A group of five Arab migrants have been arrested and charged with aggravated assault in Sweden after filming themselves pushing a Ukrainian refugee into a river and watching the man fight for his life in the freezing cold water.
The incident occurred on Nov. 22 last year when the Ukrainian victim, working as a truck driver for a Polish hauling company, decided to stop at Sydhamnen in Malmö and opted to try his hand at some late-night fishing in the nearby river.
The truck driver’s dash cam showed a group of Arab males approaching the man and engaging him in a conversation. The Ukrainian refugee appeared to not understand the group of migrants and shows them the fish he had caught, before proceeding to turn around and continue fishing.
At this moment, one of the Arab men powerfully shoves the truck driver in the back, causing him to fall into the extremely cold river. Later, when the police measured the temperature, they learned the water was just 8°C (46.4°F) — considered to be dangerously cold, with even the most extreme-cold swimmers at risk of hypothermia if exposed to such a temperature for more than a few minutes.
One of the Arab migrants filmed the assault, and the men can be heard laughing uncontrollably as their victim struggles and splashes in the water. With no ladder to assist his escape, he can be heard screaming desperately for help as his heavy, wet clothes pull him under the surface.
Eventually, some of the group helped him back onto the platform, where they left him for dead and drove off in a vehicle. The man was then assisted by three witnesses who heard his cries for help and contacted the emergency services.
The Ukrainian truck driver’s dash cam caught the moment the migrant group approached their victim.
When tended to by emergency responders, the victim’s body temperature was just 34 degrees, which is classed as hypothermia.
When interviewed by police, the Ukrainian refugee said he had been scared the migrant group would kill him.
The car was swiftly located by authorities, and its occupants were arrested and charged with aggravated assault. During police questioning, one member of the group insisted they were only “having fun” and did not intend for the victim to fall into the water.
The five migrants are all between the ages of 20 and 23. Four of them are Iraqi nationals who arrived in Sweden between 2007 and 2014 and who all now possess Swedish citizenship. The fifth arrived in Sweden from Syria in 2014 and obtained Swedish citizenship in 2016.
The Samnytt news outlet reported that the man who pushed the victim into the freezing water, Hussein Fakhir Ayyal Al-Rubaye, has already been convicted of multiple crimes in Sweden and had already been convicted of a crime prior to obtaining his Swedish citizenship in 2018.
The Swedish prosecutor handling the case accused the group of being “together and in agreement” in their joint attack on the truck driver and showed “special recklessness and brutality” in their treatment of their victim.
A “transgender” male has admitted to abducting and repeatedly sexually abusing a child while dressed as a woman.
Andrew Miller, a “transgender” male who reportedly styles himself using the name Amy George and was known for being the proprietor of the local butcher shop, has reportedly admitted to abducting a child while dressed as a woman, before repeatedly sexually assaulting her for more than a day.
The biological male was reportedly charged with the crime earlier this year, now admitting his guilt at a hearing of the High Court in Edinburgh via videolink.
According to a report by state-owned broadcaster the BBC, Miller had originally picked up the young girl in his Jaguar car after she was reportedly unable to get the bus home.
NEW Andrew Miller, 53, also known as Amy George, has admitted abducting a primary schoolgirl while dressed as a woman before sexually assaulting her at his home in the Scottish Borders. https://t.co/Hav6EX3bcspic.twitter.com/mkOgHosM0N
The girl described herself as accepting the offer because she was cold, and that Miller looked like a “lady” who was non-threatening.
Instead of taking the girl home, however, Miller kidnapped the child, bringing her to his three-bedroom bungalow in the village of Gattonside.
He is then said to have kept her confined to a bedroom in the building’s attic, where he repeatedly sexually assaulted her over a period of 27 hours.
Eventually, by what has been described as “complete fortune”, the child managed to escape the locked bedroom after Miller fell asleep before contacting the police.
Upon arrival, law enforcement found Miller asleep wearing a bra, silicone breasts, female pants and tights.
