The Muslims figured it out: Europe is the cancer, Islam is the answer. Or at least Islam predicts this conclusion anyway… but not just about Europe (apparently Buddhists are bad too… now that’s crazy…). Coming from an American perspective, the sign this guy’s holding might not make sense — many Americans aren’t aware just how bad the Muslim situation in Europe is (or often that there is a Muslim situation in Europe at all). There have been many, many problems in and around Europe.
Unfortunately for Muslims (especially the ones in Europe) the Europeans don’t have any historical precedent for taking a balanced approach when it comes to dealing with social upheaval of the sort the Muslims are threatening. European societies go through phases, swinging much like a pendulum. For decades a whole set of countries may engage in art and poetry and sexual artistry and hard sciences without a care in the world because life is exactly as beautiful as they can make it — until the illusion of universal love breaks down. Then they holocaust entire societies.
American society has never gone that route — either because the influences of the melting pot concept of American society, or perhaps just because the US isn’t an old enough country to have experienced its Hitlers yet. I’m not saying that what happened to the Native Americans was nice or that slavery was a beautiful thing, but they were both one time affairs and pale in comparison toiterative atrocities you’ll find littering the pages of European history. There is a huge difference between the two.
European nations all have a long history of efficiently planned and executed population extermination and forced relocations. Unfortunately it is a little scary. But then again, so are most the things Eric Arthur Blair (AKA George Orwell) and Winston Churchill had to say before WWII kicked off, though that did not make them wrong. (I find this piece funny, though…) People at that time thought the world was going to shit in a permanent way with a civil war already on in Spain, a horribly bloody, backstabby revolution going on in Eastern Europe and Russia, and no clear picture for how the future of colonial Africa was to turn out. But most folks simply refused to see WWII coming and even refused to see the rise of Hitler as a threat, despite his numerous and quite explicit declaration of intentions. Funny that we’re there all over again, and its Europe again.