Leonid Goldin | Journey from Amsterdam to Vienna

We are excited and anxious… not knowing our fate or destiny.
Benedict Spinoza.

There is no cure for the headache that comes from delirium in dreams and reality.
Alexander Radishchev, “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow.”

A friend of mine, a career diplomat who has visited many countries in the course of his duties, is actively expanding the geography of his travels after he has retired. He told me about his neighbor at his dacha, who has visited 114 countries, a feat that he finds inspiring and admirable.

Beyond the point of no return

Such a frenzied fascination with global diversity and hopes for understanding and rapprochement through smiles, handshakes, and sampling national cuisines is incomprehensible to me. Galloping across the world, superficial impressions, amateurish knowledge; the undereducated are worse than the illiterate. There is more than enough of the charms of multiculturalism, inclusiveness, and everything else in this arsenal in New York, and the joy from it is diminishing, while problems and anxiety are increasing.

Through my work and other opportunities, I have had the chance to visit multicultural countries, but my interests and comfort zone are limited to Western civilization; everything else is enough for me to have a general idea and read the headlines in the news. The atmosphere in Western countries is changing rapidly and alarmingly, but this only strengthens my desire to see, while I still can, the treasures of the greatest civilization in history. I am not trying to convince or dissuade anyone; this is my choice, my values, my limitations.

The West has passed the point of no return, according to the New York Times: “Immigration is not a crisis. It is the future.” And this time, I have to agree with the mouthpiece of liberal ideology. In 50 years, whites, who now make up less than 10% of the world’s population, will become a minority in the West. America is more psychologically prepared for this prospect, but Europe has yet to realize its inevitability and consequences. So it was interesting, albeit briefly, to learn about and to feel the mood of the people and their attitudes toward the near future.

This time, my partner and I decided to take a train from Amsterdam to Vienna and stop in cities along the way. We arrived in the Netherlands when the world’s attention was focused on the NATO summit in The Hague, or more precisely, not on the summit itself, but on Trump’s participation in it. The American president arrived with an entourage of a thousand people, not to listen to others and discuss, but to firmly declare that it was time for European partners to stop hiding under the American umbrella and relying on American spending. One minute of the summit costs a million dollars, but that is not the biggest expense of the European Union’s giant bureaucracy.

NATO members agreed to increase military spending, although it seems to me that the main threat to Europe is not external but internal, primarily immigration policy and the accompanying radicalization and polarization of society.
In Amsterdam, we were met and taken to The Hague by a close friend, the ambassador to the Netherlands. He has vast diplomatic experience, has worked in many countries, served as a minister, and headed a major international organization. He is a highly respected figure in politics, but our brief meeting was mainly devoted to getting to know The Hague and celebrating my partner’s birthday.

The Netherlands is a small country, but it successfully competed with the British, Spanish, and French empires in manufacturing, trade, the struggle for colonies, and control of the oceans. Some of the world’s greatest cultural masterpieces were created here.

One cannot help but wonder what the pinnacle of Western civilization will be in the new world. My observations are not representative enough. Liberals are more optimistic and open to communication than conservatives, which is perhaps why I did not meet anyone who was seriously concerned about the country’s future and way of life. Almost everyone said the same thing: “We live in a new world, we need immigrants, we must help them more, and in time everyone will adapt.”

In my opinion, these sentiments reflect not only kindness and open-mindedness, but also fear and an unwillingness to face reality. Utopian beliefs in universal values and justice, in equality, friendship, and brotherhood among peoples did not disappear with the collapse of communist doctrine, but were revived in liberal-democratic ideology.

But if we move from fantasy and dreams to indisputable reality and take a sober look at the statistics, the picture does not match utopian expectations. In the European Union, the birth rate among whites is 1.3 children per woman, and over the past 20 years, the birth rate has fallen by more than 20%. For simple reproduction of the population, there should be 2.1 children per woman. At the same time, the proportion of whites of retirement age is constantly increasing. Among the majority of immigrants, Muslims, and Africans, the birth rate is 3-4 times higher, their influx is constantly increasing, and they are charged with passionate energy to assert themselves in new circumstances. Even without mentioning foreign cultures and behaviors, everyday conflicts, aggressive protests, terrorism, and other attributes of multiculturalism, demographics in a liberal democracy determine the fate of Europe.

