Nationalism and the European immigration crisis
James W. Huston has this commentary on the rise of nationalism and the immigration crisis in Europe. Last October, 20,000 marchers took to the streets in Dresden, Germany to protest Germany’s plan to admit almost 1 million Muslim refugees from Syria. The march was organized by PEGIDA, the so-called Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West. The group claims that German and European culture is being “overrun” by immigrants. Another march occurred la later in October. “The anger at their government and the nationalist and anti-Islamic sentiments reflected in the protests are deep and growing in Germany and elsewhere and are spilling over into overt and renewed neo-Nazism. And now Paris. Two weeks after emigrating from Syria, one refugee participated in the bloody attacks on defenseless Parisians.”
One passage of Huston’s commentary is especially interesting:
“People often look back to the 1920s and 1930s and wonder how Adolph Hitler was able to convince Germany to follow him down the path of hatred, anti-Semitism, and anti-immigrant fever. But rarely do people read what Hitler said in “Mein Kampf.” He was as clear as it is possible to be. His number one target was immigrants. He blamed immigrants for everything bad that was happening in Germany, from the shambolic economy to the struggle for the political future of the country. Hitler’s “immigrant” targets were the Jews and Bolsheviks. The invaders. The non-Germans, Jews and Slavs. In Volume II, Chapter III of “Mein Kampf,” Hitler tears into Germany for exercising its “magic” whereby it turns a Mongolian slave into a “real German.” A Zulu or “Kaffir” can become a “citizen.”
Many governments, like Germany in the 1930s, are perceived as being more interested in allowing in all comers with no consideration for safety, let alone the deep-seated culture and the beliefs of the average members of the society. Germans felt abandoned by the state in Hitler’s time, and feared for their country. Many were silent, until Hitler expressed what they were thinking. He didn’t create the fear, the hatred and desire to stop the immigrant flood, he rode it.
The same fear is building today in Germany and elsewhere. The feared immigrants of today aren’t Jews and Bolsheviks, they’re Muslims.”
KJ