Victor Davis Hanson: Could France’s Crisis Happen in America?

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Welcome to the Daily Signal Podcast, where we provide intelligence for the intelligent. Now, without further ado, here's today's take.

Victor Davis Hanson (0:08)

And the answer to all these questions is they are terrified, not just that they have 15 to 25% immigrant populations, not just that they have 30 to 40% first and second generation immigrant population, but because they have immigrant populations that don't like them and don't want to integrate and feel that Islam or the autocratic method is superior.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. In the news right now, it's rioting in France, rioting in Belgium, rioting in Italy, rioting in Albania, with other countries experiencing threats to riot. Who are these people? Well, they're supposed students that are angry that their classrooms or their education is not competitive or subpar. They're socialists that are driving the unrest, but especially they're immigrants. And let me just say at the outset, it's very common among the left in the west, in Europe, Canada, the United States, to immediately bash anybody who criticizes immigration.

But the left is the party that created this problem, because most people who are centrist or are independents or on the right approve of immigration with a qualifier. It has to be legal.

It has to be diverse from all over the world, not just from Africa or south of the border or Asia. It has to be measured. So in some fashion, the people coming in are not a million, two million, three million a year. They have to be in the thousands that can be acculturated, assimilated, and integrated. Because if they're not, then what's over there comes here, and not what over there comes here and becomes west. It brings that culture into the west. Now, another thing to remember is it has to be merocratic. There are, everybody wants to come to the west. And to the degree that western nations say to those in Africa and Asia and the western hemisphere, we can't accommodate everybody. We have a few for refugees. We have a few from family reconciliation. We have a few from people that have outstanding talent. But we have to have the majority speaking the native language, willing to acculturate, and most importantly have skills to be self-supporting, so they don't burden the social welfare system at the expense of US citizen. That's not happening in Europe right now. It's not happening. The historic Limoges Town Hall in Limoges, France is burned down. It's toppling.

If you go to Marseille, you often see the historic statue of Marianne. She's the symbol of the French Republic, a statue. It's been defaced and is threatened with destruction. At Lyon, they destroyed a 175-year-old town hall. One of the most impressive Gothic churches in all of Europe is the Duomo, the Duomo in Milan, and they're right outside burning and rioting, right outside.

So, what is driving this coalition? Who is doing this? Why are they angry? Well, we have a very strange phenomenon happening in Western countries over the last two decades, especially about 15%, up to 20%, are first born immigration. I mean, they are first generation, and they do not come from European countries, some of them from one to another, but most of them are from the Middle East, Asia, Africa, the Western Hemisphere. And what's happening is they come at a time where the West is in crisis, and it does not believe that its culture and civilization is superior to the alternative. So there's no state effort to assimilate, to acculturate, to integrate, to teach people about Greece and Rome, or the Medieval period, or the Renaissance, or the Enlightenment, or the founding fathers here in the United States, or whether you're left or right, Rousseau, or Voltaire, or Shakespeare, or Plato, none of that. In fact, it's just the opposite, that people are come and coming because they have rejected with their feet their own culture, and yet they are praised as the other, as if their cultures, which are failed and which have driven them out, are somehow superior, and therefore they can retain their own cultural identity within a Western nation with the caveat that they also will be protected by Western security, given Western freedom, and have Western economic prosperity that they didn't have in their own country.

This is not sustainable. It's not sustainable. This new alliance between socialists, immigrants, and Islamists. We're seeing it in the US as well. We see all of these candidates that are running for Congress, for state office, for Senate, Mayor of New York, and they have nothing good to say about the United States. They have a lot of good to say about the countries that are illiberal from which they came, and which they under no circumstances want to go back. The iconic moment in the United States were the protestors in Los Angeles who were here illegally and they were waving the flag of the country under no circumstances they wanted to go back to and burning the flag of the country under which every circumstance they wanted to stay. Now, there are geostrategic implications of this. We are becoming a strange from Europe. Europe is becoming a strange from Europe.