While (Western) Europe Slept, Part 1
Shortly before the knife and vehicle attack Wednesday on the streets of London, Turkish President Erdoğan warned Europeans worldwide of dire consequences if Europe continued to resist his ability to appeal to the Turkish diaspora there. While President Erdoğan has threatened the safety of Europeans before, this latest threat appeared to be a call to action.
If you continue to behave like this, not a single European, not a single Westerner will be able to take a step on the road safely anytime in the world,” Erdoğan said at a press conference adding: “We as Turkey are calling on Europe to respect human rights and democracy. (Note the irony here.)
Many Turks living in countries like the UK, Germany and the Netherlands have expressed massive support for Erdoğan following the failed coup attempt last year.
Shortly after the coup, tens of thousands of Turkish expats attended a rally in Cologne, Germany, to express support for Erdoğan. Then, last week, when two Turkish ministers were refused entry in the Netherlands a week ago, hundreds of Turks flooded the streets of Rotterdam and rioted.
Erdoğan has suspended high-level diplomatic relations with the Dutch calling them “Nazi remnants,” and the pro-Erdoğan Turkish press depicted German Chancellor Angela Merkel as a Nazi on the cover of newspaper Gunes.
In still another threat to Europeans, Erdoğan said the EU can “forget about” the migrant deal and that it is, for all intents and purposes, dead anyway. This threat appears quite real as a recent report showed an abnormal increase in the number of migrant arrivals over the past week.
Can anyone take seriously the longstanding proposal to admit Turkey to the EU? And when will the Europeans realize that “virtue signaling” and appeasement are not effective strategies in combating radical Islamic terrorism or the Islamic invasion of Europe? In 2015, European Union member states allowed unvetted entry to more than 1.2 million first-time asylum seekers in, more than double that of the previous year, according to Eurostat. And millions more have come into the EU since then and more are on the way. This mass migration of Islamists of all stripes into the EU coincided with major terrorist attacks in London, Paris, Brussels, Nice and other cities along with an upsurge in sexual assaults and criminality.
Soon or later Europeans will awaken to the fact that migrants and legal Turkish immigrants constitute a veritable “fifth column,” as UKIP’s Nigel Farage phrased it, who can undermine European countries from within, in favor of the Islamic jihadists or Islamic regimes. As the most recent attack on the Westminster Bridge outside Parliament confirmed, all it takes is a single individual with a knife and a vehicle — and a complicit PC culture whose main concern is fear that Europeans will be start to form the idea that the elites who run the EU are really do not have their best interests at heart. But this realization may come too late. Instead, Londoner’s have a Muslim Mayor telling the world to accept such acts as “part and parcel” of urban life.
Maybe it’s just me, but I haven’t noticed any terrorism in Tokyo, Budapest, or Warsaw. Whatever could the difference be?
Predictable Response to London Atrocity
In a satirical piece on the Brussels airport attack one year to the day before the Westminster attack, Douglas Murray writes presciently about what to expect (“A Terrorist Attack has happened in Europe. Let the Standard Response Begin”):
The Corbynite-wing of the Labour party will get onto their favourite subject which is not dead bodies in airports but people who have been looked at meanly on a bus while wearing a headscarf. By at least tomorrow the story of a savage ‘backlash’ (consisting mainly of stares and horrible things written on social media) will be being talked-up by all mainstream Muslim leaders. By Thursday no one will be talking about the victims.
And of course all this happened, only the pleadings for tolerance of Muslims and concern about “Islamophobia” go far beyond the Labour Party establishment. Indeed, the Westminster event, like all the previous instances of Islamic terror, have nothing whatever to do with Islam.
