While the furore over European sovereign debt appears to have taken something of a back seat to the raging weakness of the dollar (and corresponding strength of the euro), to my mind the most significant force driving Europe today is quite far from the financial markets.
My sense is that the economic pressure of the last couple of decades, which really speaks of the failure of European policies and politicians, multiplied by the readily identifiable “other” — Muslims now make up over 5 per cent of the European population — is creating such a visceral backlash to the decades of tolerance that the Age of Enlightenment, which so wonderfully defined European life and thought for over two centuries, is coming to a close.
My first real introduction to this world, the world of liberal European thinking, was in the mid-1970s when I lived in New York and became friends with a wonderful French woman, Helene. No, not like you think — she was married and her husband, Charlie, was also a friend. Charlie was — is — American but both of them were really very French in the way they were, the way they lived, the way they thought. Charlie had schooled in Geneva and they had (still have) a house in the south of France; their children studied at the French school in New York, and dinner at their house was always just so… well, French.
They were like family and one of the loudest things I remember from that time was their absolute horror, amazement, indeed, embarrassment at the rise of Jean Marie Le Pen, the grotesque right-wing politician who started the National Front on a singular anti-immigrant platform, and, horror of horrors, won sufficient votes (by the late 1970s) to become a real force in the French Parliament.
Now, Charlie and Helene were children of 1968 and were left of centre in their politics. But back then, it was clear that the vast majority of France scorned Le Pen and what he stood for. Most other Europeans, too, were equally appalled, although I’m sure some of them secretly enjoyed the discomfiture of the French, who, as always, acted as if they were the custodians of liberalism and the centre of contemporary European — indeed, western — culture. Le Pen represented only a minuscule part of French public opinion, but, like other fundamentalists (before and) after him, was able to stir up the worst of the lumpen elements of French society.
But now, only (?) 30-some years later, it is shocking to see that there are such a vast number of children of Le Pen afloat, with virtually every western European country having outspoken right wing racist political parties in their governments. Sadder still are what I guess I’d call the stepchildren of Le Pen, the mainstream European political parties, which continue to pretend to be shocked by overt racism while themselves perniciously pushing Islamophobic verbiage and policies. And most tragic of all are the large numbers of close-minded “liberals” all over Europe — and, indeed, the world — who, in the name of tolerance and women’s rights, play right into racist hands by, amongst other things, aggressively supporting the banning of headscarves and burkhas.
I hate to say it, but it seems like Liberte-Egalite-Fraternite is dying and “western” Europe is beginning to look more and more like the fundamentalists it ostensibly opposes.
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Of course, racism is a natural, if normally dormant, human trait, which oozes to the surface only during times of economic trial. And in Europe, which has been the ultimate definition of good life even over the past two decades, it is now time to pay the piper.
With the notable exceptions of Germany and the Scandinavian countries, Europeans appear unable — or unwilling — to comprehend why they should have to suddenly start working harder. Even Mr Sarkozy’s attempt to increase the retirement age from 60 to a paltry 62 has resulted in blood on the streets. But then, even more than in India, the government has always been the mai-baap in France (and Greece and Italy and…), and the babies are growling ferociously at their milk bottle being taken away.
But there’s no more milk. And no more cows, as a result of the demographic disaster created by the rationalist philosophy that has driven Europe for at least the last century.
Unless, of course, you look East. And South. And learn to enjoy the different flavours these bring. For make no mistake, the flavours of Africa and the Levant will bring diversity and much deeper nourishment to the bloodstock of the old, effete, “liberal” Europe.
A new Europe is being born and — Allah be praised — it looks like Turkey (and Morocco and Algeria).