, Reform, Enlightenment, Romanticism - means to forget that Europe itself is not anymore part of Europe because it has cut itself from its sanguinary past... I am Nothing therefore I am Everything, seems to affirm the post-national, post-European Europe... This Europe of the Memory has become a Tabula Rasa. But another modality exists: to live in the duty of preserving the Culture... Man lives in society not because he inherits it from other men, but because he commemorates other men. To commemorate means to revive what is great in our dead..."

But this type of memory is not anymore practised. If Europe grows away from itself without looking at its past, it is not just because of the memory of past atrocities - and which country or society is immune from violence ? - but because, alas, culture, this great transmitter of values, the heritage of our humanism, has no more importance.

In this context of de-Europisation, we're facing not only a lax attitude towards immigration on part of leftist Italian politicians, but a general complicity in erasing national traditions and sense of belonging, everywhere on the whole European territory. Immigrants know that they can count on the sense of guilt which confuses the society they are prepared to invade. They know, in spite of government's declarations and good intention, there is the countereffect of a political left which, in the name of virtuous sentiments, sabotages every attempt at establishing some sort of order.

It is too late: the European Parliament and the European Commission have decreed the death by stealth of the Old Continent. One day at the time, one more Mosque, one more more Rom child forced to beg in the street instead of going to school. because--as the Italian Supreme Court has admitted--begging is part of their culture and deserves respect, one more under-age Nigerian prostitute, one less barrier of the Schengen treatise to border trafficking: it happens all here, in front of our very eyes, but then we are impelled to look away. It is all too disturbing, what can we do?

Welcome to the Happy Realm of the Ostrich!

Comment: The above article was originally posted on 3 December 2008. I don't regard the cause as being hopeless as Marisa seems to. It should still be possible for Europeans to find a way to stop their becoming demographically overwhelmed if they stand up for their rights assertively. Perhaps some pragmatic compromise can be made even with the non-Europeans in their midst as it would not even be in their interests to allow Europe's population to continue to grow indefinitely. The article "Why U.S. immigration reformers can still remain hopeful" of 13 Nov 08 by Leon Kolankiewicz may point to a way forward. - JS