Europeans are Living a Daily Humiliation Ritual
How long can a people survive when they stop believing they deserve to?
It must be hard to be European these days, watching the culture that shaped the western world die around you in a pathetic fart of irrelevance. The old standard bearers of western civilization have been conquered; their lands and people subsumed by writhing, suicidal self-guilt.
Our tour of the European ruins begins in Britain. The seat of an empire upon which the sun never set is a mere shade of its former self. News recently broke that the U.K. is the only G7 nation unable to produce its own steel, following the closure of its last two domestic blast furnaces.
The Chinese company that owned the furnaces shut them down, leaving Britain dependent on imported Chinese steel instead.
How humiliating that such a critical strategic resource was owned by a foreign, hostile power. In America, some question the wisdom of allowing China to own our farmland for national security reasons, but at least they don’t own all of it.
Britain’s issues perfectly illustrates why strategic resources demand a functioning domestic production base.
Considering we’re less than five years removed from a global pandemic that shattered supply chains, the idea that Britain could go without steel for an extended period makes these closures catastrophic.
Some MPs have suggested nationalizing the furnaces to avoid the worst consequences, but the years of neglect towards Britain’s industrial core cannot simply be fixed with the flick of a pen.
Meanwhile, there are threats that require a full-scale mobilization.
At least, that’s what Europeans seem to believe. Germany, titan of the EU and top producer of pretzels, has decided now is the perfect time to rearm in response to an increasingly aggressive Russia. But Germany’s military is a pale reflection of its glorious martial heritage.
Equipment is woefully outdated; many of the Bundewehr’s tanks hail from the Cold War. A 2022 report claimed that the military only had enough ammunition for two days of sustained conflict. Nearly 30% of rank and file positions remain unfilled while enlistment drops year after year.
And why wouldn’t it? There’s little reason to feel pride in the state anymore, let alone die for it. Article after article highlights growing malaise amongst German youth, a sentiment shared across much of the Old World. Young people feel like strangers in a foreign land as the countries they and their parents and their grandparents knew have ceased to exist.
Worse, their leaders seem more concerned with coming across as politically correct than solving glaring issues. Welcome to the last stop on our tour, la France.
I admit, I have a soft spot for l’Hexagone. I spent two years there fresh out of college nearly a decade ago. Even then, I could see the festering rot growing; threatening to consume the country.
European bureaucrats try to convince the public there’s nothing wrong with unchecked Muslim immigration, but the average Frenchman tells a very different story. “They don’t assimilate” many say. “They form their own little ghettos where they speak Arabic and enforce their own laws.”
I saw it myself.
During my time as an English teacher, I tutored children to make a little extra side money. One family had a French father and a Moroccan mother, both very kind, but the mother often talked about how much she hated France and the French. She said they were rude and avoided spending time with them, a fact I found telling.
The tension between France and its Muslim population spans from cultural disconnection to violent jihad. She has suffered the lion’s share of Islamist violence with myriad stabbings, shootings, and truck attacks in the years since the end of the colonial period.
And so unfolds the decline and fall of the European continent.
Europe was not conquered in a decisive battles. There was no Waterloo, no Hastings, no Cannae. This collapse is slower, more pathetic. It’s a death by a thousand self-inflicted cuts. A civilization so ashamed of its past that it forfeits its future.
What other civilization would willingly accept being sold in parts to hostile powers? Britain once ruled the waves with fleets of English wood and English steel. Now she is dominated by the nations she once held in the palm of her hand.
What other civilization would willingly disarm and bleat meekly when they are faced with a hungry wolf? Germany cannot hope to defend itself against Russian aggression, let alone defend Ukraine.
And what other civilization would welcome with open arms a culture so antithetical to its core tenets that assimilation is impossible? France has and reaped the consequences.
How long can a people survive when they stop believing they deserve to? The Old World is certainly no stranger to the rise and fall of great civilizations.
Perhaps it is simply the way of things that Europe shall die with a whimper.