They held a ceremony on October 3 commemorating the unification of East and West Germany. The event featured the usual European elites, congratulating themselves for being so forward-thinking and compassionate.
As has become customary, the Europeans also warned against the rise of nationalism and extremist political parties both "inside and outside Europe," as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz solemnly declared. The event occurred on October 3, the day after the attack on the Manchester synagogue. Not a word was spoken by any speaker about that horrible attack.
For those of us who are blissfully uninformed, French President Emanuel Macron translated for us. The politically dead French president claimed that Europe’s “extreme parties” embrace a “new nationalism,” based on “hate of the other." The "other" are, of course, illegal immigrants, mostly from Muslim countries, who are doing far more damage to civil society in Europe than populist parties advocating for restrictions on immigration.
First, a clarification. Germany’s AfD, France’s Rassemblement National, and Britain’s Reform UK are not based on "hate of the other." They are based on love of country. It's easy to confuse the two if you're Macron and Merz, who fear the wrath of a growing number of their voters who see their beloved nations in peril because of the onslaught of people who would rather assimilate Europeans rather than the other way around.
"At the German reunification ceremony, Macron did not mention France’s no-go zones, where state authority has broken down. He did not acknowledge France’s history of large-scale Islamist terror episodes," writes City Journal's Heather Mac Donald.
As for Merz, he sorta forgot to mention the skyrocketing number of attacks on Jews in Germany, or the knifing assaults by immigrants, or the fact that immigrants commit a vast disproportion of crime compared to their numbers.
Neither leader acknowledged the horrific attack on people standing outside a Manchester synagogue that killed two people and wounded three others on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar: Yom Kippur.
As Mac Donald notes, this is par for the course.
Germany’s elites and their European brethren pretend that the biggest threat to Jews in Europe comes from the right. Never mind that the AfD, the Rassemblement National, and Reform UK are the most philo-Semitic and pro-Israel parties in their respective countries.
Wheresoever two or more members of the European elite gather together, they will cloak themselves in the mantle of science and enlightened expertise. In Saarbrücken, Macron denounced the “return of the dark Enlightenment.” The “new Enlightenment,” as he put it, believes that “respect and science are stronger than hate and fury.” That is the same respect for “science,” presumably, which closed schools during the Covid epidemic—despite evidence that children faced virtually no mortal risk from the disease—established arbitrary social distancing rules, and shut down the economy without regard to costs and benefits.
Totally unaware of the consequences, elites in Europe have made "diversity" a sacred calling. Muslims have gratefully accepted this gift of the rope by which Islamists will hang them. The Islamists, of course, couldn't give a fig about diversity and "multiculturalism." Meanwhile, the Europeans brag about their "rainbow" societies.
British Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, speaking at a vigil for the victims of the Manchester attack, said, “Our country, those of all colors, all faiths and none, stand with you,” he told mourners at the vigil. Lammy worried that the vision of the multicultural fantasy would disappear. “We cannot, must not, let them divide us — we must show them who we really are, not what they want us to become or to believe,” he said.
On the evening of the Manchester attack, anti-Israel activists marched in Manchester and London, leading to 40 arrests, including six for assaulting police officers. The feckless British home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, expressed her disappointment at the demonstrations, which had ignored pleas by British leaders to give the country a chance to grieve. “Carrying on in this way does feel un-British,” Mahmood said. Mahmood is just now noticing that Britain has become decidedly un-British. Don’t expect that recognition to last.
Nigel Farrage, head of Reform UK, provided a sharper gloss: the Thursday night demonstrations were celebrations of the synagogue attack, he said.
The European elites refuse to work with the populist parties despite their rising numbers, if not influence. That's because the establishment parties have found ways to squelch their voices and curtail their power.
Mac Donald says of the populists, "They are the last Europeans with the will to conserve European civilization." Let's hope that's not an epithet for Western civilization.
