The political revenge of mass migration
Have you noticed how concerned Jews and non-Jews in the West discuss what they perceive as a rise in antisemitism? They talk a lot about the increase in antisemitic incidents (granted, by the way, these have increased to unprecedented levels everywhere in Western Europe). They also talk a lot about societal attitudes towards Jews and Israel: what do the surveys say about the share of the Western public that openly dislike Jews? Has that share increased? Is it just about being anti-Jewish (for them, terrible) or about being anti-Israel (for them, somehow better)? And they, those concerned Jews and non-Jews, sponsor and conduct no end of surveys on this topic. In fact, I can bet you any money that a survey of antisemitic attitudes is being carried out somewhere in Europe as I type. In reality, I can tell you, they are not interested in any of that. To be precise, they are really interested in something else entirely. That ‘something’ is the question: is another Holocaust possible? Everything else that they choose to discuss so eagerly-be it incidents or surveys-is actually just the means to an end. The means of answering this very question: will another Shoah happen? Only there is a problem. Neither the surveys nor the antisemitic incidents statistics can, by definition, answer this question in a straightforward manner. They simply have not been designed for that. Full stop. End of story. The desperate scholarly and ‘scholarly’ attempts to milk any meaning out of statistics has not helped so far. I am not holding my breath for the future of that. Nothing in the long history of antisemitism research since the mid-1940s paved the way for answering this question. Ask professors and chairs in antisemitism research and Jewish history how could this be. With all these grants, research assistants, conferences. Personally, I tried asking many times but have never heard anything convincing or even coherent. But let us leave it aside. Today, I have come to deliver a different message.
Which is this: having spent over a decade researching antisemitism in the West empirically, I have reached the conclusion that another Holocaust is not just possible but probable. This is because the collective West had undergone a full, or nearly full, de-Christianisation and has turned to the development of an alternative religion, an alternative creed that is powerful enough to unite and glue together the disintegrating nation, to give it a sense of purpose and a direction. How does this promise the new Holocaust?-I can hear you asking. Simple. In the West today, this creed is pro-Palestinianism. That thing, that alternative creed, by the way, is sometimes called a ‘civil religion’ or a ‘civic religion’. In itself, this notion is not at all new. Look at Wikipedia: ‘Civil religion, also referred to as a civic religion, is the implicit religious values of a nation, as expressed through public rituals, symbols (such as the national flag), and ceremonies on sacred days and at sacred places (such as monuments, battlefields, or national cemeteries).’ What is new, I believe, is the role of Pro-Palestinianism. It came as a replacement of both Christianity and nationalism. It had to come. The postmodern Western nations need Pro-Palestinianism if they are to continue to exist. How so? And what kind of proof do I have? After all, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I have it. Follow me.
THE FOUR PUZZLES
Below is a list of highly puzzling developments in the West, all observed in the context of the Gaza war that Israel has conducted over 2023-2025 following a deadly Hamas-led incursion into Israel on October 7, 2023. Some of them, or even the most of them, were observed earlier, and took a comparatively more intense form than before. By ‘highly puzzling’ I mean that the developments described display the lack of internal logic. In a way, they are self-contradictory. They show a ’thing’ , ‘something’ where that ‘something’ cannot exist, if the acknowledged rules and regularities of a society apply. That quality in them would be visible irrespective of the actual political position that the readers of this essay take on the issue of Gaza War, or Israeli-Arab conflict.
