April in Europe is what could be called Dark History Month. Between the morose commemorations of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, the Katyn massacre in Poland, the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine and the genocide in Armenia. And several Eastern European countries host their Jewish Holocaust memorials in April. Even the Rwandan genocide is now commemorated, since Macron recognized the “overwhelming responsibility” of France. There is a lot of history on the old continent to go around, alas the editorial privilege lies with compulsive hagiographers who attach barbs of relativity and moral lessons to even the most innocuous milestones of Western tradition. These days there is much competition for which state is The Sick Man of Europe, to the point that public opinion landed on the idea that it is the European Union as a whole. With this much longevity in illness, it’s hard not to think that Europe isn’t already in a glass-house purgatory.
A fortnight ago, on the conspicuous date of April 20, the parliament of the EU voted in favor of a new Migration Pact, which will not only make the process easier for asylum seekers to enter and stay in the EU, it will make migrant relocation quotas mandatory and unlimited for all member states. Ratification by the EU Commission seems guaranteed, since the vetoes of a couple of dissenters like Hungary and Poland will not be enough. There is something ghoulishly kitsch about the parliamentary echo chambers of the EU that manages to disconnect most representatives from the expressed interests of their constituents. With no less than 754 members in an architectural hivemind decked with blue carpet and upholstery, conforming to the bureaucratic cult is almost a matter of subliminal coercion. Blue isn’t the color of the EU because the Smurfs originate in Belgium—although there is a certain pseudo-utopian vibe in synchronicity. The vibe has more to do with the fact that a third of MEPs are designated “friends” of George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, which received funding to the tune of 18 billion euros.
The recent arrest of Vice-President of the European Parliament Eva Kaili indicates that corruption goes right to the top and is in no way isolated. The glamorous Greek MEP is now under house arrest, but her case is not looking strong. Her lawyer argued that the prosecutor’s case was largely symbolic and that Kaili was being kept behind bars as a “trophy.” But Kaili and her human-rights NGO-founding husband were apprehended with €600,000 cash dropped off by Qatari mules as part of the World Cup bribery operation. Though she’s not quite the European Elizabeth Holmes, the case deals another blow to younger women entering politics in the hope of one day getting a cabinet position—only to end up in the trophy cabinet instead.
It’s not been a good run for female heads of state, no matter how photogenic, media savvy and establishment-protected they may be. The OnlyFans prime ministership of Finland’s Sanna Marin came to an end after voters decided they’d had enough of her Instagram lifestyle and fake leadership. Marin failed to tackle any of Finland’s domestic problems and took orders from abroad on covid and Russia, which is why she back-flipped on her previous stance of keeping Finland out of NATO. Though she was refreshingly feminine (for a woman raised by lesbians) she was reduced to a puddle of tears a little too easily when the rather milquetoast footage surfaced of her dancing at a party. A month before her April 6 election loss, a puff-piece by America’s 60 Minutes declared that Marin was Finland’s “most popular prime minister in thirty years.” One can get a sense of Marin’s brainless centrism from the question of Europe’s lurch to the right on immigration, in which Oblivion NPC narratives like “ageing population” and “new jobs” pop up like an overworked script.
Sanna Marin’s sojourn in politics to some degree resembles the tenure of her antipodean best friend, Jacinda Arden. Recall that, as Prime Minister of New Zealand, her most profound impacts were donning a hijab in response to the extraordinary Christchurch terrorist event, elbowing a language signer in a fit of jealousy, and having a child during her term in office. Since it wasn’t quite clear why the PM of Finland took a visiting trip to New Zealand to establish bilateral relations, one journalist took one for the team by asking whether it was because the two were of same gender and similar age. Gliding into the gig unelected and treating office like a public relations position while backroom experts and officials do most of the decision making is a luxury of Western democracy that clearly appeals to a certain careerist mindset. What else, other than self-aggrandizement, can be expected from people who both finish studying and enter politics in their mid-twenties? Unfortunately, this same formula appears in the biography of the popular new hope of the European right: Giorgia Meloni.
