The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

by Douglas Murray

Down the line there is another, starker, rebuttal. That says that this form of destruction is exactly what our societies deserve. ‘Do you know what white people did?’ they ask. ‘And you Europeans in particular? You travelled around the world and lived in countries and pillaged them, and tried to erase their local cultures. This is payback. Or karma.’ The novelist Will Self (currently Professor of Contemporary Thought at Brunel University) played precisely this line of attack on the BBC in the same week that the 2011 census was published. On the network’s main discussion show, Question Time, he declared, ‘Up to the Suez crisis … most people’s conception of what being British involved was basically going overseas and subjugating black and brown people and taking their stuff and the fruits of their labours. That was a core part of British identity, was the British Empire. Now various members of the political class have tried to revive that idea quite recently without much success.’9