Let us begin then. Have you ever wondered about any of the following?…
THE SHEER SPEED AND INTENSITY of the Gaza War protests. Why is there such an unprecedented surge in the pro-Palestinian activism in the UK and Western Europe in general? I am not talking here about the antisemitic incidents. I am talking very deliberately about expressions of support for Gaza, Palestine, Palestinians and denunciation of whatever it is that ‘Israel is doing’. Since October 7, 2023, hundreds of thousands in the UK took part in protests against the ‘Gaza War’: marches, demonstrations, sit-ins. Some of the largest ones, like the ones in London, remarkably, happened in October/November 2023, in the very beginning of the Gaza war. At that time, Gaza could not even boast its eventually-famous morbid statistics, so many ‘children and women killed’, so may ‘starved’, all derived from the Hamas-led Ministry of Health and popularised by the activists and the Western press. It was too early for that. That ‘victimhood industry’ is just maxing about now, almost two years later. Its vocabulary changes, diversifies, adjusting itself to the emerging (or invented, or promoted) items of the evolving War: from ‘River to Sea’ to ‘Free Gaza’ to ‘Ceasefire now’ to ‘Stop starving Gaza’. But all that is now. My point is that it was all too ready to ‘spontaneously and furiously ‘ erupt very early on. It is like none of the activists had the time and the headspace to wait for the actual events, let alone analyse them. They were action-ready single days after ‘something happened in Gaza’ and they did not take their foot off the acceleration pedal since. How many Gaza War protest has London seen since October 7? It is easier to count weeks without such protests, it seems. Add to that the protests in other Western European capitals, all of them. Add to them the campus-based activities.
Am I saying, for example, that there is some sort of conspiracy behind that speed and intensity of protests? In strongest terms-NO. I am saying that there is a well-oiled machinery operating at the background, several well-coordinated organisations working constantly, not hidden, highly visible. They become more visible at the time of protests, naturally, but they are there all the time. The reason that they are there in the first place and the reason that their reaction to anything Gaza or Palestine-related can be counted on is that their activity is very urgent in nature for the British (and Western) society. That urgent problem is not the state of Israel-Palestine relations or the Middle East. They are solving, or trying to, an internal problem of Western societies. The real problem of Britain and the West, which makes them highly needed and functional- is integration of the relatively newly-arrived, foreign elements. The immigrants. The first, the second, the third, and so forth, generations. Very many of them come from Islamic cultures. Their pro-Gaza, and anti-Israel, stance is almost instinctive, arguably. It looks like it does not need to be explained. (Parenthetically, things are not as simple as they are, but this is a marginal point, I will not want to expand on it). The secret of the quick and fierce societal mobilisation for Gaza, or against Israel, is the existence of the nagging need to accommodate these groups, bring them in and bring everyone, the society, together. The cynical minds, the right-wing critics, would call it ‘appeasement’. The question is: why would such ‘appeasement’ be needed? Can Europeans simply discipline those who (a) foreign, (2) fly foreign flags and (3) seem to care for causes in distant locations on the planet? After all, Europeans have historically been not bad at disciplining rebellious minorities? Not so fast, I’d say. Europeans, like anyone else, are quick to discipline when they feel strong and confident in themselves, and they are not. They are weak in spirit, and, some, say lacking in purpose. And disciplining someone rests of being strong and purpose-driven. Disciplining is ‘bringing back in line’. That cannot be done when there is no ‘line’.
THE DISPROPORTIONALITY. Why is there such a centrality of Gaza War and the Palestinian cause to political and cultural lives of Western Europe?
The Foreign Minister of the Netherlands resigned in the late August 2025. What was the matter? NATO obligations? American tariff policy? Taxation? Not at all. Nothing to do with the Netherlands, in fact. He did so because the Dutch government refused, on that occasion, to impose sanctions against Israel over its ‘conduct’ in Gaza. To an untrained mind, or a visitor from Mars who is just beginning to study the Earth, this sounds like Comrade Stalin decided to fire his Foreign Minister because Japan invaded China. Where is the connection? There is a Russian saying for this situation: ‘ Elderberry is in the garden and the uncle is in Kiev’. ‘There is neither rhyme nor reason’ is the English approximation of this.
But it is not just the Dutch politics. It is also Irish. And Norwegian. And Belgian. And Spanish. The British politics is also critically dependent on the Gaza War. There is a new party on the British political map, also as of August 2025. It does not have a permanent name, the temporary one is ‘Your Party’. It is headed by Jeremy Corbyn, the leftmost figure of the Labour party with a long history of antizionist activism and Zarah Sultana, also a Labour ex-pat. The name of the new party is uncertain, yet its platform is in a good shape. Go to the party website and see for yourself. Its first item is redistribution of wealth and power (fair enough, the usual rhetoric of the Left, I expected nothing less). Its second item is ‘defending the right to protest for Palestine, ending the arm sales to Israel and ending complicity with the genocide’. (Israel conducts genocide in Gaza- such is the party line). The third item is…there is not a third item. Two are enough. Corbyn and Sultana are now inviting the public to give the new party a permanent name. Easy-I would have thought. They should simply call it a ‘Palestine party’.