Transport, construction, hotels, restaurants, the cleaning and sanitation industry, care for the sick and elderly, and domestic service are almost entirely dependent on immigrants. They are increasingly present in business, medicine, and education. Their activity is particularly noticeable and influential in politics.

With the current immigration policy, half the planet is ready to move to Western countries, and regional wars and conflicts, as well as climate change, are exacerbating this process. For decades now, the most common name for newborn boys in large European cities has been Muhammad, churches and synagogues are closing due to a lack of parishioners, and mosques and prayer houses are replacing them.

Obvious facts and processes cannot be denied or ignored, but they can be interpreted in different ways, turned upside down, and proclaimed as the common good and mutually beneficial cooperation. A conservative interpretation is usually presented as virulent racism, nationalism, and xenophobia. Right-wing, reactionary sentiments are indeed growing, and the ground for them is being prepared primarily by uncontrolled migration, its consequences, and its prospects.

Liberal fantasies completely dominate government policy, the mainstream media, and education, but there is more realism in fiction. Jean Raspail’s book The Camp of the Saints, published in 1973, predicted the destruction of the Western world under the influence of mass immigration from the Third World. Today, the book is a bestseller. Michel Houellebecq, in Submission (2015), showed a future in which a democratically elected Muslim president and his allies impose new laws and a new way of life on the country. The authors of such publications have no hope for a reversal of events or for their own personal safety.

Although The Great Replacement Theory has been the subject of heated debate and protests in the press and academic circles, it is no longer a theory, but a statistical fact and a forecast.

From personal experience

In Amsterdam, we spoke with a female doctor who told us about the peculiarities of local architecture and construction—the city is built below sea level, and the canals here are longer than those in Venice, but so far it has been possible to reinforce the centuries-old buildings and keep the water clean. The huge service and infrastructure sector requires enormous labor. There is a shortage of local workers, and there are no other options—a constant influx of immigrants is needed.

“To be or not to be,” “What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, that he should weep for her?” Hamlet’s questions do not arise among my interlocutors. What do European palaces and temples, Spinoza, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Rembrandt, Rubens, Vermeer, Van Dyck, Bruegel, Bosch, Van Gogh mean to people of a different culture with different values? The legacy of empires, monuments of colonialism…

I remember a long conversation on the train with Nora, a student with straight A’s from the suburbs of Munich. She helped us a lot when, for unknown reasons, trains were canceled, delayed, changed routes and platforms, and it was impossible to find any service personnel.

Nora knows the history of her country well, is aware of the current situation in the world, and intends to devote her career to solving social problems. She is a mature liberal, full of radical optimism and faith in goodness and justice; she believes that education and goodwill will solve all problems.

It was interesting to touch on a sensitive topic for Germans: after the war, a large part of Germany was ceded to France, Poland, Russia, and other countries, and 15 million people became refugees. Nora believes that since Germany started the war, it must accept its consequences, and that it is foolish to think about returning the lost territories. A reasonable, realistic view. It was very tempting to ask why she did not express this point of view to her friends and classmates, who are actively involved in ongoing demonstrations in support of the demands of Palestinian terrorists.

Nora is a wonderful, educated, kind girl, and if she is destined to change her views, it will not be through discussion, but through a radical change in her living conditions.

I was in Munich 33 years ago on an academic exchange. It was a time of great change and great expectations. Now the atmosphere and mood are completely different. By chance, we ended up having lunch in a huge restaurant where Hitler attempted a coup d’état in 1923—the Beer Hall Putsch. The Weimar Republic survived this time, Hitler ended up in prison, where he wrote “Mein Kampf,” and was released nine months later. The Weimar experience taught today’s liberals nothing.

