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Bedlam Europe
By Gerald Vouga
In the 1970s Portugal’s
authoritarian regime succumbed to a peaceful coup by discontented army
officers. Most of the country rejoiced but enthusiasm did not last long:
within a few months the country was like a mental hospital under
self-management. Portugal’s long tradition of music hall comedy thrived,
and counter-revolutionaries with theatrical flair made the most of the
loony political situation, drawing huge audiences.
Current developments in Europe look similar.
All that’s missing is a suitable continental stage on which to burlesque
the hilarious ongoing events—but anyway here are some typical scenes.
The United Kingdom
Like the rest of Europe Britain is a strange
place nowadays. Earlier this year a lad of eleven was brought before a UK
court charged with committing a hate crime. He had been caught at the age
of ten in his school playground insulting a fellow-pupil as a “dirty
Paki”. The boy was then tracked by the police for a year, his playground
wickedness duly registered, and criminal proceedings initiated. His
eventual defence was that his victim had started it all by calling him
“white trash”.
In an unusual display of common sense, the
judge dismissed the case and denounced the Crown Prosecution Service and
the police for devoting their attentions to childish misdemeanours instead
of attending to car-theft, burglary and assault. In his day, said the
judge, the matter would have been dealt with by a timely clout. The
judge’s decision was then indignantly condemned by teachers’ unions and
has gone to appeal.
* * *
The extraordinary attention paid by the
authorities to one small boy is in sharp contrast to the carelessness
shown by former Home Secretary Clarke, who mislaid over a thousand
dangerous foreign criminals that should have been deported after serving
their sentences. Instead they were released into the community and some of
them went on to commit further violent crimes including rape and murder.
Adding to the scandal, a Court has ruled that
Afghan hijackers who have been in custody for several years cannot be
deported. This is because of EU Human Rights provisions governing asylum
seekers. No matter that Afghanistan is supposed to have been liberated. No
matter that the hijackers would no longer be persecuted in their homeland.
No matter that they might even be treated as heroes back in Afghanistan.
They cannot be deported from Britain because—so says the law—they cannot
be sent anywhere they might be persecuted. Not surprisingly, in
consequence of public outcry, and the Home Secretary’s admission that even
more foreign criminals are missing, Mr Blair has now declared that
Britain’s adoption of EU Human Rights law should be reconsidered.
As his reign draws to a close Blair seems to
be at sixes and sevens. Contradictions crowd in thick and fast. After a
recent cabinet re-shuffle, Ruth Kelly has been named Minister of Equality.
(Yes, believe it or not that is what her portfolio is called. Is there
perhaps the sign of a guillotine over the ministerial door?). She is a
practising Catholic and a member of Opus Dei, well-known for being one of
the most orthodox and traditional of the Church’s religious orders.
Its social project roundly condemns all the
Left’s pet gender options: contraception, abortion, homosexuality and gay
marriage. How Ms. Kelly will act or speak on these matters is anyone’s
guess.
In a recent TV programme a British Moslem
leader enunciated Islam’s well-known position on homosexuality by
condemning it. He was then investigated by the police but has so far not
been prosecuted for a hate crime, though this could happen any day. The
British media are naturally agog to find out whether (a) Ms Kelly can be
provoked into making her views on these controversial matters known, (b)
whether, if she does so, she also will be investigated, and (c) whether,
in the latter case, she might end in jail.
France
Across the channel the prophecy that Prime
Minister Dominique de Villepin’s nomination last year would soon bring
people out into the street turned out to be over-optimistic. Instead of
three months, we had to wait until April this year, when large numbers of
ethnic French decided to exercise their time-honoured prerogative. What
began as a student protest lasted for over three weeks and at one point
there were a million demonstrators all over France.
What made these events strikingly different
from earlier resort to the barricades was that this time the demands were
in support of the status quo. Prime Minister de Villepin had
angered the young, their mainly middle-class parents and the unions by
proposing mild reforms in France’s notoriously inflexible labour laws.
These laws, which make it almost impossible
to fire unsatisfactory staff—even youngsters in their first jobs—have long
been blamed for France’s high unemployment rate of more than 10 percent,
which has persisted for over a decade and accounts in part for the
nation’s declining economic growth. The students and their union allies
(mainly public-sector workers) wanted no such reform. But no attempt to
explain the unsustainability of France’s social security legislation was
listened to. Villepin had to climb down, and his dismissal began to be
mooted.
The French Prime Minister is a bureaucrat who
has never stood for office, and was appointed to his job after his
predecessor Raffarin had been forced out following France’s “No” vote in
last year’s referendum on the EU constitution.
We might note in
passing that bureaucratic ossification and blocked job opportunities have
been a feature of French society for a very long time. In the
revolutionary and Napoleonic period there had been major upheavals, and
numerous young men found political and administrative posts.
But thirty years later
they still held them, preventing the next generation from finding
employment. A Genevan author wrote a pamphlet in 1828 with the title On
Gerontocracy, or the Abuse of the Wisdom of Old Men in the Government of
France. Ancient functionaries, he said, had reduced France’s
administration to seven or eight thousand asthmatic, gouty, paralytic, old
men who blocked the entry of eligible candidates.