In the social and cultural space in Western Europe, the Gaza War is everywhere. ‘Free Gaza’ graffiti feature on the inner door of the male restrooms in central Cambridge. People in my age group remember the pictures of male genitalia that-that used to be the only legitimate form of art in place like this. As a society, we really moved up a gear…. Coop, a British retailer, announces the policy of boycott of Israel’s goods. ‘Lush’, a soap retailer, shuts down activities in solidarity with ‘starving Gaza’. Kids in homeschooling clubs fly balloons in solidarity with Gaza children while their mum organise ‘Gaza cake sales’. Palestinian flags are everywhere. Streets, shops, walls, nail polish. In the English country side, Palestinian flags are used as a symbol of the counter-protest, against flying the English flags, as an ‘anti-nationalism’ gesture.
And here is a story I got told while on a visit to a certain Jewish community in Europe just recently. A Jewish communal building uses regular services of a gardening company for the annual tree surgery. This year the company refused because of the ‘Gaza War’, ‘what Israel does’ and the building being a Zionist building. But ‘no worries’, one communal leader told me, ‘we are good: several other providers of this service offered doing it for us for free’. Well, I thought to myself, I am not easily consoled. Tree surgery is a ‘petty cash’ really. I am not sure I trust a society where someone can refuse as simple service as a tree surgery over what happens in the other part of the world and someone else is eager to compensate, over the same issue. It sounds like a flaky society that lost its way. Who and what can be counted on? When I left the building on my way back, I stopped to check emails in the middle of the busy street. For that I had to connect to one of the free networks. My phone scanned the available networks. The first suggested was called ‘Free Palestine’. I took a screenshot.
I said enough, you have an idea. The only way to avoid ‘Free Gaza’ messaging in the West today is to (1) stop going to work or shops, (2) discontinue using any media, and (3) lock the door and pretend not to be at home. That would probably do. For how long-who knows.
Am I simply ‘venting’, as anyone in political opposition would do, for example? Are the European governments, parliaments and populations simply being noble and principled and that grates a Zionist, such as myself? Even if this is the case, the very centrality of the Gaza War to European politics can hardly be contested and it demands an explanation. Pointing out that there are other important domestic and international issues that could and should preoccupy the European minds is not ‘whataboutery’. European societies need that clarity for themselves. Gaza War cannot be declared the most important conflict that this civilisation without some, and quite exceptional, evidence. In the early 21st century we are ‘blessed’ with more than just one conflict. And I am not talking about South Sudan, Congo, Yemen, Syria. These people never mattered to the Europeans and never will, let us be honest. I am talking of Russia-Ukraine, for example. That conflict, maturing for a while and erupting in the early 2022, has a tremendous significance for the collective West. In theory. Russia has gone through almost a third of a century of economic and political transformation, many of its indicators improved, and its political resurgence has followed. The contours of the Western politics are changing, new alliances are on the horizon, new wars are emerging. The new Cold War, at the very least, is firmly present. What I am saying is that , theoretically, the Gaza War has strong ‘competitors’ for the Western attention. The victory of the Gaza War over a Western mind, and the loss of the Russia-Ukraine war over a Western mind, is not trivial. I propose, just like I did a short while ago, that the victory of the former and the loss of the latter can be easily explained. They are perfectly comprehensible if my earlier line of explanation is adopted. The collective West is intensely engaging in repairing its fractured internal connections and relationship building with the newly-arrived, foreign elements. Those I mentioned in my previous point. Those elements require integration, or else….On that point, there is a wall to wall consensus in the West. And so, the Gaza War is treated in a particular way for this reason. Treating it as a mega-catastrophe, Israel as a mega-criminal and Gaza as a mega-victim is what fits well, given the political sensibilities of the newly-arrived foreign elements. Adopting their agenda on all-things-Palestine is a small thing that promises a big reward-integration, cosiness, trust and even a potential of Kumbaya around a bonfire. The Westerners have not had Kumbaya for a while…The Europeans are afraid on Muslims in their midst. Plainly that. They need to invent a new social lubricant. A new glue that sticks everyone together. Pro-Palestinianism is just that.
