The Mark Steyn Show with Douglas Murray

[Music] hey welcome along on today's show it is an honor to have with us one of my favorite commentators on the scene of the plays were sharing stages with him around the world New York London Malibu Copenhagen he's written a brand-new book the strange death of Europe immigration identity Islam the author is Douglas Murray Douglas great to have you with us a lot of us have dabbled in this terrain and what I like about your book though is it winds up very profound and existential there's really three elements to the book you deal with the kind of prosaic bureaucratic government aspects of immigration you travel around Europe meeting some of these refugees at their ports of entry and then you get to actually the big questions about whether Europe Christendom the birthplace of the modern world is dying before our eyes and it seems to me just by way of introduction that actually most Britain's most Europeans they see the news as a terrorist attack here there's something happens in Paris something happens in Brussels but the political class and even most European citizens do not even look at it in big picture gnomes no I think that's exactly right that I was so fed up with writing about sort of bits of this question when the migration crisis in 2015 really kicked off I was writing pieces going to the places in Greece and I'm listening elsewhere and firing the story up and I just had it endless feeling that first of all it needed to have a dots connected and secondly that I needed to write about what was really going on which it seemed to me always was centrally about us what it was that we had got that meant that we were doing what I think is a suicidal thing and and yes I mean it's it's strange in Europe these days a way in which we get caught up on these you know something happens something blows up in a few hours you know go back to the usual routine next day sort of thing it within a week you know before the funerals are over everyone moved on and I thought this needed to try to be explained yeah and you do you as you say it's at a certain level it's about us so that even though Islam makes it into the subtitle of your book it's it's not primarily about terrorism or even about Islam something deeper is going on in Europe of which Islam and terrorism are really just symptoms yes I mean it's something you surf a long time that the that it were its attack and to me the opportunity of speaking that that the most serious that's going on at the moment but it sort of been anything in a way anything that was assertive and believes in itself I I say in the bottom is sort of set of what I think of as sort diseases that we have guilt being one existential tiredness which I explained at one point right there's another that sense that you when trying to look at why politicians others would totally change the society that they ought to be looking after right I can't only be accident no no and it's certainly not conspiracy because nobody could have arranged this so well right and and I thought it's impart this feeling that if we run out you know that the stories run out that is they say it changes as good as the rest right right and people do actually believe it well you just just to tell the story the way you tell it you begin with a very nuts and bolts chapter on immigration and you make a the very basic point that all the most anti-immigrant figures in the 1960s what has happened is on a scale beyond all their doomsday production so that for British viewers and other European viewers and Commonwealth viewers will be familiar with the name of Enoch Powell it was a prominent conservative and gave a famous speech which became known as the rivers of blood speech and you point out in the beginning for your book but if you look at the the boroughs in London which are now majority non-white British that's beyond anything Powell addicted no I say Powell in 1968 yeah it had decided to save it in 2011 the official census will show people who identified as white Britain in a minority in their capital city right I mean that would have caused the I mean we think the beach caused enough trouble as it was that video I mean I would have gotten you know consigned the thought that he would have he people would have thought that he was just nuts there's no way that can happen yet that quickly yes and and yeah yeah as we all know all the worst doom said were under estimating situation I mean the other one is one of the others I give it the example in France of this I think very ugly novel orcam for the Saints which has you know a million people landing on the shores of France from having from the third world and that it interview I quote in the book where in 2011 the author of that novel that was published in 97 he thought to be absolutely explosive and I don't know he's interview about about that quite a lot of what he said seems to sort of happen the near the end of the interview into and 11 on French television the intercept you've gotta admit you're a spy you gotta admit I mean the numbers would never happen like that and he said no that's true I mean we never actually had a million people go in one go yeah 2011 right so so yet even the most apocalyptic people I mean that yeah yeah and then and then Frau Merkel invites in whatever it is a million and a half to Germany and you have it and again these are the major powers were talking about here Britain France Germany but you just mentioned on pass our one point that the majority of Swedes alive now will live long enough to see them become a minority in their own country uh this is Sweden which is kind of as far north as you can go yeah in Europe and it's also I mean it's interesting to me because with Britain you know the the 1948 British Nationality Act made a quarter of the world's population British subjects they did not distinguish in law between one of his Majesty's subjects from Kingston on Diane's Kingston Ontario Kingston Jamaica you can argue about whether that's a good idea but it is a legal fact Sweden is not anybody's idea of a great global Empire how do Swedes wind up becoming a minority and then 100 it's a variant engagement Swedish one there remember there were things that I kept on thinking may not apply to certain country I thought maybe I mean that Swedes have got no reason to have post-colonial guilt no I mean that's a good argument for Britain having it for a bit you know but but the sweet and then and also then the other bits of the guilt of course which i