The proceeding judge has described the actions of Miller as “abhorrent”, describing him as “every parent’s worst nightmare”, while police have been forced to board up the sex offender’s butcher shop for fear locals could throw a brick through one of its windows.
Miller is now scheduled to be sentenced sometime in August. Britain’s Sky News reports that when they asked Scotland’s leader Humza Yousaf whether Miller would be placed in a male or female president, the answer was unclear.
MP Sarah Tanzilli (Renaissance) denounces the holding of the second round of the presidential elections in a room connected to a mosque in Décines-Charpieu.
[…] Sarah Tanzilli also considers that the choice of this polling station allowed the creation of a “climate of fear” during the first round of voting, pointing in particular to the threats to which the representatives of the opposition parties to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan were subjected. She recalls that several of them had the tyres of their vehicles slashed and, above all, that four assessors from the left-green YSP party were violently attacked on Tuesday May 9 as they were leaving the polling station after the polls closed. “Last week’s acts of violence have an irrevocable effect on the loss of confidence of some Turkish-French citizens to go to the polls in this environment,” confides the MP, explaining that she is “thinking especially of those who are otherwise Kurds, Alevis or Armenians”.
The mayor of Décines-Charpieu, Laurence Fautra (LR), contacted by Le Point, is also “outraged” that the election took place in a mosque in her commune. “Neither the consulate, nor the prefecture, nor the association running the mosque had the decency to warn us,” she frets, stressing that the organisation of the first round of voting “led to numerous disturbances that the town hall had to deal with”, mainly due to “wild parking. The city police issued over 200 parking violation tickets and towed away vehicles that blocked the parking spaces of businesses in the area”. Le Point
After the shocking massacre in Herten, people are horrified: A Turk is suspected of having killed his own daughters (5 and 8) and their mother (37)!
Previously, an acquaintance (29) of the mother had been worried. The landlord of the flat in which the family lived was informed, went to see what was going on – and, according to the newspaper BILD, was given a hard-boiled excuse by the suspected father at the door! The girls and their mother had presumably already been dead for a long time …
After the autopsies of the victims, further investigations are necessary to clarify the exact causes of death. During his interrogation, the 35-year-old partner and father of the children confessed to having suffocated his wife and daughters. The motive he gave was a previous quarrel between him and the woman. On Thursday, May 18, 23, the 35-year-old was brought before a magistrate at the Recklinghausen district court at the request of the Bochum public prosecutor’s office. An arrest warrant for triple manslaughter was issued against the 35-year-old. No further information can be released at this time, as the exact sequence of events is still the subject of ongoing investigations.
After the release of ‘The Kerala Story,’ several people have come forward to talk about and share their stories on grave issues like forceful conversion to Islam and love jihad, which was dismissed as a ‘hoax’ all these years. On May 16, Tuesday, OpIndia met some victims from Kerala, who fell prey to this systematic crime that has been flagrantly taking place in various parts of the country with assistance from various Islamist organizations.
Shruti, a Hindu and a native of Kasargod in Kerala was among the females interviewed by OpIndia to discuss this practice of brainwashing and Love Jihad. She told OpIndia that she was radicalized to the extent that she wouldn’t have shied away from killing a person who objected to the ideology and did not convert to Islam.
Shruti reported attending a conversion center in Malappuram, Kerala, where the preachers brainwashed them not just against Hinduism but also against the country. They were indoctrinated to believe that Bharat (India) is not their home since it belongs to the ‘Kaafirs.’
“They told us how we must disseminate Islam throughout the country and turn the country to Darul Islam. They are so polished and have such exceptional oratory abilities that those who listen to them start believing their sermons. You start to believe that it is impossible for them to coexist with the kaafirs. I became so radicalized that I wanted to convert everyone I knew to Islam. I was actually prepared to even kill those who refused to convert to Islam,” Shruti remarked as she recounted her journey and gave insights about the horrific and grave problem of conversion that has been plaguing Indian society.
Throwing light on how a systematic syndicate operates to execute this ‘organized crime’ with financial and logistical support from various Islamist organizations, Shruti explained how this cartel follows a premeditated step-by-step process to bring vulnerable and ignorant people into the folds of Islam.