But follow me for a little longer…There are more puzzles. And more explanations, and they all cohere.
IGNORING THE NON-IGNORABLE. How is it that the activists, but, curiously, not insignificant segments of the broader society in the West seemingly ignored and ignore still that the Gaza War was a response to an unprecedented outburst of anti-Israeli violence, too gruesome for a Westerner to stomach? Does it really not matter that much? Even the unambiguous symbolics of the terrorist activity, such as the parashooting Hamas fighters, were eagerly adopted to start with. While the authorities in some places cracked down on those, Palestinian flags were flown freely and still are, in a way that is ‘disembodied’ from anything that is happening. Instead of becoming a symbol of terrorism, Palestine , Gaza and by now very poorly specified ‘Palestinian cause’, became celebratory. It is more than just supporting some distant nation’s independence. It looks like there is something dormant there, prepared to ignore the inconvenient facts or use ‘critical thinking’ to take the sharpness of it away. Douglas Murray wondered about the eagerness of some pro-Palestinian activists to claim that the particulars of the horrendous violence launched by Gazans against Israelis on October 7 were fake. Burning of children, rape, mutilation of bodies and disembowelment, according to them, never happened. Evidence, according to them, was faked by ….not sure who, but that someone is pro-Israeli, who wants to position the Palestinian liberation movement beyond the pale. One wonders, asks Murray, why would anyone want to deny the reality of all this when the Gazans participating in the massacre of Israelis documented it themselves and distributed the material proudly, as evidence of their heroism and accomplishments? Well, in asking this question, Murray makes a subtle suggestion that the activists denying the atrocities may be manipulative. I say: it is difficult to know whether or not they are manipulative. We will never known unless an advanced form of a brain scan is invented, for scanning the brains and learning the exact thoughts. But I have a much easier explanation, closer to the surface, as to why the denial is needed: for Western individuals, the type of violence shown HAS to be denied, because it is incomprehensible and scary. Its is genuinely unbearable because, in the West , it is no longer familiar. Yet, outside of the West, dare I say, it is quite normal. Extreme gruesome violence towards enemies (real and imagined), women, the disabled, animals is routine in societies that were once called primitive and now called traditional and collectivist. It is a form of entertainment in places where human life has very low value. Murray does not know this, likely. I do. I grew up in such a society (it was not Islamic) and, running a risk of disappointing you, I will say that this kind of murderousness has little to do with Islam. So, let us now ask again. How is that that the Western nations, are either ready to ignore the scary violence or prepared to perform an intellectual salto mortale to deny it (so they can ignore it). Are Western nations, or large swaths of them, now terrorism-supporting? How did this happen?
‘Wait, what…? Did you just call Gazans primitive and undeserving of Westerners’ compassion?’-I can hear you asking. I am, frankly, prepared to call them anything you want me to. Because labels attached to the product do not change the essence of the product. Mass murder of Israelis by Gazans on October 7 is real. And if atrocities are unpalatable or declared unreal or smuggled as understandable, or indeed even if they were totally unreal -this changes nothing with respect to the scope of the murder. Even the most Israel-critical minds can see this point. What I am saying is that by ignoring this point, namely, the reality and the scope of the murder (not the method) and unnecessarily focusing on the unimportant details of how it happened (the method), and beating around the bush-Western societies are performing an important work of crafting a narrative of ‘palatable violence’. They do it because they need it. For what? For ambience. Which ambience? The ambience needed for integration of the newly-arrived, foreign elements in the West. It is the third time that I am making this point, and deliberately so. It is a novel point that will appear sudden too many readers. Yet, it is intuitive enough and, once adopted, it becomes a proverbial key that unlocks many doors in today’s European political culture.
And now to the greatest puzzle of all….