Our table neighbors, two men in their fifties, were surprised that we didn’t order beer, which is an essential part of life here. We struck up a conversation. One was a car dealer, the other a tax lawyer, both unmarried and childless. The explanation for their family situation boiled down to the fact that raising even one child is very expensive, requiring both parents to work and restrict their lifestyle. How immigrants with lower incomes raise half a dozen children was not a question that arose. They don’t like the influx of foreigners, but they have no hope of changing the situation: “What’s the point of thinking about something that’s not up to us?”

During our conversation, our interlocutors drank four large mugs of beer each. It seems that a fondness for beer is one of the few things left of their former traditions and interests. Even among well-educated people, it is difficult to find someone to talk to about Goethe and Kant. The museums are full, but they are almost exclusively tourists, mostly from Asia.

Of course, there are many people in Europe who are dissatisfied with the transformation of their countries. There are extremist, nationalist sentiments. Right-wing parties are gaining ground. But I have not had the opportunity to interact with this category of people, and I am not ready to make broad sociological generalizations.

A special issue is mass immigration from Ukraine. Ukrainian and Russian with a Ukrainian accent can be heard everywhere. Ukrainians work in every hotel and restaurant. They are young people, aged 20-30. We went to a Georgian restaurant in Vienna, and all the staff were Ukrainian. We did not touch on politics; our interlocutors were clearly not inclined to discuss this topic, and I will refrain from making judgments, but I get the impression that most of them do not intend to return.
All the cities we visited have a rich Jewish history. Jews have always been a small part of the population, persecuted and discriminated against for centuries, but they have made an enormous contribution to the development of Western civilization. Now, judging by the way things are going, the Jewish history of Europe is coming to an end. Among the reasons are low birth rates and mixed marriages, loss of national identity and community belonging.

But the main reason is mass immigration from countries where anti-Semitism is ingrained from birth. The number of violent anti-Semitic incidents is growing every year. Continuous mass anti-Israel and anti-Zionist protests are openly anti-Semitic in nature. Jews are officially advised not to show their identity.

In Amsterdam, we saw an Israeli flag on one of the private houses. I rang the doorbell, and a man who did not look Jewish opened the door. We introduced ourselves: Patrick, Irish, married to Sybil, an Israeli. Patrick is not a convert, but all his sympathies lie with Israel and the Jews. During the recent pogrom in Amsterdam, when an Israeli soccer team arrived in the city, Arabs tore down the flag and burned it in the central square. Patrick hung up a new one: “This flag is the only one in the city, and it will be here as long as I live.” Although tickets to the Anne Frank Museum must be purchased well in advance, Patrick has very few like-minded people.

When Nathan Sharansky asked French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, “Is there a future for European Jews?”, his interlocutor replied with a question: “Is there a future for Europe?” The fate of Western civilization raises many doubts. One can talk about occupation, and one can talk about suicide.

But despite all the crises, antagonisms, and gloomy forecasts, Europe remains accessible, and even a brief acquaintance with its treasures is a great joy and blessing. The world’s best museums and architecture. High-quality service. Although there are demonstrations against the abundance of tourists in some cities, people are friendly, willing to give advice and help.

We were particularly impressed by the Maison Elle hotel in Amsterdam, which is conveniently located, has good public transport links, reasonable prices, and friendly staff who speak excellent English. Due to a mix-up with our passports, we did not arrive on time, but the management was understanding and everything worked out without any problems.

However, the much-praised European railways, if you use them with transfers, which is cheaper, require you to be prepared for delays and cancellations, as well as long walks between platforms. Immigrant taxi drivers will charge double the price if you don’t clarify in advance. And also, in Amsterdam, there is a crazy flow of cyclists from all sides, and there are no rules for them.

In the end, this trip was the most interesting, informative, and important of my overseas experiences.

If I had the opportunity, I would repeat the same route tomorrow.