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By Philippe Legrain 3 COMMENTS

Christopher Caldwell is an intelligent and educated man. His columns for the FT are often perceptive and original. But his views on immigration in Europe, presented in his new book, "Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West", are paranoid and delusional.

Caldwell's book is a cocktail of projected fears: Europe is in decline, its population ageing and falling, its citizens decadent and weak; immigrants are a threat, Islam an even bigger one, and Muslim immigrants are multiplying like rabbits; ergo, Muslim immigrants are a united force bent on conquering a continent that has lost the will and the means to fight. I simplify, but only a little.

Caldwell's book tells us more about Caldwell himself than it does about immigration in Europe. But sadly, it will get huge play, because it plays to the prejudices of all sorts of people.

Read a full review of Caldwell's book in the FT by Mark Mazower here.

Posted 04 May 2009 in Blog
  1. Brittancus says:

    Subject to the news of immigration reform and the continuous violence of foreign nationals, and attacks on Americans by these people. To me this is a harbinger of things to come. Without any fear of contradiction that if our mostly corrupt politicians secretly pass a path to citizenship, we are going to see short outbursts of violence, that will culminate in an all out war. Because by far the largest illegal immigration has swept here from the South side of the border, they will be the ugly beneficiaries of the full impact. This nation has become a crutch for all the poor, uneducated who have broken our laws. Most have been welcomed by the business world, who are eager for large profits and shun jobs for US workers.
    On our streets–specially in the sanctuary cities, will run with blood. American workers have already been sacrificed by our politicians, by cutting off E-Verify to stop illegal aliens stealing jobs in the workplace. Sen. Harry Reid and majority House Speaker Pelosi must be congratulated, for their stealth in slitting the throats of millions of American Workers and favoring the criminal enterprises of pariah businesses that search-out cheap labor. The administration might be contemplating putting the National Guard on the border. But in the near future those same troops, may be needed on our own streets to safeguard both US citizens and immigrants. Just as in Europe the benefits of illegal labor has run its course, and the terrible corruption has benefited the few and not the indigenous people are angry and frustrated. Without any restrictions thousands of people have accumulated in England and insisted on their laws and regulations. To see the English people downtrodden and their livelihoods stolen will have repercussions very soon. The usual conservative and social mindset of the British people, for now they populating the once detested British National Party. My relatives who live over the Atlantic ocean have joined the membership. The British/English people are being backed into a corner, as they were during the early days of the Second World War. But when you think your values and generations of pomp and circumstance is threatened, violence will be the ultimate manifestation. The flare ups will start small but if you do not read the rural British Press on-line, you will never be served the daily additions of growing violence in this once peaceful society.

  2. mick says:

    “Until recently politicians suggested that immigrants might actually save European welfare states, replenishing the ratio of workers per retiree which has declined rapidly because of low European birth rates. It won’t work. Immigrants, too, age and retire and the system must take care of them and their large families when they do. But the amount of wishful thinking invested in this idea is impressive. “In the long term, migrants themselves will age and contribute to the increasing dependency ratio,” a Home Office report admitted in late 2007, “but only assuming that they remain in the UK during retirement.” What other assumption can be made? Are we to imagine that migrants will work to fund cushy retirements for Europeans, then slink obligingly back to the Third World to pass their own retirements in poverty?
    Immigration also weakens welfare states by making native taxpayers less willing to fund them. Five years ago David Goodhart of Prospect magazine warned that social programmes arise out of a sense of obligation to fellow citizens, which gets harder to maintain when fellow citizens have a different culture”
    Christopher Caldwell
    Who isn’t loving this financial collapse. All the balls are in the air. And it has a long way to go. Obama has no more of a clue than Bush. I expect to hear a lot more from the likes of Caldwell over the next ten years. Liberalism is starting to smell funny.

  3. Martin says:

    What about all the inner city crime that blacks in particular have brought to this country? Is that part of the enrichment that we should be so grateful for? I needed to leave London 10 years ago with my family because it was no longer possible for my children to have a normal life. They were frightened to go out, basically. And it wasn’t white youths that intimidated them. They are now much happier living amongst people of their OWN ETHNICITY. You can bet liberals that support nation wrecking immigration make sure that their own children attend a school that is all white. Billy Bragg comes to mind, pro-immigrant, yet he lives in Burton Bradstock, an all white village in Dorset!

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