Active in politics from the age of fifteen and becoming a councilor at twenty-one, Meloni has gone though as many political parties as Berlusconi has social ones. Meloni’s crypto-pivot to the mainstream in recent years may have been a little more sincere than some had hoped—declaring herself to being aligned with Republicans in America and Tories in the UK. Her policies are a blend of paleo- and neocon. She visited Yad Vashem in 2009. The party she co-founded, Brothers of Italy, is perhaps a little antiquated and elicits semantic comparison to the Muslim Brotherhood. Indeed, under her administration Italy has banned artificial meat and the AI bot ChatGPT. Meloni remains steadfastly anti-cannabis, anti-euthanasia and anti-abortion, but none of these are the reason why Meloni was elected. It’s the African flotilla landing on Italian shores that she was tasked with, and far from ameliorating the crisis, the numbers are worsening—37,000 this year by last count. Just how much judicial and extra-legal obstruction she and her deputy Salvini are up against may not entirely be clear, but what is known is that the duo has had plenty of time to devise a strategy. Instead, Meloni has been racking up the frequent flyer miles on various diplomatic missions abroad — India, Algeria, Ethiopia, Britain and of course Ukraine. Domestically, she has been on a constant apology tour for her prior ideological affiliations, and the latest test of resolve came on Liberation Day (April 25) in which she predictably played defense in the standard homily against fascism, in exchange for unrelenting hostility from her detractors. Moderating to respectable center-right politics has been an enlightening transformation for the Sardinian blonde and the role of savior is really starting to grow on her. In perhaps her most melodramatic performance yet, Meloni pinned the problem of African migration on President Macron and French “neocolonialism.”
The other great hope of European nationalists has been Eastern Europe, a beacon that has never truly been tested until now. The signs are not good. It’s no secret that the appeal of life in Slovakia, Bulgaria or Romania is not high on the list of Third-World asylum shoppers. Even so, by sheer backlog, significant clusters of foreigners from non-European countries are starting to amalgamate. Fortress Hungary saw its first inter-ethnic mass brawl in a Budapest shopping mall, involving Syrian and Jordanian clans. Whatever advantages eastern Europeans may have from a stronger sense of ethnic identity and a heightened allergy toward leftist doctrines, it seems that these will be insufficient to compensate for the greater incompetency, corruption and kleptomania that plague this region. This applies to the highest levels of government down to the common citizen who might stand to make a bit of money from letting out a spare room. Eastern Europe is a place of trolley buses and ubiquitous graffiti. A startling number of cities can’t even solve their stray dog problem, let alone marshal migrants with policemen who often can’t speak basic English. The East is plagued with brain-drain, economic emigration and low birth rates. The most prominent success stories of human capital are from individuals primarily based in Western Europe, but who maintain links with their homeland. Athletes and models are perhaps the region’s most notable exports. And for those who might be wondering how Emily Ratajkowski managed to become the world’s highest paid model, you should know that she was in fact born in London not Warsaw, and has incredible agents.
If bullied countries like those of the Visegrad Four (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia) have not left by now, then it seems likely they will stay in the abusive relationship with the EU to the end. New kid on the bloc Croatia has little to show a decade after joining, other than the perfunctory progressions to the euro currency and Schengen Area membership. These are pitiful perks that have been exchanged for accelerated brain drain, heightened inflation, property and assets being sold off, and, worst of all, the relinquishing of sovereignty. Croatia has been one of the most ethnically homogeneous countries in Europe since independence but is now being flooded with cheap labor, particularly from South Asia. One is most likely to see such individuals in the employment of Wolt and Glovo, the European equivalents of Uber Eats, as they ferry hamburgers on their bicycles and Vespas to people apparently too lazy to leave their building and purchase food from the wide range of vendors located on every corner. This tuk-tuk culture of street butlers is a scourge continent wide, but it is a particular blight for Croatia as the most overweight country in Europe. As for the ethnic street food takeaways that seem to enchant so many—be it Greek, Lebanese or Mexican—they are neither owned nor staffed with representative minorities but rather by Indians and Filipinos. Europe in 2023 is where 1990s multiculturalism arguments come to die.
Croatia is led by president Zoran Milanović and prime minister Andrej Plenković—who are at constant odds with one another but are united by the fact that both were draft-dodgers during the war. The PM is the one with the policymaking power, which is a shame since Plenković is a 6’5 poodle of Brussels. His bookwormish demeanor even translates into his overly clerical pursuit of superficial accolades and delegated benchmarks that only look good on paper. In a recent scandal involving the attempted smuggling of children from a Congolese orphanage to Croatian couples, Plenković sided with the smugglers and declared the children to be Croatian citizens in spite of them having never left Africa, on the rationalization that corrupt Croatian officials had provided legal paperwork through an illegal process. Mimicry of Western vices among Eastern Europeans has become a vice in itself. Croatia had one of the best records for free speech in the world, but that all changed last week as the parliament led by Plenković voted to make the World War II slogan “For homeland ready” illegal, thereby copying the Western model of policing speech and thought. The gesture of atonement was not coincidental in its timing, since it coincided with their Holocaust Memorial Day. What’s more, 2023 is the year that Croatia presides over the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance—an intergovernmental organization that most Jews have never heard of, let alone gentiles. It’s no wonder Plenković is the favorite to succeed Jens Stoltenberg and become the next Secretary General of NATO, which is not bad for the caretaker of a meals-on-wheels economy.
