The European Union is a marriage of convenience; the acceptance of massive immigration a matter of economic necessity. A salad of nations and peoples is now tossed together because the arrangement is politically and economically imperative, however grimly distasteful they find one another, however unsuited their temperaments, however grossly they have betrayed one another in the past. Now, I am certainly not opposed to the unification of the European people, nor to their cheerful acceptance of a flood of immigrants from faraway lands of which they know nothing. It would be glorious if brotherhood among men were at last to prevail upon this tormented and schismatic continent.
I am simply listening to Rammstein and thinking: Don’t bet on it.
CHAPTER 9
TO HELL WITH EUROPE
SEEN ON A PARIS SIDEWALK in late May 2005, shortly before the French vote non to the European constitution: A shady-looking character runs up the street. Suddenly a waiter from one of the cafés comes running up behind him, yelling at him to stop, then charges into him, knocking him to the ground with a dreadful clatter. The waiter straddles him and begins slapping his face, calling him a filthy thief. A police motorcycle roars up. Off hops a cop who cannot be more than twenty-five. He interposes himself between the thief and the waiter, and then, with his finger in the air, begins a lecture. Never raising his voice, he tells the infuriated waiter that no matter what the thief might have stolen—some customer’s wallet, it seems—he has no right to settle matters privately. He outlines the procedure for filing a civil or criminal complaint.
Then he says, slowly and quite distinctly, “In France, we have the law.”
As these words rolled over the waiter—they were repeated several times—his face registered first embarrassment, then unease, and then what was unmistakably a deep sense of shame. In France, we have the law. Not There are laws against that, buddy, as a New York cop would have said, but We have the law in France, almost as if, as the representative of the state, he was addressing the untamed and violent aspect of the human heart itself. And then, with the thief in custody, the policeman adjusted his sunglasses, gunned his motorcycle, and was off.
Things to note: The we in his declaration—that is, we, the French, not we, the Europeans. The appeal to the law: This easily mocked people with their passion for abstractions really does take some things seriously. The shame registered on the waiter’s face as he realized that in some very concrete way, he had violated a social contract to which he himself had given his allegiance.
Contrary to the assurances of its politicians, France’s core national values were under threat by the prospect of a unified Europe. Anyone in doubt of this should try doing what I did as the vote on the constitution took place: Move from Paris to Istanbul. From this vantage point, one sees immediately that the idea of integrating Turkey into the EU has always been ludicrous. It can be established at a glance: Turkey is not Europe, and it is certainly not France. I do not say this merely because the phones, electricity, Internet, refrigerator, stove, hot water, and front door lock failed on me, serially, upon my arrival. I say this because of course the working-class Turks to whom I’ve spoken want to become part of the predicted flood of cheap, unskilled, Islamic labor that would completely destabilize the economies and delicately balanced social orders of the northern European welfare states—if Europe and its periphery were to be glued together and all its borders thrown open, that is.
Istanbul is an extraordinary place. It is utterly alive—an exuberant, thriving, tolerant Islamic city, living proof that it is not just politically correct cant to say that Islam and modernity are compatible. But as for having the law in Turkey, no, I don’t think so. Why has my electricity been unreliable since I arrived? Because everyone in my neighborhood—the supposedly European neighborhood, I might add—is stealing it, causing blackouts.
It is fascinating to see that supposedly thoughtful politicians have seriously been considering the idea that France and Turkey might within our lifetimes be merged into one harmonious national entity. It is an indicator of the level of magical thinking and delusion that has accompanied the EU dream. But deep down, the ordinary Frenchman doesn’t believe that in Eastern Europe, or Turkey, they have the law. They do not much trust that the Germans and the British have their interests at heart. Given European history—and given what I see around me—I can’t say I blame them.
The pro-Europe talking heads on French television were busy, in the weeks following the referendum, poking fun at French fears of the so-called proverbial Polish plumber. How they could argue that he was only proverbial is beyond me. If you want to test the theory, try living in an apartment in Paris that needs repainting. Get estimates. The Polish workmen will—literally—ask for ten times less than the French workmen. They will not ask for social security or health insurance either.
If I were a French housepainter or plumber, I, too, would have voted non.
Sooner or later, of course, France will have to come to terms with reality: Its extensive social welfare system, its thirty-five-hour work-week, and its highly regulated economy cannot be sustained indefinitely. But many of the concerns that drove French voters to reject the European constitution make perfect sense. French politicians may have delivered enthusiastic encomiums to European unity for the past half-century, but it seems that the French people do indeed cherish their sovereignty—particularly their protected national labor markets, as many have observed, but also their distinct cultural identity, their legal and educational traditions, and their social stability.
In all the millions of words written in opinion pieces in France, uttered by television pundits, and spoken by politicians following the referendum, no one said the most plain and obvious ones: To hell with Europe. That’s right, to hell with Europe—to hell with integration; to hell with the superstate; to hell with playing a role like that of the United States on the international stage; to hell with liking the Germans; to hell with putting up with the English; to hell with the Poles; to hell with the Turks; to hell with them all. No one has said, “It’s a nutty idea. It will never work. It would put us in contact with people we’ve hated for thousands of years.” Intellectuals and public figures in France, from left to right, explained their votes by first expressing boundless devotion to the ideal of Europe itself: The vote against the constitution, they said, reflected only a tactical readjustment in the great vision. The fantasy of Europe has adopted so prominent a role in the consciousness of French intellectuals that no one will speak plainly of it. No one is prepared to express what the majority of French voters really feel.
