The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

by Douglas Murray

Overview

A controversial and devastatingly honest depiction of the demise of Europe.

The Strange Death of Europe is the internationally bestselling account of a continent and culture caught in the act of suicide. Douglas Murray takes a step back and explores the deeper issues behind the continent's possible demise, from an atmosphere of mass terror attacks and a global refugee crisis to the steady erosion of our freedoms. He addresses the disappointing failure of multiculturalism, Angela Merkel's U-turn on migration, and the Western fixation on guilt. Murray travels to Berlin, Paris, Scandinavia, and Greece to uncover the malaise at the very heart of the European culture, and to hear the stories of those who have arrived in Europe from far away.

Declining birth rates, mass immigration, and cultivated self-distrust and self-hatred have come together to make Europeans unable to argue for themselves and incapable of resisting their own comprehensive alteration as a society and an eventual end. This sharp and incisive book ends up with two visions for a new Europe—one hopeful, one pessimistic—which paint a picture of Europe in crisis and offer a choice as to what, if anything, we can do next. But perhaps Spengler was right: "civilizations like humans are born, briefly flourish, decay, and die."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472942241
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	06/20/2017
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Douglas Murray is Associate Editor of the Spectator and writes frequently for a variety of other publications, including the Sunday Times, Standpoint and the Wall Street Journal. He has also given talks at both the British and European Parliaments and the White House. He is the author of The Sunday Times bestseller The Madness of Crowds, as well as The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The beginning

How we got hooked on immigration

The excuses we told ourselves

'Welcome to Europe'

'We have seen everything'

Multiculturalism

They are here

Prophets without honour

Early-warning sirens

The tyranny of guilt

The pretence of repatriation

Learning to live with it

Tiredness

We're stuck with this

Controlling the backlash

The feeling that the story has run out

The end

What might have been

What will be

Afterword

Notes

Acknowledgements

Index

Editorial Reviews

2017-06-14
A timely work that blames Europe's current immigration disaster on the Europeans' misplaced guilt and fatally good intentions.With the massive influx of refugees from the world's war-torn zones deluging migration points and asylum centers across Europe, Spectator associate editor Murray (Bloody Sunday: Truths, Lies and the Saville Inquiry, 2012, etc.) takes a stance that few dare to take, as it is firmly not politically correct. Indeed, using examples from places he has visited—Lampedusa, Italy, a ferrying point from North Africa; Lesbos, Greece; Berlin; London; and elsewhere—the author surveys the movements of asylum seekers during the last few years especially and the inadequate accommodations for them. He claims, perhaps rightly, that most of the immigrants are Muslim, most are young men with little to sustain them, most are seeking economic betterment rather than asylum from life-threatening causes, and most will disappear through the legal cracks because of the inability of the host countries to process the overwhelming numbers. The result, Murray warns by citing dire demographic numbers, is essentially a dilution of European culture—that is, white Greco-Judeo-Christian culture, which believes in liberalism, secularism, and human rights, including equal rights for women. Instead, the author writes, Europeans, denying their best instincts and led by Germany's Angela Merkel, are hogtied by "the tyranny of guilt," in the form of the consequences of World War II, the legacy of colonialism, and the enslavement of indigenous peoples. While the good leaders of Britain, Germany, and other countries claim that their nations need immigration for economic growth and to bolster an aging population, Murray sees "obvious" crises such as housing and school shortages and rapidly increasing health care costs to these welfare states. He also sees "parallel communities" developing everywhere, crucibles of radicalism and crime that the mainstream dares not report due to the fear of political backlash. With violence erupting in Europe and America's new anti-immigration policies, this audacious work will find its readers.

