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Mass Immigration and the Death of Europe · UK Column Radio

0:38
Don Lockton, thank you for joining me in the trenches.
0:41
Hi, Jim. You know, I've chattered plenty
0:46
over the last few years, but this is for my UK column
0:49
audience. For those who don't know who you
0:51
are, John, very, very briefly, what is your background?
0:54
So I'm currently an academic. I teach political science in a
0:59
small private university in the West of France.
1:01
I live in Paris, I commute there for two days a week, and I also
1:06
work as director of Forum for Democracy, International Forum
1:10
for Democracy being a Dutch political party run by our
1:15
mutual friend Thierry Baudet. So I have those two sort of
1:20
quivers to my bow. And before that I wrote a number
1:25
of books. The one that's probably best
1:28
known is A1. I wrote in the 90s on the
1:31
European Union called The Tainted source, The Undemocratic
1:34
Origins of the European Idea. But since that, I've written a
1:37
lot about Eastern Europe and done a lot of work on relations
1:42
between East and West, and obviously therefore with Russia.
1:46
And let's not forget that you and I Co host a Wednesday panel
1:51
discussion. We'll be doing it for a couple
1:53
of years now, haven't we? Which we do for essentially for
1:57
FED International, we call it the Forum and I'm very delighted
2:00
and honoured to have you as a Co host.
2:04
Well, the feeling is mutual, John.
2:07
Now you're in France, you're obviously British, but the
2:10
situation across Europe is very much the same.
2:13
This, the elephant in the room is the mass immigration crisis.
2:18
It is a crisis, is it not? Yeah, but I do think it's an
2:21
elephant in the room because I think it is being talked about
2:24
now after many decades. It's discussed and it's
2:30
recognised as a crisis, I would say in all European countries at
2:34
the moment, in France, in Germany, and even in Britain,
2:38
where the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer made a very surprising
2:42
speech some weeks ago in which he said we'd become a country of
2:45
strangers or an island of strangers or something.
2:49
And the scale of course of the problem is, is absolutely
2:53
gigantic. I mean, I think this is in a way
2:55
I, I, I suppose I, I, the word crisis implies a sort of sudden
3:00
event, you know which, a sudden high intensity event.
3:04
But unfortunately this immigration problem has been
3:08
going on for decades. It's been going on since at
3:13
least the mid 1990s in Europe when the European Union, the
3:20
most European Union countries, abolished internal border
3:24
controls, the famous Schengen agreement.
3:26
So now if you're in the Schengen area, which extends from the
3:31
Black Sea in Romania to the English Channel, because every
3:35
and every country, including, by the way, Switzerland in between,
3:40
has abolished its internal border controls.
3:42
This means of course, that you only have to land in Lampedusa,
3:47
which is an island, an Italian island not very far from the
3:50
coast of Libya or across the, let's say the the Bulgarian,
3:55
Turkish border to enter the Schengen space.
4:00
And you are automatically, you can automatically go wherever
4:03
you like all over Europe without much fear of being checked.
4:07
You certainly won't be checked on a on a border.
4:10
And that agreement, which was signed in the mid 90s had an
4:14
instant effect. When I say instant, I myself in
4:20
the, I think late 90s. So there's a couple of years
4:23
afterwards visited the refugee camp in Calais.
4:27
So Calais is obviously opposite. Everyone listening knows where
4:31
Calais is. It's opposite Dover on the other
4:32
side of the English Channel in France.
4:35
And there's there was a refugee camp or at least a Red Cross
4:38
camp there from from the mid late 90s onwards.
4:44
Why? Because people, as I say, could
4:47
across the Mediterranean, they could land in Lampedusa or they
4:51
could come through the Balkans from God knows where, from the
4:55
Middle East, from Afghanistan, Pakistan, literally from all
4:59
over the world. And they could travel across, as
5:04
I say, the whole Schengen space. And if they wanted to come to
5:07
Britain, they could hide stowaway in lorries or more
5:11
recently cross the Channel in, in little inflatable dinghies.
5:16
Well, little, I mean, they carry about 20 or 30 people, I think.
5:21
And, you know, I, I mentioned this visit that I made to the
5:24
camp, which was then in a a little suburb of Calais called
5:28
Songat, because it underlines how long this has been going on
5:32
for. That's why, as I say, I'm not
5:34
sure the word crisis is right. The increase has been
5:38
spectacular in Britain, but even before this latest increase in
5:45
the last couple of years, the figures have been absolutely
5:50
catastrophic. So when I talk about an
5:53
increase, I think, and I'm sure many of our listeners will know
5:56
that the net arrivals in Britain in I think 2023, so the last
6:03
year of the Conservative government wrote were 1.4
6:07
million. I don't have to hand the figures
6:11
for 2024 under which when Labour took power, but they are, they
6:18
are absolutely gigantic. You know, this is a large city
6:22
arriving, this is like the city of Birmingham or something
6:24
arriving every every year. Because prior to the figures,
6:29
which went well over a million and reached as I say 1.4 million
6:33
in 2023, the figures were still were already at 5 or 600,000 a
6:39
year every year for about 1/4 of a century.
6:44
Since, as I say, since the mid to late 90s and and throughout
6:49
the 2000s and 2000 and 10s. So Britain for, let's say for
6:55
the last 25 years we're in 2025 has been accepting hundreds of
7:01
thousands, half a million, let's say every year.
7:04
Of course, people leave as well. That's not the net figure, but
7:07
the net figure is still very, very high.
7:09
It's still in the hundreds of thousands.
7:11
And this has been going on, as I say, for 1/4 of a century.
7:15
And the there's a second reason as well why I think the word
7:19
crisis is wrong, because this is an industry, this is
7:26
industrially organised. These, this illegal migration,
7:31
each migrant pays a considerable sum, several thousand, many
7:35
thousands of dollars to get to their destination.
7:39
It requires considerable logistics.
7:42
Obviously you have to be smuggled across the external
7:45
Schengen border. That presumably involves bribery
7:49
or at least some kind of operation, getting people across
7:54
a border. If there's a physical border,
7:58
then it requires obviously transport to be arranged over,
8:02
you know, hundreds or thousands of kilometres, firstly to get to
8:06
the Schengen space in it. And then of course it requires
8:12
these dinghies to be brought across from to, if they're
8:15
coming to Britain or, or, or or other forms of stowaway.