Thirty years after Croatia fought for independence, its victory is looking increasingly Pyrrhic. It may not be the Croats’ fault, but in place of the absconded Serbs they are now acquiring people from South Asia with a far different character. The Croats have a right to be skeptical of people from such a heavily populated area as the Indian-subcontinent, but who have less achievement om s[prts than themselves. Based on news coverage alone, one could be forgiven for thinking that the Indian male population comprises spelling bee champions and gang rapists with few in between—a harmful stereotype that the media ought to answer for. Years of such news items would normally be enough for people to draw at least tentative conclusions, while others, in the words of Trump, still prefer to monitor the situation. But Indians are the new Chinese and are migrating to the West in large numbers, rather than curtailing their population growth. In 2015, only 44% of the population used toilets—in a country that was pursuing a space program. And that is the handiwork of the world’s largest democracy. Last week, Der Spiegel encapsulated the sentiment perfectly, with a cartoon lampooning India’s pride and preference for quantity over quality.
Only those on the lower rungs of Hindustani society care to migrate to the realms of their fellow Satem speakers in Eurasia. The upper echelons naturally cast their lures on either side of the Atlantic, which of course includes their former colonizer, the United Kingdom. The number of Brits who have ethnic origins on the subcontinent currently stands at four million—and their influence is being felt. The UK now surely leads the world on the spicy food to mild weather index, which isn’t without its drawbacks. Indians in particular are flourishing: 14% of households bring in more than £2000/week, compared to 6% for White British. Between the House of Commons and the House of Lords there are enough subcontinentals to field seven cricket teams. And yet somehow, at a time when the English PM, Scottish FM, Mayor of London and even Irish Taoiseach have origins between the Indus and the Ganges—a week cannot pass without a mewling PSA on the menace of institutional racism.
Muslims like Sadiq Khan have no greater public figure for an ally than King Charles, whose dapper brand of wokeness and racial progressivism is already well documented. The level of pandering includes Ramadan/Eid well-wishing, something his counterparts in the Gulf States would never do. But as the Gods would have it, this year on Eid his long-time friend Barry Humphries died, meaning Charles was committed to honoring a man famous for dressing in drag as Dame Edna Everage. Irony and awareness gel about as well as oil and water in the mainstream of modern Britain. Over the weekend, the largest Eid event in the UK took place on Trafalgar Square—the very monument that honors the battle that prevented the invasion of Britain. Others may be succeeding where Napoleon failed.
White-on-White imperialism in Europe is a bit like Black-on-Black crime in America — awkwardly ignored or poorly fig-leafed phenomena that don’t align well with Marxist grift or critical race theory pretense. Which brings us to the issue of Northern Ireland. It’s almost certainly the case that, had the Irish been Black, the six counties still part of the UK would have been returned long ago. This makes the current plight of the Irish Republic all the more tragic. Engaging in a long and bloody struggle to kick out the English, only to open the floodgates of immigration to the Third World seems a lot like cutting off your nose to spite your race. The Irish, with their squeaky-clean history free of imperialism are embracing those whose tendencies for grievance-aggression will be simply based on present frivolities rather than invoking a past. One of the most draconian legislations against free speech has already passed the first house of parliament and if made law will enable prosecution of anyone in possession of material deemed offensive to minorities—presumably including articles from TOO. Ireland survived the Great Famine and The Troubles, but may not survive their current jig on the edge of madness.
Americans are largely oblivious to just how small and demographically fragile Ireland is, which is an ignorance borne from the unusually large numbers of Irish descendants in America. Few Americans shy away from claiming and emphasizing Irish ancestry, whereas the same cannot be said for English or German ancestry. Namedropping Irish ancestry has become a rather craven form of underdog-signaling among Whites. The Elizabeth Warren-style Flight from White may be discredited, but the Split from Brit is in season. This trend has no greater poster boy than President Biden, who has both English and Irish ancestry, but is vitriolically pro-Irish and anti-English. His April visit to Belfast was well received on account of his American identity, not to mention him being the mascot of useful senility. In a roundabout kind of way, perhaps the Irish are imperial after all. Ireland only has six million Irish, compared to the United States’ 36 million Irish-Americans—with the President of the American Empire being one of their own. Whether Biden is the emperor with no clothes or the emperor with no marbles is a question that doesn’t appear to concern most Europeans, who are still fed a steady diet of bread and circuses.
As for the Sick Man of Europe, its ailment is clearly far more spiritual than physical. The stewarding elites are in a confused stupor, extending the hand of charity to intercontinental interlopers rather than their own vulnerable souls. And they choose to militarize Chernobyl, forsaking Grenoble. Migrants only have to swim across water, while the patriotic sons of Europe must struggle in virtual quicksand, in which greater effort only results in hastened punishment. Perhaps the old European remedial practice of blood-letting to rid the body of malaise has been misunderstood all along.
By Thomas Zaja