Kirkus Reviews

". . . fiery, lucid, and essential polemic." - Sohrab Ahmari, Commentary

"Timely . . . Murray takes a stance that few dare to take . . . With violence erupting in Europe and America's new anti-immigration policies, this audacious work will find its readers." - Kirkus Reviews

"[An] excellent and disturbing book." - Michael Barone, Washington Examiner

"The Strange Death of Europe may be one of the most important philosophical books of our time . . . This is nothing less than a dynamite book. It is likely that liberals in Europe and North America will avoid this book, but they shouldn’t. Murray’s questions are too important to ignore anymore." - Benjamin Welton, New York Journal of Books

"A powerful new book." - John O'Sullivan, The National Review

"Murray’s analysis deserves careful attention. . . . Readers able to face a stern depiction of culture clash will witness in The Strange Death of Europea panorama of a receding landscape. One wonders what next transforms European mores and beliefs." - Spectrum Culture

"[The Strange Death of Europe] makes a ferociously well-argued case." - Ralph Berry, Chronicles

"Lively . . . Murray’s book is informed by actual reporting across the Continent, and a quality of writing that manages to be spritely and elegiac at the same time. Murray’s is also a truly liberal intellect, in that he is free from the power that taboo exerts over the European problem, but he doesn’t betray the slightest hint of atavism or meanspiritedness." - Michael Brendan Dougherty, The National Review

"This is a brilliant, important and profoundly depressing book. That it is written with Douglas Murray’s usual literary elegance and waspish humor does not make it any less depressing. That Murray will be vilified for it by the liberals who have created the appalling mess he describes does not make it any less brilliant and important ( . . . ) Read it." - Rod Liddle, Sunday Times

"His overall thesis, that a guilt-driven and exhausted Europe is playing fast and loose with its precious modern values by embracing migration on such a scale, is hard to refute." - Juliet Samuel, Telegraph

"This is a vitally important book, the contents of which should be known to everyone who can influence the course of events, at this critical time in the history of Europe." - Sir Roger Scruton

"Douglas Murray glitters in the gloom. His pessimism about multiculturalism is so well constructed and written it is almost uplifting. Liberals will want to rebut him. I should warn them that they will need to argue harder than they have ever argued before." - Nick Cohen

"Douglas Murray’s introduction to this already destructive subject of Islamist hegemony is a distinguished attempt to clarify the origins of a storm. I found myself continually wishing that he wasn’t making himself quite so clear." - Clive James

"Douglas Murray writes so well that when he is wrong he is dangerous." - Matthew Parris, Spectator

"A compelling, insightful and persuasively argued narrative . . . a deeply humane book that touches on individual tragedy . . . It may even prove to be the start of a conversation, and for such a dangerously politicized and neglected subject, that would be most welcome. The combination of fascinating subject matter and superb writing make The Strange Death of Europe a title that stays in the mind throughout the reading process and beyond." - Entertainment Focus

"Powerful and engaging . . . Murray is at his strongest when lampooning the neurotic guilt of Western liberal elites . . . Disagree passionately if you will, but you won’t regret reading it." - Literary Review

"[E]rudite, dispiriting, and indispensable . . . . More than any other book with which I am familiar, The Strange Death of Europe provides a rich, comprehensive, and haunting portrait of a continent in extremis and an astute, thoroughly credible diagnosis of the social, psychological, and cultural afflictions that have led it to this hour of crisis." - FrontPage Magazine

"Every so often, something is published which slices through the fog of confusion, obfuscation and the sheer dishonesty of public debate to illuminate one key fact about the world. Such a work is Douglas Murray’s tremendous and shattering book, The Strange Death of Europe." - Melanie Phillips, The Times

"Murray’s clear and humane exposition of the seismic changes and the abject failure of political elites to face up to them gives those not willfully blind an opportunity to see." - Eric Metaxas, Breakpoint

"[The Strange Death of Europe] does hit on some unfortunate truths." - The Economist

"The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray is an enthralling account of the rise of Islamism in Europe. It’s beautifully written and cogently argued." - Christina Hoff Sommers, Politico

"In Douglas Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, whereby one learns that the death in question is not so strange after all, for it is merely a case of suicide—or, more precisely, attempted suicide, because there is an increasing resistance underway, which is even reversing Islamization in some European countries, at least in some respects . . . Murray is very effective in fully identifying the deformed, guilt-ridden liberalism à la Karsten Nordal Hauken that generates illiberal concessions to intolerance—and to violence." - Tablet

From the Publisher