think is one of the fundamental things in in Europe uh but we're going to have to shake off but may not you know the sweets don't seem like they're not that the Germans you know have good cause that have recent complexes and so on and forever you know needing to apologize for what they think and feel and do the three easily would make whether actually all of the same things and thus we do have a kind of weird post-colonial saying they have a guilt thing as well they actually changing the further away they come from the wall the more guilty they feel about it it's it's just more quietly expressed but it's they're all symptoms are the same thing it's just ever so slightly different inflection in each country sometimes one country facts are different but the response is exactly the same yeah there's an interesting phenomenon that goes on in Europe when when I first started writing that this I guess you know shortly after 9/11 sophisticated people that think tanks and whatnot used to say well this is a completely banal reductio obviously if you look at Pakistanis in Yorkshire that's completely different from the experience in the Algerians in cliche subha or Turks in Hamburg or and and in fact none of it is it's like you could toss you know the turkey in Yorkshire and the Pakistanis could be in cliche subha and it all seems to come out the same yeah I mean well that's one of the things that you've been on to the longer than anyone and what's so fascinating about isn't is it it's almost as if at any one time the only thing worth talking about it can't be talked about right you know these armies of endless sort of you know if I give an example in the book at one point of a discussion the University of Heidelberg I was unfortunate to be a part of and the realization of the horror of what fort was thought to be and but it was just an extreme version of something that goes on all the time which is it that any you know think tanking in any public meeting any political discussion any television show and most of the time and this one is laughing others but I mean any like Inez BBC showing you you never get into the only thing that matters yeah it's an you never get on to the important thing this is just time to sort of say well you know there's a huge difference in their daggers for doing these theme I'm everyone yes and yes well yeah I mean it was thank you about that there so don't you don't get a chance to say what about what aren't is huge thing that's happening and and I think there are all sorts of reasons for that one is that it that we can sell ourselves through this period by pretending it's not going on but as I say at one point of the book you know the presumption we've had is that if you walk with a lie of more than a generation is if you walk into the Italian islands of the Greek islands anywhere else you walk up through Europe you become as European as anyone else and you breathe the air of Voltaire and so all damn tinkerton ah and that's nonsense isn't it how do we know that but it profound nonsense people come with their own ideas and that I mean that was never discussed really we we only again I mean if we sat in a BBC source to do something about that there is European at the next person yeah yeah what are you saying and and you sort of have say well I'm not saying they're not I mean I mean but I think it's highly unlikely that everyone who arrives in your arrives of the same slightly pained wounded and tired view that modern Europeans find themselves to be I think highly unlikely they'll have just arrived and happened to get a stage we're in our own use of religion for instance know much more likely they'll bring their own views and then we're discovering that oh well you you described at one point you're in France and you visit the famous Cathedral in which Charles Martel's remains are in turd the man who held the line against Islam in 732 and is celebrated and that's why he's buried among the French kings that's his stature and yet you said you described the scene around that Cathedral which is really quite remarkable aside from that Christian building in the middle of it it's not Europe anymore no and I said if Charlotte L got out of his tomb and wandered just outside of the de Lucas under me he would think he lost the bathroom hmm it's a very strange and painful thing this ah the French I think are deeply pained by this again ought to do about it the center of Paris they will know this place is there who distortedly part of their history where the tombs of the kings alarm but they they don't want to go there and they wish it wasn't there where they wish it wasn't as it was but it is can you make it an actually quite a subtle point about public transit area in Paris where there's two two categories of subway lines and how it's possible to ride the upper subway line and still think you're in France but the the lower line which is the one the immigrants take across the city is creatively different row is she she's in the Paris you know sin and you know well-dressed and everything off there they're often so unless there's a shallow line right it stops quite regularly Blin is the deeper line the our our er which goes out to the suburbs and go down to the airport and that's not much more occasionally and travelled with a further distance and it's like another in another world and you know these places where the RER line comes up in the centre Paris and there's always they are the bits that some people to avoid you know people from the suburbs come up and they go the local McDonald's whatever these are as you well know me neither two different things living alongside each other but you do get these intimations sometimes of how this can go and and I think a good surprise in the book sale unit is we're all thinking about this I mean everyone passed my politicians obviously but we're all worrying about this and it's the version of what I think I explained at one point I think of as being but the process we've been going through in Europe and the American others been going through which is that that's sort of feeling that the boomers and others handed the basically history in the future was with us one-way street you know when we're going to walk up it and the crowded or with Arthur and you know we're if you walk faster you'd get more points but right we're basically walking to an ever better and brighter future in which you know we had more and more rights and fighting from moribund Ishii right so that wasn't me no and then we noticed somebody