The decline of the West

Perhaps the clearest evidence of the decline of Western civilization is the example of those who now shout it its defense.

In the name of protecting civilization, a movement promoting racial supremacism is infecting Western consciousness with the notion that a set of values and cultural constructions is now in jeopardy when in fact our civilization’s corruption is already well advanced.

If the progress of Western civilization came about through the unfettering of the power of the people in egalitarian societies, that trend was quietly reversed as citizens became consumers. In recent decades, that decline further deepened as economic “advance” turned out to be a mask concealing expanding inequality.

In the hollow culture which this has created, beyond employing a stock of well-worn platitudes about freedom and liberty, civilization’s self-appointed protectors find it easier to spotlight purported threats than describe exactly what they are defending.

In this context we should note that American culture remains influenced by European culture more than any other and to the extent that Europe provides a cultural compass, we should be alarmed at the direction this now points. An ocean will not protect us from its influence.

Christian Science Monitor reports:

A new survey in Germany shows that 13 percent of its citizens would welcome a “Führer” — a German word for leader that is explicitly associated with Adolf Hitler — to run the country “with a firm hand.”

The findings signal that Europe’s largest nation, freed from cold-war strictures, is not immune from the extreme and often right-wing politics on the rise around the Continent.

The study, released Oct. 13 by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, affiliated with the center-left Social Democratic Party, revealed among other things that more than a third of Germans feel the country is “overrun by foreigners,” some 60 percent would “restrict the practice of Islam,” and 17 percent think Jews have “too much influence.”

The study’s overall snapshot of German society shows new forms of extremism and hate are no longer the province of far-right cohorts who shave their heads or wear leather jackets adorned with silver skulls – but register in the tweedy political center, on the right and the left. Indeed, the study found, extremism in Germany isn’t a fringe phenomenon but is found in the political center, “in all social groups and in all age groups, regardless of employment status, educational level or gender.”

The year 2010 is marking a clear shift toward extremist politics across Europe, analysts say. An uncertain economy, a gap between elites and ordinary Europeans, and fraying of a traditional sense of national identity has just in the past month brought more hard-line politics and speech, often aimed at Islam or immigrants – into a political mainstream where it had been absent or considered taboo.

On Oct. 10, the city of Vienna, a cosmopolitan and socialist stronghold since World War II, voted the far-right Freedom Party into a ruling coalition. The party, which ran on an “anti-minaret” platform in a city with only one mosque, was formerly associated with nationalist Jorg Haider, but has been reinvented by an animated former dental hygienist, Heinz-Christian Strache.

On Sept. 19, Sweden, long a Scandinavian redoubt of social tolerance and openness, put the far-right Sweden Democrats into parliament for the first time.

Further, this week the Netherlands saw the rise to influence, if not power, of the anti-Islam party of Geert Wilders, a social liberal who argues for gay rights – but whose main platform is to ban the Quran and the practice of Islam in the Low Countries. Mr. Wilders’ party will formally participate in the Dutch ruling coalition without specifically joining it.

Ian Buruma writes:

All these countries may soon be following the Danish model, in which the illiberal populist parties pledge their support without actually governing, thereby gaining power without responsibility. Denmark’s Conservative government could not govern without the support of the People’s party. Sweden’s recently re-elected conservative Moderate party will have to rely on the Democrats to form a viable government. And Wilders has already received assurances from the conservative and Christian Democrat parties that, in exchange for his support, the burqa will be banned in the Netherlands and immigration curbed.

The influence of these slick new populists, waging their war on Islam, goes well beyond their countries’ borders. Nativism is on the rise all over the western world, and Wilders, in particular, is a popular speaker at rightwing anti-Muslim gatherings in the US, Britain and Germany.

European populism focuses on Islam and immigration, but it may be mobilising a wider rage against elites expressed by people who feel unrepresented, or fear being left behind economically. They share a feeling of being dispossessed by foreigners, of losing their sense of national, social, or religious belonging. Northern Europe’s political elites, largely Social or Christian Democrats, have often been dismissive of such fears, and their paternalism and condescension may be why the backlash in those liberal countries has been particularly fierce.

