The End of the European Fantasy

The French are already bombing Syria in retaliation for Friday’s attack, and the scales are finally falling from the Euro-elite’s eyes:

The Paris attacks that killed at least 128 people on Saturday night will put renewed pressure on Europe Schengen agreement and threaten the “very essence” of the European way of life, as far-right parties seek to capitalise on the attacks, analysts have warned. With Paris now enduring this second major terror bloodbath in under a year, questions are now being asked about how much longer both Europe’s open border system and vision of a tolerant, multi-cultural society can survive.

“With Paris in lockdown and France closing its borders, we can see all too clearly that what is at stake here is the very essence of our way of life in Europe,” said Davis Lewin, the deputy director of the Henry Jackson Society, a conservative think-tank. Designed to facilitate the free movement of goods and labour that is the economic life-blood of the continent, the Schengen system has also enabled the easy transfer of both weapons and, potentially jihadist fighters, across those same borders.

The “idea of Europe” was always a postwar fantasy, a Euro-Disney of unreality that could not survive first contact with a dedicated and implacable foe.

In the last few months Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have all re-introduced some form of border controls in order to try and regulate the flow of migrants – many from Syria and Iraq – as they flooded into Europe. The security risks posed by open borders were highlighted by both the Charlie Hebdo attack and the botched Thalys train attack earlier this year, when in both cases the weapons used in France had been smuggled in from Belgium.

Continental Europe is reportedly awash with automatic firearms orginiating from the Balkan wars of the 1990s and the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Belgium, a country with a population of 11 million, has around 900,000 firearms in circulation. More broadly, analysts warn that the Paris attack also has the potential to fuel the on-going rise of Europe’s Right-wing parties who have warned of the posed by uncontrolled migration – both in terms of immediate security but also to Western’s Europe’s culturally liberal way of life.

“Potential”? Just watch them keep rising. This will get very ugly before it’s over, and the Euros have nobody but themselves and Mama Merkel to blame.