walking down the other way yeah and sort of odd then more people started walking the other way and then it seems to me that we in Europe are in the process of wondering what if one day more people are walking the other ways and I'm walking our way right and that's what's happening yeah and it's a you you explain the background to this and quite I mean we have a demographic issue which is that Europeans do not want to have babies for whatever for whatever reason can I say that that one is one of the things I did in this book looking at this with looking at that question and it's it's true but we get under that strange thing of why do people not ask why right so during the period immediately after Tony Blair massively expanded victim's family the migration into Britain after 1997 if you look at the the public opinion polls the social attitudes about the number of babies that women want right it is actually at the levels which is you know I mean the thing that would would be a perfectly adequate replacement this women what we know more than one child and and some one five and most one about to you know anything so yeah very very few people if they want to have children want to have an only child yes let's and and actually it was a very small number who said I'm not interested in the camp business yeah and so this argument and I keep trying in the book to explain why the argument we hear about wives it happened then why it happened in the cities why it happened now why it happened in 2015 all bogus arguments made up after the facts were put upon us anyway right so and if you wanted if you hadn't worried about not having replacement bateman in your population you look at why women felt they couldn't have children why and I say one when the books are anecdotally nobody in my country who knows a young couple hears them say we really after five children because they know that they've got it with two really good salaries you know they'll work very hard to be able to afford the first well I think when we had to treat themselves to a second and a third is sort of out and you know the only we can afford to have more than two babies are basically the very rich or the very poor right and but but that's something you could dress I mean doing it's like Angela Merkel thing of no we need to import you know like if you if you've got an aging population and the growing population of the Germans would say they do then sure that you know there are things like raising with time and age encouraging people have much of it you have loads of things you do before deciding on the next generation of Germans should be from Eritrea right right well and you and you look at it in practical terms I mean we're well in in your country one of the reasons why people constrain the size of their families is because property prices are very high so to have three children if you want to live in Greater London and got multi-millionaire yeah and well and that's why rock stars like Mick Jagger are incredibly second because they can afford individual bedroom yet all the children they sire but if you're not in that situation it's expensive and impractical and as you say government's that the ball gets kind of finding creating the conditions that would able people have space for a family nevertheless a comfort thing that somehow cultural transformation is easier to manage it's also that one that is in Britain we need to basically build city the size of Liverpool every couple years but they've gotten the migrations coming in about three hundred thousand houses new houses a year need to be built and almost nobody says that that's actually net always precisely a number of people who are coming in each year right it never gets it never gets raised and of course if you do raise it so that are god you're banging on right everything's about immigration isn't it yeah are you going on your aggression again again well actually it does affect almost everything yeah it affecting property prices affects people views about the future of their countries affects their views on culture and and everything else yeah I mean it's quite a good thing to bang on about I mean you know we chose a good subject it's still a disreputable subject in a in a certain sense and you have people I saw Kenneth Clark former Lord Chancellor did big heavyweight member of the Conservative Party he was on question time a my old friend Connor black a few months ago happens see him and he suddenly goes into this sentimental Rhapsody about how the multicultural transformation of Britain has been one of the most wonderful things he's seen in his lifetime but he hardly ever he says I hardly ever saw a black person when I was growing up and now I don't even notice it if I see one on the bus or something I don't believe that the Lord Chancellor takes buses mad orphan I wouldn't particularly expect him say oh there's one yeah it wouldn't but this thing to me the most absurdly sentiment is that somehow you make that you make the point in the book that we're supposed to celebrate diversity and Britain is already like a big Stanley Gibbons album it's got initially it was the Empire yeah now you've got people from places that were never within her Majesty's dominions in any sense so it's it's I move beyond that to all kinds of all kinds of people and you and you say what point are we you know we're not diverse enough so if we add another 1 million Pakistanis or we diverse enough or is it going to be another 4 million yeah good stuff yeah I mean I mean as I say I mean I mean the problem with pathways London is that they're not diverse enough but they can't as diverse they just write you know there are the sort of people who tick white British right in enough a number to make it a diverse place anymore but does that count yeah you're because you're saying that diversity means now predominantly Muslim areas of East End yeah where all the non-muslims have found it uncomfortable and moved out well that's the thing you see because the Kenneth Clark Tryg argument is well there's still these bits of the countryside or elsewhere and sort you know they're they haven't had diversity enough actually that isn't true a lot of the people who don't live in places like East End of London have moved out because they tried diversity and they didn't liked it much or you know they discovered that their area was entirely Bangladeshi and they just didn't that wasn't what they thought their future was going to be like and they they move out to Kent yeah you you