Breitbart London’s editor-in-chief Raheem Kassam has spoken at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on the European migrant crisis, expressing his concern for the future of the continent.
Speaking alongside Hungary’s deputy state secretary for foreign affairs and trade the Hon. Levente Benkõ and Director Dr. Lorenzo Vidino from the George Washington University Program on Extremism, Mr. Kassam spoke on the European migrant crisis, Germany’s scheming, and Turkey’s weaponisation of events.
Greeted with a standing ovation for his defence of Israel, Mr. Kassam also responded to audience questions, one of which was “is immigration being used as a weapon of Jihad”, to which he replied “it absolutely is”.
Elaborating on the point on the Breitbart News Sunday radio show, he said: “Jihad isn’t just about terrorism. Jihad is about spreading Islam.
“I really do beleive that these people see a way to further what they believe in, specifically political Islam. It may not be they are terrorists or inclined to terrorism, but if you look at modern day Muslims living in Britain, they are far more radicalised than their parents were.
“If you look at who is making up the numbers of people coming into Europe now, they are young, fit, healthy men”.
Speaking at AIPAC, Mr. Kassam said of the migrant crisis: “[Breitbart London] was the first English language news outlet to do any reporting on the mass rapes and sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, and I for one found it abhorrent that our mainstream media in the UK, across Europe, and in these United States were so shy about talking about that issue. There is no way at all that we are going to get to grips with what has become a crisis of multiculturalism without being upfront and honest about what it happening in certain sections of society.
“That is not to say that every single one of the 350-500,000 Syrian refugees who have fled into Europe are rapists, murderers, or criminals. But it is to say we don’t know who is entering Europe, and we do know there are some bad eggs among them. And we have to be careful about how we are maintaining our border security across Europe at the moment”.
Discussing the duplicity of Turkey in the crisis, he remarked: “We have a very seriously deteriorating situation with Turkey, a NATO member, who has effectively held Europe upside down and shaken her by the ankles for six billion euros.
“[This has been] in exchange for the promised migrant slowdown. But Turkey itself has been wilfully turning a blind eye to human traffickers in the country for some years now.
“A senior security source of mine in the European Commission told me: ‘Turkey will do anything to rid itself of its Kurdish problem, even if it means sending them en-masse into Europe. All you need to know is that as far as the Turkish government is concerned, just one less Kurdish person is a massive victory for them’. This in part is driving what the Turkish government is doing.
“But they are not just getting six billion euros. Any logical person would say they have spent a lot during the crisis, so the money won’t make up for that. What they are trying to get is the visa liberalisation with Europe and fast-track EU membership. What that means is even if we stop migrants coming across into Greece and up the Balkan route within a few years if Turkey is an EU member state those people would be able to come into Europe anyway.
“So it isn’t a stop, it is hardly a pause! We are looking at this crisis on a month-to-month basis, and unfortunately policy makers around the world look at politics on a day-to-day basis. But we should be looking at it in a decade basis. What is Europe going to look like in ten, fifteen, twenty or thirty years?”
On the cynicism of Germany in the crisis, Mr. Kassam spoke of their attempts to engineer economic growth and control of Europe through the migrant crisis. He said: “people are looking at what [Angela Merkel] has done and are saying ‘Germany needed a larger population, a workforce, and it knew it could get cheap migrant labour. It made a very cynical decision to use the migrant crisis for its own gain’… that is what she is doing, using the crisis to bolster the German economy.
“To lock in Germany’s control of Europe — alongside Turkey they would have a huge majority in the European Parliament between those two countries if Turkey joined. I don’t like it one bit”.
“Angela Merkel has implemented an extreme policy for Europe — not just for Germany, she’s done it on behalf of us all — and we are getting extremism in return. I’m not saying Alternative for Deutschland is an extremist party because they aren’t. But you are getting a rise of hard-line nationalism again in Europe, and that is no good for anyone.
“It is no good for people on the right of politics like me because it makes my politics look tarnished. And it endangers people. And it is no good for people on the left of politics because they have a rising tide of aggressive, angry, and often violent people to deal with. This is what Angela Merkel has done to Europe”.
Listen to Raheem Kassam discuss his AIPAC appearance on the Breitbart Sunday Show:
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