“They first identify the girls who do not have too much knowledge about their own religion, in my case Hinduism. They play on this disability and start instigating you against your own religion by asking questions to which we have no answers”, Shruti said.
She described the types of questions they posed to her during the brainwashing process, which caused her to question her own religion. “They made fun of our deities by saying things like, Do you worship Lord Ram? Why did he abandon his wife? Is this his attitude towards women? You worship Krishna, a womanizer? Why do you pray monkeys?”
Shruti went on to describe how they question their targets’ religious practices, and when they see the target has no idea how to respond, they begin condemning their faith even more passionately and dangerously, creating a sense of inferiority complex in the individual. Shruti mentioned that they put you in a position where you develop such an aversion to your faith that you don’t even want to consider or talk about it.
When the victim reaches this level, they paint such an appealing portrayal of their ideas, culture, and religion that the person gets completely riveted. As the victim reaches an addiction stage, they begin injecting their ideological views into your system like slow poison, Shruti described the systematic and methodical method that these cartels operating in various parts of the country, particularly in South India, employ to carry out this organized crime.
This organized process of indoctrination in the name of Islam, which Shruti spoke about, is a raging issue that has been very well depicted in Sudipto Sen’s The Kerala Story which has been breaking all box office records since it hit the theatres on May 5, 2023. The movie tells the story of ‘ISIS brides’ from Kerala, women from the state who had joined ISIS and married ISIS terrorists in Syria, including Hindu and Christian women who had converted to Islam.
Though the movie is based on true incidents, since the release of its trailer, opposition particularly the left and the Congress, and Islamist groups, have been attempting to delegitimize the movie.
They went on to label it as propaganda cinema and tried to prevent its screening. Despite the criticism, however, the movie has inspired people to promote ‘The Kerala Story’ among Hindu women on their own. It has also made people realize how they didn’t recognize the efforts to influence them earlier.
OpIndia reported on Anagha Jaigopal and Vishali Shetty, two such women who narrated their experiences of conversion and coming back to the Sanatana Dharma. They described in detail their experience and testified that the film depicts the reality of what is happening in not just Kerala or other states in the country but across the globe.
OpIndia also wrote about one such Hindu woman who, after seeing the movie, shared her own life experience with the media. The woman said that indoctrination in the name of Islam documented in the movie is not a figment of anyone’s imagination but a real problem raging across not only India but the world. She confessed how she herself had fallen prey to this trap when she was in college.
The British government has been paying convicted Albanian criminals to go back to their home country — even commuting the sentences of those currently incarcerated — yet many of those deported intend to return to Britain within days.
The findings are from an investigative report by the BBC into the effectiveness of the U.K. government’s deportation schemes after Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s pledged to ramp up the expulsion of foreign nationals living in Britain illegally.
Following a joint cooperation agreement between Albanian and U.K. authorities last December, the Home Office recently announced that over 1,000 people have been returned to the Balkan nation on deportation flights. Approximately half of these have voluntarily returned while others, including failed asylum seekers and convicted criminals, have been forcibly removed.
The BBC interviewed several occupants of these deportation flights to learn more about the circumstances surrounding their removal and learned that some individuals who had been incarcerated in Britain had been offered up to £1,500 and a reduced sentence in order to leave.
One Albanian convict, who spoke with the broadcaster on the condition of anonymity, revealed he was released from prison just two years into a six-year sentence for drug offenses. Upon arriving back in Albania, he will be a free man.
“The immigration officer came to see us. They ask if you want to go back or stay in the U.K. They explained that if you go back, they take one year off from your sentence,” he told the BBC reporter. The individual would have been eligible for a parole hearing after serving three years of his sentence.
Yet despite the generous incentives to leave Britain, some of those taking the taxpayer-funded handout plan to return within a matter of days, and they claim there is nothing the U.K. authorities can do to stop them.
The public broadcaster spoke with two other men on the deportation flights who said they would be returning to Britain imminently.