The question is what to do about it. One possible solution is to let populist parties join the government if they get a sufficient number of votes. The idea of a Tea Party candidate becoming US president is alarming, to be sure, but European populists could only be part of coalition governments.

True, Hitler’s Nazis took over Germany almost as soon as they were voted into power, but the new European right are not Nazis. They have not used violence, or broken any laws. Not yet. As long as this is so, why not give them real political responsibility? They would then not only have to prove their competence, but also moderate their attitudes.

Buruma’s assumption that governance inherently imposes a moderating effect, seems very dubious. Look at Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu party in an Israel that prides itself on its Western identity. There’s little evidence that participation in government has forced them to turn away from extremism.

The underlying idea here is one that has guided the eviscerated Left for the last two decades: that the political challenges of the day can only be met by some form of reaction or accommodation through which the sacred political center can be reclaimed. The idea that the Left provides a genuine political alternative has — at least by mainstream politicians — been effectively abandoned.

This is the context in which an American underclass is expanding, ready to be corralled by rightwing, xenophobic opportunists.

The Guardian‘s Paul Mason went to Atlanta to see how economic decline is reshaping American society.

Unable to borrow or earn, a whole generation is being shut out of the American lifestyle.

Meanwhile, some states have begun a race to the bottom: slashing welfare, labour regulations and local taxes to attract investment. High-wage companies close and relocate to low-wage states, and foreign investment flows to the towns where labour costs are lowest. These states are being transformed by the arrival of low-waged Hispanic migrants even as the rightwing politicians who support the economics rail against the demographics.

As a result the so-called Sun Belt, identified by Republican strategist Kevin Phillips in the 1970s as the new political bedrock of conservatism, now feels like the unhappiest place in America. Median incomes in the south are, on average, $8,000 lower than in the northeast; poverty rates are higher than anywhere else in America — and so are the racial and religious tensions.

In the midterm elections politicians have promised to “do something” for the middle class. The kindest thing they could do is tell the truth: Americans have been living a middle-class lifestyle on working-class wages — and bridging the gap with credit. And it’s over.

Instead, the message is that the American way of life is as good as ever — just so long as it can be protected from foreign threats: the economic threat from undocumented Latino workers and the cultural threat from dangerous Muslims.

A real alternative, however, would go much further than pointing out that most Americans have for too long been living beyond their means — it would spell out that the American dream is built on a false promise and our concern should not be reduced to who has access to its fulfillment and who does not. That false promise is that the good life flows from the good stuff.

In one of the tales of Mullah Nasrudin, his friend finds him in misery with bleeding lips as he chews on red hot chillies. “Why do you keep on biting into those chillies?” his friend asks. “I’m looking for the sweet one,” the Mullah answers as he digs deeper into his basket. We too find it difficult to abandon that futile quest for a sweet chili.

America now suffers less from the consequences of easy access to credit than the fact that we have virtually no conception of material sufficiency. Our fascination with the future is driven by an experience of the present as defined by unmet needs. Ours is a condition of perpetual insufficiency. The land of opportunity is populated by people who can never have enough.

Only when we discover we have enough can we pause, take stock and consider what is of real value. The defense of civilization consists not in thwarting foreign threats but recognizing the ways in which we value or devalue civilization’s core assets.

We are now warned of a dreadful “Japanification” of America if consumers refuse to consume.

Is that all that Americans are: the earthworms of the global economy? Or might we find some hidden wealth through material loss?

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23 thoughts on “The decline of the West

  1. pabelmont

    All peoples (not just right-wingers in Holland, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Germany — but that is a terrible list, isn’t it? — are frightened of the “other” and are frightened the more so when the “other” behaves in a genuinly threatening manner. Consider USA fears of Muslims after a VERY FEW considered or actually engaged in terrorism.