BRIDGING THE UNBRIDGABLE. Why and how is pro-Palestinianism capable of uniting the seemingly incompatible lifestyles under its banner? For the critical minds on the political Right and Centre in Europe it is almost customary to ridicule what they perceive as a sinister Red-Green Alliance or , even more so, the LGBT/anti-Gaza War alliance. They have a point. Indeed, the very possibility of the existence of the Queers for Gaza, or Queers for Palestine, makes one pause. What do radical Islamists, or traditional Muslims for that matter, have to do with the LGBT? And what do LGBT have to do with all these people and agendas? Where exactly is the common denominator? And even if it exists, say, if one accepts the narrative that fighting Israel is in essence fighting some sort of ‘oppression’ and ‘all oppressions are the same’ (as in: ‘oppression of the LGBT is exactly the same as oppression of Gazans, and so we are all brothers’), it is difficult to ignore the fact that Israeli is the more benevolent culture in that respect. After all, there is not a single society in the Middle East that is more accepting of the LGBT phenomenon than Israel. While any shade or colour of LGBT lifestyle is intolerable in the social space of the whole Arab and Muslim Middle East, Israel looks at it with a typical Western mixture of supportiveness and indifference. Imagine an LGBT activist travelling in an airplane over the Middle East (indeed imagine any Westerner, a man, a woman, anything in -between, anything different every day, flying over the Middle East). Imagine that an emergency situation is declared and the airplane is at an equal distance from Tel Aviv and Teheran. A pilot decides to quickly consult the passengers on the preferrable, from their point, location for an emergency landing. Which one the LGBT individual choose? Easy choice-right? Right!? So, if it is so easy, why is it that Israel does not get a bonus in the political calculus of the LGBT activists? Why, in any political disputes between Israel and the rest of the Middle East, the automatic preference is given to the anti-Israeli side? I could go on and list other strange fellow travellers of the Gaza cause, the ecological activism being one of them. But there is no need to do so. Once we understand the LGBT, who really give us a masterclass of a seemingly absurd political alliance, we can cope with all others.
Am I saying then that the LGBT are too stupid to figure out their own political interests? Not at all, The opposite is true. I am saying that the LGBT’s pro-Gaza instincts are not wrong, they are the healthiest of all. In fact, the LGBT are ahead of other segments of the society, as could be expected from the, arguably. Let us think for a moment. In the West itself, the LGBT liberation is a new thing. The position of this group is still a little delicate. The anti-LGBT voices, however mild, have been heard recently across the West and in Eastern Europe the LGBT rights are being rolled back, it seems. Traditional segments of the Western societies in particular are not enamoured with the LGBT agenda. Who are these ‘traditional segment’? Most centrally, these are the relatively newly-arrived, foreign elements in the West. People originating from the Muslim communities all over the Middle East and South Asia. It is with them, the new members of the Western societies, that the LGBT need to build rapport. Not those who stay in the Middle East. No matter what happens there, the Western LGBT are not going to be seen rolling on the beaches of Syria and Yemen, are they not? So, why would they care about what is happening there? What they do care about, and rightly so, is what happens in those societies in which they live. They need to ‘market themselves’ as respectable members of a society precisely and exactly to those who have fundamental doubts in the very legitimacy of the LGBT lifestyle and make no secret of this, i.e. the newly-arrived, foreign elements in the West. What will do the job, then? Right, embracing a joint cause. That costs nothing and builds trust, bridges and ambience. Here in the West, where it is needed. Not in some sort of Egypt, where it is not.
To sum up my point: Western societies are experiencing a genuine spiritual crisis. There are many ways to name it, and many of these ways are not wrong. It is just that we are not well-equipped to understand the full meaning and consequences of this state. The West has lost or is loosing its religion. Christianity has ruled Europe for a long time, 1,000-2,000 years, depends what and where we are talking about. On that edifice, many other things were built, nationalism, current left and right ideologies. Now, that it run it course, something else is needed. That something else, however, is impossible to engineer at will. It needs to develop organically, to be logical and justifiable in view of previous sensibilities (however enfeebled). And, most importantly, that new thing, new ‘religion’, needs to deliver in the new state that the West finds itself in: having a very large and growing foreign populations, of whom many arrived from outside Europe, and specifically, from the lands controlled by Islam. The new religion can only be adopted if it is functional for giving the society that new glue, that new social lubricant that allows to bridge the unbridgeable: the political and spiritual worlds of the newly arrived, on the one hand, and of the European ‘old timers’, on the other. Pro-Palestinianism fits this goal like a glove. First of all, it offers a coherent world view, suitably binary and very unambiguous as to who is right and wrong (clear ‘victimology’ and orientation). Secondly, it is accessible to all-traditional Muslims, radical Muslims, ex-Muslims, indifferent Muslims, active Christians, passive Christians, atheists, agnostics, LGBT, teenagers, the elderly….new immigrants, established immigrants, the Right, the Left, in short, anyone at all.