One individual revealed he had already traveled back and forth to the U.K. on three occasions, telling the interviewer: “It’s not a problem for me. I’ll go back whenever I want.”
The Albanian government has recently committed to implementing further border checks to catch deportees attempting to return to Britain, but in reality, there is little desire by the authorities to fulfill such obligations.
“It’s not possible to put a chip in everyone to follow where they go,” said Albania’s Interior Minister Bledar Çuçi. “If there are people with criminal records, especially in trafficking, then police will be on alert. But in general, the people who return are free citizens in Albania,” he added.
The influx of illegal Albanian immigrants heading for Britain over the past two years has caused tension between the Albanian government and the U.K.’s governing Conservative party, which has vowed to combat the rise in illegal immigration.
With a record number of migrants arriving by small boat across the English Channel from France last year, reports revealed that 4 in 10 of all new arrivals were from Albania. The majority of these newcomers immediately claim asylum. This provides them with protection and a requirement to accommodate and feed them at the taxpayers’ expense while their application is considered, a process that, with the current backlog, can easily take over two years.
Albanian citizens have the right to travel freely to countries such as France and Belgium, which provide the perfect location to enter Britain in small boats via the English Channel.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman has described the assault on England’s southern shore as an “invasion” and insisted that Britain should not be a safe port for Albanian criminals. Her remarks were condemned by Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama as “very, very disgraceful” and had contributed to “a very low point” in the relations between the two countries.
An ongoing exodus from the Catholic Church in Germany has produced a financial and membership crisis, a new report asserts.
According to a report appearing in Kirche und Recht, the German Catholic Church stands to lose some 40,000 properties by 2060, including rectories, community centers, and churches.
The Catholic Church has been in freefall in Germany for years, as its ever more progressive leadership has all but abandoned the countercultural mission of preaching the gospel in favor of trendy social engagement and moral permissiveness.
In March, papal biographer George Weigel warned the “synodal way” undertaken by the German Catholic bishops looks oddly like a second Protestant Reformation.
The Catholic Church in Germany has exploited Pope Francis’ call to undertake a listening process called the “Synodal Way,” using the pretext of dialogue to propose radical changes to established Church teaching, Weigel noted in a Wall Street Journalop-ed.
For instance, the German Synodal Way decided “to rewrite the Catholic Church’s sexual ethic and sacramental practice by authorizing the formal, liturgical blessing of same-sex unions and calling for women to be admitted to holy orders,” Weigel wrote.
What is unfolding in Germany is akin to “the 16th-century Lutheran Reformation: apostasy,” Weigel proposed, which has led some in Rome to refer to the Synodal Way as the “Suicidal Way.”
In a still-relevant 2015 article titled “The Bleeding German Church,” Vatican journalist Marco Tosatti explored the underlying causes of mass defections from the Catholic Church in Germany, and settled upon two primary causes.
The first was a close alliance between church and state, with believers paying a special church tax, leading to a very wealthy church unwilling to challenge its members.
The Church in Germany is the second largest employer in the country, with only the government employing more people. Many Church employees are non-Christians whose relationship with the church is merely formal.
The second cause of the mass departure of German Catholics has been a progressive trend away from traditional Christian belief toward a liberal position often associated with mainline Protestantism, Tosatti reported.
As a body, the German Church has become known as one of the most progressive in the world, a trend that has made the Church ever more irrelevant for many.
A 2016 academic study found that churches that embrace conservative theology tend to draw more adherents than those that have fallen into progressivism.
The Canadian study, published in the Review of Religious Research, found that successful churches “held more firmly to the traditional beliefs of Christianity and were more diligent in things like prayer and Bible reading.”
The leadership of the German Catholic Church has been in quasi open rebellion for years, ignoring Vatican decrees, unilaterally relaxing sacramental discipline, and watering down the Church’s moral teachings.
In 2019, the German Catholic bishops’ conference issued a statement declaring homosexuality to be just as “normal” as heterosexuality while adding that adultery can no longer be considered a “serious sin.”
