Fortunately for all of us, massacres perpetrated by self-proclaimed white supremacists like the Australian Brenton Tarrant are still relatively rare. In a world roiled by ferocious ethnic and sectarian conflicts, in which the current left-wing obsession with “identity politics” is hardening the many divisions that already exist, this is surprising. Until quite recently, Europeans and their kinfolk elsewhere were every bit as bellicose, and as willing to attack any group they thought hostile, as other members of the human family, but it would seem that, after two horrifying world wars, most decided it would be better “to give peace a chance” and let film-makers, pulpnovelists and video-game creators take care of their ingrained lust for violence.
That was why the slaughter of 50 Muslims in two Christchurch mosques had a far bigger impact – and gave rise to far more soul-searching – in Western countries than have any of the many equally murderous atrocities committed recently by Islamic supremacists in Manchester, London, Nice, Paris, Orlando, Barcelona, Madrid and St Petersburg, let alone the ones that occur regularly in Nigeria, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Kashmir and other parts of the non-Western world. Progressive multiculturalists take it for granted that Islamists deserve a break because they are victims of racism, while Tarrant incarnates the Western id, the dark forces that lurk just below the hedonistic surface of daily life and must be kept down there because, should they come bubbling up, the consequences would surely be appalling.
After each Jihadist attack, politicians and commentators warn us not to leap to conclusions and assume that there is something uniquely aggressive about Islam, a creed, they say, which has nothing whatever to do with the violence committed in its name by individuals with mental problems. In contrast, even before Tarrant has been arrested by the New Zealand police, the same people were roundly blaming all alleged “Islamophobes,” starting with Donald Trump, for the massacre and demanding that social media and newspapers help silence anyone who suggests that Islam is not a remarkably peaceful religion.
It would be hard to imagine a more counterproductive approach. Extremists like the Australian and those who could be tempted to emulate him feel they are entitled to wage a personal war against Muslims because the authorities in their own countries refuse to take the threat posed by Islamist militants seriously. They can point to the discrepancy between the way “right-wingers” are treated and the reluctance to do anything about the “hate preachers” whose fiery sermons keep the holy warriors on the boil.
In many Western countries, large numbers of people now take it for granted that the local government – backed or cowed by the cultural elite and leftists – supports the Islamists in their campaign against the societies in which they live. This is why political movements explicitly opposed to “Islamisation” are thriving in Germany, Holland and France, Italy and Austria, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and even Sweden. Helping them are zealots like Turkey’s boss Recep Tayyip Erdogan; a couple of days ago, he threatened to send home “in a casket” any Australian visitor to his country who failed to show a proper respect for Islam.
In his manifesto, “The Great Replacement”, Tarrant took up the notion that a sinister cabal is determined to “replace” the peoples of European origin in their native lands by Africans and Asians. This conspiracy theory, which has found a ready audience in France, may seem far-fetched and has been suitably derided by many commentators, but for wellknown demographic reasons something like it is really happening. The steep decline in European birth rates is a matter of concern in many countries, if only because it is rapidly undermining welfare schemes that were put in place decades ago when circumstances made them seem viable. What is more, there can be little doubt that the influx of many millions of Muslims – and the tendency of some of the children and grandchildren of apparently assimilated immigrants to make the most of their religious identity, with many getting their wives or daughters to wear distinctively Islamic clothing and some even joining the Islamic State Jihadists and performing countless acts of “mediaeval” brutality – are likely to condemn Europe to a very ugly future.
There is no reason to think this is all due to a cunning plan devised by the Davos globalists and others who allegedly have it in for European whites and want to see them expunged from the face of the earth. It is, rather, the result of social and economic trends no government is in a position to control. For now at any rate, Europeans are not facing “genocide” as Tarrant and some others would have it; instead, they are committing collective suicide by declining to procreate. To dismiss concerns about this as right-wing scare-mongering is foolish; unless some very drastic changes are soon made, the world today’s children and teenagers grow old in will be nothing like the one we are familiar with. In all likelihood, it will have far more in common with the Middle East and Africa than with present-day Europe.
Though Tarrant says he is a white supremacist, the country whose ethos he admires most is China. He also claims to be an “eco-fascist” who is against overpopulation because it is harming the environment, and thinks the Muslim “invaders” are the worst culprits. Whether he really believes in what he says, or is just trying to needle progressives by going on about things many of them support, is beside the point. For well over 1,000 years, relations between the Muslim world and what true believers call “the House of War” they will conquer when the time is ripe, could hardly have been worse. For a while, European leaders assumed that as they had put their own conflicts behind them, all others would do the same. Such optimism was premature. Unless we are very lucky, the nightmare many fear, in which gangs of well-armed “white supremacists” wage a war to the death against their Islamist counterparts, could well become a reality.
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