Commentary
The hopeless decline of Europe
More than 100 migrants died on June 28, while Salvini was closing the ports and roaring against Malta. And what about the others, the saved migrants? They are placed in the midst of ridiculous conflicts between European politicians.
Europe comprises 48 states, excluding Russia, and has 730 million inhabitants, just over a 10th of the world’s population. In the last 100 years, most of the European countries have been involved in a series of wars that have caused 100 million deaths. And this is the so-called cradle of civilization, which has spread (along with the American propaganda) its heritage of technologies and lifestyles first with colonial and imperialist violence, and then with the economic power.
Nowadays, with an impressive acceleration, Europe—which, after the catastrophe of the Second World War, had tried to go down the road of pacification and cooperation—is riding on the nationalistic tendencies that had almost caused its destruction 73 years ago. And what is the crucial factor in the implosion of the European utopia? Migration to the old continent of several hundred thousand immigrants and refugees from Africa and the Asian countries at war.
The confused European Council meeting on June 28, with its misunderstandings and its fictions, is only one stage in this predictable entropy. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who by pure happenstance came into his role, declared himself successful at the summit because all the other leaders promised to accept migrants on a voluntary basis: i.e. hypothetical, i.e. non-existent.
Macron played the role of “human” leader because he welcomed a few people who escaped from shipwrecks, while his police seal the borders. Angela Merkel is exclusively interested in assuring her Bavarian allies that the country is at its limit—thus the necessary measures will be taken so that no one else can come. The others, the fascists or para-fascists from Austria, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary, whom the European bureaucracies are careful not to punish, close themselves up in an increasingly ferocious isolation of identity.
Finally, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, as his rebellious rhetoric demands, condemned hundreds of shipwrecks drifting to hunger, thirst and death on rafts or NGO ships. It must be repeated: more than 700 million inhabitants of a developed continent (or 400 if we consider only the EU) are overwhelmingly rejecting these people. Their rhetoric and rationale goes as far as active racism. And it concerns a limited and derisory number of asylum seekers and migrants, considering the proportions.
Moreover, the governments, after having stoked nationalism for years, increasing the sense of insecurity, have only changed their tactics. The previous Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti organized the internment of a million Sub-Saharan migrants in Libya, where they were humiliated, tortured, raped and killed. Today, Salvini has used the tragedies at sea to negotiate a bit of space in Europe, and especially to gain consensus in a frightened electorate, impoverished and unaware of the real issues at stake. Naturally, this is happening with the help of the 5 Star Movement, which is pretending to be the good cop.
In this way, Africans and Asians die at sea, if they have escaped the traffickers in Niger, the armed gangs in Libya and the coast guard in Tripoli. More than 100 died on June 28, while Salvini was closing the ports and roaring against Malta. And what about the others, the saved migrants? They are placed in the midst of ridiculous conflicts between European politicians, while migrants and refugees will be tormented by tiny leaders who blather about sea taxis, humanitarian missions, national identities and borders to defend against invasion.
Human beings of flesh and blood like us, migrants are lost in no man’s land, dead and imprisoned in concentration camps. European leaders think they are realistic, but they are laying the foundations for an unstoppable decline, while the real hegemonic powers in the world are watching us.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/declino-europa/ on 2018-07-01