AUTHOR
INTERVIEWS
'The Strange Death Of Europe' Warns Against
Impacts Of Immigration
JUNE 27,
2017
NPR's
Robert Siegel talks to Douglas Murray about his new book, The Strange Death of
Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam. He argues that European civilization is
dying as a result of immigration.
ROBERT
SIEGEL, HOST:
The way the
British writer Douglas Murray sees it, European civilization is in the process
of suicide by immigration. Western Europe in particular, after encouraging
immigration to fill low-wage jobs, now finds itself defending traditional
values against those of largely Muslim immigrants and their descendants. Mr.
Murray's new book is called "The Strange Death Of Europe," and he
joins us from London. Welcome to the program.
DOUGLAS
MURRAY: Very good to be with you.
SIEGEL:
First, what does it mean in your view for Europe to die as opposed to change
with changing populations?
MURRAY:
We're used to the idea of slow, incremental cultural and societal change. I use
the famous example of the ship of Theseus. As bits fall off, you put bits on,
but it remains recognizably the ship of Theseus. That isn't the case when you
have migration at the levels at which Europe has had it in recent decades,
particularly not at the level of 2015, when Germany added an extra 2 percent of
- to its population in a single year alone. And it's also very unlikely, it
seems to me, that people who come with very different attitudes are not going
to change the continent significantly.
SIEGEL:
Very different attitudes, you believe, being essentially Muslim attitudes, is
what you're - what you're writing about here?
MURRAY:
That is obviously the one that is - that Europe is finding it hardest to
digest, yes.
SIEGEL: Let
me cut to what, for me, is the chase here. As a Jew, I mean, I have to ask you
- what is so different about contemporary opposition to Muslim immigrants from
19th and 20th century European anti-Semitism? Things were said about the Jews -
that they wouldn't fit in or would bring radical ideas from Eastern Europe with
them into the West.
MURRAY:
Well, the difference is the facts, isn't it? That's the first thing - and
secondly, of course, the numbers. Take an example like - let's say 2015 across
the continent of Europe. The numbers that came that year from across
sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, the Middle East and the Far East were far in
excess of any of the migration that was seen during the Jewish migrations into
Europe.
And
secondly, that the claims that were made about Jews were erroneous claims,
whereas the people who did warn that some - obviously not all, but some - of
the Muslim immigrants will bring serious security challenges with them has been
demonstrated time and again by events. So, you know, you can hear ugly echoes
whilst also being able to differentiate the difference between facts and lies.
SIEGEL: One
fundamental difference that you write about is - you write that for, well,
going on two centuries, in Britain and other parts of Europe, religious faith
has been moving from the literal to the metaphorical.
MURRAY:
Yes.
SIEGEL: And
the people arriving are bringing a very literal faith with them.
MURRAY:
Yes.
SIEGEL: And
that seems to be one of the basic dissonances that you're writing about.
MURRAY:
Yes.
SIEGEL: Do
you feel that's what makes you and the people you grew up with fundamentally
different from many of the people arriving now?
MURRAY: Let
me give you one very quick example. In Britain, we, some decades ago, came to a
fairly straightforward accommodation and belief towards tolerance towards
people who were of sexual minorities. If you - if you look now at all opinion
surveys of the people who've come in most recently, they have very, very
different views. A poll carried out a couple of years ago found that among U.K.
Muslims there was zero - zero - belief that homosexuality was a permissible
lifestyle choice. And a poll taken just last year in Britain found that 52
percent of British Muslims wanted being gay in the U.K. to be made illegal now.
Now, there
are people who won't bake your wedding cake if you're gay. There are some
ultra-Protestants who won't marry you in their churches. But these are people
who actually want to make it a crime punishable in law in the 21st century in
Britain. So I'm afraid that everyone has to concede - liberal or conservative
or whatever - that some of the people who the liberals and their attitude
towards immigration have brought here have more illiberal attitudes than anyone
else in the country. And this is a big problem.
SIEGEL:
Yeah. And you represent the other side of that coin, which is someone taking
what would be described as a very - your critics would say a very intolerant
attitude of immigrants. But you're openly gay and...
MURRAY:
Well, I am intolerant - I have to say, I am intolerant of people who want to
put me, as a gay man, in prison. Yeah. Yeah, I'm intolerant of that.
SIEGEL:
Yeah, there's no - fair enough. But as a gay man, one of the - one of the
traditional values that you're saying is under assault is a degree of tolerance
that's developed in Britain and other European societies.
MURRAY: Of
course. We all - we all know - it's a grade-school question of the level at
which you can decide to be tolerant of an intolerant belief.
SIEGEL: Do
you accept, though, that there's something odd and almost comical about a Brit
saying, we never asked for Pakistanis to come to our country en masse when, in
fact, no one on the Indian subcontinent, to my knowledge, ever asked Britain to
come and set up an empire there and decide that it was fit to rule over
hundreds of millions of people in that part of the world?
MURRAY:
It's one interpretation and usage of the word comic. Ironic, perhaps, you'd
say. But no, if that is the comparison you'd like to make, then I would throw a
question back to you.
SIEGEL:
Yeah.
MURRAY:
Which is everyone agrees that the colonial era was wrong. I'm not an apologist
for empire. But in that case, how long does the reverse colonialism happen for?
And if you see it as some kind of blowback for colonialism, then what is the
end point of this anti-colonialism?
SIEGEL:
Well, you're using the construct of punishment. I was saying it's a fairly
natural consequence, just as the French have a very large population that are -
originates in North Africa, where they had decided for some time they should
rule.
MURRAY:
Yeah, but this doesn't - this doesn't work...
SIEGEL:
It's human nature to do that.
MURRAY: The
problem is that this isn't borne out by the facts across Europe. For instance,
I mean, where was the Swedish empire across Africa or in the Middle East? Where
was it?
SIEGEL:
Fair enough. That's not the same.
MURRAY: And
so why did Sweden take in 2 percent of its population in addition in one year
alone, 2015? It makes no sense. We can all find excuses and reasons for why
this is happening. I think it's much better to look at it in the round and see
the very complex picture this actually presents and the very complex future
it's setting up for us.
SIEGEL: If
what you call the strange death of Europe is - if it remains a process rather
than a condition, what would be your solution to reverse the process?
MURRAY: The
first solution is very straightforward. It is that you slow down the flow. I
don't say no migrants into Europe. I don't say that at all. But you've got to
massively slow down the flow because a society doesn't have a hope of remaining
cohesive when you have migration at these levels. The second thing is you work
on the people who are already here more. The third thing is that you make it
clear that as well as speaking the language of inclusion in our politics, we
have to speak the language of exclusion - what it is that we won't tolerate as
well as what it is that we do and what it is we will be tolerant of.
There's a
whole set of other things. One of them is a very basic one, which is to try to
shrug off what I diagnose as, among other things, the guilt-ridden complex that
Europe has. I'm not advocating that we become sort of, you know, patriotic
nationalists. You've got to find a balance here. And one of the balances has to
be arrived at by recognizing a very simple fact, which is that Europe cannot be
the home for everybody in the world who wants to move in and call it home.
SIEGEL:
Douglas Murray, author of "The Strange Death Of Europe: Immigration,
Identity, Islam." Thanks for talking with us today.
MURRAY: Great pleasure.
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