Both the homosexual and heterosexual orientation “belong to the normal forms of a sexual predisposition that cannot and should not be changed by any specific socialization,” the bishops’ communiqué stated.
In open opposition to the Vatican, the German Church has partnered with the Central Committee of German Catholics, “a lay group that has demanded the ordination of women, an end to clerical celibacy, the blessing of same-sex unions by the Church and rethinking of all Catholic teachings on sexuality,” they stated.
Reacting to the most recent report, Matthias Kopp, spokesman for the German bishops’ conference, toldOur Sunday Visitor (OSV) that the situation is dire.
“It’s a fact that church attendance has strongly reduced, with a significant and steady decline in priestly vocations and church membership, and an increasing loss of financial income,” Kopp said.
“However, the closures have not only affected parish churches — the abandonment of monasteries, as well as of church and charitable institutions, has also led to empty religious houses, pilgrimage centers and chapels,” he added.
Kopp said that some churches “are either no longer needed at all, or not fully needed, while many congregations are already forced to keep their churches closed outside of Mass times.”
“The church has to accommodate the situation of its members, as well as of its buildings, finances and services such as Caritas. This means changes are necessary, and these are the responsibility of parishes and dioceses,” he said.
The Catholic bishops of the Scandinavian countries presented an open five-page letter criticizing transgender ideology on March 21, just before Easter. The document primarily expresses care and advice and was read aloud in Catholic churches in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland. Cardinal Anders Arborelius, Bishop of Stockholm, is one of the signatories of the document.
Publications of this kind are known as pastoral letters because their purpose is to show care and provide advice based on Christian conviction. The thoughts in the “Letter on Human Sexuality”, which is the official title, can hardly be doubted, but the Swedish expressing them is linguistically somewhat intricate. The letter was originally written in Norwegian and has now been published in eight languages: three Scandinavian and five European. No other church institution in Scandinavia has published a similar statement to date. Some of the thoughts expressed are recognizable from papal statements.
Initially, it is stated that the perceptions of what it means to be a human, and thus a sexual being, are changing. “What is taken for granted today may be rejected tomorrow.” Because of this, they claim to feel a responsibility towards “the Lord, ourselves, and our world to explain what we believe and why we believe it is true”.
The bishops see their task as showing care by “pointing towards the peaceful, life-giving way of Christ’s commandments,” which may seem narrow at first for those who want to follow it but “widens as we advance”.
The purpose of the manifesto is therefore to present the fundamental principles of Christian anthropology (view of humanity) and do so in a spirit of friendly dialogue readiness and respect for different thinking.
The problem situation discussed today
Already at the beginning, the letter refers to the rainbow, which in our time is alleged to be the symbol of a movement that is both political and cultural. To the extent that the rainbow flag is perceived as a message about the equal value of all people and their longing to be seen, the church shares and agrees with this message, according to the statement.
In a way that is customary when the church enters into dialogue, they recognize at the beginning “all that is noble in the aspirations of this movement”. It is further stated that “the Church condemns unjust discrimination of all kinds, including in terms of gender and orientation”.
Once this has been established, the bishops move on to critical views of the modern rainbow movement and transgender ideology. They argue that it “promotes a view of human nature that removes the embodied integrity of the person, as if physical sex were irrelevant”.
They particularly protest against the perception that gender is irrelevant being forced upon children as something they have to decide for themselves. According to the letter, this becomes a heavy burden, something minors are not prepared for.
The bishops find it strange that our society, which is so intensely body-conscious, in fact takes the body lightly and refuses to perceive bodily sex as important for identity. They protest against the idea that “the only ‘I’ that matters is the one produced through a self-constructed subjective self-perception”. Against this, they posit that according to Christian faith, the human being is created in the image of God, something that not only refers to the soul. The body also essentially belongs to the person. The unity of soul and body in creation is eternal.