    Today, we are seeing in Israel/Palestine the playing-out of a horrible tragedy which began with Russian and Polish violence (pogroms) against Jews, continued with Germany’s ghastly violence (Holocaust) against Jews, and was then transformed into Jewish invasion of and violence against Palestinian Arabs (and vice-versa, it must be said). Some history of this — largely about the reason Palestinian Arabs were frightened of the immigrating Jews in the early days of the Jewish push for a Jewish State in Palestine is here.

  2. Juan

    Hey, Woodward, you’re not a European. You’re a Jew. Now tell me, why is it you Jews always side with mass-immigration? Is this a strategy of some sorts?

    We will have our ethnic homelands. You can bet on it. The days of importing hoards of Somalians to drain the public purse in Europe is coming to an end. Get over it.

  3. Paul Woodward

    Juan — in the same sense that I’m African, I’m also Jewish. European is simply among the most recent glosses on my identity.

    When I was eight I had a conversation with a chimpanzee and realized my roots go back even further — into the web that has no weaver.

    Our differences are unremarkable; our connections much more intriguing.

  4. Juan

    You can be a naive world traveler. The rest of us regard our nations as homes, and we will decide who may enter. And you are just going to have to accept that.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_a-25MhRuk

    How do you think self-respecting Europeans react to behavior like that? The condescending, moralizing, meddling arrogance. I understand that Jews think themselves lights upon a liberal hill for all of humanity, but it just ain’t so.

  5. Paul Woodward

    Juan — Does Europe need people like Barbara Lerner Spectre to assume the role of being a multicultural beacon? Probably not. But that’s not because there’s a flaw inherent in the multicultural trend. It’s because the multi- implies that no group assume a central role. In this particular instance, the evangelical fervor from which you recoil may have as much to do with the fact that this individual is American than the fact that she is Jewish.

    Jews are just as much a part of Europe as anyone else and anyone with a modicum of understanding of European history will know that the boundaries circumscribed by the modern nation states belie the multicultural roots of each nation.

    Having grown up in a place where within a ten mile radius one settlement had been named by Romans, another by Vikings and another by Anglo-Saxons, I could hardly be ignorant of the fact that my Englishness was the result of an exotic amalgam.

    Whereever one might hope to find an ethnically pure homeland, Europe is indeed the last place to look.

  6. Juan

    “In this particular instance, the evangelical fervor from which you recoil may have as much to do with the fact that this individual is American than the fact that she is Jewish.”

    She left the United States to her ethnic home Israel and now spends her time trying to get Somali’s imported to Sweden. Do you understand the hypocrisy there? Can you? She immigrates to a nation that is an ethno-state; a state that accepted her because of her ethnicity. Then she turns around and works to weaken the ethnic makeup of another country. It is utterly incomprehensible how hypocritical that is. I simply do not have it in my DNA to behave with such duplicity. If you people love Vibrant Diversity so much then import Somali into Tel Aviv. If not, piss off.

    “boundaries circumscribed by the modern nation states belie the multicultural roots of each nation”

    Diaspora mentality. Free trade, mass immigration, multiculturalism. These are the fixations of an arrogant diaspora mentality. The mentality that has traitors in The Office of Special Plans sending Americans to die and kill for their little ethno-state. The mentality that speaks of free trade in a world of severe wage disparity. These ideas are fully, completely incompatible with what is right and good for a home, which is what a nation is. A nation should care for her own. A nation should protect her own. There is no sustainable safety net in a world of mass third world immigration.

    This is not new, of course. Internationalist communism was from top to bottom a Jewish creation. As is libertarianism. Both assume that there is no “us”. For the commies “us” was class and for the libertarians “us” is money. We still haven’t recovered from the horrors of the Eastern Bloc and already the Jews are agitating for mass immigration plus free trade and full-blown capitalism (though some throwbacks are still communists – Naomi Klein and her hubby Avi Lewis for example). How long will it take Europe to recover from this?

