What TV doesn't, print can't; we deliver.
What TV doesn't, print can't; we deliver.
Uncontrolled immigration and the erosion of cultural identity pose a critical threat to the concept of nation-states in a globalised world
I have been meaning to write about West Europe for some time now, but issues like the Prigozhin march to Moscow, or the recent US visit by PM Modi demanded more immediate attention. But now with the France riots that are gradually spilling over to neighbouring states like Belgium, it is back to Europe and, probably time for a glimpse into what these riots are indicative of.
West Europe, through France, is having a sneak peek at how its moment of reckoning will look. The proverbial chickens have come home to roost, and there is nothing that their governments can do or are willing to do about it. They can best put it under the carpet and pretend that all is well. For instance, instead of calling for a ban on rioters, French President Macron has called for a ban on the internet. No internet means no coverage of the destruction and mayhem caused by the rioting immigrants. What you do not see does not exist.
Douglas Murray covered this weird case of European ritual suicide in depth in his milestone book, ‘The Strange Death of Europe’, anything that we try to add here along the same lines would be superfluous. What can be added, however, is that it is painfully frustrating the way momentous works such as these (or the fiction titled ‘Submission’, written by Michel Houellebecq) fall uselessly by the side as the politicians in governments continue serving their globalist overlords, and the legitimate population continues to be ignorant, indifferent, and unorganised.
India has been facing the same problem for a long time now. The wound caused by the illegal immigrants – first from Bangladesh, and later on from Myanmar – has been festering for decades, and, like in France, remains topped with the same amount of government unwillingness to tackle it.
While France and other Western European nations cite reasons that range from lofty intangibles like humanitarian angles to practical issues like repopulating their countries to address a labour deficit, the Indian state remains ambiguous, hiding behind airy adages like atithi devo bhava and more practical considerations such as vote-bank politics.
Though the immediate issue at hand is a demographic imbalance, the larger problem that this imbalance ushers in has the potential to threaten civilizations. Across both India and West Europe, this unbridled allowance of letting illegal immigrants walk in and settle down has not only damaged the fabric of the countries concerned, but this anomaly now threatens to overturn the very concept of a nation-state.
There are numerous pockets within India where subversive non-state elements and institutions rule with their own sets of laws and actively undermine the political borders of the country – the functioning local government chooses to remain blind to this. We have, of course, been witnessing the French riots – a result of what happens when the demography of a territory crosses a certain threshold in terms of absolute numbers.
But how does this threaten the concept of a nation-state?
A nation-state is the political entity of a state (government) dovetailing with the cultural ethos of a nation (a set of people). This concept, which began a little shakily around the time of the Treaty of Westphalia back in 1648 and later on found its footing in most parts of the world, remained fundamentally underlined by a core characteristic: the cultural identity of its people, and the state as a representative of its people. So, for example, the French people would form France – both the nation and the government, and the Germans would form Germany, and so on.
Ever since the advent of globalisation, there have been deliberate efforts to dilute this crucially distinctive feature of this concept. Globalisation, which during its first innings (20th century) managed to impact the consumption pattern of the globe, now seems determined to destroy the identity of the global population in this century.
After all, if the French are not a majority voice (or number) in France, or the Italians are not a majority voice in Italy, then there remains no concept of a nation. In which case there just remains a state – a random political entity with any name (France can then well be called EU-002 or something); it does not really matter, with a nominal government to oversee the territorial administration.
Once the identity of a nation disappears, people stop being concerned about whether their government is elected or orchestrated, physical or digital.
A watershed moment? You could call that. Just as nothing binds when an individual, a family, or a community loses their identity, there is nothing of collective worth that could keep a country together once its identity is destroyed. At the end of a few decades of forcible population mixing (with the active collusion of the government), there would be nothing of worth in that geography that any population would consider bigger or higher than themselves; there would be no reason to unite.
So that is the arrangement that the global elitists want, and the politicians are happy to serve them. That explains why Macron is eager to censor the riot videos from spilling out. That explains why there is so little political will to tackle the issue that stares Europe in the face: rampant Islamic imports from the Middle East and North Africa – pre-industrial people who simply do not gel with post-industrial societies. That explains why, despite these riots, there would be no check on the number of immigrants pouring into Europe. Or India.
This instability would continue to hound the EU and, in the process, destroy West Europe as we knew it and turn it into a wasteland. Or, it could turn the white European population towards right-wing ideologies and make them violently demand the purity of their population, in a manner that would be a rerun of Germany in the 1930s.
I could say that there are many lessons for India there, but given the way our governments have overlooked the issue of illegal immigration, there is little point. Just that, on the rare off-chance that India has this genuine urge to preserve its status as a civilisation-state, it can choose to take the Russia-China-Poland path.
Arindam Mukherjee is a geopolitical analyst and the author of JourneyDog Tales, The Puppeteer, and A Matter of Greed.
Disclaimer: Views expressed are the author’s own