8:19
Of course there are thousands and thousands of lorries which
8:23
crossover the Channel every every day, every hour, and I
8:27
myself have seen migrants climbing into the back of these
8:30
lorries and indeed mentioned the Sangat camp in the late 90s.
8:34
But much later on, I think in the 20 tens there was a gigantic
8:41
camp. Gigantic.
8:42
It wasn't even a Red Cross camp, it was just like a shantytown
8:46
near the ferry terminal in in Calais itself.
8:51
Absolutely gigantic. Was called the Jungle until it
8:54
was cleared out and when you drove to Calais to take the
8:56
ferry to Britain, you would see all over the place, Africans,
9:03
black Africans mainly, but also as I say, people from the Middle
9:08
East, Central Asia and so on, wandering around basically
9:12
trying to get onto lorries and now as, as we know more, onto
9:17
boats. Anyway, all this requires
9:20
organisation. Now I'm not saying there's,
9:22
there's obviously not one organisation.
9:24
I assume there are many, many different mafia groups, many
9:27
human trafficking groups. But it requires very substantial
9:31
organisation and it requires of course at the receiving end,
9:36
economic interest. There must be economics driving
9:39
this. So obviously the migrants,
9:43
again, in the case of Britain, they are coming to Britain
9:45
because they will be housed, they will be given a free
9:49
healthcare and all the rest of it and they can work.
9:52
So they have a economic interest.
9:55
Very obviously they don't come as far as I know, to live off
9:58
benefits, although of course that's also a problem.
10:02
Certainly in other parts of Europe that's a problem.
10:05
They probably come to work and but there must, as I say on the
10:09
receiving side, be very substantial economic interests.
10:13
Otherwise the scale of this would not would not have reached
10:17
the the figures that it has. And when I say economic
10:19
interests, I am without knowing exactly the answer because I'm
10:24
not a specialist on this. I suspect that the economic,
10:29
apart from the obvious economic interest of having a constant
10:32
stream of cheap labour, which is in the economic interests of
10:38
some sectors of the economy. I'm not, I'm not convinced, far
10:41
from it that it's good for the economy as a whole.
10:43
But clearly if you can get, you know, more and more people
10:47
pouring out of Somalia or Pakistan or Afghanistan or
10:50
wherever, then you can obviously keep wages down.
10:55
But I suspect that there are much more sinister economic
10:58
interests. I imagine that a large section
11:02
of this immigration is being driven by organised crime.
11:06
We know that they track the transport is organised crime,
11:09
but I expect that at the, once they've reached their
11:12
destination, they are therefore I, I, I imagine some percentage,
11:17
I don't know what percentage to deal in.
11:19
I don't know drugs or whatever, prostitution, that kind of
11:21
thing. And similarly, and this is a
11:27
further level of speculation for which I'm afraid I don't have
11:30
proof, but it seems to me to stand to reason that there must
11:34
be big financial interests as well.
11:37
Because again, this is a problem that goes back many decades.
11:40
If you can, if you have got a large sector of criminal
11:48
activity, well, whatever it is, drugs or whatever, that money
11:52
has to go somewhere. But the money has to be washed
11:57
through the system. And I assume, I mean, it's, it's
12:02
a, it's a speculation, but it's not, it's not of course, it's
12:06
based on, on other things. I know that the that there is an
12:10
interest at least for the financial sector in having this
12:15
money washed back into the system through various money
12:20
laundering operations, including shops and, and, and and whatever
12:25
else. So as I say, I think it's the
12:29
word crisis doesn't really give us the a feeling of the scale
12:35
because On the contrary, this is an industrially organised
12:38
transfer of population and it is organised both at the sending
12:43
end and also at the receiving end.
12:44
And there are of course interests involved, big
12:46
interests involved at all stages.
12:54
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean we know that the people
12:58
arriving are not refugees in the legal sense.
13:01
Word the United Nations Refugee Convention has long has has been
13:07
a dead letter now for ages it it provides that if there's a war
13:11
then the neighbouring countries should have some sort of
13:15
obligation to accept people from there and you know, try and
13:18
house them or whatever. But as, as I've said and as
13:21
everybody knows, these people are crossing very great numbers
13:26
of safe countries in order to get to their destination.
13:29
And it's obvious that if some Afghan or something ends up in
13:34
Calais, he is in, he is safe in Calais.
13:36
He's not. He's obviously in a legal sense
13:39
no longer a refugee. And by the way, we we know from
13:45
others who have studied this much more closely that than I
13:50
have that the largest numbers of countries providing immigrants
13:55
into Britain, if we take Britain from memory, I think those
13:58
countries are Nigeria and Pakistan.
14:01
There, there aren't, there isn't a war in Nigeria.
14:03
There isn't a war in Pakistan. They're not, there's no, there's
14:06
no sense that these people are fleeing any kind of conflict.
14:09
On the contrary, they are economic migrants.
14:11
It's economic mass migration. But there is something odd going
14:16
on, John, because a significant percentage of those migrants
14:20
come from Africa. Now I'm also African.
14:23
I guess my own identity is a conversation on its own.
14:26
I'm not European, but I have European ancestry.
14:29
So I guess for the time being you could claim that I am
14:33
African. And when I visited you a couple
14:36
years ago, the amount of red tape that I had to go through
14:39
just to get into Europe was was probably the worst that I've
14:45
ever experienced in all my travels around the world.
14:47
It was the toughest place to enter yet other Africans are
14:52
getting in very easily, so something doesn't add up well.
14:56
They are obviously coming in illegally and when you came a
15:00
couple of years ago I joked and said you should have come by
15:02
boat from Libya because you'd have, you'd have been able to
15:04
get here much, much, much more easily.
15:08
They are clearly illegal migrants.