But ask a French taxi driver. You’ll hear it. To hell with Europe.
According to those dismayed by the outcome of the referendum, the no vote represented a mix of incoherent sentiments, chiefly a frustration with structural unemployment, a rejection of market reforms, and a widespread loathing of the Chirac government. All real, these issues. But unemployment in France is a structural problem of very long standing. It would be a problem whether or not the French voted for the constitution. Chirac? Everyone has always disliked him. The one thing the vote did surely express, with perfect clarity, was the unwillingness of the French to cede any more of their national identity to the fantasy of a unified Europe.
It is an old fantasy, of course. The great peace of Innocent III was the expression of just such a fantasy: the notion that the Catholic Church was finally in a position to introduce the City of God into the fractious European political arena. That attempt lasted no more than a generation. Why should this one last longer? No effort to unify Europe has ever succeeded. Most have ended in blood.
What no one in the French elite is prepared to say, but what the French electorate has said clearly, is that the European Union is historically nuts. It does not reflect the will of a single nation-state, or the will of an empire, based on the ability of a central political entity to dominate its periphery, or some form of established European national identity with deep historic roots. Even the Austro-Hung
arian Empire had in Austrian power—diminished though it was after 1866—a stable and powerful center. All of European history—all of world history— argues against a federation with no force to back it up and no way to impose its will on member states. The French voters recognized this, as did the Dutch, who voted nee several days later.
The EU is, in effect, an empty empire. The only national identities up for grabs are the old national identities of the chief nation-states of Europe. And no matter how much the EU bureaucrats try to promote a French identity into a European identity, what do you know? The people just aren’t buying it.
THE THIN VENEER OF GAITY
They aren’t buying it because the strains are showing. When the mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, took office, in 2001—the first leftist to take charge of the city since the Paris Commune—the foreign tabloids made predictable jokes about Gay Paree, because Delanoë is, as everyone knows, gay. And Paris has been unusually gay under Delanoë. Every summer, he redecorates the banks of the Seine, importing 10,000 tons of sand, potted palm trees, little café tables, and umbrellas so Parisians can enjoy the ambience of the Riviera in the heart of the city. Cool glasses of Ricard by the river during the day! Singers and jugglers at night! Men in Lycra and women in bikinis playing volley-ball in the sand! He even decreed a special beach for dogs. He implemented pedestrian days in the city center—and if the merchants didn’t like that because they couldn’t get their wares to the shops, he shrugged. To hell with them. He organized citywide scavenger hunts. He arranged for Hollywood movies to be broadcast at night onto giant screens outside the city’s famous landmarks, and everyone thought the Cathedral of Notre Dame much improved by the ninety-foot-tall likeness of Clint Eastwood, gesturing in the vague direction of the gargoyles and enjoining them to make his day. The mayor has been enormously popular, of course. What’s not to like?
The Nuit Blanche celebration—the Sleepless Night—took place on October 5, 2002. This was another one of the mayor’s gay ideas: Throw the city’s monuments open to the public, all night, and have a giant free party for everyone in Paris. The Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe all were open. Jazz pianists and cabaret singers played the bistros until sunrise. Giraffe-limbed models in sunglasses put on a fashion show at the Palais Royale. A glass façade of the National Library became a giant interactive light show: Passersby could operate the display by sending messages with their cell phones. And for those who made it to dawn, free croissants! Outside the Hôtel de Ville, enamored, grateful citizens chanted “Bertrand, Bertrand!”— and this before anyone heard the bad news.
I was on the scene when it happened. In fact, judging from the news accounts, I was about twenty feet away. I missed the entire thing and read about it the next day in the New York Times. Frankly, I wasn’t all that sober, and neither was anyone else. Delanoë had decked out the foyer and the hall of mirrors like a 1930s nightclub; everyone was preening and flirting and doing the cha-cha, and zut, who was paying attention?
I’d been living in Paris for a while, but I’d never been inside the Hôtel de Ville before, and neither had most native Parisians. Under Delanoë’s predecessors, the opulent town hall—which looks like a statuesque wedding cake from the outside and a magnificent bordello inside—was closed to the public for security reasons. But Delanoë threw the gates open. There were no metal detectors or pat-downs at the door, because, he insisted, that wouldn’t have been festive.
That was why the assailant was able to throw himself on the mayor, who was circulating without bodyguards among the crowd, and stab him in the stomach, missing his aorta by less than an inch. Delanoë was gravely wounded but insisted he be evacuated quietly: “Let the party continue,” he said, wanting no one’s night to be spoiled. Doctors at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital operated on him for more than three hours, and saved his life.