Identity conflicts are also part of the life of faith
After these fundamental beliefs have been established, the letter addresses the issue of identity conflicts. The bishops recognize that human self-perception often involves contradictions and wounds, as well as a focus on what we are not, “on gifts that we have not received, on feelings or affirmations that are missing in our lives”. Many are forced to struggle with themselves. The integration of masculine and feminine traits within ourselves can be difficult. The Church wishes to encompass and comfort all who experience such difficulties. Those who seek personal integrity are said to be “worthy of respect, and deserve encouragement”.
The Apostle Paul’s statement “By the grace of God I am what I am” becomes a guiding star in the letter. They assert that the Bible and the lives of the saints show “that our wounds, through grace, become sources of healing for ourselves and others”. The bishops remind that the path to self-acceptance goes through engagement in what is real, i.e., the order that God has given creation.
The rainbow is a biblical symbol of wholeness and blessing
In the biblical story of Noah in Genesis chapters 6-9, a flood is described that drowned all living beings that did not fit in Noah’s ark. After the flood, the rainbow appeared as a sign of the first covenant established between God and all living creatures of the earth. No devastating flood would ever strike again, according to God’s promise. The promise corresponds to demands. God demands righteousness: Humans are called to live in righteousness as a blessing for the earth, to bring joy to one another, revere God, and establish peace.
The letter highlights that God’s image in human nature is revealed in the reciprocity and complementarity between man and woman. Man and woman are created for each other. They have been commanded to be fruitful and have a “longing for love and seek sexual wholeness”. In Holy Scripture, the marriage between man and wife is portrayed as an allegory of God’s communion with humanity. It is emphasized that the point of the church’s teaching is not to restrict love but to enable it.
“The joy of friendship allows us to see that great, liberating intimacy can also exist in non-sexual relationships.”
So far, not many reactions to the open letter have been heard.
Cambodia genocide denier Noam Chomsky has spent his reprehensible career vomiting up all sorts of conspiracy theories about America, but he had no problem with a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein even after his conviction.
Chomsky, who has accused America of genocide and of every possible crime, was palling around with a pedophile.
Chomsky, a political activist and professor, told the Journal that they met occasionally to discuss political and academic topics…
Botstein and Chomsky met multiple times with Epstein after he was a registered sex offender, The Wall Street Journal recently reported. Chomsky, a political activist and professor, told the Journal that they met occasionally to discuss political and academic topics.
When initially asked about his relationship with Epstein, Chomsky had told the Journal, “First response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone’s. Second is that I knew him and we met occasionally.”
None of your business?
“Those who do not rise to the minimal moral level of applying to themselves the standards they apply to others — more stringent ones, in fact — plainly cannot be taken seriously when they speak of appropriateness of response; or of right and wrong, good and evil,” Chomsky once argued.
Unlike 99% of his lies and propaganda, this is a reasonably good, albeit obvious, quote. One that Chomsky never has and still does not live up to.
Chomsky claims to hate capitalism, but was hanging around with a Wall Street guy to discuss “academic topics”.
What sort of “political and academic topics” was Chomsky discussing with a guy whose primary interests were raping young girls?
Chomsky has a feeble explanation for his relationship with the serial pedophile.
In response to questions from the Journal, Chomsky confirmed that he received a March 2018 transfer of roughly $270,000 from an Epstein-linked account. He said it was “restricted to rearrangement of my own funds, and did not involve one penny from Epstein.”
Chomsky explained that he asked Epstein for help with a “technical matter” that he said involved the disbursement of common funds related to his first marriage.
“My late wife died 15 years ago after a long illness. We paid no attention to financial issues,” he said in an email that cc’d his current wife. “We asked Epstein for advice. The simplest way seemed to be to transfer funds from one account in my name to another, by way of his office.”
“By way of his office.”
Was that really the simplest way? And considering the size of Chomsky’s finances, you would think he’d have someone for that rather than turning to a criminal pedophile billionaire to handle a simple account transfer.
Either way, Chomsky was palling around with a pedophile. What was Epstein getting out of that relationship and what was Chomsky getting out of it?
Daniele Scalea is the director of the Italian conservative think tank Machiavelli Center and an expert on the Middle East and jihadism.