15:10
And again, this takes us back to the organised and indeed, let's
15:16
say sponsored, possibly even state sponsored or at least
15:21
certainly tolerated the nature of this gigantic industrial
15:25
operation. There are in France where I'm
15:28
speaking to you from. I again, I'm sorry I don't have
15:32
the exact figures, but I don't think I'm wildly wrong if I say
15:35
there are 1,000,000 people in France who probably should not
15:40
be here, who are here illegally. You know, the British complained
15:45
that the French police don't round up the illegal immigrants
15:50
in Calais. Well, that's a fairpoint.
15:52
But on the other hand, as I say, if the total number on the whole
15:55
of the territory of France is 1,000,000, then it's effectively
15:59
impossible to remove so many people, or at least it would be
16:02
a very, very difficult operation to imagine.
16:06
So my, yes, my, my, my conviction is that there is some
16:12
sort of tolerance, if not encouragement on the part of
16:17
states. I mean, again, in Britain, it's
16:19
not difficult to see that, that there is such tolerance because
16:23
if you arrive in a, in a dinghy, uh, crossing the Channel, you
16:27
are immediately taken into a reception centre and then put
16:30
into a hotel that is paid for by the state, obviously.
16:34
So there is clearly a level of state sponsoring or
16:39
encouragement of this. And then even illegal migrants
16:43
are effectively allowed to work and they are also, of course
16:46
given handouts. So the states are encouraging
16:50
this, yes, there's no doubt about it.
16:53
And I think they're encouraging it.
16:55
They're encouraged. It's not clear to me why
16:56
exactly, but as, but again, I think it's part of the thing I
17:02
indicated a moment ago, big financial interests are
17:05
involved, money is involved. Money is washed through the
17:09
system that itself generates further income and the state in
17:18
one way or another is involved in that.
17:21
Whether it's through corruption or ideology, I don't know, but
17:26
there is no doubt. I haven't meant made this point
17:28
yet, but there is no doubt that there is of course an ideology
17:31
of immigration. Immigration is supported
17:34
ideologically by states. We've had decades of anti racism
17:42
in all European countries. State sponsored anti racism,
17:46
racism and prejudice against migrants is considered to be the
17:50
greatest possible sin and huge campaigns have been waged
17:55
against it. Political parties have been kept
17:58
out of power. They still are being kept out of
18:00
power in your all over Europe for that very reason.
18:04
And that is state driven. That is state driven and that is
18:06
ideologically driven. And the ideology is, well, there
18:11
are various aspects to it. Again, it's such a big
18:14
phenomenon that you can't summarise it in one quick
18:17
sentence. But there are, there is plenty
18:20
of evidence. More than evidence there's
18:23
plenty of there are plenty of people who say that migration is
18:26
needed. Lots of big companies say it,
18:30
but lots of states say it as well needed to pay the pensions.
18:34
The idea that if you have a falling birth rate or a low
18:36
birth rate, you need to keep the demographic pyramid the right
18:40
way up in order to and, and you can only do that by migration.
18:43
If people aren't having enough children.
18:46
It's widely, widely argued at the higher that's necessary for
18:52
the overall health of society. And then of course, you have the
18:57
more again, more, let's say a bit more sinister ideology,
19:00
which is part of the anti racism and is the ideology that, you
19:05
know, an African, a black African and a Dutchman are
19:09
interchangeable. This is the, the, the liberal
19:12
ideal, you know, you have, if someone arrives from Nigeria, he
19:17
can essentially do the same job and have the same economic and
19:21
social functionality as, you know, a Frenchman or a Dutchman
19:25
or whatever. And that's part of the, I would
19:29
say globalist post national ideology, which obviously is
19:33
dominant in in in all across Europe at the highest political
19:39
level and frankly also in Britain.
19:43
Just on that, I watched, I don't know, last year, I think it was
19:48
just a little bit of Eurovision, which is the largest music thing
19:53
in the world. What do you call it?
19:54
Festival. I don't know, music competition.
19:56
It blew my mind how many of them did not look like they come from
20:01
those countries. Yeah.
20:02
Well, I mean, soccer I think is special because of course the
20:08
players in these big teams are paid.
20:12
It's a, it's not an amateur sport.
20:14
And well, to put it very bluntly, the black Africans are
20:19
very athletic and they are probably better football players
20:22
than the whites. So they get recruited that.
20:25
So that's not, that's not quite so much demographic A
20:29
demographic phenomenon as as a financial one.
20:32
Eurovision, I don't know, Eurovision is highly political.
20:35
So it could well be that again, the national teams put forward
20:41
people from migrant backgrounds in order to, you know, uh,
20:45
increase their own kudos or whatever.
20:47
But of course, there's no doubt that there is a demographic
20:50
impact. I, I've said, I said at the
20:53
beginning of, and answer your first question, it's been going
20:55
on for 25 years now. So, uh, you know, a young man
20:59
who arrived 25 years ago is now, uh, you know, well into middle
21:02
age and therefore he's now 45 or whatever, 45 or 50.
21:06
So, so of course these, these things percolate through and you
21:10
can see it again in all countries.
21:13
You can see it in Britain in the political class.
21:15
You can see there are plenty of Indian and African origin,
21:20
members of parliament, ministers and so on.
21:22
You see the same phenomenon across Europe.
21:26
That's inevitable. When you have, as I say, the
21:29
equivalent of 1 large city arriving in your country every
21:33
year, then obviously that will eventually be visible both in
21:37
public life and indeed on the streets, as of course it is in
21:40
places like London and and other big cities which all of which,
21:44
Birmingham, Manchester and so on, are now all.
21:47
All the big cities in the United Kingdom, as Nigel Farage pointed
21:51
out at least a year ago, are in fact now majority migrant.
21:54
We've had statistics on this again for decades.
21:57
When I last lived in London in the 2000s, already by then the
22:02
census showed that white British, that's one of the
22:06
categories, was a minority. And when the period I'm talking
22:10
about, we were 48%. Now 20 years on, I think it's
22:13
gone down to 38% or something like that.
22:16
But it obviously brings up a few philosophical discussions around
22:19
what it means to be of that nation.
22:22
So I'm a South African. If you had to ask me what is a
22:25
South African, I can't answer that question anymore.
22:28
I don't know what. I genuinely don't know the
22:30
answer. Similarly, what does it mean
22:31
then to be British? Well.