    For the first time, ever, Jews should support the majority and not work to undermine it. After all, we’re merely starting to behave like you. That Europeans are starting to behave like Jews is a good thing. We have ethnic interests and we have an ethnic home and we will now agitate with emotional intensity to pursue our ethnic interests in our ethnic home. This is not the decline of the West. This is the preservation of the West.

  7. Observer

    Paul, I enjoy your pages very much, but written with respect now, I think you are misreading ‘European racism’ — I am middle aged now, and have lived most of my life in multicultural areas of the UK, and lived cheek by jowl with Jamaicans, Muslims, Irish, Neturei Karta sects, and assorted others, all of whom I and my friends learnt *everything* from regarding our clothing and musical tastes, our reading and religious ‘habits’, our art tastes, our social inter action and dating, and more.

    I honestly do not think that Europeans are racist ( Of course, it’s difficult to generalize, but one needs to if one is to convey ones over all view of the truth). Europeans have welcomed ‘inter racial’ friendships, marriages, music scenes, fashion and religion for decades now — mostly, with great enthusiasm.

    But, yes, there is a problem now, which certainly can’t be overlooked — globalization has shattered people’s sense of belonging, their sense of security and well being — capitalism as you know, sets people at each others throats anyway, and competition for jobs and living space has been fierce.

    That is no recipe for success.

    Immigration has simply not been carefully organized — I know from experience that there are many areas in the UK that are simply unrecognizable , as Iraqis jostle with Turks who jostle with Pakistanis who jostle with Bangladeshis, Azeris, Brazilians, Spanish Ukranians, and Poles for rapidly diminishing resources.

    It is not racist to notice that something is badly wrong and out of control, as all these groups ‘duke it out’ for a footing in London’s degenerating , violent , under resourced, crowded ghettoes. And it’s far worse in the old mill towns of the north of England, which in recent years have become Balkanised and atomised.

    I applaud mixed cultural environments. I applaud a healthy mix. I applaud diversity and the jettisoning of ‘nations’ and other constructed identities — but, when it’s done in the framework of divisive capitalism , in which everyone is compelled to fight for a place at the table — then the centre cannot hold.

    And that is what is happening in Europe now. It is not rooted in race hate — though that is what it is turning into. British are generally not racist, and generally speaking, I don’t think the majority of other Europeans are either.

    Also, you speak of the danger of America falling sway to European influence — surely you are not serious — I have worked with Americans for years, and whilst some of them have a ‘romantic’ view of ‘old England’ and ‘the old country’, replete with mistly isles, Somerset Maughm, Sherlock Holmes etc — I have yet to meet one who took Europe seriously at any deeper levels. American affection for Europe, whilst real at some levels, is usually patronising, condescending, paternal, and based on stereotypical ideas of ‘romantic Irish blood’, Scottish mountains, demure Englismen and other such cliches. Either that, or Europe is seen in contemptuous terms as the ‘old place’, a place of racial and ethnic strife, the one time dictator of Americans — or, when seen in a good light — viewed as a plucky ‘little bro’ the lesser prop and ( sometime ) faithful respectful junior buddy to American power.

    You’ve got the influence thing the wrong way round.

  8. Observer

    Juan wrote “Hey, Woodward, you’re not a European. You’re a Jew.”

    How absurd; how utterly absurd — I hate to pull out the ‘anti Semitic’ card; it’s way over done — but sometimes, it’s accurate to do so, and you deserve it Juan.

    Whichever way you view the conudrum and deceptive riddle of ‘nations’, ‘ethnic groups’ and ‘races’ ( I respect such terms and their meaning for people, but personally I think much of such grouping is little more than constructed narratives ) millions of Jews certainly are European. They have lived in Europe, intermaried, converted others and been converted, since pre Christian times. Read Shlomo Sand, Amos Elon, and even conventional,( often bigoted ) ancient historians like Tacitus.

  9. Observer

    You can’t take Buruma seriously on anything — he wrote a dreadful, cliched, hackneyed old book on ‘why Muslims are jealous of the West and are so eaten up by their jealous rage they want to tear us to pieces’.