As the director of the Machiavelli Center, could you tell us what exactly is this conservative think tank?
Well, the Machiavelli Center is a center for political and strategic studies. It is quite a classical think tank. What we do is policy papers and reports that are specifically designed for the members of the parliament and of the government, i.e., Italy’s decision makers. We also organize a lot of events and conferences, especially in Rome and in the parliament, but not only. We also now provide post-degree courses at university for specific careers.
In English, there is the word Machiavellian, and its connotation is rather negative. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, being Machiavellian means using clever but often dishonest methods to deceive people so you can win power or control. So why do you want to be associated with this Machiavelli?
Machiavelli actually has the same negative meaning in Italian. However, nowadays Machiavelli is widely recognized as one of the greatest political thinkers, one of the founders of political science, and in particular Machiavelli symbolizes the effort to connect scholarship with decision-making. And this is exactly what a think tank and especially our think tank is trying to do. Machiavelli was a scholar who, instead of just staying in the proverbial ivory tower, chose to be in civil society, in the political sphere, and to use his academic knowledge, his research, and his thought to do something good for the management of the state.
Moreover, Machiavelli was also a great Italian patriot. His philosophy has been oversimplified to: the end justifies the means. But the end for Machiavelli was the creation of a unitarian state for Italy because he was a true patriot.
You’re not only the director of the Machiavelli Center, but also an expert on jihadism and the Middle East. In light of Machiavelli’s recommendations for princes, what would you say of Western Europe’s present approach to immigration and the rise of Islam in Europe?
If we talk of mass immigration, almost everyone recognizes that there is an issue. But before you tackle a problem, you have to ask yourself, “Why is it a problem?” If you give two different answers, you’ll get two different solutions.
For me, immigration is a problem mainly because it looks more and more like a foreign colonization of our land.
For super moderates, the issue is probably just the fact that it is happening illegally. For others, there is no problem at all, or maybe just that this mass immigration generating popular discontent can also fuel right-wing sentiments. For example, before Matteo Salvini was interior minister (in 2018-2019), his left-wing predecessor Marco Minniti tried to curb illegal immigration. He said that he did so solely because he feared the popular discontent generated by this phenomenon.
And then finally comes the far left, the neo-Marxists. For them, immigration is a positive phenomenon. Why? Because it is replacing the working class as the revolutionary subject in order to destroy the European tradition and make room for social engineering.
So, in light of Machiavelli’s teachings, what would you say of Victor Orbán’s rule in Hungary?
Well, I think his rule is very positive. Obviously, I see things from abroad, from Italy. There is also a language barrier, so I do not have the pretense to be a complete connoisseur of Hungarian politics and policies. But I’m sure that Orbán, from what I know, is a source of inspiration for conservatives in all of Europe because he managed not only to lead his country with admirable consistency with conservative values, and this is a very important thing, but also to do it effectively.
Apparently, from what I see, Hungary is a well-functioning country. What he is doing actually works. And also, if we look at the think tank environment in Hungary, now we are at this wonderful CPAC Hungary, which is a great event that I also attended last year. Hungary is becoming a focal point for all conservatives in Europe and also in North America.
Orbán, Fidesz, and Hungarian conservatives have created institutions such as the Center for Fundamental Rights and the Mathias Corvinus Collegium as well as many others that are doing a great job. All think tanks, such as the Machiavelli Center, are trying to take inspiration from them and replicate what they’re doing.
We’re speaking here from a “no-woke zone” at CPAC. I don’t know if you have an explanation for this, but usually, wokeness means both support for mass immigration in Europe and the LGBT revolution with this whole gender ideology, not to mention the green revolution. So that’s all those things together, but I can’t see any logical link between them. They’re even kind of contradictory. You are an expert on jihadism: for LGBT people, radical Islam and the presence of jihadists linked to immigration are actually a threat.
We have to ask what wokeism actually means. After the 60s and 70s, the neo-Marxists realized that the working class was not going to be a true revolutionary subject for them. It wasn’t going to overthrow the structure of society and economy in Europe, so they changed their focus.