22:33
I think you've put your finger on it, but I think it's very
22:36
different, of course, for South Africa, because South Africa is
22:40
a, a new country dating from the beginning of the 20th century,
22:45
whereas France and Britain are very ancient countries and have
22:48
existed for, you know, 1000 years and more.
22:52
And there's no doubt that those countries, to put it again very
23:00
bluntly, have an ethnic base or had an ethnic base.
23:04
And but of course, this has been taboo now.
23:06
It's been taboo to say this in Europe for again for decades,
23:11
but it it to me it's obvious that nations do have an ethnic
23:15
base. The very word nation comes from
23:19
the word to be born. It, it implies where you were
23:22
born. So if you have coming into the
23:24
country people who were born somewhere else, then the
23:30
characteristic the, the, the composition of the nation
23:32
changes. And again, I mentioned ideology.
23:37
For decades in Britain we've had a, a discourse, a political
23:41
discourse about British values and that, you know, migrants are
23:45
supposed to embrace and, and acquiesce in British values.
23:53
Well, firstly, it's not very clear what these British values
23:57
are. Secondly, nations, as I, as I
24:00
say, are not created out of values, they're created out of
24:03
ethnicity. So you have the word England
24:06
comes from very, very ancient pre Norman conquest people.
24:12
The angles, it's the land of the angles.
24:15
The angles are a first Millennium people.
24:20
That's where the that's that's what defines the country, the
24:23
people who live in it. And you know, in all countries
24:27
now, particularly in Britain and France, indeed you've had for
24:31
decades this officially sponsored notion that the
24:34
nation, the state and the nation can continue to exist as it did
24:39
before, even with these industrial levels of
24:42
immigration. And I believe that they can't.
24:46
I don't believe the same nation if, if so in London, if it's
24:50
only 38% of the people are white British.
24:53
If the if in the capital of the country the the indigenous
24:57
people are in a minority, That to me is is very, very serious,
25:02
very, very serious and serious for all kinds of reasons.
25:06
But to say that it can somehow be all laundered through values,
25:12
to me is is quite wrong because I think that ethnicity does
25:15
count. Of course, it's not the only
25:18
thing that matters in the world, but I think it does count.
25:22
And I think that the problems from which all European
25:24
societies currently suffer are to some extent a matter of
25:31
ethnicity. So, for example, we talk about,
25:34
we talk about again, I don't think any of your viewers or any
25:39
of our viewers will be, I hope they won't be shocked.
25:41
But I mean, there are substantial numbers of Chinese
25:45
immigrants all over, all over the world.
25:48
China is a very big country. There are plenty of Chinese
25:50
people in in Britain, but they generally slip under the radar
25:56
because indeed they are not socially, generally speaking, a
26:01
problem. It's as simple as that.
26:05
Just to add to what you're saying, you know, if I said
26:08
Zulu, you immediately know what I'm talking about.
26:10
You're not thinking of a white person because you don't really
26:13
get white Zulus. It's a nation.
26:15
And as it as it happens, the nation tends to congregate in a
26:21
specific part of South Africa just by its own, by its own
26:26
desire. Now this you would see happening
26:29
all all over the world, excepting when it becomes
26:31
artificially induced. Well, I mean you, I, I, I, I
26:38
believe, but again, without being a specialist, that
26:42
ethnicity continues to continues to play the a role similar to
26:47
the one you've described. Look, I don't have figures to
26:51
hand and maybe, maybe I'm wrong, but there surely must be
26:55
sociologists who've worked on this.
26:58
We know that. Let's again, let's take the
27:03
Indian, this Indian population of Britain, the the population
27:06
of Britain that comes from the Indian subcontinent.
27:11
It seems to me, looking at it from some distance, that it's
27:16
very common for Indians. People from Indian or of Indian
27:19
origin, even if they're born in Britain and are essentially
27:22
British, are British, legally speaking.
27:25
It's very common for them to to marry other Indians and to start
27:28
families with other Indians. Again, I don't have the figures,
27:31
but you know, the last, the previous Prime Minister was born
27:34
in Britain, Rishi Sunak, but married in India and married an
27:40
Indian wife. And I think this is quite
27:42
common. And that's an example of how
27:43
ethnicity continues even in the structures of a very substantial
27:49
state like Britain. South Africa, I think is, as far
27:53
as I can tell, it's a much weaker state.
27:55
It's a more recent creation. It doesn't have the same
27:58
homogeneity. Obviously, it doesn't have any
28:00
homogeneity as far as I can tell, ethnic.
28:03
But even in a case like Britain, which theoretically should have
28:08
a national culture, legal and moral and political culture, and
28:13
of course does have there's there, one would expect in those
28:18
circumstances for there to be a great melting pot.
28:21
But in fact, as we know also, by the way, from the United States
28:24
of America, people do group together by ethnicity.
28:29
Not not everybody, of course, but largely speaking they do.
28:33
And that, again, to me is a basic anthropological fact.
28:38
It's not. It's not discriminatory, it's
28:42
not condemnatory. It's On the contrary, a
28:45
description of what seems to me to be human nature.
28:49
I. Was just thinking as you were
28:50
talking, as we are having this discussion, we are very clearly
28:54
walking in tip toes through a minefield and I'm trying to
28:56
figure out John, why. Well, because of the ideology of
29:01
political correctness, you know, the anti racism has been so
29:06
intense that indeed you're right.
29:08
One has to choose one's word very carefully and sort of hedge
29:11
everything round with all kinds of qualifications and perhaps
29:14
not say everything that one is thinking.
29:18
You know, we're all we all, I'm afraid we do live under a very
29:22
restrictive regime. We also, I suppose we're polite
29:27
and we don't want to be rude about other people.
29:30
You know, there may be other factors as well, but there has
29:32
been. That's why I say that the states
29:35
are themselves involved. There has been a massive
29:39
campaign of vilification ever in Britain.
29:43
Everyone knows Enoch Powell's famous, famous speech, which I'm
29:48
not mistaken was already, even in the late 1960s.
29:52
I've forgotten the date of the, of the speech that's usually
29:56
referred to wrongly as rivers of blood.
29:58
It's he didn't say rivers of blood.