MY POINT OF DEPARTURE
In my analysis of the situation, I am being a critical follower of Immanuel Todd, whose work (‘The Defeat of the West’) I covered in an earlier essay, on Substack. That very Immanuel Todd, a demographer-prophet of our time. I adopt some of his points and develop, and modify/add to, others. One subject that Todd covers at length is the decline of the Western original religion, Christianity. On that, I find it difficult to disagree. The replacement of Christianity, according to Todd is nihilism, i.e. life without meaning, lack of attention to any traditional values. On that I agree but only in part. I think, nihilism may be one path for one segment of a society, but there will be other competing creeds. One ‘way forward’ for the Western societies is Pro-Palestinianism. It simply works better, in my view. It is a very respectable looking candidate for a religious creed, with the whole luggage of meaning.
Another subject, on which Todd is interestingly silent, is the mass migration to Europe. Part of the Western crisis, that makes the West behave seemingly suicidally in political terms, is exactly that, in my view. Populations stripped of their creeds will look for a new worldview. Populations that are, in addition, numerically very diversified in a way that is unprecedented in scope and pace, will frantically look for a unifying worldview, something that works for all. Nihilism (=nothingness) or existing ideologies cannot be used for that. They either divide or do nothing. Pro-Palestinianism is that (in truth, not very original) out-of-the box thinking that Westerners are capable of. Therefore, in my analysis I am inspired by Todd but do not follow him to the letter. My approach is selectively Toddian, for anyone who cares about the terminology.
ZERO RELIGION=ZERO SOCIAL GLUE
In his recently published ‘The Defeat of the West’, Immanuel Todd described in some detail the path followed by Western societies from ‘active religiosity’ to ‘zombie religiosity’ to ‘zero religion’. For reasons that remain unclear, the book, written originally in French, had not been translated into English. The content of the book, namely its characterisation of the religious state of the Western society, has been found as revolutionary by many people and so various summaries of the book’s main ideas proliferated. They are everywhere on Substack and YouTube. I will present the argument in an nutshell and refer the readers elsewhere for details.
Todd’s scheme is simple. In the active state of religion (stage 1), many people attend church regularly. The majority do. Example of such life? In the mid-century England, 75% of the population were weekly church-goers, if the 1851 Census of Religious Worship is to be believed. The state of zero religion (stage 3) is about now, or very soon. In today’s United Kingdom, 8% are weekly church attenders, if the 2017 survey conducted by the Pew Research Centre to be believed. The difference between those who self-identify as Christians and those who are unaffiliated in religious terms, when it comes to church attendance, was zero. Yes, zero, self-identifying as a Christian is not a marker of ‘having a church-life’. The situation in the rest of Western Europe is no different. The feelings towards religion, also measured in surveys, tell the same story, by and large. About half of the population in the UK, France, Germany, Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden and Canada think that religion hurts more than it helps.
I initially planned to present all this in graphs showing the figures by country but thought better of it. A waste of time, it is all the same. Near-zero religion. The watershed event marking a transition to zero-religion for Todd is a transition to ‘marriage for all’, i.e. from the marriage being defined as a sacred union of a man and a woman for the purpose of procreation to a union of anyone with anyone. Neither Todd nor myself are critical of this development. It is merely an attempt to clearly highlight the turning point.
