“If you see Steyn and Peters as your top authorities on the future of Europe, you have a problem.”

Henry Wickham writing at the American Thinker in early January tried to decide who was right: Mark Steyn in his pessimism about Europe (actually this supposed pessimism consists of at least one part vicious glee), or Ralph Peters, who says that Europe is in no danger from Islam … because sooner or later those Nazi-like Euros will rise up and kill or expel all the Muzzies.

I sent him this:

Dear Mr. Wickham:

Regarding your article at American Thinker, Peter’s column was actually a vicious attack on Europe, not a call for Europe to defend itself. For you to see Peters as the contra Steyn and take his arguments seriously, instead of seeing that Peters doesn’t even believe in Europe but despises it—just as Steyn does—is to miss the truth entirely. The contra Steyn would not be someone who talks about how Europeans are a bunch of Nazi savages under the skin. The contra Steyn would be someone who (1) believes in Europe and wants it to survive, revive, and thrive; and (2) urges Europe to the steps that can actually save it, the most important of which are the cessation of Islamic immigration, the removal of many of the Muslims already there, the rejection of the EU and EU type liberalism, and the revitalization of Europe’s constituent historic nations.

Steyn talks about the enervating effects of the EU mentality and of low birthrates, but he never gives any idea of what a re-vitalized Europe should actually DO to protect itself from Islam. He never even addresses the question. He just makes it appear that if America (he’s given up on Europe) were to increase its birth rates, it could fend off Islam. How? He never says. Worse, Steyn has frequently expressed Schadenfreude at the prospect of the Islamization of Europe and has even urged the Islamization of Europe, while Peters is easily the number one Europe hater in America, maybe the number one hater of Europe anywhere, anytime.

And these are the two writers whom you are discussing as the authorities on whether Europe can be saved! I hope you see the problem here.

Any discussion of what to do about Islamization that ignores the need to stop (and preferably to reverse) Muslim immigration is not serious.

I also recommend this discussion of Steyn which was a follow up to the article linked above: Readers’ comments on Steyn and Islam. In particular, consider this, from one of my readers, a Swedish conservative:

Steyn says in his speech that the Muslim population of Rotterdam is 40%. Rotterdam and Marseilles are the European cities with the highest share of Muslim population. But the figure I have seen is 25%. Where is his source?

And in his article, “Europe imploding,” he writes: “By some projections, the EU’s population will be 40 percent Muslim by 2025.” By what projections?

Look here. The Muslim population of Europe today is 4-7%. If every Muslim woman in Europe gives birth to four babies, and every Muslim man marries a Muslim woman outside of Europe and bring her to Europe through family reunification, and then get her pregnant with four babies, the Muslim population in Europe will quadruple in one generation. This exponential growth is certainly mind boggling, and it will give us a Muslim population of 15-23 percent by 2025-2030. But there’s no way there could be 40 percent. Not until a generation later, by 2050, and only if the current trends are just projected and nothing is changed in policy or behaviour. What’s the motive of Steyn for exaggerating this figure beyond what is possible?

The only way that it would at all be possible to reach 40 percent by 2025 would be to extend Europe to include Turkey. Is this what Steyn is basing his calculations on? If so, why doesn’t he say it? (Next we will include Iraq also?) And why on earth isn’t he bashing the Bush Administration for pushing for Turkey’s membership in the EU, since this would be the decisive factor for imploding Europe just the way he described? Why is he only interested in being the grinning dishonest doomsday prophet?

The Swedish conservative’s question “What’s the motive of Steyn for exaggerating this figure beyond what is possible?” should be pondered. This is someone who wants Europe’s prognosis to appear even worse than it actually is. Why is he doing this? And why do people like you take Steyn “straight,” instead of asking questions of him?

To take Steyn as the representative of a serious view on Islam that we must consider, rather than as someone who is pushing a very suspect view of things, is a major intellectual mistake.

Lawrence Auster

Wickham, naturally, did not reply to my e-mail. None of the mainstream-conservative Islam critics ever does. It never ceases to amaze me, that an intelligent writer receiving an intelligent, civil letter raising points that go to the heart of his own position, just flat-out ignores it.

I shared my e-mail to Wickham with a correspondent who wrote back:

If you use Steyn and Peters as your two greatest authorities regarding the future of Europe, you have a problem.

- end of initial entry -

An Indian reader living in the West writes:

What you say about Ralph Peters and Mark Steyn is very interesting. I have some thoughts on this.

The fundamental nature of democracy is that the people live in the moment and have very little memory. Collective amnesia is a very democratic phenomenon. The result is that being breathtakingly wrong (even repeatedly) is no bar to a long and successful career in journalism. There will always be people, for ideological reasons or whatever, who will always read some journalists. To end your career, you would have to commit some unpardonable sin. In today’s world, saying anything that is considered “racist” has the same effect—unless you apologise profusely and make an absolute grovelling spectacle of yourself.

However, apart from these limited exceptions, being wrong on matters of great importance doesn’t really seal one’s career in journalism. On Iraq, Steyn, Peters and the entire Neocon crowd haven’t just been wrong—they have been thoroughly wrong in almost every respect and almost every “prediction” they made has gone woefully wrong. And the consequence of this is quite terrible—for American and coalition soldiers in Iraq and for the country in the long term. But for the journalists, their careers continue regardless. It’s almost as if none of those mistakes ever happened. This is also the reason that journalists never own up to mistakes; why even admit that you were wrong when people won’t even punish you for the mistakes? In Steyn’s case, there was no end of testosterone powered gung-ho rhetoric on Iraq for a couple of years. Now, its almost as if Iraq has disappeared off the map. He’s back to cracking Pelosi jokes and taking his usual pot-shots at the Democrats. I am sure his readership hasn’t dropped that much.

Steyn can make all those ridiculous short term predictions about Europe because in twenty years, who would remember it anyway? If people don’t even punish him for all the rubbish he wrote about Iraq just two years ago, then what are the odds of his being held accountable in 2030 for predictions he made in 2006? There is almost no chance of that.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 24, 2007 06:40 PM | Send