30:00
It was, On the contrary, an image from Roman, from ancient
30:04
Roman literature that he was using.
30:06
But anyway, that speech, if I'm not mistaken, was from the 1960s
30:09
when immigration had already started, of course, on a much
30:12
lower scale than it is now. But we're dealing with a
30:15
phenomenon that's been going on forever.
30:16
And he famously was sacked from the cabinet because I think he
30:20
was a cabinet minister at that time and then expelled from the
30:23
Conservative Party and has been demonised ever since, as have
30:27
all other politicians going up to today who campaign against
30:31
immigration. They are all deep.
30:33
Jean Marie Le Pen in France was demonised for decades and and
30:37
even now the the the anti immigrant parties are by and
30:43
large demonised and excluded from power in Germany.
30:45
The IFD, the various states in Germany there are one or two.
30:50
There's AI think it was I forgotten which state?
30:54
One of the states in West Germany has announced that no
30:57
member of the IFD party can work in the state administration.
31:02
There are repeated threats to ban the the party, even though
31:07
of course it's it takes part in elections.
31:10
So the pressure ISM is gigantic. In Austria, the anti immigrant
31:13
party won the last elections but has been excluded from office by
31:17
a coalition of the losers and on and on and on.
31:20
You know, there are some countries where the anti
31:22
immigrant party has managed to gain power.
31:26
The case of the Netherlands is very interesting because in the
31:30
2023 elections the anti immigrant or more precisely anti
31:34
Islam party of Wilders was was the winner and formed the
31:40
government, albeit without the party leader Wilders as a
31:45
minister and in the year in which they governed the
31:50
government collapsed a few weeks ago.
31:53
The numbers of people arriving in the Netherlands has continued
31:59
at the level of well over 100,000.
32:01
In other words, well over the population of a major city like
32:07
I believe Maastricht or yes, Maastricht I think is has a
32:11
population of about the number of people who arrived last year
32:15
under the watch of this supposedly anti immigrant
32:19
government. And that, by the way, also shows
32:22
it's not directly connected to the question of immigration, but
32:24
it it also shows, and of course we saw this in the first Trump
32:28
administration, not specifically on the question of immigration,
32:32
but it also shows how difficult it is to govern countries and
32:36
how deeply embedded inertia is, how deeply embedded the deep
32:41
state is and how difficult it is even for elected officials with
32:46
a clear mandate to to turn things around.
32:51
So is there a disconnect between, say, the EU and
32:57
Europeans? Well, absolutely.
33:00
I mean the EU is disconnected from Europeans structurally and
33:06
on all other issues. But of course on this
33:10
immigration issue, yes, but the disconnect is is also clear at
33:16
national level because as I've said, in most countries the anti
33:21
immigrant political parties are excluded or at least demonised.
33:26
The only exceptions, the only partial exceptions to this have
33:29
been the Netherlands and Austria, which have had the anti
33:32
immigrant party in power for brief periods without much to
33:36
show for it. But yes, the EU is structurally
33:41
disconnected from Europe. But again, it's not, you know,
33:45
I'm, I'm a very strong critic of the EU, but this is a problem
33:50
that cannot unfortunately be blamed only on the European
33:53
Union. It's a problem that is very
33:56
deeply embedded at the state level as well, at national level
33:59
as well. You know, you were talking
34:02
earlier about illegal immigrants just coming in large numbers
34:07
into Europe, but China doesn't have this problem.
34:10
So what is happening at the border of of each of these
34:14
territories then? Well, as I say in within the
34:19
European, within the Schengen space, there are no borders,
34:22
there are no physical borders. So if you're in Romania or
34:27
Bulgaria, you can go to Sweden without being asked to show your
34:30
passport. What happens on the external
34:33
border I suspect? Well, firstly I imagine there's
34:38
corruption. I imagine that you bribe a
34:41
border guard or whatever. Secondly, we know that there is
34:44
a whole apparatus of non governmental organisations, very
34:50
often by the way, funded by states.
34:52
Again, this is a big scandal, but it's well in the public
34:55
domain. Who bring migrants.
34:58
They fish them out. They when I say fish, I don't
35:01
mean that they've drowned or whatever, but they collect them
35:05
or this again, this has been going on for years.
35:07
I'm sure, I'm sure people listening to us know about this.
35:10
They certainly should. They, they, these non
35:12
governmental organisations sail close to the Libyan coast.
35:17
They find a dinghy, they put the people from the dinghy onto a
35:21
proper ship and they bring them over to Italy.
35:24
So that's been part of the thing.
35:26
And these NGOs, many of which, as I say, are funded by states,
35:31
then continue their action, for example, preventing
35:39
deportations. So you have this again, it's one
35:42
of these big structural issues which for some reason seems to
35:47
be very difficult to to dismantle, whereby this is the
35:53
case in France for example, but I'm sure it's the case in many
35:56
other European countries. The state funds non governmental
36:00
organisations whose principal activity is to stick spokes in
36:05
the wheels of what the state is doing.
36:08
So for example, to to give legal aid to people who are contesting
36:14
their deportation order. This is one of the crazy things.
36:18
These organisations are generally state funded.
36:22
So you know, the answer to your question is multiple and again,
36:25
famously these things. I hope your, I hope our
36:28
listeners and viewers know this, but the head, or at least a
36:33
senior figure in the European Union's border organisation,
36:38
Frontex, resigned a year or two ago and then stood as a
36:44
candidate and I believe has now been elected to the European
36:47
Parliament. Because when he took office, he
36:51
said, right, let's really sort this illegal immigration out.
36:54
Let's make Frontex do what it was supposed to do.
36:57
And he was told quite specifically by, I believe the
37:00
European Commissioner involved in immigration that this was
37:03
absolutely not what what was going to happen.
37:07
And On the contrary, Frontex was just a smokescreen to
37:11
essentially permit or at least or maybe even encourage mass
37:15
migration for the reasons I've given the argument.
37:18
The immigrationist lobby is very powerful with economic and
37:22
ideological arguments. No discussion about the fall of
37:29
Europe can be had unless we also bring in a fundamental aspect of
37:35
Europe and that is Christianity. My wife asked me a very
37:38
interesting question the other day.