you have a great secular power well in the book it just like an observation which is fascinating that because it's about the difference between how we live our lives and the attitudes we hold and you talk about Swedes yeah in Stockholm who find 3d cities are all becoming a bit too diverse and multicultural so they move out to the country to live among more of their ethnic Swedes but if asked by pollsters they still say that oh yes we'd much prefer to live in more diverse nation s Lemon area you move to the more in favor you are diversity right right but you know at the heart of it is it's one of these huge questions which again we never asked ourselves and this is one thing too fascinating about it you know just looking over the history of this we never ever predicted any of it and we never asked any of the serious questions and one of the things that is most bizarre about this whole thing is hi what was it about ourselves in Europe that we decided you know Europe is a really boring uncultured place that hasn't done enough or thought enough or created enough and what we really need is an injection of people from around the world to bring us their brilliant culture that so think about this is of course is that we all know that whoever doesn't want to know about the world's cultures and find out things but the blessing you get from it isn't constant in relation to the numbers all right so in the first the first a scam can introduce you to Afghan food but the thousandth Afghan doesn't introduce you to more food than the Nerds and the millions and so on so fix it but but what is it about us that makes us think that there's this hole in our heart the the culture that produced all of this in Europe that the culture that produces the Renaissance and the Reformation and the heights of what we regard as civilization right actually had a hole in it heart that needed filling because you never ever hear this about anywhere else no one ever says think about Somalia is they really need an input of people from Wales yeah but go and introduce them Sir yeah you know it's really how to find a good French restaurant in Mogadishu and you know the Chamber Orchestra really could you know there's not enough barkins you had it nobody ever says it's never done that by man and this goes to the masochism that we clearly indulge in that that as I say in the book of one point you know yeah I mean we're in a great risk on this one that I mean the great problem for masochists I'm telling is what happens when they meet a real sadist and and it's possible that we're in the process of meeting our CDs yes and the what seemed to be just a sort of kink turns out to be faithful yep in other words you're in the bondage dungeon and you suddenly realize there is no safe word to extend your meta flour and comfortable have yeah your you what I find interesting though before getting too hung up in the bondage is um you know as I go about I don't live there so I go back to places sometimes places I just went new as a child right well but they're places I go to I am in every 7 8 10 15 years or whatever and what's sad to me is that diversity actually makes everywhere boring and then if you go to a small town it's particularly true in Germany and Scandinavia you go to a small town in remember is actually quite a pleasant little Swedish town or Finnish town and it's not that you're getting great pushed in cuisine it's that some immigrants have come there and they're running a pizza and kebab play right which is like the ebony and ivory of fast food in in in Northern Europe and it's not great pizza and it's not great kebab it's it's it's just the drab uniform face of this rather cheerless multiculturalism and you you travel around the continent I mean you can't honestly say it's enriched can you not after certain point no no I think I think the first bit is sort of interesting and interesting and then then the returns slow down yeah and and you also of course then start to get the problems this is this is the fact that I was doing a recently in London of the public discussion and debate and it was really interesting mode one as were young right on PC German guy said you know I'm very happy with Lionel Merkel did in 2015 and and I think it's been it'll make our country much much did is all that stuff and and you know I said to him recruit I said well I mean okay yeah you might get it I get slightly cheaper cleaner off this may be a site cheap repair if you have children and and and you just gotta hope that your kids don't like ariana grande and go on the wrong night right and if you are willing to take that if it was presented like that I say it slightly telling key convoy in the book that I mean the deal we seem to have come to on always in Europe is that on the plus side you know all on on the minus side we've got a bit more gang rape and beheading than we used to have but on the plus side there's a much wider range of cuisine really grown it's all swings and roundabouts yeah yeah yeah just going to choose a you know we're and and that's that if you have ever said the public I mean it's actually incremental didn't now look only a couple of people army a first million will be suicide bombers yeah you know and on the one side you know you get a wider range of languages heard in your local neighborhood on the ground side you know every now and then if you're standing outside the wine bar and and but you'll get blown up but right yeah everything's a choice you know yeah yeah no no no it's like you you you met these people at them their ports of entry on the Mediterranean where they come in and you're sweet and affable with them and you wish them all good luck the point isn't that some of them suicide bombers and some of them are our rapists gang rapists child rapists whatever the point is that all of them are mass eventually reach a point where they change Belgium or the Netherlands into a mere territorial designation yes yeah that's right by the way I mean one of the reasons of going and speaking to people if I was I think that if you if you're going to draw conclusions or let alone some suggestions as I rather I self to do by the end of the book you know you need to stare the whole issue in the inner human face and that includes speaking to people who've been through the most terrible things obviously having people who fled Afghanistan so I have to have stories some of which I relay in the book which I unimaginable I mean it I suppose one of my overwhelming feelings is we've got to do that