“This is betrayal, ladies and gentlemen! Europe has been betrayed! And if we do not stand up for it, this Europe will be taken away from us.” So declared Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (shown) last Thursday while condemning European leaders who have opened up the continent to waves of mostly Muslim Middle Eastern migrants.
It was not the first time Orbán had inveighed against the migration, which threatens to upend European culture. And it further underlined the chasm separating politically correct Western Europe and what many would call a more culturally correct Eastern Europe.
Speaking to his countrymen, Orbán further warned, “Ladies and gentlemen, what we face is nothing less than the challenge of finding ourselves at the gateway to the implementation of a deliberate conceptual project, which could be described as left-wing and which seeks to marginalize the nation states of Europe. Where this project has failed to overcome Christianity and the identity of the nation state — and the values and responsibility springing from it — in conventional political struggle, it will strive to eliminate it on ethnic grounds.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OF0MKYhMkA
Orbán apparently was referring to the collectivist, open-borders, European Union mentality that seeks to replace nationalism with internationalism. And immigration facilitates this agenda. If countries can be so balkanized that there’s no longer “a people” but rather just a disparate collection of “peoples,” there then will be little sense of nationhood and hence little resistance to a loss of sovereignty and dissolution of borders.
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And prominent statists have at times alluded to this agenda. Andrew Neather, former aide to ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, confessed in 2009 that the massive immigration into the United Kingdom over the last 15 years was designed to “rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date.” Barack Obama said in February he was “optimistic” statism would prevail “because this country [the United States] just becomes more and more of a hodgepodge of folks.” Then there’s Hungarian-born billionaire investor George Soros, whom Orbán criticized as being a dark hand behind the migrant influx. Soros replied that the prime minister’s “plan treats the protection of national borders as the objective and the refugees as an obstacle. Our plan treats the protection of refugees as the objective and national borders as the obstacle.” Of course, critics would warn that Soros’ true objective has nothing to do with “protection” of refugees.
Calling the EU-facilitated migrant invasion “treason and conspiracy,” Orbán also addressed how European peoples have been visited with migration without representation, saying, “By whom and on what authority were the European leaders tasked with not only admitting but transporting to the European continent hundreds of thousands of people from groups outside European culture, so that little by little European cultural identity will be called into question?”
And Orbán isn’t the only one noting the threat to European culture. Jordanian opposition leader Dr. Mudar Zahran, himself a Muslim asylum-seeker currently living in the United Kingdom, warned last month that the Muslim migrants are not what they appear to be, should be kept out of Europe, and are part of the “Islamic conquest of the West.” Saying, “this is going to change Europe’s culture,” he also claims Europeans are being played for fools. As he revealed, “Read Arab magazines and Arab newspapers; they are talking about, ‘Good job! Now we’re going to conquest [sic] Europe.’” “So,” concluded Zahran, “it’s not even a secret.”
What these Arab publications are alluding to, writes commentator Michele Hickford, is “actually an ancient strategy, straight from the Islamic playbook[,] called The Hijra … the migration or journey. Hijra is one of the most effective methods of jihad which requires no military or wars. But it is an invasion nonetheless, and the politically-correct, humanitarian West is inviting it with open arms.”
But while such dissenters may feel as voices in the wilderness in the ever-wilder West, Orban’s position is not so uncommon beyond it. Poland just elected an anti-EU, anti-immigration government. And then there’s Orban’s countryman, Hungarian Bishop Laszlo Kiss-Rigo, who criticized Pope Francis for saying that Catholics had a moral duty to help the migrants. Wrote Christianity Today in September:
“They’re not refugees. This is an invasion,” said Kiss-Rigo. “They come here with cries of ‘Allahu Akbar.’ They want to take over.” Europe is being overwhelmed by non-believers posing as refugees who pose a serious threat to the continent’s “Christian, universal values,” he said.
… “I’m in total agreement with the prime minister [Orban],” Kiss-Rigo said….
The bishop said that many of the so-called refugees do not deserve assistance because they “have money.”
… Kiss-Rigo said Pope Francis is greatly misinformed about what is really happening. He “doesn’t know the situation,” he said.
And apparently referring to many migrants’ cultural and religious chauvinism, the bishop bluntly stated, “Most of them behave in a way that is very arrogant and cynical.”
More recently Kiss-Rigo’s sentiments were echoed by fellow prelate Cardinal Bechara Boutros al-Rahi, the Maronite patriarch of Antioch. The Lebanese-born cardinal — who has interacted with Muslims his whole life — warned that Islamists are seeking to conquer Europe with religion and procreation. As Breitbart reported last Friday:
“I have often heard from Muslims that their goal is to conquer Europe with two weapons: their faith and their birthrate,” al-Rahi said in a recent interview with Famiglia Cristiana, an Italian Catholic weekly magazine.
For the Muslims, the Cardinal said, “the practice of the faith is essential and fundamental. In Saudi Arabia they go to Friday prayers even if they need a walking stick. They know the Koran by heart, and when they talk they often cite it. The same is not true for Christians who do not refer either to the Bible or the teachings of the Church.”
The Muslims “believe that God’s will is to procreate and that marriage is aimed at this,” he said. “They think that numbers will give them the upper hand.”
Christians, however, “hardly get married anymore, and have few children,” he said.
No doubt. Birthrates all throughout Europe are below replacement level (2.1 children per couple); in parts of Spain and Italy it’s below 1. Orban’s nation is a prime example. As the Express reported, “The population of Hungary has declined every year since 1980, and in 2011 fell below 10 million for the first time since 1960.”
Orbán recognizes this problem, but understands that the solution to a below-replacement-level birthrate is not replacing the people. As he recently warned, “Europe cannot build its future on immigration instead of families.” For while many tout immigration as a source of workers and a solution for a graying West (interestingly, though, it’s never mentioned as a remedy for a graying Japan), some may detect a double standard. With millions of Chinese entering Tibet during the last few decades, anthropologists sometimes label the influx cultural or demographic genocide. In the West, however, the same phenomenon is billed as “diversity” and is so welcomed by “elites” that Swedish Social Democrat politician Mona Sahlin actually said in 2001, “The Swedes must be integrated into the new Sweden; the old Sweden is never coming back.”
And in light of comments such as that, many may understand why Prime Minister Orbán says “Europe has been betrayed.”