37:40
She asked me if I think the implosion of Europe has anything
37:46
to do with perhaps the decrease in Christianity, the rise in
37:49
atheism. The Church of England, which is
37:53
effectively the largest head of Protestant Christianity
37:58
worldwide, doesn't seem to be doing much.
38:00
You know something about the Vatican.
38:02
Do you think the Vatican's doing anything?
38:07
Well, firstly, the, it's, it's not strictly speaking correct to
38:14
ask about the Vatican because the Catholic Church, yes, of
38:20
course, the papacy ultimately appoints bishops and so on and
38:24
has has considerable power. But the again, it's a bit like
38:29
your question about the European Union.
38:30
You know, the problem is also at the level of bishops in all the
38:33
various different countries. But since you do ask about the
38:38
Vatican, I think it's, it's, it's worth remarking on the fact
38:42
that the last two, the present Pope and the previous Pope have
38:47
of course not been Europeans. And this is a, an important
38:52
phenomenon, if only on the symbolic level, because whereas
38:56
for 2000 years popes were always Europeans, and indeed for many,
39:01
many, many centuries they were Italians, That stopped of course
39:05
with John Paul the Second, the first Polish Pope.
39:08
And then since then there hasn't been an Italian.
39:10
But now the papacy, the papacy of Leo, Leo the 14th and of Pope
39:16
Francis before him have symbolised the fact that the
39:21
Catholic Church is of course a world, a very, very substantial
39:24
worldwide organisation with enormous rises, I believe, or
39:30
certainly increases in religious observance in the what we call
39:36
the third world. So in Africa, for example, and
39:38
in Latin America and therefore not in Europe.
39:43
And so the focus of the Vatican of the papacy is indeed much,
39:50
much wider than Europe. And for that matter, the, the
39:53
previous Pope seemed to have a certain contempt for Europe.
39:56
As a as a matter of fact, he certainly didn't defend when he,
40:00
when he went once to I think Lampedusa, he brought back in
40:05
his plane a number of migrants and they were all Muslims.
40:09
And obviously they were not Europeans, obviously by
40:12
definition. So what is the connection with
40:17
Christianity? These are very, very big
40:19
questions. There's a very well known French
40:23
sociologist, Emmanuel Todd. Who is very widely regarded in
40:28
France. He's mainly famous for having
40:32
published in the 1980s a book saying that the Soviet Union
40:37
would collapse, a prediction that he was able to make because
40:41
he could see the declining birth rates in the Soviet Union.
40:45
Many statistics in the Soviet Union were falsified, but it's
40:49
very difficult to falsify demographic statistics.
40:52
And he looked at these and concluded that something was
40:55
very badly wrong. And he's since published a
40:59
number of other books, always with a demographic angle, and
41:04
his most recent book is called The Defeat of the West.
41:11
And in that book he talks about all kinds of things.
41:15
He talks about the war in Ukraine, he talks about
41:17
disindustrialisation, but he has a very arresting chapter on what
41:23
he calls nihilism, Western or specifically European nihilism
41:28
and what he means. He is not a religious man at
41:31
all. He is a an old fashioned liberal
41:34
left liberal, ultimately Emmanuel Todd, very brilliant,
41:37
but absolutely not, you know, on on a sort of some sort of right
41:42
wing conservative trajectory. On the contrary, but he, as I
41:46
say, as a non believing person, has identified from a
41:51
sociological point of view the collapse of Christian observance
41:58
in Europe and he talks about various stages.
42:02
He talks about zombie Christianity, by which he meant
42:07
that people would get married in church and that they would go to
42:10
funerals with a priest and so on, but they didn't practise in
42:14
any real sense. But then nonetheless, the church
42:16
still, if you like, marked the the sort of the great moments in
42:20
life and death. And he says we've gone beyond
42:24
that in Europe. We've gone beyond zombie
42:26
Christianity to 0 Christianity and to what he, as I say, calls
42:32
nihilism. And I, who am a philosopher who
42:35
studied philosophy, I find this remark about nihilism absolutely
42:41
fascinating. He doesn't actually develop it
42:43
very far, but it's quite clear that he knows what he's talking
42:46
about. He's understood the problem.
42:48
And in an interview I saw of here, I've read the book,
42:52
unfortunately, I think I gave my copy to someone, possibly even
42:54
to TRV actually, but so I haven't been able to recheck the
42:59
book. But in an interview he gave, he
43:01
said, what do I mean by nihilism?
43:03
Well, what I mean is that people do not know I'm quoting him why
43:08
they are on Earth. They don't know why they're
43:11
here. And that's a really a, a very
43:14
good way of describing it actually.
43:19
You know, people don't know. I mean, in a way, I suppose none
43:24
of us knows, but they don't even ask.
43:26
They don't even think they don't have any.
43:29
There's no reflection if you like.
43:31
There's no it's regarded. That's why he talks about it
43:33
being 0 Christianity. And the reason why I'm
43:38
mentioning this, it's a sorry, it's a rather a long answer, but
43:41
is that, as I say, he links this to the overall decline and
43:44
ultimately postulates it as the root cause of the decline.
43:49
And I and I think he has identified, albeit as a
43:52
sociologist, not as a theologian, something which to
43:57
me is absolutely obvious. I I remember, by the way, more
44:01
than 10 years ago, 15 years ago, hearing Viktor Orban, the Prime
44:05
Minister of Hungary, in a big political speech, say that our
44:11
adversaries have spiritual values and that's what makes
44:14
them strong. They have.
44:16
And he was, I imagine, referring mainly to the, the, the Muslim
44:21
world. And I think that's right.
44:24
I think if populations cease to have any spiritual dimensions,
44:32
any, I'm not trying to sound slushy or touchy feely or
44:36
whatever, but if they, if they do not know why they are on
44:40
earth, if they do not think that their life has any real greater
44:45
meaning other than whatever consumption or, then it seems to
44:51
me obvious that they will be weak in all kinds of other
44:55
areas. Strength comes from a belief in
44:59
transcendence and if that belief disappears, if that belief also
45:04
in the future and in, you know, the, the ongoing future
45:08
generations and so on. If that all vanishes, as it
45:10
seems to have done, then I think our societies are are fatally
45:16
weakened and I and I so I encourage people.