    The book is called “Occidentalism; the West in the eyes of its enemies.” It really is horrible. When reading it, you really do get a sense that Arabs are living in tents in the desert, with harems and daggers, and planning our demise because they are so jealous of our coca cola, blue jeans and Beatles records.

    Yes, it really is that cliched.

  10. Paul Woodward

    I was citing Buruma for three reasons. Firstly, I think he’s correct in identifying the way the European Islamophobic groups can now leverage political power even while they represent relatively small minorities. Secondly, because I think his assumption that their views would be moderated if they participated in government is naive. And thirdly, because he represents the confused, reactive liberal thinking that obsesses over centrism, that I wanted to criticize. I wouldn’t want to limit myself by only quoting people I agree with.

  11. Paul Woodward

    “Observer” — I actually share much of your experience and perspective having grown up in West Yorkshire (or the West Riding as it was when I was a kid) and don’t underestimate the challenges involved in creating a harmonious multicultural society. But I think that the messiness of what has evolved (as I think you agree) has economic rather than cultural roots.

    As far as America’s susceptibility to European influence, you’re right, it shouldn’t be overstated and what I was referencing but should probably have made more explicit is that Americans will use the European “brand” as and when it is expedient — Pamela Geller’s support of Geert Wilders being a case in point. So, in terms of broad cultural impact, yes indeed, America exerts vastly more influence over Europe than the other way around. But when it comes to Islamophobia, its prevalence in Europe is now being used to legitimize its expansion across America.

  12. Paul Woodward

    “Juan” — You say “we have ethnic interests and we have an ethnic home”. If that’s what you believe, why are you hiding behind this fictional “Juan Valdze” identity? What is your ethnicity and your “ethnic home”? Do you agree with Stephen Colbert who says: “My great-grandfather did not travel across 4000 miles of the Atlantic ocean to see this country overrun by immigrants”?

  13. Observer

    Yes, I can’t really argue with your much Paul — I agree with much of what you have now clarified.

    It is ghastly to see the so called ‘multicultural dream’ unravelling. I have watched its growth since the mid 70’s, and its demise is predictable, since ‘the foreigners’ were only brought in to provide cheap labour anyway, and no care or attention was really paid to practical matters such as how long would it take each nationality/religion to integrate; what would be the impact ( jobs wise, space wise ) on the host nation; would the new comers easily be able to adjust ( due to religious taboos etc ) , would there be ‘ethnic’ rivalries amongst the new comers, EG Hindus vs Muslims, Sikhs vs Muslims, Jamaicans VS Pakistanis, Polish and Ukranians unused to living with ‘black people’, young ethnic white British men angry at being undercut in the working class trades and no longer being the only alpha males in the neighbourhood, Wahabbis vs Shia, Sufi vs Sunni, Bahai vs Muslims, Sri Lankan vs Tamils, Jews VS angry Muslims etc etc.

    All of the above are very real, and have been of serious concern in UK in recent years, the cause of real rifts and anger and have produced a spilntered, atomised , bittter, resentful environment.

    Of course, none of those questions and rifts mentioned above mean much or even matter if your only concern is ‘who will work for two quid an hour’ , before you head off to your urban flat in Pimlico, or your weekend country house on Surrey. And of course, the British upper middle classes/economic classes fit that definition, and are the ones who have clumsily messed up immgration policy.

    The impact on the English inner cities has been devastating.

    Unlike Juan, I welcome , and am happy to live in as diverse an environment as I feel is workable — the current ‘strategy’ however, is clearly not workable.

    Unless you are a greedy, calous boss looking for cheap labour that is. The centre cannot hold.

  14. Observer

    Juan, I just watched that ghastly clip you included from that Spectre woman, and yes, it is angering — but it seems absurd to take a quantum leap and dislike all Jews because of one ultra capitalist, ultra exploitative right wing ‘Ayn Rand-ish’ old wind bag, who just happens to be Jewish, and who seems deluded enough to envision her manipulative plans as being representative of a role for Jewish people.

