According to POLITICO magazine, a desire to preserve the Christian heritage of Europe is “wacky”. Also deemed bizarre are: people not welcoming violent migrants, dismay at the fact that diseases long-eradicated in Europe are now making a return, and concern that European cultures are being eroded.
The magazine, which is Washington, D.C.-based but has opened a wildly successful Brussels bureau, has compiled a list of ten remarks by European politicians in the face of Europe’s migrant crisis which it thinks are beyond the bounds of acceptable debate.
“Some EU politicians are brutally frank about not wanting more migrants,” the editor has noted in the sub-heading, almost visibly astonished.
Number one on the list is Marine Le Pen’s comment suggesting that Germany is keen to import cheap labour. The National Front leader told a meeting of supporters “Germany probably thinks its population is moribund, and it is probably seeking to lower wages and continue to recruit slaves through mass immigration.”
Specifically, Politico takes issue with the word “slaves”. But for many migrants trafficked from poor countries, particularly from the Balkan region, into the affluent West of Europe, slavery is a reality. A Home Office report last year found that there could be as many as 13,000 slaves working in the UK right now, trafficked from over 100 countries, including Albania, Nigeria, Vietnam and Romania. Maybe not so “wacky” after all.
Three of the listed comments refer to diseases which have been reintroduced to Europe by the migrants. Polish President Andrzej Duda told Polish media that “The security of citizens is the most important question, financial and physical security as much as health.” He added that accepting migrants brought with it the risk of “possible epidemics.”
Meanwhile Matteo Salvini, of the Italian Northern League dared to mention “TB and scabies” in relation to the migrants, while former Polish prime minister Jarosław Kaczyński said that migrants had brought dysentery and cholera with them, as well as “all sorts of parasites and protozoa which … could be dangerous here.”
Cholera is spread by poor sanitation so Europe is unlikely to suffer another cholera epidemic like that which claimed 250,000 lives across the continent in 1883–1887, but airborne diseases could pose a risk if health services become overwhelmed.
Even without an epidemic the health outcomes of Europeans are compromised as services become overstretched. In Britain, patients living with HIV are having to travel further from home to access clinics and have seen vital services cut as the costs rise due to pressure from African migration.
Prime Minister David Cameron makes the list for referring to the number of migrants as a “swarm”. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word “swarm” as: “A large number of people or things” (It uses the example: “a swarm of journalists”). According to Frontex, the European Union’s border agency, 710,000 migrants entered Europe in the first nine months of this year, up from 282,000 in the whole of last year.
Mr Cameron refused to apologise for his use of the word “swarm,” saying: “I was explaining that there are a lot of people coming across”
But perhaps most revealing of all is Politico’s condemnation of politicians who have expressed a desire to keep Europe, well, European.
They ridicule Slovakia’s prime minister Robert Fico who is purported to have said that Slovakia was “built for Slovaks, not for minorities.”
They round on Björn Höcke, head of the Alternative for Germany (AFD) group in the state of Thuringia, who merely pointed out that if Germany is changed irrevocably, the Germans will no longer have a place to call home, saying: “Let’s not forget, the Syrian who comes to us has still his Syria. The Afghan who comes to us has still his Afghanistan […] But if we lose our Germany, then we have no more home!”
And they downright dismissive of the desire to preserve a Europe based on Judeo-Christian values, singling out Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who recently wrote: “We shouldn’t forget that the people who are coming here grew up in a different religion and represent a completely different culture. Most are not Christian, but Muslim. Or is it not worrying that Europe’s Christian culture is already barely able to maintain its own set of Christian values?”
It’s almost as if they are not interested in preserving the European way of life, with all its advances in commerce, medicine, law and liberty. How “wacky”.
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