What is a zombie-religion state (stage 2), then? It is a zone in-between stages 1 and 3, when the majority no longer believe or care all that much about worship but still perform church- or religion-inspired rituals (weddings, baptisms, burials). Israel is in-between the active and the zombie religion, by the way, judging by various indicators of religiosity. Statistics are merciless. But I digress…
Religion plays a major role of a social glue. That is my main point. This is an addition to the sense of purpose that it gives. Todd does not say that, at least not explicitly. I do. Religion and structures based on it (e.g. the nationalism) tell people who they are, where they come from, what they live for and what is worth living and dying for. Critically, not just the individuals receive that message, but the groups. All that creates commonality, links people together. With the death of the religion, its derivatives die as well, including the links, and everything will need to be defined anew. Including the new bases for commonality, new reasons to be together and feel together. And here is a catch. At the time of the Great Decline in Christianity, the formerly Christian societies are no longer homogeneously former-Christian. They have the non-Christian newcomers. Any new religion, if such religion is to arise, would do well, if it offers something to the old timers and the newcomers. The new glue for the new era. Now think of the Pro-Palestinianism…. If it did not exist, it would have to be invented. Europe needs it today more than it needs the Russian gas.
And now I will show you why Europe needs it so much.
THE NEW EUROPE
The proportion of Muslims in the total population of Europe, and that includes Eastern Europe with minimal Muslim presence, was about 5% in 2016 and perhaps twice that figure in 2050. However, in the core Western Europe, meaning the UK, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, it is expected to go from 6%-9% in 2016 to 15%-17% in 2050. The Northern Europe is a lot like the Western Europe.
The estimates and the projections (under the medium migration scenario, note!) are charted below, and they originate from the Pew Research Center.
Now…all of these figures are underestimates, in my view. That is for several reasons that cannot be covered in detail here. I will have to dedicate a special essay to this subject, and I will. For now, suffice it is to say that not all surveys and censuses underlying the estimates above ask about people’s religion in a way that maximises the responses. Some survey questions in the style ‘What is your religion?’ allow, or even encourage, non-response. Nobody likes filling in questionnaires. The moment any question is defined as optional, it will be skipped by some respondents. Further, when projections are built, they account for religious ‘switching’. In reality, this means that people transition from belonging to a religion to ‘no religion’ during their lifetime. The measures of this phenomenon (religious switching), and assumptions based on them, are inadequate for many purposes, in my view. Including many aspects of political life, of which Pro-Palestinianism is the central one. More on this – later.
At present, the most important point to comprehend is not the methodological nuances that the demographers revel in but something else. The proportions of this or that group out of the total population may be misleading with respect to the actual social meaning of these figures. This is so because the totals (as in: Muslims constitute 6% of the total population in the UK) conceal that in younger ages, their proportions are in double digits. This is simply because Muslim populations have higher fertility, and so, naturally, among children they ought to be numerically stronger. The data from countries with a tradition of collecting data on religion in population censuses illustrate that well. Below is the data from England and Wales in 2021, collected by the Office for National Statistics. Whereas in England and Wales Muslims constitute 6%-7% of the total population, they are over 10% among those aged 15 years and younger. In places like Greater London and Greater Manchester, Muslims constitute 20%-25% of this age group. In Birmingham, they are close to 45%. The graph below shows the situation in the major British cities, with total populations close to or in excess of 1 million. Together, these cities account for about one quarter of the population of England and Wales.
Pro-Palestinianism is needed because it can – politically, culturally emotionally – accommodate a lot of people. These people, originating in migration waves from North Africa, South Asia and the Middle East already form a very significant proportion of the European societies. In certain places in Europe, and in certain age groups, they are already a majority, or very close to being a majority. Their sensibilities, real or imagined, matter to Europeans. It would be strange if it was not the case. The Europeans need to build rapport with a lot of people, especially the young Europeans. Birmingham is a well-documented microcosm and not even the most extreme example. There are a lot of ‘birminghams plus’ across Europe.
PRO-PALESTINIANISM: THE MARCH
Pro-Palestinianism is the fourth Abrahamic religion that is now marching across the West and Europe. My prophetic soul foretells that it will compete well with what remains of Christianity, Todd’s nihilism, existing ideologies and pretty much everything else. It gives the highly diverse and diversifying Western societies what they need-the glue that brings them together and , critically, the glue that sticks the old timers and the newcomers. It solves the greatest problem of all-uniting a fractured, ill, society, it is a lubricant ensuring group cohesion for incompatible and mutually incomprehensible groups. I predict a glorious march. Throughout the West mostly, but with some potential spillover into Eastern Europe. Not because they have the same problem. Eastern Europe has nobody to please. Because Eastern Europe admires the West and copies its fashions uncritically.