and recognize the scale and still find answers you know are one of my views these days it's just that in general because of our politics and particularly the way that sort of Millennials are persuaded to look at the world everything is as if it's about you know I'm great your Hitler I'm good you're evil hmm you know hear me roar right and move yeah and whine but but but one of the things I'd say towards in this book is actually when it comes to something like this it's about competing virtues you know just as sometimes things are about choosing between evils and we've got caught in this competition between what I describe is justice and mercy which and we have the tool in our own tradition our own traditions of rationalism and philosophy to deal with it's not a look at this what happens went to things that seem to be virtues are in competition right well you must be a misunderstanding and miss applying one of them and I've got to work out where that is and one of the things I said it is in a search to be merciful we've among other things given up the idea that there should be any justice for the peoples of Europe because we we don't have another home no we are in the process of wrecking the only home we have by saying that absolutely anybody from anywhere in the world who wants to come into our home and make themselves at home is welcome and that is a I to my mind the most wicked thing to do and one of the reasons why is that you totally screwed over future generations you've inherited something that you haven't passed on right in fact you decided to destroy the whole thing for your short term emotional misunderstanding games yeah yeah and I think that's unforgivable no I think I think you're right that in within the space of you know our current political classes tenure they have offered up for sacrifice their great capital cities London and Paris and Brussels and and so on so that if you look at a TV show from the seventies that London and Paris and Brussels is gone and is unrecognizable as why it happens you made an interesting point to me once you're talking about that in a sense we think we're stronger and more confident than we are and you said it's like when the Prince of Wales goes to visit an Anglican Church on a Sunday morning and of course everyone hears that the Prince of Wales is coming to church service this Sunday so the pews of and he walks in anything sad what they're talking about Church of England is in decline things seem to be humming along and your your sense is that that over evaluation of our own cultural rings is yes I think that I think that sort of Merkel Blair generation of politicians although have a version of that you know they don't see what anyone who younger than them can see in particular whether they like it or not which is that all these things are changing very fast then that that that strong sort of assertive culture is is not there you know what we're and we're in our schools would would students and pupils be taught to carry on this tradition namely their told had a war on it that's the new has been for generation right and that's a new way to be clever and virtuous you so maybe they just won't pass it on this time and I think by the way I mean across across America you can see that I mean it seems obvious to me the students in America haven't been taught the American idea no I mean they have I mean one of the things that you know both of us are obsessed by free speech I only don't understand the I know but it's not just that they you know want to turn up and holler and you know jabber and sometimes knock people out and set like the cars if they say something's my only you know disagrees with their point of view is that they don't think that free speech matters really no and the funny thing about it is if you if you're cut off from your cultural inheritance as I think that's true in Europe in America I think it's true in Canada we're celebrating a hundred and fiftieth birthday very few Canadians actually could give you a coherent answer on the hundred and fiftieth birthday of what right but the thing is once you recognize that there's a hole in your somewhere inside you you don't necessarily turn back to what you've lost you know you have a book a bit in the book that I recognized and and people who've encountered this particular kind of young lady recognize where you say you know you've heard all these stories they're all the same some some girl who's of easy virtue she's off her hedge his rat asked in a nightclub somewhere and at some point she wakes up you know face down in her own vomit and thinks this is a meaningless empty life I need to turn my life around and she finds Islam yes yeah it's a fascinating thing that I've heard so many stories of this and I've spoken to lots of people have had versions of this tends to tends to happen around the turn of your 30s hmm but these are the questions I need to ask oh so you see and the person who's brought up in a society where basically you know what what are we doing yeah I'm a young he wanted were we actually doing what's all this about what it's for basically anything you get is well you can buy new stuff right let's kind of crappy and you'll have to replace it a bit later that's the point and you can acquire things you can go on holiday yeah it's exciting than that what are we doing on this earth what are these are like that you know what everybody would win red there's a bomb and David Cameron or Theresa Bay or whoever's next in line says we will never surrender the Bombers will never force us to change our British values which means like as you say buying the latest iPhone and I mean listening to area in Grandia yeah this is the this is the consequence of something I say in the introduction this book is is what happens when you take in the world if you can import the world into your country a part of the fact that if you important wealth people you'll import the world's problems which is something we've only just started wake up to the other thing if you've got to change who you are because you've got all these P you have totally different views on each other and among each other and towards yourselves so you've got to have a definition of yourself that encompasses the whole world and that's why our politicians end up in this thing of saying it you see what our British values on them they're they're about tolerance that's all right and and being nice all right you know there's a little right and and being and being decent and and being diverse of