Yet today the streets
are filled with young people demonstrating in favor of these same
rigidities, besotted with lifelong security and jobs from the cradle to
the grave.
* * *
Monsieur Villepin has had a difficult year.
Last autumn there were smaller but much more violent demonstrations during
a long hot month in the ghetto suburbs where largely Moslem youth vented
their anger against French society, burning cars and destroying property.
Though everybody knew the origins of these demonstrators it was some time
before the Press referred openly to the fact that they were Moslems and
mostly North African. Heart-searching followed, and it was revealed that
more than half these young ghetto-dwellers are unemployed.
Now whether or not racism might be a factor,
most of these youngsters are school dropouts so they are not easily
employed. The labor law reforms were aimed precisely at encouraging
employers to take such people on by making dismissal easier. Youth
unemployment overall is around 25 per cent, but as so much of it is
concentrated among Moslem youth, it is clear that the demonstrating
students knew what they were doing. They had the most to lose from reform:
neither they nor their parents wanted it to be easier to sack them from
their first jobs.
But Villepin’s troubles have not ended. At
present he is involved in an altogether different kind of scandal, the
so-called Clearstream Affair, in which he is accused of conspiring against
Interior Minister Sarkozy in a Machiavellian plot to involve the latter in
corruption charges. These concern deposits in a Luxembourg bank account
resulting from the sale of French frigates. It is alleged that both
Villepin and Chirac were keen to smear Sarkozy in an attempt to eliminate
him as a candidate in the next presidential election.
Who is conspiring against whom, and who is
smearing whom, is not entirely clear; but it is plain that what is at
stake is who is to be the Right’s candidate in the next presidential
election, and therefore who will have the chance of reforming France’s
Welfare State, and averting both looming bankruptcy and the collapse of
the social security system, not to mention dealing with acute immigration
problems.
President Jacques Chirac continues in office
and his inborn chauvinism remains impermeable. At a recent EU meeting he
walked out in protest against the French chairman’s use of the English
language for the proceedings. It was explained that English was the
language of business. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the
dangers of nationalism in EU affairs.
Italy
In Italy Silvio Berlusconi, after three weeks
resistance, at last reluctantly conceded. The recent general election was
described as one of the roughest episodes in Italy’s turbulent post-war
electoral history. Media baron and multi-millionaire Prime Minister
Berlusconi made almost daily headlines with colourful testicular epithets
hurled at opponents.
However his rude speeches and rowdy departure
from TV debates failed to win him a clear majority. Romano Prodi, notable
for his ineffectual performance as president of the European Union, is now
Italy’s new Prime Minister by a very slim margin. But Italy has long
departed from tradition: recent studies indicate that 52 per cent of
Italian women in the age range 16-24 do not want to have children.
Scandinavia
Denmark, normally a quiet and sensible place,
is recovering from the Mohammed cartoon affair and the authors are said to
be still in hiding. Perhaps never since the time of the Vikings has this
small Scandinavian people been so reviled. But now the hatred and boycott
of Danish products extends from Moslem enclaves in Britain and the rest of
Europe to as far away as Indonesia.
One consequence of this excessive reaction to
a few rude caricatures of the Prophet is that artists everywhere now think
twice before taking up pens or brushes. The other is that people are at
long last beginning to challenge the taboo on discussing Moslem
intolerance.
Most of these events have attracted
international headlines. Not so with what has been happening in another
Scandinavian country. Hardly anybody has commented on the extremes to
which political correctness has been leading the Swedish model of social
democracy. As long ago as 1973 family legislation decriminalized incest
insofar as half-siblings are concerned, by permitting marriage between
half-brothers and half-sisters. In 1987 a husband’s special responsibility
to support the family was ended. In 1995 homosexual unions were recognized
but this received little attention.
More recent changes in family law have
similarly passed unnoticed. In 2002 gay and lesbian couples gained the
right to adopt children. And now a Swedish court has recognized polygamous
marriage among Moslem immigrants, a judgment welcomed by family reform
groups who now foresee that polygamy for all will be legalized by 2010.
The more hopeful of these declare that they will be lobbying for similar
measures to be adopted by the EU for all its members.
Spain
In Spain socialist Prime Minister Zapatero
had already defied the Catholic Church by legalizing gay marriage and the
right of homosexual couples to adopt children. Recently he sponsored what
might be the ultimate way of legally eliminating gender difference.
Henceforth the words “mother” and “father” will not appear on birth
certificates. They will be replaced by “Progenitor A” and “Progenitor B”.
It is not clear as yet whether the
unfortunate child is itself to be described as an “A” or a “B”. Meanwhile
the Catholic Church is protesting these measures, while the State is
prosecuting those State officers who refuse to comply with the new
regulations.
