A few courageous journalists are now describing the dire consequences of Muslim mass-migration into Europe. Many of the migrants have the wrong clothing for the Northern winter, and have anyhow brought diseases or health conditions not seen in Europe. Authorities have dumped tens of thousands in cities and towns unable to house them, so migrants are sleeping rough. Police forces give up the attempt to control crime. Nobody has a clear idea what the consequences of this population shift will be, but it is easy to detect the shudder of fear throughout the continent that this is all leading to disaster.
The one politician who speaks out is Victor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister. Hungary, he said, is a Christian country and wants to stay that way. At the end of Communism, Hungary was first to open the Iron Curtain and let people out, and now it is first to erect a fence to keep people out. The European Union exists to destroy the nation-state and de-nature national characteristics into an international post-Communist (but still leftist) sludge — the political equivalent of the Eurovision Song Contest. All sorts of eminent persons at once condemned Orbán as a racist and a fascist. Mrs. Angela Merkel, German chancellor and sponsor of unlimited migration into her country, was a foremost critic until public opinion forced her to close the borders, in effect to justify Orbán.
I have just attended a conference in Budapest ostensibly on Islamism but inevitably asking whether Orbán is right. To generalize, the Hungarian speakers proposed appeasement rather resistance. A sense of fear for the future was in the air. I kept reminding myself that I had first been in Budapest at the time of the Hungarian revolution of 1956, and wrote a book about that epic event. I took time off from the conference to sit in Gerbeaud’s café, and meditate on the triumph of nationalism and the relationship between Christianity and democracy. The cake that has made Gerbeaud’s café famous the world over is the symbol of normality and continuity — the Communist utopia couldn’t even provide that.