course right okay that's necessarily wide because you're trying to encompass everyone you now have in your country it's shallow yeah totally shallow who says god I just can't wait to lead my tolerant diverse life it answers none of the questions which we as people as human beings and as souls are asked and so we we have this strange thing where the culture said nothing to you and it has no no reason for what we're doing I give the example one point in the book of a wonderful French philosopher called Chantal del Sol who had this terrific image of of modern European lead Western man as what she describes she says we're like Icarus forward we're like in course would have been if he'd survived before we in Europe cry in my expression said we tried everything you know we tried all the religious ideas and different interpretations that we tried to what political ideas we dreamt these dreams in the 20th century and they all collapsed and it was all terrible and and we oughtn't have been here and yet we are and we are singed and bruised and looking up at the four we just made and we don't know what to do and the only answer is the thing that most people do when all the ideas collapse which is you have a nice time right the problem is is it just doesn't last very long because it can't it can't sustain it so there's nothing meaningful that to your point about that the convert thing is is that the Islam it is so galvanizing and important so worthy of our attention because it has a strong and a is claimed right it makes to my mind ridiculous claims for itself and that are obviously wrong but they're claims they are claims about everything and when people say in the West that they want to understand why people do it you think you've got to start from the understanding that these people are talking about everything you know life death love meaning absolutely everything in you in return are saying well we're going to re-evaluate this bit of our counterterrorism strategy or inclusivity strategy to really really amend that bit any of that there are home sex figure this again recently ambu run amber rod and I said somewhere that you know in the end you've got to realize it and the run might tell you something but Allah might have a different view yeah who are you going to go with amber rod o Allah yeah I recommend people will notice the Home Secretary will probably be replaced in a few months time and and so on earth they they may just plump with what they regard as being the answer to absolutely everything well the the you you proposed a couple of ways in which this might be turned around or this might go in the in the next few years and you start you mentioned Michele Welbeck's novel submission in which the protagonist makes an effort to come home to Christianity and he can't do it yet and you say because as you know every village in Europe is centered around a church on a village green and all the ways fit and and you're not asking people to become necessarily believing Christians but just to return to the cultural Christianity that was you know the old joke about oh no when the Jehovah's Witness knock on you know we're not religious in May we're Church of England you know there but that you you know all the hymns you recognize the biblical quotation the things that were standard in Britain a generation ago and on most of the continent and we're a long even getting back to that yes I try to I mean some of the things I say in the book about slowing down the migration flow and all these things a little practical suggestions these are the ones these ones yeah the really essential things yeah I mean I'm not asking people to be believin Christians I'm not a believing Christian but one of the things I say that we are Christians anyway whether we like it or not and we're probably finding that out at the moment I mean where the hell do people think the human rights came from yeah these are these are things that exist on the embers of Christian thoughts but you know as well as I do Douglas that there are people that there are a lot of people who so I'm totally opposed to what Islam's doing and then they suddenly but they say I'm a secular rational atheist know that they're a secular rational Christian atheist right right they know they may not want to be but they are yeah they still dream Christian dreams yes they still have Christian thoughts and influences they don't actually behave as they would if they had no ragging at all but isn't this is one of the most important things is what is our attitude towards this part there's a passage in the book I mentioned what is our attitude to these buildings in our min are the embarrassment are they something we think we return to in times of trouble and and one of the few say this is is it were too deep to be picked up by the shorter average Guardian reviewer who either somewhat lambasted by if this is a I think there's a classic thing about the chalice of our time where when you have you mention anything important right what are you going on about that yeah yeah it goes back to think about the migration yeah why don't you join us in talking about this boring by-election right right right right right yeah there they sort of present-tense hamster wheel yeah but mad yeah and and but but this at what our attitude towards our party is master them warring on it I know is not an answer in fact is part of our current catastrophe warring on our past include the people who say I'm really against suicide bombers yeah and that's why we've got a closed faith school right right right right or they go I I will criticize the crazy jihadi but I also don't want bishops in the house of Lord no no no I mean I'm not something that the total waste of your energy yeah time yeah it's also and also just I'll be positioning yeah showing yeah hand yeah yeah it's it's also that the rap singer Pope Benedict is one of the central figures of this book in a way because I we should take seriously several of a very straightforward things here and one of them was he said he at one point Osen persuaded the late Oriana Fallaci atheist of this they said he said the behave as though God exists yeah and he also made what I think are as being one of the key insights because one of the reasons why people wore on their origins in Europe he's apart from the positioning and all that little thing it's because they think that it's about the philosophy and the reason and the science or the religion right and I say well I'm the book but that we should recognize I didn't