Netherlands
Dutch commentators say Voltaire and Erasmus
must be turning in their graves. After the murder of Theo Van Gogh by an
Islamic fanatic for directing “Submission”, a film about the treatment of
women in a Moslem country, there is today a new victim—Ayaan Hirsi Ali who
wrote the screenplay. A woman from Somalia who became a Dutch MP in 2003,
she has been stripped of her Dutch citizenship. After Van Gogh’s assassin
had declared she should be killed too, she had been living in hiding.
Now Netherlands immigration minister Rita
Verdonk has entered the fray. Ms Verdonk, a former prison warden known as
“Iron Rita”, decided Ayaan should be punished because she gave a slightly
altered name on her application for citizenship in 1997. The real reason
for this draconian measure against a member of parliament, observers say,
is that Ayaan, formerly Moslem herself, has annoyed the Left because of
her criticisms of Islamic fanaticism and Dutch multiculturalism.
Even if widespread protests against the
treatment of Ayaan are successful she is not interested in staying in the
Netherlands, and is leaving to join the American Enterprise Institute in
the US. It is probably the safest thing to do. A late report says more
than 50 percent of the Dutch population agree she should be expelled. Such
is the spirit of accommodation with Islamic fanaticism in the Netherlands.
Such is Dutch courage today.
Germany
In Germany, which takes itself more seriously
than other nations and where there is a large Turkish immigrant minority,
public attention is taken up with more tragic matters: the frequency of
“honour killings” among Germany’s Moslem residents. These have of course
been noticed in other European countries, but there are signs that more
indignation is being shown in Germany than elsewhere at these violent
manifestations of Moslem sexual prejudices.
Meanwhile the press prefers to divert
attention to the forthcoming World Cup. There is ongoing coverage of the
preparations being made to build brothels and stock them with thousands of
women. What feminists or Germany’s woman chancellor have to say about all
this is not known. In Poland, however, preparations for the World Cup are
roaring ahead and they have little to do with women’s rights. Instead,
powerful groups of Polish thugs have announced their intention of forming
a league of 500 highly aggressive hooligans. They plan to go to Berlin to
fight their German and English counterparts. Polish police say there are
at least 2,000 more keen to join in.
Brussels
A draft report on alcohol consumption has
been leaked. It is to be published in June, and the report’s lead author,
Dr Peter Anderson of the World Health Organization, is an enthusiastic
hunter of tobacco addicts. He described in an interview how a similar
strategy to that which has made smoking socially unacceptable ought to be
followed with wines and spirits.
Reporters were told that a concept resembling
that of “passive smoking” should be popularised. Alcohol consumption, he
declared, caused enormous costs to society and non-drinkers were adversely
affected through no fault of their own by the drinking of others. He did
not mention whether any Islamic lobby had influenced the authors of the
report. There is no news as yet of reactions from famous toper Jacques
Chirac, France’s wine industry or European brewers generally.
* * *
In normal times everybody would agree that
this catalogue of European aberrations provides a treasure house for humor
factories everywhere. TV and radio shows, films, newspapers and books
would be inundating us with their products. But in Europe nowadays only a
few of these matters can be freely discussed. You can comment on the
antics of Prescott and Berlusconi, or the bad manners of the little
English boy, but not much else.
Instead the situation is increasingly like
that in the old Soviet bloc where humour became subversive and confined to
samizdat publications and word of mouth. Not quite as bad admittedly. The
Mohammed cartoon affair was adequately covered and duly, if nervously,
ridiculed in some countries. In Britain however, the cartoons, out of
respect for multicultural sensitivities, were not generally reproduced.
This at least was the usual excuse that was offered. The more candid
admitted their motives to be prudential: media barons said they did not
wish to place their employees at risk—but perhaps they were also thinking
of themselves and their property.
Nevertheless, here and there the new iron
curtain is being dented and some hardy souls are daring to speak out. One
who has never been silenced is the doughty Italian journalist Oriana
Fallacci. Now over seventy and ill with cancer, she lives in New York and
cannot return to Europe because she is being prosecuted in France and
Italy for “hate crimes” and could end her life in prison.
Having risked her professional life in places
like Viet Nam and having interviewed some of the world’s most ruthless
dictators, she is now a refugee from Europe’s bizarre standards of human
rights. Her crime? Speaking out against what she sees as the grave threats
facing Europe: Islamic immigration, the continent’s declining birth-rate,
and European self-hatred.
Someone far more powerful than this frail
woman (and one of her regular readers) is Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict
XVI. He and Marcello Pera, a philosopher who is an enthusiastic fan of
Karl Popper and President of the Italian Senate, have been collaborating
for some time on an analysis of the European crisis.
It is worth noting that Ratzinger, the head
of Christendom and regarded as incurably reactionary by progressive
Catholics, is perfectly at ease with self-confessed atheists like Fallacci
and Pera. When the late Pope John Paul II was still a Cardinal and facing
up to Communist domination of his Polish homeland, he could scarcely have
dreamed that his successor would be called upon to play a similar role
against the dominion all over the continent, not of communists, who were
after all generally sane, but of madmen in the service of false gods bent
on destroying European civilization.
Gerald Vouga is a long-time observer of
the European scene.
June 2006
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