Bawer on European multiculturalism

Front Page Magazine has a striking interview with Bruce Bawer, author of While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within. Bawer describes the rise of culturally separate Islamic enclaves within most large Western European cities and the appeasement of Islamic extremists by European leaders. He also emphasizes how greatly mainstream Western European society differs from American, and in particular, how European attitudes encourage (if any encouragement is needed) such Islamic cultural separatism.

. . . Western Europe has been admitting huge numbers of immigrants for decades, most of them Muslims.  But the way they’ve handled them has been disastrous.  The European elite hates America so much that instead of recognizing the U.S. as a model of how to integrate newcomers, they rejected the American approach entirely.  They chose to view immigrants as members of groups rather than as individuals, as dependent children rather than adults who are potentially self-sufficient and responsible, and as exotic alien creatures who should remain exotic rather than as Europeans in the making . . . .

Bawer implies that beneath its liberal veneer, Europe, unlike America, is deeply xenophobic, indeed, racist. He goes as far as to claim that the Jews faced extermination in Europe precisely because they were eager to assimilate into European society. Contemporary Muslim immigrants in Europe do not wish to assimilate, on the other hand, and so gain the reflexive respect of the European elite.

In Europe, the elite prefers its minorities unintegrated, and the supposed reason is that it respects differences.  But the real reason is a profound discomfort with the idea of “them” becoming “us.”  Anyone can become an American; but an immigrant to Norway or the Netherlands will never really be thought of by anyone as Norwegian or Dutch . . . .

It would seem that the exaggerated European insistence on cultural tolerance is a kind of neurotic reaction-formation against a repressed hatred of foreigners. Doubtless liberal North Americans share a similar neurosis, but it does not seem to be nearly as pronounced. The European case is a recipe for disaster, as such hatred is liable to break out explosively—in neo-fascist political movements.

A Europe torn between nativist fascism and Islamofascism is a grim prospect, all too reminiscent of the situation in Europe in the 1930s.  Some days it feels avoidable.  Other days it feels inevitable.