- Former interim Labour leader Harriet Harmen said the attack should not “be used as a pretext for division … and Islamophobia.” Prime Minister Theresa May “absolutely” agreed and commented “We will all move forward together.” The Prime Minister also said the “Islamist” attack on Parliament was not “Islamic” and Islam is a “great faith”. Speaking in Parliament, Theresa May insisted: “It is wrong to describe this as Islamic terrorism. “
- MPs almost unanimously agreed with the Prime Minister, lining up to warn against “demonising” and “stigmatising” Muslims, and to condemn “Islamophobia” and “racial and religious” discrimination.
- Khalid Mahmood, the Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, said the attacker or attackers “pretend to be of a particular religion”. “If they were of a religion they would not be carrying out acts like this,” he added.
- Tulip Siddiq, the Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn, added: “People who commit acts of terrorism in the name of Islam do not speak for the majority of Muslims in this country.” (“Theresa May says ‘Islamist’ Westminster attack ‘not Islamic’”)
And, as Murray points out, it is utterly predictable what will not be said by our intrepid leaders:
The only things that are worth saying won’t be said. What are those things? Among other things the fact that we are living with the consequences of an immigration and ‘integration’ fantasy which should have been abandoned years ago. Instead our governments have kept pretending that the weakening of Europe’s external borders and the erosion of its internal borders happening at the same time as one of the largest population replacement exercises in history could have no tangible effects on our continent’s future. They pretend that Britain will always be Britain, France will always be France, Sweden will always be Sweden and Belgium will always be Belgium.
But perhaps we do learn some things. Albeit silently. A decade ago, after every attack, the pundits used to point to places where mass immigration, integration and open borders were meant to have worked. After London people said ‘What can we learn from France’. After Paris they said ‘What can we learn from the Swedish model.’ Nobody cites Sweden anymore. In fact nobody looks to anyone else’s model anymore. Because all of the ‘models’ failed. So here we are — stuck with a problem our politicians have given us and to which they have no answers.
A Different Response in Eastern Europe
The same event triggered a far different response in Poland. Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło also drew a clear link between the European Union’s permissive migration policy and terror events such as the Westminster attacks. “I hear in Europe very often: do not connect the migration policy with terrorism, but it is impossible not to connect them,” the Polish premier told the TVN24 broadcasting network.
Poland’s governing Law and Justice Party (PiS) is currently locked in a struggle with the EU’s unelected executive, the European Commission, over its refusal to accept 6,200 migrants under the EU’s mandatory quota system, which was imposed despite the resistance of much of Central Europe.
The Commissioner for Migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, on a visit to Warsaw on 21 March said “If some of them do not comply the Commission has the power [and] the tools to convince these countries.” The EU wants to fine member-states €250,000 for every migrant they refuse to receive — a sanction which would cost Poland over €1.5 billion. But good luck trying to collect it. So Swedish MEP Cecilia Wikström proposed simply withholding funds from “troublesome” countries. The wishes of the democratically elected government of Poland be damned.
Szydło struck a defiant posture:
The Commissioner should concentrate on what to do to avoid such acts as yesterday in London … Poland will not succumb to blackmail such as that expressed by the Commissioner,” she asserted. “The Commissioner is coming to Warsaw and trying to tell us: you have to do what the EU decided, you have to take these migrants. … Two days later another terrorist attack in London occurs.
Poland has taken a similarly no-nonsense stance after other European terror events, with interior minister Mariusz Błaszczak declaring that “well-organised marches” and “painted flowers on the sidewalks” expressing sympathy for migrants are no solution to Europe’s terror crisis. “We must reject political correctness and call things by their true names,” he said. “Rather than shedding tears like [European Union High Representative Federica] Mogherini [and] organising marches that solve nothing, authorities should ensure the safety of citizens.”
Hungarian patriot prime minister Viktor Orban has taken a similar perspective in his comments on previous incidents of terrorism, echoing the views of some Western politicians — Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen, Farage, has called refugees the “Trojan horse of terrorism.” Of course these politicians are far from being able to form a government, and even though Donald Trump has managed to become president, it is an open question as to whether he will be able to stem the tide given the hostility of huge swaths of the courts, the media, and Congress.
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