we should recognize for instance in I say look the churches would have given up claimed Benedict give himself a new signal they've given up a claim to legislate okay there are parts of the world without and applicate but modern Europe the church is basically have no legislative power and have by their own admission so they don't want it so as long as they cannot impose their beliefs on a non-believer or something like that the argument about the positions of religion to that extent the most it have been sorted out but there's something that the non-religious then has to do which is and I think this is a quid pro quo which is to concede that in matters like issues to do with life and meaning the churches have a voice you know they've thought about in this I mean one of the great things I discover on campus is under this people they are we know we don't know like X telling us about you know we don't have bishop telling us about I know procreation right well it's possible the Church of thought about this I mean it may have even thought about the more than you have in eighteen years of life or whatever and that there's a whole set of issues of that skin it's almost as if we've said anything that comes from our religious and philosophical tradition and by its nature is of no interest right you are right right because we've got this great new idea and of course sadly the idea the great new idea is this it is this and George in retirement as the late can manage different syndrome where you the whole of life is a set of battles for rites and you slain the dragon and now you stagger around the land looking for smaller and smaller dragons they till you're in the situation the left in at the moment where they're just standing leering and like waving a sword around attempt yeah yeah no he or the or the less and relevance an issue has to to people the larger it loom yeah so that sexual identities no one had ever heard of 20 minutes ago like all the you know intersexual questioning and all those become suddenly the be all yeah and then there is a terrible thing you I always thought you were much more optimistic than me a decade or so ago and you used to say that you used to be more optimistic when you went to the Netherlands or whatever they could actually reverse and change this one of the interesting phenomena of modern politics is it is the nanosecond between oh we've still got plenty of time to address this problem and oh it's now too late to do anything this problem and I feel that in the couple years after 9/11 if you talked about the Islamization of Europe or whatever people said oh we've still got plenty of time to address this problem implicit in the reaction of Theresa May and Francois Hollande and Ankle lemarchal and all the others now is that it's too late to do anything about it well it's certainly beyond any one politician or any one generation of politicians and I've I've I've come to the view that I think you're right I mean I was probably more optimistic to anything other than events happened and and you see the same thing play out everywhere and I mean the optimism and pessimism depend on the facts you see and blacks are not great at the moment specifically I think the thing that I find saddest is that it's hard to see decent ways out now and that just fills me with why you know we had three terror attacks in ten weeks in the UK and after each of them Westminster Bridge the Manchester concert and and then London Bridge and after each of them the same disheartening and troubling thing happened which is that everyone said don't don't look back in anger love must overcome hey and don't and don't really look at why this might have happened stop it don't finger point then just a couple days ago we had what looks like an attack by a non-muslim on Muslims coming out of a church if using Isis style tactics of using a band of no innocent people down in the street and of course the different thing happened instead of love must overcome hate don't point fingers it was get your fists out and find the people who you know actually jeopardize any future trial anybody looks like the guy was a lone madman who may have had a most horrible and often did out the most horrible views but but my point is what so disheartening is that there is still so little desire or appetite to find out and deal with the problem when it is you know twenty two-year-old of Libyan descent blowing people up on the way out in ariana grande concert but we still just know exactly what to focus everything when it's the crazy white far-right whatever it why don't we apply the same thing even now even now why wouldn't we and that to that extent we know we sort of go around in just his boring tiny learning curve circle there was a BBC question time the week after Manchester thing this guy in the audience said look the mosque of that the bomb went to and I went there on an open day in the other man's and they gave me this leaf and it's all about how awful the West is a now and anyway and you know this is an interesting morning we we think it's an interesting point wasn't show of it no everything was just I shot the guide and a presenter well we don't know that you picked up in they know the woman in the head Karzai goes at Moscone and and I don't believe that that was given out anyway you quoted out of context and and and if I go out of something wrong didn't pick it up there's a wide Yahoo boom ever and and this crime is like left them definitely set the buttons of identity we don't know whether you got it as like a concert and he's just like it's blue yeah with his leaflet they think what the hell yeah yeah I give in my hand like I said I wrote a piece I'm saying yeah welcome to the rest of us make it yeah no one cares though hears about the interesting and important fact they shut you down because they don't want it no and it's what hands Christian Hansen got wrong in the little boy who points out that the emperor has no clothes because when you point out that the multicultural emperor has no clothes the mob just clubs the little boy to a pulp for disclosing is that yeah a fact yeah it just says it just as a final question Douglas because you a as I say you posit alternative endings in the poem and in a sense the longer it goes on without something changing the more it's and it shouldn't be necessary to point this out to anyone from the United Kingdom because you have journeyed through this process all over the map in various little colonial skirmishes and much closer to home in