45:19
Unfortunately, I don't know if the book is translate.
45:21
I don't think it's translated into English.
45:22
So it'll be difficult for them to read The defeat of the West
45:26
la de fete de Loccidon. But it's a, a remarkable book.
45:29
And indeed, I would like to, if I find the time, I would like to
45:33
develop this theme from a more philosophical and even
45:36
theological perspective. I, I'm, I'm not going to promise
45:38
anything because I've, I've got more unwritten books on my
45:41
computer than than I care to admit to.
45:44
But I I gave a lecture about it recently and that's something
45:48
I'd like to start working on a bit more myself.
45:51
I must just apologise. I have recorded this entire
45:55
conversation using the wrong microphone, so we'll do a whole
45:58
lot of editing afterwards to make me sound better.
46:00
I've been clearing my throat and I just realised now that would
46:02
have been off putting. I've got a frog in my throat
46:04
throughout this entire conversation, so my apologies
46:07
John. It's OK, I.
46:09
Didn't hear it but I too have been coughing from I think
46:13
pollen or something. When I was in Europe a couple of
46:17
years ago, I noticed there were a lot of churches and cathedrals
46:22
that were just empty. Well, that's right.
46:25
And I mean it depends. I think there is some variation.
46:31
France oddly enough has, is there is a certain growth at the
46:37
moment that people have remarked on an increase in the number of
46:40
adult baptisms quite, quite significant percentages.
46:46
I've forgotten the figures, but I think 20% increase on the
46:51
previous year, but the absolute figures are very low.
46:54
So we're only dealing with a few 10s of thousands of people.
46:58
But yes, broadly speaking, you're quite right.
47:00
And I've indicated in my the answer to your last question
47:04
that my belief that nihilism, if that's what it is, 0.
47:10
Christianity 0 Thinking about the transcendent, about the
47:14
afterlife, about your soul, about all these theological
47:17
issues, that is, in my view, a source of weakness nationally.
47:23
That can only translate into weakness, it seems to me.
47:28
But I, again, I'm sure that many of our listeners will agree to
47:31
me that just on a basic sociological level, I mean, of
47:35
course, going to church is not a social activity.
47:37
It's a religious activity, but it also has a social dimension.
47:42
People chat as they're leaving the church service.
47:44
They know each other, they, they form a little community and so
47:47
on. And, and yes, if the churches
47:49
are empty, as they are in large parts of Europe, and of course
47:54
in some countries, the decline has been absolutely spectacular.
47:59
I'm thinking of Ireland, for example.
48:01
Ireland, which used to export priests to the entire world, now
48:06
has almost no seminarians left at all.
48:09
And its churches are also largely emptying out.
48:16
I, I, I think I'd like to say one extra thing, which may sound
48:19
a bit crazy, But unfortunately where I think Emmanuel Todd is
48:25
wrong, and again, I apologise because I'm not an expert on
48:30
this and I haven't worked on it properly, is that he doesn't,
48:35
not being a theologian and not being a, a man of faith, he
48:38
perhaps doesn't see the worst consequences of this.
48:42
Zero. And the worst consequences are
48:46
that nature upholds a vacuum and that other things fill the void
48:52
of nihilism. You know, there are, there are
48:58
Satanists, there are people who are into really kooky stuff in
49:04
America famously, but I think also in Britain.
49:07
And that aspect to me is, is absolutely terrifying.
49:12
Again, I don't know what kind of levels we're talking about, but
49:17
there is no doubt that that exists.
49:19
It's no, I'm sure it's very small and so on.
49:22
But there are people who, you know, as I say, are into very,
49:27
very strange beliefs indeed. While the churches are empty,
49:32
mosques are filling up. Yes, yes.
49:37
Well, again, that's the story, isn't it, of the last quarter of
49:42
a century. Islam has been growing now for
49:47
at least 1/4 of a century, both in its countries of origin and
49:54
in countries where there are Muslim immigrants.
49:58
When I talk about when I say countries of origin, you look at
50:01
Turkey, for example. Turkey, as far as I know, is a
50:05
much more Muslim country, much more Islamic country than it was
50:11
a couple of generations ago. The Balkans, which I know a bit
50:14
better, religious observance has increased there.
50:19
And this by the way, of course, brings us back to the question
50:24
of immigration, because one of the factors driving religious
50:29
observe Muslim religious observance and one of the
50:32
factors driving other very unpleasant phenomena associated
50:37
with immigration. I'm thinking of sexual
50:39
harassment and rape and sex crimes and so on.
50:43
And, and, and more generally the, the sort of the, the
50:46
sociological problems associated with certain immigrant groups,
50:52
crime, ghettoisation and so on. These things are connected
50:58
because that's why when I referred a moment ago to British
51:02
values, I, I think everybody understood I was, you know, they
51:06
were inverted commas around my use of the word.
51:10
Once again, nature abhors the vacuum.
51:12
And if you are from an immigrant background, your parents or
51:19
grandparents are from wherever, North Africa or the Middle East
51:23
or whatever, that is part of your identity.
51:26
It's part of your it's very difficult to Most people don't
51:29
want. Why would they?
51:30
Why should they? They don't want to abandon their
51:33
ethnic identity. We all know the phenomenon of
51:36
adopted children. They want to find out who their
51:38
real parents are. Those people know that they have
51:44
another identity. They are interested in it.
51:47
It gives them. It's special.
51:49
It's part of their physical composition.
51:53
But if they are in a society which is completely nihilistic
51:59
and they come from a society which has some sense of cohesion
52:03
and values or whatever, in this case, let's say through Islam,
52:06
then their attitude towards the society which they find
52:09
themselves in will become one of contempt and anger and
52:13
frustration and alienation. And that I think is very
52:17
definitely one of the problems associated with with migration.