The attacker, Azedine Berkane, was a Muslim immigrant from Algeria. Initially, the media suspected organized terror. But the man, police concluded, was a lone nutball, more John Hinckley than Mohamed Atta. According to Le Monde, the police had at least fifteen files on him, half concerning drugs, the others, theft. He had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals and prisons for years. He lived with his parents.
He had stabbed the mayor, he declared, because he hated politicians and he hated homosexuals even more. Berkane came from one of the tough, hopeless Parisian suburbs that recently exploded in rioting and arson. Le Monde reported,
At the foot of his building about twenty young adults described their neighbor’s personality. . . . [One neighbor] remembered above all that this childless bachelor “didn’t much like homosexuals,” and that “he made this clear to everyone he hung out with.” On that matter, opinions among the group were unanimous. “He was a bit like us,” continued [another neighbor]. “We’re all homo-phobic here, because it’s not natural.” “It’s against Islam,” added [yet another neighbor]. “Muslim fags don’t exist.”1
Of course, most Muslim immigrants do not attempt to murder the mayor because he is gay. Nor, for that matter, are all murderers of gay martyrs Muslims: Daniel White, after all, whose last name rather sums up his ethnic situation, killed San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk. But the story is revealing nonetheless. It is a hint that Europe may have a problem on its hands. It is a hint that the veneer of gaiety may be thin.
This story, and stories like it, are why the French voted non.
REVERSION BY DEFAULT
Throughout the Middle Ages, the life of every single European, from peasant to lord, from knight to tradesman, was ordered and assigned meaning by the Church. The village church was the center of his community. His days and seasons were governed by the rhythms of the liturgical calendar. Sacramental rituals demarcated the milestones of his life. He received the Eucharist on Holy Days. He confessed his sins. He feasted on feast days and fasted on fast days. His cycle plays enacted the drama of creation and judgment. The Church was the source, the only source, of his education, and often his only connection to the world beyond his village. All music, all literature, all art, all philosophy—all emanated from the Church. His understanding of his place in the universe came from the stories and examples of the lives of the saints, from devotional treatises, from religious and mystical lyrics, from religious allegories in poetry and prose.
Each man’s life was infused with a sense of supernatural meaning. His monarch ruled by divine right. His place in a rigid, hierarchical structure of loyalty was divinely sanctioned. Human history unfolded according to an ineffable divine plan, represented in the paintings and stained glass on the walls of his church. God was directly involved in human affairs: He rewarded the just, and punished the wicked. Plagues and famine were the Devil’s work. There was no other explanation for the mysteries of human existence on offer, and none conceivable.
The rise of modern science facilitated the death of Christianity, and thus the nullification of this entire social and political order, by replacing religion as a framework to interpret human experience. The origins of European atheism, however, were political as much as intellectual, rooted in protest against the power and corruption of Europe’s Church institutions. (It is not an accident that atheism, like Marxism, captured the imaginations of Europeans, but not Americans.) Nothing about the Scientific Revolution inherently entailed the demise of religious belief. Atheism gained strength through its loose association with the triumphs of science, not through its logical emergence from any particular scientific discovery: The existence of God, after all, was never specifically disproved. And no scientific discovery provided anything like a comprehensive and fully satisfying answer to the questions posed by religious inquiry. Nonetheless, medieval piety was extinguished, and with it every ordering principle of medieval life, leaving a vacuum in its wake. This made possible the rise of the nation-state— and made it necessary, as well.2
Since the death of Christian Europe, Europe’s new social order has been rooted in the nation-state. Nationalism, propagat
ed through the emerging secular channel of print media, restored meaning and ritual to European civic life. National ceremonies replaced those of the Church. The nation-state in Europe has always been more than an administrative structure; it has been a pseudo-spiritual entity, imparting meaning to the lives of men.
The nation-state was predicated, precisely as the term suggests, on this idea: one nation, one state. The nation includes all and only those who share a particular historical, linguistic, and cultural heritage. By definition, it excludes those who do not. Unsurprisingly, nation-states are confounded when they meet large-scale immigration. If Europe is unable to integrate its minorities as the United States does, it is because the United States is, in effect, an empire, and empires successfully integrate minorities. Indeed, the empires of European history—the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the French Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire—successfully encompassed a multitude of racial and ethnic groups. But the First World War delivered the death blow to the great multinational empires. The Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were destroyed. National self-determination emerged as the official doctrine of Europe, enshrined in the Versailles Treaty: From then on, Europe was to be a continent of small nation-states, not empires.46
The European nation-state was predicated as well on the idea of national sovereignty. Following the war, Roosevelt and Stalin were determined to extirpate nationalism forever from Europe, and indeed succeeded in repressing nationalism, in favor of ideological empires, until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Western Europe was rebuilt as a symbol of liberalism, capitalism, and free trade, while Eastern Europe was forced to adopt Soviet Communism. The collapse of the Soviet Union has ended this epoch. No longer under the control of the superpowers, Europe has in many ways reverted by default to the era of Versailles. The treaties that established the European Union work at cross purposes with the essential character of the nation-state. The persistence of the nation-state as the source of social order in Europe, despite the stubborn efforts of the superpowers to eradicate it, is key to understanding modern Europe.
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