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The New York Times informs us that citizens in countries "across Europe" are perturbed at the number and behavior of the Muslims whom their ruling elites have welcomed into their countries. This is no surprise - what's shocking is the number of European leaders who don't seem to much mind when their people are attacked, robbed and raped by foreign invaders.
What's even more surprising is that some ordinary Europeans have decided to actually do something useful about the problem:
In Finland, militia groups are patrolling small towns housing asylum seekers in the name of protecting white Finnish women. In Germany, far-right protesters rampaged through Leipzig on Monday, vandalizing buildings in an "anti-Islamization" demonstration. In Italy on Tuesday, an anti-immigration regional government approved the text of a law making it difficult to construct new mosques as Muslim refugees are settled in the area.
The ruling elites and the media are encouraging Europeans to stay the course and admit even more "refugees," but the message doesn't seem to be nearly as acceptable as they desire:
At the same time, polls show that far-right parties are gaining support in France, Germany and elsewhere.
"Far-right" is about the worst insult permitted by the Times' style guide. Other stories say that some of these "far-right parties" are organizing street patrols to protect women, much as the Guardian Angels ride subway cars in New York City to protect passengers. Some politicians are furious that these unofficial peace keeping forces haven't been stopped by the official police, but others are reluctant to criticize them.
As one scholar put it, "This has been the elephant in the room that no one is prepared to acknowledge: that the great fear is the fear of Islam."
There are scattered reports of anti-immigration protests being met with pro-immigration protests. There doesn't seem to have been a lot of violence between these two groups so far, but the potential is there.
Immigration has been an issue that's led to violence for years. Pim Fortuyn was a Dutch professor who founded an anti-Muslim political party in 2002. He was murdered in 2002 by Volkert van der Graaf who said he murdered Fortuyn to stop him from exploiting Muslims as "scapegoats" and targeting "the weak members of society" in seeking political power. Elevating culture clash to the level of murder shocked many Dutch citizens, but there was more to come.
In 2011, a lone-wold terrorist named Anders Behring Breivik demonstrated once again the folly of government-created victim disarmament zones by murdering 77 people on an island where the ruling political party was holding a youth camp. Breivik claimed the defense of necessity (jus necessitatis) because the ruling party was accepting so many Muslim immigrants.
He feared the cultural destruction of his beloved Norway and took action to publicize his views. He failed in that the mainstream media didn't explain why he'd committed murder; his views were simply not fit to print.
These political murders were roundly condemned all over the world. When Muslims mobs attacked European women all over Europe last New Years Eve, in contrast, the authorities first tried to suppress the news. The European double standard resulting from this cultural divide is illustrated by the fact that non-Muslim pro- and anti-immigrant crowds are demonstrating against each other.
What can't be disputed is that the Koran teaches that women are inferior to men and that any infidel woman or one who's not dressed in a burkha is fair game for anything any man chooses to do to her. This attitude is barely comprehensible to modern Europeans, although the Muslims are working hard to provide refresher courses in Muslim doctrine concerning women.
It's hard to find a clearer illustration of the clash in worldviews than this protest in Cologne, Germany following the New Year's Eve sex attacks. A Swiss performance artist named Milo Moire stood naked in front of the famous Cologne cathedral, holding a sign reading:
Respect us! We are not fair game even when naked.
While it's a bridge too far to expect conservatives to support someone parading around the public square in the altogether no matter how worthy the cause, we agree wholeheartedly with the content of her sign. A streaker should get a fine or perhaps a trip to the looney bin, but doesn't deserve rape.
Of course, Ms. Moire had the elementary prudence to stage her performance in broad daylight. It seems that German cities are becoming like the twin cities in the DC Comics universe: ever-sunny Metropolis during the day vs dark, ominous, dangerous Gotham at night.
The mayor of Cologne advised women to protect themselves, advising them not to stay out too late and to avoid dark alleys. This didn't sit well with liberated German women who've become accustomed to dressing as they want and going wherever they want without concern for personal safety. Some of them are trying to prepare defend themselves against attack - pepper spray is sold out, even though it's not even legal everywhere in Europe.
The fact that pepper spray has sold out suggests that women have decided to fight back rather than meekly submit to their would-be foreign overlords. It's not clear just how much good pepper spray would do against a mob of 20 or 30, but it's a start.
It's not just Germany either: this sane, practical response harks back to the London race riots of 2011, which saw Amazon sell out of baseball bats - ordered with the fastest rush delivery by nervous Brits who'd been prevented by their government from owning more effective weapons. Not that the government learned anything: under government pressure, Amazon discontinued sales of police truncheons. But by then there were many thousands more of them in yeoman hands than previously.
The fact that civilian street patrols have started up in Europe, rather like Mr. Zimmerman's "neighborhood watch" in his gated community, suggests that significant numbers of citizens don't trust the police to be on their side and are willing to do something about it personally.
As the fate of Mr. Zimmerman illustrated, though, informal "neighborhood watch" associations can lead to trouble - particularly if a neighborhood watchman runs into a group of Muslim men whereas Mr. Zimmerman only had to deal with one thug. If these increasingly frequent encounters lead to significant violence, the police will be more or less in the position of the UN Peacekeepers who're trying to keep the Lebanese and Israelis from killing too many of each other with rather limited success. As the saying goes, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be shot at by both sides."
If countries like Germany and Finland become battlegrounds between opposing views of how women should be treated, those nations will have changed beyond description, and not for the better. Are European police prepared to be forced into the position of referees trying to keep warring sides from each others' throats?
Yet it seems that's what the pro-immigration side really wants. The Cologne rapes should be a wake-up call regarding what Islam really means for women, but we doubt that European elites will learn any faster than ours.
They urgently need to be re-educated about the reality of evil by being thrown out of office. We'll soon find out if that's even still possible there; every time an anti-immigrant party comes close to winning, the establishment conspires to keep them out by hook or by crook. Mr. Trump has tapped into a vast reservoir of American anger which looks fair to sweep him all the way to the White House. What will it take to get Europeans angry enough to do something effective?