52:22
It, it both explains the rise in Muslim observance in immigrant
52:29
in countries, so in Europe. And it also explains the
52:33
hostility I've got, again, obviously this is not the
52:37
majority, but there is, we all know the Islamist movement and
52:39
so on. There have been plenty of
52:40
Islamic attacks, terrorist attacks in in Europe over recent
52:45
decades. We've only just recently
52:48
celebrated or commemorated 20 years since the horrible attacks
52:52
in London in 2005. These things are part of a
52:57
cycle. So if the society is nihilistic,
53:00
then religious observance increases on the other side, in
53:04
this case on the Muslim side. And so does hatred.
53:07
So can hatred for the society in question, contempt and hatred.
53:12
Douglas Murray wrote a book a few years ago.
53:14
You might remember the Strange death of Europe.
53:17
There's a greed I found. So Europe is clearly on life
53:21
support. Is it able to recover?
53:28
It's not absolutely clear. I mean, I, I hesitate to say,
53:33
no, it can't recover, but only because of looking at history
53:38
over the very long, long stretch, you know, countries, I,
53:45
I, my, my feeling is that countries don't completely
53:48
disappear. They can degrade, they can go
53:52
down a very long way, but they don't completely disappear.
53:56
I mean, if we take Russia, for example, Russia had 70 years of
54:00
communism. It was in a terrible state in
54:05
the at the end of the 1980s and then throughout into the 1990s,
54:10
and yet that country undoubtedly has recovered absolutely
54:14
spectacularly. Not all problems, of course,
54:17
have been solved, but there's really no comparison between
54:20
Russia in 1991 and Russia Today. On the contrary, it's a
54:25
prosperous country with a lot of economic growth and all the rest
54:28
of it. And also, I believe some
54:30
favourable demographic tendencies.
54:33
So I'm, I'm hesitant to say that it can completely, that Europe
54:37
can completely disappear also because I think it'll, it might
54:42
vary. So France, for instance, might
54:44
be slightly, slightly less bad in some ways than Germany, for
54:47
example, or, or Italy or whatever.
54:50
But I but yes, I think the situation is exceptionally
54:55
grave. The immigration issue that we
54:57
started off is a is a problem that won't go away.
55:02
People, there are a few groups talking about remigration.
55:07
They want to encourage people to go back to their countries of
55:09
origin. They want to change the benefits
55:12
system so that there's less incentive for people from
55:15
migrant backgrounds to stay and so on.
55:18
This is a very minority view and it's never been tried.
55:22
And even if these people were able to get into power, would it
55:25
work And so on. That's a structural problem.
55:28
That's a physical problem, this presence of a huge foreign
55:33
population on your territory. And then the other structural
55:37
problem, which I think makes the outlook for Europe very, very
55:41
bleak indeed, is of course, debt.
55:43
We haven't talked about this, but all, all the Western
55:46
countries and all the European countries are massively in debt,
55:51
massively in debt. They are.
55:52
They are in debt to levels that they will never be able to
55:56
repay. The the French debt has
56:00
increased by 1000 billion under Emmanuel Macron by by 30%, from
56:06
2 trillion to 3 trillion. These are figures that are
56:11
almost impossible to to imagine really.
56:14
And of course, that means that that's taxation for many
56:18
generations ahead that will have to pay for that debt.
56:22
And it essentially means deferred taxation for future
56:26
generations or inflation of the currency, both of which are are
56:30
catastrophic for the future. So I'm afraid the outlook is
56:34
extremely bleak and I don't really know what Europe can do
56:38
about it. John, you're such a ray of
56:41
sunshine. I was hoping for something
56:42
positive to end the conversation on.
56:49
Well, you know, I've mentioned these sort of figures in France
56:52
where I live. So there are here and there
56:55
little little inflexions, little positive points there have been
57:04
on the immigration question. You know, Farage in Britain is
57:08
seems to be doing well. It's difficult to see how long
57:14
the cordon sanitaire can hold against these right wing anti
57:19
immigrant parties, or at least anti immigrant parties.
57:23
But we're not there yet, you know, we're not there yet.
57:25
The Dutch example, the Dutch experience has been extremely
57:28
disappointing. The Austrian and German and
57:32
French examples are not encouraging.
57:34
I think the French political system will manage to regenerate
57:39
itself. I don't see a victory for the
57:42
anti immigrant party here in France.
57:45
So, you know, I think, I think we have to be realistic.
57:50
I, I, and I also think again, this is 1 of Thierry Boude's
57:54
big, big, big points. And I, I heard him say it again
57:58
in Vienna last week, is that change doesn't come from
58:02
politics. Again, the Dutch example shows
58:04
this. Politics has only very limited
58:06
capacities for effecting political change, and instead
58:13
political change comes from bigger things, the kind of
58:15
things that I mentioned at the beginning, financial interests,
58:19
economic interests, and so on. And of course ideology,
58:22
education, ideology, cultural hegemony and so on.
58:26
And there is, I'm afraid, a huge amount of work to do in all
58:29
those areas. Would you say that politics is
58:33
downstream from culture? Yes, absolutely, absolutely.
58:38
And I'm lucky to teach in a university where, where we have
58:42
freedom and where there is no ideology, there's no, you know,
58:47
political correctness or whatever.
58:49
But we are, you know, they, we have 2000 students out of, I
58:53
don't know how many hundreds of thousands of students there are
58:55
in the whole of France. It's a very minor phenomenon and
58:58
indeed probably a unique one in the whole of Europe.
59:01
So unfortunately, the challenges in the cultural area are
59:05
gigantic as well. How can my UK column audience
59:10
follow either you or FED? Yeah.
59:14
So the main one would be FED international.com, which is our
59:20
web page, but also my we have obviously an X channel FED
59:25
Underscore Intl and my own one which from memory is John
59:30
Underscore Lockland on X. So those would be the main
59:35
places. And we're also on things like
59:37
Instagram as well. We have the weekly show that I
59:39
do with you, the forum which is on our web page and also of
59:43
course on X, but also on all the other platforms.
59:46
Just for clarity, FVD not FEDFVDV is.
59:52
The Dutch for for Forum for Democracy.
59:55
We kept the Dutch acronym because that's how political
1:00:00
parties are referred to in the Netherlands.
1:00:02
So FVD John. Knockland, thank you for joining
1:00:05
me in the trenches. Thank you.
1:00:06
John, it's great talking to you. All the best.