    But such crap is not the reserve of Jewish elites and think tanks — nearly all the New Labour lot came up with the same cliched nonsense about multiculturalism too, all of it just a cover for the desire to screw as many immigrants as possible for cheap labour whilst disenfranchising and disempowering the ‘home grown’ working classes — so, are you now , for examples’ sake, going to hate all northerners because of some very similarly exploitative, phony rhetoric, not from a Jew, but from John Prescott ?

    And you seem to see all Jews as some monolithic, reducible collective, who have all been been born into some inherent cardinal sin at birth — that of being a Jew. It shouldn’t need saying for God’s sake, that Jews are as diverse as anyone else. In fact, many well known Catholic figures such as St Teresa, or leading Jesuits — were in fact, converts from Judaism. ‘Tribal’ Jews and right wing nationalist Jews , I grant you, are annoying and divisive — but so are ‘tribal’ and right wing nationalist Gentiles and their equivalent amongst Muslims. You seem to think there is some kind of ‘Jewish quality’ that just can’t be escaped and is inherently wicked.

    You don’t make much sense Juan.

  15. Observer

    PS If you read the reliable research of Shlomo Sand, he states his findings that the majority of Syrians, Lebanese, Jordanians, Yemenis and Palestinians were *also* mostly all Jewish once too, and over the centuries, converted to Christianity and Islam. ( Sand completely rejects the idea of a mass Jewish diaspora/ exodus as pure fantasy based on Biblical myth, and ‘bad history’ influenced by poor record keeping by Orthodox Jews and by clumsy historical method from the likes of Roman historian Tacitus ).

    Are Syrians, Lebanese, Jordanians, Yemenis and Palestinians then, also ‘conspiratorial and wicked’ too Juan — or have they somehow ‘escaped’ the ‘wicked nature’ of their one time Jewish origins ?

  16. Juan

    I am from Europe. I currently reside in the Vibrantly Diverse cesspool of poverty, crime and corruption that is known as Miami. Upon completion of my graduate education, I’m off to my ethnic home.

    Observer, I know of one Jew who opposes mass immigration. One. His name is Stephen Steinlight, and he opposes mass immigration because it is bad for the Jews. Everything is about them. They do not have ideas or beliefs that are good/bad on merit. What is good is good for Jews. What is bad is bad for Jews. That’s it. It is collective narcissism.

    Here’s how it works. Jews don’t want to be a minority in a nation with a strong majority. So they work to undermine the majority. The Vibrant Diversity is specifically placed in our societies to weaken the majority.

    http://www.parapundit.com/archives/007575.html

    Get used to nationalistic populism. Accept it. It is only going to get stronger. The ‘right’ (neo-liberals – influenced entirely by Jewish economists) has controlled the economy and the ‘left’ (cultural subversives – guess who?) has controlled the society. This is ending.

  17. scott

    Is Shlomo Sand perhaps overstating the number of Jews in the Middle East relative to the Number of Phoenicians, Egyptians, Arabs, Syrians, and Persians? I might tell you that damn near every American Founding Father was Anglo/Scottish, but that doesn’t tell the truth. This country was subject to significant Dutch, Spanish, and French immigration to cite just a few, even in those founding days. The Anglo influence perhaps leads our history books to better tell that Anglo story at the expense of the Dutch, French and Spanish perspectives.

  18. Paul Woodward

    I appreciate your comments Juan — not because I agree with them but because they don’t seem to resonate with anyone else here. Some people believe that a site like is a magnet for anti-Semites but the reality is that anti-Semitic statements (such as yours) are the exception.

    I don’t believe Europe, home to so many indigenous ethnicities, can itself be described as an ethnic homeland, so I’m sorry you declined to be more specific. Was that because when one drills down to the level of ethnicity, none correspond to national boundaries?

