“Your world means nothing to them”
Makes us even, I suppose; their world means nothing to me. Less than, actually.
Jean Raspail, mass migration, and the meaning of civilisational surrender
Your world means nothing to them. They won’t try to understand. They’ll be cold. They’ll be hungry. They’ll build a fire with your lovely oak door… Every object will lose the meaning you attach to it. What’s beautiful won’t be beautiful anymore.In 2015, German Chancellor Angela Merkel famously declared “Wir schaffen das” (“We can do this”) as she opened Germany’s borders to a mass influx of refugees. Over a million asylum-seekers, mainly from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq poured into Europe amid the continent’s worst refugee crisis since World War II. Supporters hailed Merkel’s open-door stance as a humanitarian duty, but critics warned of economic strain, cultural clashes, and security risks. In the decade since, Europe has indeed grappled with rising migrant crime and social tensions. But beyond the high-profile incidents of violence, everyday indignities have also come to symbolise the cultural disconnect.
One striking example occurred in Brussels, a migrant was caught frying eggs in a pan over the Eternal Flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a memorial honouring Belgian soldiers fallen in World War I. Just weeks earlier, another migrant had been arrested in Paris for lighting a cigarette using the sacred flame under the Arc de Triomphe. Such acts of casual disrespect, unthinkable to the native population fuel public outrage and raise questions about the boundaries of tolerance in European societies. The Brussels incident, in particular, became a viral image on social media, seen by many as a metaphor for how Europe’s heritage and heroes are treated by newcomers who “have no business” being in those countries. While some observers chalk it up to individual homelessness or ignorance, others view it as a grim sign of cultural insensitivity fostered by years of unvetted mass immigration.
These episodes of desecration, however low-level, provoke a visceral reaction because they touch on something deeper than law-and-order. They reflect a erosion of respect for European history and identity under the pressures of uncontrolled migration. It is as if the “eternal flame” of Europe’s memory is being used as a mere campfire by those with no connection to the sacrifices it represents. This sense of humiliation is keenly felt by many Europeans, especially when they remember that countless young men died in the world wars to defend the very civilisation now seemingly taken for granted. Indeed, if those fallen soldiers could see a foreign vagrant cooking his dinner on their memorial flame, would they think their sacrifice was worth it?
To ask the question is to answer it, methinks.
These are merely the opening ‘graphs of a damned excellent (albeit highly discomfiting) article, of which you will definitely want to read the all.
I’ve had an eBook copy of Camp of the Saints sitting on my phone for a good long while now. It occurs to me that I really need to get started reading the darn thing, I’ve waited quite long enough. Key takeaway lines:
Beyond politics, Raspail’s novel and Europe’s real migrant tensions both underscore a fundamental cultural clash. The clash is not simply about religion (though Islam’s spread in Europe is a major factor) but about worldviews, nations and social norms. Camp of the Saints suggests that our civilisation is not communicable to these people, that many of the newcomers neither understand nor respect the ethos of the West.
By George, I think she’s got it. “Not communicable to these people,” though? Oh, I’m afraid it’s a great deal worse than that: it is anathema to them;. Not only do they not “respect” Western Civ, they positively abhor it as innately and irredeemably degenerate, wicked, and outright evil.
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