Steyn courageously declares that (no, Steyn tentatively inquires whether) Muslim immigration is endangering Europe

(Note: in a reply to a reader, I acknowledge that Steyn’s blog post is better than I gave him credit for in this entry’s title. But the main problem with Steyn hasn’t changed: he remains a surrender monkey.)

MBS writes:

Sounds like Mark Steyn is reading your blog:

Most times in today’s Europe, the guys beating, burning and killing Jews will be Muslims. Once in a while, it will be somebody else killing the schoolkids. But is it so hard to acknowledge that rapid, transformative, mass Muslim immigration might not be the most obvious aid to social tranquility? That it might possibly pose challenges that would otherwise not have existed -for uncovered women in Oslo, for gays in Amsterdam, for Jews everywhere? Is it so difficult to wonder if, for these and other groups living in a long-shot social experiment devised by their rulers, the price of putting an Islamic crescent in the diversity quilt might be too high? What’s left of Jewish life in Europe is being extinguished remorselessly, one vandalized cemetery, one subway attack at a time.

LA replies:

I doubt he reads VFR; his head would explode. Let us recall that Steyn in all his voluminous writings on the Islam problem during the previous decade, and chiefly in his egregious, widely celebrated 2006 article at The New Criterion, “It’s the demography, stupid,” and in his very popular 2007 book America Alone (see a reader’s letter to Steyn about it), not only never addressed the issue of Muslim immigration as a factor in the Islamization of Europe, he never once used the words “immigration” or “immigrants.” Not once. In this, his writings on the dangers of Islam were of the same class of intellectual honesty as the Pentagon’s official report on the Fort Hood massacre, which never once mentioned that the jihadist mass murderer Maj. Nidal Hasan was a Muslim.

In more recent years he has on rare occasions brought up the problem of Islamic and other Third-World immigration—only to counsel surrender to it. See also his 2009 Macleans article, where, reviewing a book by an establishment conservative author who did discuss Muslim immigration at length, Steyn perforce mentioned it—only to admit that he was a coward on the subject, and, once again, in the article’s last paragraph, proving his cowardice, to aver once again that there is nothing to be done about it.

Now Steyn, having massively excluded the thought of the increasing Muslim presence in the West that has been produced by immigration and of doing anything about it from the minds of his many thousands of “conservative” followers, both the intellectual elite and the rank and file, who all amazingly treat this lightweight as their authority on the subject (!), once again broaches the issue of Muslim immigration, but only in a blog entry at the Corner, and only in the form of tentative, rhetorical questions.

I know readers will say for the nth time that I am too tough on Steyn, that he (this brave battler against PC) is doing all he can under current circumstances to move the issue forward. But in my view, for his long career of cowardice and staggering dishonesty on this vital subject, and for the incalculable harm he has caused through his huge influence on conservatives, he cannot be condemned enough. Let him address the issue fully and honestly, let him admit to his past course of avoidance, distraction, coverup, and surrender, and then I’ll treat him with respect.

LA continues

Correction: Steyn does go beyond rhetorical questions whether Islam is harmful and makes a strong declarative statement that it is harmful, when he says, in the last sentence, “What’s left of Jewish life in Europe is being extinguished remorselessly, one vandalized cemetery, one subway attack at a time.” But note that it was only the danger to Jews that he felt comfortable addressing in the declarative mood, not the danger to Europe as a whole.

- end of initial entry -

Ortelio writes:

You say:

Correction: Steyn does go beyond rhetorical questions whether Islam is harmful and makes a strong declarative statement that it is harmful, when he says, in the last sentence, “What’s left of Jewish life in Europe is being extinguished remorselessly, one vandalized cemetery, one subway attack at a time.” But note that it was only the danger to Jews that he felt comfortable addressing in the declarative mood, not the danger to Europe as a whole.

But that was not his last sentence. Steyn’s article’s last two sentences were each declarative:

“A society that becomes more Muslim eventually becomes less everything else. What is happening on the Continent is tragic, in part because it was entirely unnecessary.”

The first of these sentences is not strong. But the last four words of the second have only one meaning, and it is very strong: the immigration need never, and should never, have been permitted.

Of course that’s not all, or half, of what needs to be said—which is said in your separation policy. But there must be many of your readers who have been brought to your site and your view by Steyn, for all his evasive silences, and these new declarations of his should bring more.

LA replies:

You’re right. When I wrote that comment, I was looking at MBS’s quote of Steyn and neglected to look again at his original post at the Corner. So I take back my last point in the entry, as well as the point in parentheses in the entry’s title. Steyn ends on two declarative statements: that Islam suppresses (and, he implies correctly, ultimately kills) the civilization of whatever country is unfortunate enough to be taken over by it; and that Europe’s allowing Islam into the continent was a tragic and unnecessary error.

At the same time, what has Steyn ever said to encourage Europe and the West to reverse this suicidal error? NOTHING.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 23, 2012 11:33 AM | Send