  19. Christopher Hoare

    The decline of the west and the growth of racism in Europe have accelerated since the collapse of the Soviet Union. While it was no paradise on Earth, it surely acted as a valuable counterbalance to the unbridled greed and casino mentality of Western capitalism. My own feeling at the time was that its collapse had cleared the decks for a thorough make over of capitalism – and clearly I wasn’t the only one to think so. In the following decades the deafening increase in libertarian propaganda and corporate ‘Newspeak’ was clearly aimed at heading off that glimmer of opportunity.

    The cure is surely a resurgence of progressive economic structures and politics. The inequalities between Western populations and the people in the emerging (and the static) countries, as well as the inequalities between working people in all countries and the rentier elites have to be addressed. Since it is physically impossible to raise the world’s poor and the devalued middle classes to the financial excess of the rich, the rich have to be pulled down to a less extreme divergence from the rest of us. The Labour Government in Britain after 1945 used heavy death duties to level the excesses in society, and worldwide would surely be a policy acceptable to the majority.

    This is not to end enterprise nor private ownership but to open the field to more players. Even wise wealthy heads of families today are careful not to set up their children for the trap of nepotism by handing them everything without regard to character development. Inheritance, beyond a medium entitlement for dependent relatives, is one of the most regressive aspects of human society. The false doctrine of libertarianism – that flies in the face of all logical and sociological study – has to be weeded out of the public discussion. ‘Trickle down’ was a fraud from the start – a deliberate falsity.

  20. Observer

    Scot wrote, “Is Shlomo Sand perhaps overstating the number of Jews in the Middle East relative to the Number of Phoenicians, Egyptians, Arabs, Syrians, and Persians? ”

    Yes, that’s a good point of course, and one that Sand investigates thoroughly — his book does indeed, also look at the very significant,considerable numbers of people that were also Manichaeist, Zoroastrian, Mandean, Sabian etc etc. He also looks carefully and the inflow and outflow of Greeks, Persians, Phoenicians etc in the Middle East.

  21. Observer

    Yes, but Juan, it seems to me that you can’t single out Jewish people to blame because multiculturalism has now imploded — For a variety of reasons ( mostly dictated by cheap labour concerns ), multiculturalism/globalization has also been a total godsend for the traditional upper middle class/economic elites in Britain,simply because mass immigration for them , translates as a vast, heaving, anonymous bulk of humanity who they can hire cheaply.

    These elites do not care ab0ut all the struggling and disenfranchising inherent in such a societal change — no, they welcome it because it means more wealth for them ( see Ha Joon Chang on the hypocrisy, brutality and inhumanity involved in the European elite’s vision of Globalization )

    The majority of these elites from New Labour and the banking classes in UK , however, are not Jewish, but you seem to define all these changes as being a ‘Jewish plan’ of some kind — Yes, some among Jewish elites may well benefit from these changes; indeed, some amongst Jewish elites may even play their part in engineering some of these changes — but I’d wager that it’s obvious that an equal number of Gentiles *also* engineer, implement, organize and benefit from these upheavals.

    I am just not sure how you separate the two ( Jewish and Gentile expolitative elites ) ,or indeed, why it is relevant to do so.

    After all, it seems difficult to imagine that manipulative, opportunistic,exploitative ( Gentile ) creeps like Blair, Prescott et al,( Cheney, Rumsfeld etc in the U.S. ) were entirely lacking in autonomy , reduced to dangling puppets of some kind of Jewish hidden groups.

    And again on another point Juan, Jews are not a homogeneous group — do you think for example, that Yemenite, Iranian and Ethiopian Jews are also somehow ‘in on’ these plans you mention?

  22. Observer

    PS I wrote — “I am just not sure how you separate the two ( Jewish and Gentile expolitative elites ) ,or indeed, why it is relevant to do so.”

    If we are talking about Middle Eastern politics, yes, it seems totally relevant to look at who amongst decision makers is Jewish or Gentile — but, we are talking much more generally here about multiculturalism/globalization Europe and the UK.

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