In their analysis, they concluded that the structure was no more the economy but the language, because the language and the way we define fundamental categories, and so on, shape the way we think. So, this is the idea that they are “awoken.” They think they are seeing something that nobody actually saw before. This is the meaning of wokeism.
Now, it’s true that on radical Islam… In general, Islam is obviously a traditional culture, not of Italy, but it is the traditional culture of another civilization. And we must respect it. I do respect Islam, even though I’m not a Muslim and I wouldn’t like to be a Muslim. However, I have to recognize that Islam has many positive elements like any other traditional culture and traditional civilization in the world. The vision of LGBTQ issues in Islam is in some ways closer to us Western conservatives than the view of progressives.
That does not mean that we have to accept radical Islam just because maybe we can find common ground on some things. But it’s true that since now many Muslim citizens are becoming part of our society… I am against mass immigration, but obviously, I accept the idea that those Muslim citizens cannot be expelled from our countries. They must become an integrated, I would even say, an assimilated part of our countries, and they are exactly equal to other citizens since they are here. And with those Muslim citizens in Europe, we can probably find common ground on many social issues. So there is room to turn some of them into conservative voters in the future.
According to you, with the rise of Islam linked to mass immigration, what is the situation in Italy compared to France or Germany with the overall number of Muslims, but in particular with radical Islam and the threat of jihadist terrorists?
Well, we should start from the point that immigration numbers and therefore also the spread of Islam in Italy are way lower than, for example, in France, Germany and Belgium. That’s because mass immigration started later in Italy. Until the year 2000, there were really few immigrants in Italy. The boom in arrivals started in 2011. So this allowed us for many, many years to effectively integrate Muslims into our societies because they were few and were well distributed on our territory.
So in some way, we could assimilate them. Now, because of mass immigration, the numbers are getting larger and larger, and they are creating closed communities in some districts, so a problem has emerged. Not only with radical Islam, although we have some radicals in Italy, but still much fewer than in other countries. But there is also the problem of common crime. There are a lot of second-generation immigrants, especially with an Arab and in general Muslim background, who are becoming part of criminality.
Why am I mentioning them in connection with radical Islam?
Often the identity factor is important. They form gangs, especially baby gangs that are created around their common ethnic background. And they are frequently fueled by hatred toward Italians, toward Westerners, toward white people.
Some months ago in Italy, a tourist resort city, Peschiera del Garda, was for a day literally occupied by thousands of young people of African and Arab origin, who under the slogan “Peschiera is Africa” committed widespread burglaries and widespread violence and sexual harassment, and this was racially targeted against White people.
So this is a big problem emerging, maybe even bigger than just that of radical Islam because you can tackle radical Islam with security instruments, with intelligence, with police, and so on. This kind of social unrest and distress is more difficult because in that you need a major overhaul of your policy on migration, on asylum, but also on cultural integration or assimilation, on social issues, social housing, and many other things. So it would really require a new mentality on the part of our rulers.
In that respect, what do you think of Giorgia Meloni’s policy on immigration?
Well, Giorgia Meloni campaigned on the promise to totally halt illegal immigration. She said that she would manage to be even more effective than Matteo Salvini, who was very highly effective as interior minister, as he curbed illegal immigration hugely, reducing it to very small numbers.
For now, the numbers are not very good for Italy. We have experienced a surge in arrivals of illegals by sea. Those numbers projected for the whole year would make this year a record year for illegal arrivals in Italy. I’m sure that this is not what Georgia Meloni wants. She will not allow that to happen because it would be very hard for them to justify it politically, as it’s not her platform, it’s not what she stands for. So I expect that around July-August when we usually have a peak in arrivals, she is going to change her policies, even if that means that we are going to have some quarrels and some clashes with the European Commission and some EU countries such as France or Germany.
Daniele Scalea is the director of the Italian conservative think tank Machiavelli Center and an expert on the Middle East and jihadism. He served as the Special Advisor on Immigration and Terrorism to the Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs (2018-2019).
