Europe 2024: New Year, New War-Zone 

As a child of the eighties, I recall with great fondness the Christmases of my youth: full of stinging cold winters, and reassuring fireside warmings up; snowball fights and tobogganing; turkey dinners and endless festivities. They provided the perfect segue into the new year, with its accompaniment of bonfires, piping hot jacket potatoes, and mesmerising firework displays. I don’t think its naïve to say I cannot recall a single violent episode, save for a very British exhibition of tutting one year, over the lack of queuing etiquette witnessed at the hotdog stand. 

I must be mistaken however, because the festive season no longer looks anything like that across Europe. Christmas markets are increasingly facing cancellation, on the pretext of ‘public safety’. From Stuttgart to Scotland, those that remain have become ‘winter’ markets. Choirs and Santas have been replaced with armed guards; presents with metal detectors and concrete bollards – because you never know when those self-driving cars are going to get uppity again, do you? 

New Year’s Eve meanwhile, has become less celebration, more conflagration. Last year’s Europe-wide festivities were particularly un-Christian in this regard. In Germany alone, there was widespread rioting across Berlin, Hamburg and North Rhine-Westphalia, where several hundred people were arrested. With 41 emergency service personnel injured, clearly it was essential to identify where the aggression was coming from: ‘apparently predominantly young men in groups, often with a migration background’ was the furthest the authorities were willing to go. 

This year, with ever-increasing migration numbers and continent-wide Jew-hatred (thinly-veiled as pro-Palestinian demonstrations), the powers that be were determined not to take any chances. On the streets of Berlin, 4,500 officers were deployed to prevent a repeat performance – an authoritarian presence the city has not witnessed in decades. In France, the mobilisation of the gendarmerie was even more pronounced: with 90,000 officers (well over the nation’s entire force) alongside 5,000 anti-terror soldiers deployed in response to the heightened terror threat. 

There was something even more disconcerting however – namely, the police ‘begging’ the criminals to take it easy. We had already seen this of course in London two months ago, where the kid-glove favouring Metropolitan Police had implored pro-Palestine protestors to ‘urgently consider’ postponing Armistice Day rallies. This time around, it was the German police, begging the nation’s criminal underbelly to go easy on the firework attacks: 

https://x.com/polizeiberlin/status/1739967242245411121?s=20 

The effect was negligible at best. 

In Berlin, the same old story unfolded: riots littered the city, with police officers targeted (54 of whom were injured) as ‘masked Germans’ (yeah, right) shot fireworks towards them, as well as members of the public. In France, a mere 745 cars were set alight, alongside almost 400 arrests. It was much the same story across the continent:

Here’s Paris ringing in the New Year: 

https://x.com/uncutversion123/status/1741666430456889659?s=20 

And Brussels: 

https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1742536505363431551?s=20 

Berlin:

https://x.com/RonEng1ish/status/1741356923763544166?s=20 

The Netherlands:

https://x.com/PiQSuite/status/1741795594308350288?s=20

In response to the carnage, our leaders appear to agree on one thing and one thing only: it’s best to lie. The nature of the lying has morphed over the years, and the techniques for distracting the public from seeing what is in front of their eyes has become evermore sophisticated. 

A revolutionary new lie this year, is to downplay the chaos and present it instead as a success. Berlin’s top security official, Iris Spranger, dared to pass off the violence and almost 400 arrests as evidence of successful policing: “It has been shown that the months of preparation by the Berlin fire department, Berlin police and my office in terms of prevention and consistent intervention have paid off.” The French Interior Minister, Gérald Darmanin, quickly followed suit, claiming that “vehicle fires are down by 10 per cent, as are mortar fire against law enforcement which is down by 80 per cent” – an indication of a “calm” start to 2024. 

The next tactic, is the routine post riot ‘call for a debate’ on immigration; a debate our leaders are neither interested in, nor ever accede to. Mythical discussions have been the lame duck response to terrorism for at least the past two decades – but what’s to debate? The architects of multiculturalism from Merkel to Sarkozy already admitted the abject failure of multiculturalism over a decade ago. Why are we stuck in a time warp on this?

Inevitably, those of us insufficiently myopic to overlook the conclusion that relentless, unchecked immigration and anti-western criminality do tend to go hand-in-hand, will once again be facing the allegations of ‘racism’. Recent useful idiots include social psychology professor, Frank Asbrock:

“Yes, many of [those arrested] did have a migrant background, but they are not a homogeneous group. There is no homogeneous group of immigrants in Germany — and as you can see from the numbers this was a very diverse group of people.”

Or how about Anti-Discrimination Commissioner, Ferda Ataman, who aims to dispel public misapprehensions about cultural enrichment: 

“Anyone who listens to emergency forces knows that these acts cannot be ethnicised. We don’t have a problem that can be deported. It’s about developments in our society that need to be taken seriously.”

Best of all, are the token, knee-jerk and frankly insulting solutions offered to counter the riots. This year, it’s the banning of fireworks. Yes, just like knives and cars, these things can get a little heated at predictable points in the calendar – best to leave them to the criminals, who ignore police and government edicts anyway. 

In short, the authorities are prepared to do anything except deal with the elephant in the room – namely, that mass immigration is destroying Europe. Rather than face up to the consequences of their disastrous policies, the architects of our destruction are now attempting to pass it off as ‘the new normal’. 

There is no sign of the migrant hordes slowing down either. In Britain, where perhaps the most mendacious government of all resides, Rishi Sunak has just taken the brazen step of ‘clearing the asylum backlog’ (112,000 cases) – a process which involves applicants filling in a form rather than attend an interview, and a grant rate of two-thirds; in other words, an amnesty in all but name. 

Immigration (whether legal or otherwise) is the cocaine of western politicians: an addiction from which European nation states need urgent drying out in The Priory. Our leaders however, constantly refuse to give up the habit: no matter the consequences, from which they are immune. 

The good news, is that the people of Europe have finally had enough, and are doing everything they can to elect those promising to reverse the situation. The bad news, is that those in power will do their darnedest to deny them that right – and if our nations cannot get what they demand via the ballot box, that leaves little room for a peaceful alternative. 

Unless borders are closed, law and order firmly restored and mass deportations enacted, the New Year’s Eve riots are likely to continue – albeit with the added bonus that the indigenous populations start fighting back. 

Until such time however, the closest my daughters are likely to get to a traditional festive season is 6,000 miles away in culturally-confident Asia; fortunately, only I know how much they are truly missing. 

Frank Haviland is the author of Banalysis: The Lie Destroying the West, and writes a Substack here.

This piece first appeared in The European Conservative, and is reproduced by kind permission.

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