There is close to nothing that the Diaspora Jews can do about it. They are simply not numerically strong enough. This is leaving aside their internal politics and extreme political disorientation-all owing to trauma, by the way. In all political crises, sacrifices have to be made to stabilize the system, the society. Sometimes whole groups will have to be sacrificed. The weakest, the most vulnerable, the most disposable socially are sacrificed first. In fact, in the West, unambiguously, certain groups are sacrificed in the name of political stability. It is happening as I type in these immortal words. If you live in the UK, then you would have heard of the ongoing scandal around the grooming gangs of South Asian men, targeting ‘white British girls’. If you do not live in the UK, google it. It repays. It is a phenomenon that the British media and the establishment (of all political colours, by the way) have been banging on about for the past 20 years maybe. A demographic generation, really. It is a civilisational asset at this point, these gangs, like ‘Strictly Come Dancing’. If you grew up in Britain early 21st century-you would know about it. What has been done about this ethnically-coloured grooming, in the past 20 years? Nothing. You know why? Because ‘South Asian men’ is a euphemism for ‘Muslim men’. But far more importantly even: because the ‘white British girls’ is a euphemism for ‘girls from the British underclass or the low working class’ that no one cares about. Nobody ever did and nobody will do, ever. These are ultimately disposable people and indeed, they had been disposed of. Are you telling me that the society that disposed of its own when it had to, will protect its Jews?
What form will the ‘disposal of Jews’ take this time? Personally, I think that (1) historical precedents are very informative, and they pretty much chart the territory, and (2) nothing is really off the table. Expulsions of Jews are very possible, for example. Indeed, Europe implemented this method, not without success, throughout the Middle Ages. Historically, Jews were expelled from countries and city-states, all over Spain, Italy, Germany, England. Disenfranchisement, limitations on activities are very possible. These will target those with Israeli passports and connections first, and all Jews later. All sorts of funny rules may be imposed-financial transfers between Israel and certain places in the West cancelled. Flights discontinued. Just use your imagination really. To disenfranchisement, limitations-Jews will react with migration. To Israel mostly. But I would not rule out Jewish migration to Eastern Europe either.
Will it come to another ‘final solution’? Why not? What-nothing like this happened before? This is not historically unprecedented, and now, having listened to me, do you feel that this possibility is somehow ‘more real’ than it ever appeared to you? If the answer is ‘yes’, then it is very real. I just described the political circumstances, probably for the first time, in a way that allowed you to see the previously concealed. Unlike the armies of social scientists that do everything to obfuscate the truth, backed by generous donors, I lifted the proverbial curtain.
The reason I think that another combo of expulsions/ disenfranchisement /murder may be just behind the corner is that it seems instrumental to the survival of Western societies, no less. Across the West, perhaps not many actively want it, but many more actually need it. And in life, as we know, we do not get what we want, we get what we need. Societies may feel, and not without reason, that these sets of measures will set them free and unite them. They will cope with the consequences all right, Europeans do it in style. There will be museums dedicated to the Second Holocaust (or something similarly attractively framed), films about it (‘The boy with an Israeli passport’). Yes, almost forgot: a new expanded school curriculum of Holocaust education will be created.
And do not get me wrong. I am not deluded enough to suggest specifically that ‘Muslims’ would do it all. Likely: the weak-spirited Europeans would do it all, with and without assistance from any Muslims. By Europeans, I mostly mean the ‘old timers’. They would do it in the name of justice, unity, truth and peace. Peace would be their most important goal. I have full faith in the Europeans.
There is not much left to say except this message. This time-directly to the Europeans. Now that you created the fourth Abrahamic religion, the Pro-Palestinianism, it is high time to reflect on the meaning of it all. For how long your cherished creeds will owe to that little piece of land in the Middle East, called the Land of Israel? For how long your political fantasies will only be aroused by Jews and what happens to them, and ‘done by them’? It is high time for some creativity, your own home-grown ideas. Show some agency, I would say. Such is my message. In the name of peace.