Ireland the longer you go on the worse the options get until only violence remains can violence be avoided I just hope so one the point I make again the book is of the I think we have been losing the opportunity to have a soft landing on them and that really worries me I mean things like this attack outside this mosque the other day are in some ways even worse and more disheartening because you think oh god let it not be like that you know let it not be sides forming and revenge attacking each other as you say we saw that in Northern Ireland and we've seen in many other places and I just say I think we've been running out of time to make it an easier landing for ourselves but you know this is all stuff that America and we're all going through versions of this at different stages so the best we can do it seems to me is be as well informed as possible to have a wider discussion as possible about it to recognize and to speak fearlessly about what we think is coming or possible in order to be able to weigh out our options decently and I think the I think there is still always hope there is there is always hope that something changes that people come along it I know people hate the sort of them great men of history sort of version of history now it's all gonna be about class struggle yeah and and gay right yeah there's a strong man on a horse but actually in my view I have been in the book about the bike all your early warning sirens I don't mention you and it by only if you're not a European but I would have if I'd have gone beyond the European Union was very earliest warning signs on this because you've been warning about this for a long time but the point is early warning signs autos but actually the people matter you know an Italian left-wing feminists they're a gay politician and people matter and in a way one of the worst things about the kind of class struggle socio-economic view of history is it tells people you don't matter it's all about something else beyond your control but I think that isn't true I think that people change history right and maybe at some point soon there'll be more people where the embers l'amour L'Amour them whatever skin colour whichever nation who will help get up out of this no and I would like you you mentioned you know Oriana Fallaci was a ferocious left-wing feminist you mentioned pin 14 who was a kind of gay hedonist Dutchman now that what's interesting is they said oh these people are like right-wing hey I mean when I got in my little problems in Canada I was a right-wing haters so I was entirely reasonable for these how this is this he's no responsible for free speech why could we have had Margaret Atwood oh yeah that's entirely reasonable but what was interesting to me about Oriana Fallaci the left-wing feminist firebrand pimp for tame the gay hedonists Dutchman is that within ten minutes of embracing this issue they suddenly became a right winged hated just like me the iron her see yeah yeah who is a black Somali immigrant she's banned from she gets canceled at Brandeis at an American University because she's suddenly right-wing hater riddled with white fringe you know yes that's these are all very bad signs all of this but again I mean maybe maybe it's sort of the case that the public of with these people I mean I one of the things that I'm most fascinating to me about this is this just this vast gap right that's you know if you write for papers as you do and I do it you get to hear back from people the number of times there are questions which I you know probably overthink and follow my brown worried desperately morning in and night about and and it's you know it's the reason gay yeah oh no no we're not bothered about that well in others that's fine you know no and and we won't put up with that do you know and say this I do I mean one of the things in recent months both break that has been noticing the way in which people on the continent of very distrusting of the people actually hmm but I do have a residual even after our recent election Britta what reason may have cost her self over the head repeatedly you know and the British public help return even after that and even after things like the rise of this lunatic Jeremy Corbyn took position I do still have a face and people decency and honesty and I don't think we are mobs waiting to break out and I think we we're reasonable and tolerant people who just don't like being or having a piss taken really know and we rather wasn't taken Mary don't mind awfully yeah if you wouldn't mind awfully that's a very English and civilized way of putting it to Douglas you said tell us media fearlessly and I should say you know as you're the last person to to play the victim card but those of you who do speak out in London and the other capital cities a Europe and I think you have a tougher Road hoe than those of us in Canada Australia America and so speaking out fearlessly does come at a price and you have paid that and you and some of these other European figures have been brave and constant on this subject for many years now and I hope that that doesn't change the book is called the strange death of Europe immigration identity Islam Douglas Murray thank you very much for thanks [Music] you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Mark Steyn

Views: 463,200

Keywords: The Mark Steyn Show, Mark Steyn, Douglas Murray, The Strange Death of Europe, Islamization, Europe, The Mark Steyn Club

Id: 1iAKfHntZMw

Length: 63min 16sec (3796 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 24 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/thebeginningistheend]

hahaha what the fuck is with that intro sequence?

Pink Panther much?

[u/[deleted]]

His mannerisms are exactly that of Dennis Reynolds.

[u/[deleted]]

And the solution is what Douglas?...alt-right?
-No not that racist garbage.
Murray is dishonest.

[u/rswallen]

GET THIS ISLAMOPHOBIC ALT-RIGHT BIGOTTED HATE PREACHER OF THE AIRWAYS NOW!!

I AM SLIGHTLY OFFENDED!!

EDIT: Being serious, really good video

[u/[deleted]]

Why do we only talk about the culture being changed by Muslims but not America? How many mcdonalds shops exist in the streets of Europe? How much of our media is inundated with American bullshit? What movies are our great theatres playing? We even import their bullshit identity movements (black live matters UK/identity politics).

Why aren't we talking about Europe being eroded by American hegemony, not just Islam? Is it because they are from a 'western' country, not dirty brown people?