The Strange Death of Europe
Immigration, Identity, Islam
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Narrated by:
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Robert Davies
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By:
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Douglas Murray
About this listen
The Strange Death of Europe is a highly personal account of a continent and culture caught in the act of suicide. 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 is not just an analysis of demographic and political realities; it is also an eyewitness account of a continent in self-destruct mode. It includes accounts based on travels across the entire continent, from the places where migrants land to the places they end up, from the people who pretend they want them to the places which cannot accept them.
Murray takes a step back at each stage and looks at the bigger and deeper issues which lie behind a continent's possible demise, from an atmosphere of mass terror attacks to the steady erosion of our freedoms. The audiobook addresses the disappointing failure of multiculturalism, Angela Merkel's U-turn on migration, the lack of repatriation, and the Western fixation on guilt. Murray travels to Berlin, Paris, Scandinavia, Lampedusa, 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.
This sharp and incisive audiobook 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'.
©2017 Douglas Murray (P)2017 Audible, LtdCritic reviews
I feel it is mistaking Islam for The cause of the death of Europe, while it is only a symptom of a greater disease. No great nation is brought down from outside unless it is rotten from within. if islam can make the headway it is making in Europe, it is because it is a cohesive force that constrain people within a commun frame, direct energies in one directions, while Europe is a "free" society, where everyone is told to be "who they are", atomised individuals, incapable of relating on any level strong enough to ensure a common entity, a common good, something greater than themselves worth defending...
I couldn't help but notice in the chapter on the guilt tripping of the European psyche the greatest guilt-trip of all was carefully omitted, slavery, the massacre of american indians and australians aborigines were discussed and relativised at length while the Holocaust wasn't even mentioned...
very good, but do be careful
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A deeply depressing but necessary read
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A must read for all Europeans
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Clearly, this is thin ice for any commentator, and I sometimes found the book too negative and polemical. I'm not sure the typical European is guilt-ridden and self-flagelating to the degree Murray portrays. However, he constantly scores points which cause me a sharp intake of breath. I'll mention two. How long would it take the reader to become a fully operational Chinese person - speaking and writing Chinese and well-integrated into Chinese culture? And yet we think a Somalian, or whatever, can integrate into Germany or England with a few culture and language lessons? Hmm, quite an interesting thought experiment. Second, he asks why the birth rate is so low in most rich European countries. I know the answer (from my personal experience as someone who would dearly like to become a Granny), but Murray supplies it anyway. If you are a two-working-parents family in the UK or Italy the costs of setting yourself up with a home and security, mean you have to wait to start a family. If you start late, and struggle with those costs, you will only have one or two children. Is the answer to this to bring in young people from abroad to make up the demographic shortfall? Ouch Douglas, that really hurt. I found Murrey's softness for Christianity a bit odd; Yes, they built nice Cathedrals, but Europe didn't get rid of barbaric practices like slavery, torture and homo-phobia because of Christianity - it took reason and the enlightenment for that.
If you are a Jeremy Corbyn supporter, or a PC-liberal sort of person, you will find this book hard to read and no doubt you will dismiss it as polemical if not downright racist. People have been shot for saying things of this ilk, so I do hope DM takes his precautions. For myself, I found it refreshing to hear someone educated (Eton, Oxford) and measured taking on this difficult subject (Nigel Farage eat your heart out).
Narration: Robert Davies is an excellent match for the author, and has the added skill of being able to correctly pronounce names and phrases in French, Dutch, German... However, he commits the cardinal sin of non-fiction narration: Davies does accents for quotes from foreigners. I find this becomes unbearable when he is called upon to do the voice of an immigrant - for example, the Somali-Dutch-American Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She probably doesn't even speak like that. Ugh.
Hugely controversial - but gripping
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thought provoking
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