美国国家公共电台 NPR 'The Strange Death Of Europe' Warns Against Impacts Of Immigration

 

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

The way the British writer Douglas Murray sees it, European civilization is in the process of suicide by immigration. Western Europe in particular, after encouraging immigration to fill low-wage jobs, now finds itself defending traditional values against those of largely Muslim immigrants and their descendants. Mr. Murray's new book is called "The Strange Death Of Europe," and he joins us from London. Welcome to the program.

DOUGLAS MURRAY: Very good to be with you.

SIEGEL: First, what does it mean in your view for Europe to die as opposed to change with changing populations?

MURRAY: We're used to the idea of slow, incremental² cultural and societal change. I use the famous example of the ship of Theseus. As bits fall off, you put bits on, but it remains³ recognizably the ship of Theseus. That isn't the case when you have migration¹ at the levels at which Europe has had it in recent decades, particularly not at the level of 2015, when Germany added an extra 2 percent of - to its population in a single year alone. And it's also very unlikely, it seems to me, that people who come with very different attitudes are not going to change the continent significantly.

SIEGEL: Very different attitudes, you believe, being essentially⁴ Muslim attitudes, is what you're - what you're writing about here?

MURRAY: That is obviously the one that is - that Europe is finding it hardest to digest, yes.

SIEGEL: Let me cut to what, for me, is the chase here. As a Jew, I mean, I have to ask you - what is so different about contemporary opposition⁵ to Muslim immigrants from 19th and 20th century European anti-Semitism? Things were said about the Jews - that they wouldn't fit in or would bring radical⁶ ideas from Eastern Europe with them into the West.

MURRAY: Well, the difference is the facts, isn't it? That's the first thing - and secondly⁷, of course, the numbers. Take an example like - let's say 2015 across the continent of Europe. The numbers that came that year from across sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, the Middle East and the Far East were far in excess of any of the migration that was seen during the Jewish migrations⁸ into Europe.

And secondly, that the claims that were made about Jews were erroneous claims, whereas the people who did warn that some - obviously not all, but some - of the Muslim immigrants will bring serious security challenges with them has been demonstrated time and again by events. So, you know, you can hear ugly echoes whilst also being able to differentiate⁹ the difference between facts and lies.

SIEGEL: One fundamental difference that you write about is - you write that for, well, going on two centuries, in Britain and other parts of Europe, religious faith has been moving from the literal to the metaphorical¹⁰.

MURRAY: Yes.

SIEGEL: And the people arriving are bringing a very literal faith with them.

MURRAY: Yes.

SIEGEL: And that seems to be one of the basic dissonances that you're writing about.

MURRAY: Yes.

SIEGEL: Do you feel that's what makes you and the people you grew up with fundamentally different from many of the people arriving now?

MURRAY: Let me give you one very quick example. In Britain, we, some decades ago, came to a fairly straightforward¹¹ accommodation and belief towards tolerance¹² towards people who were of sexual minorities. If you - if you look now at all opinion surveys of the people who've come in most recently, they have very, very different views. A poll carried out a couple of years ago found that among U.K. Muslims there was zero - zero - belief that homosexuality was a permissible¹³ lifestyle choice. And a poll taken just last year in Britain found that 52 percent of British Muslims wanted being gay in the U.K. to be made illegal now.

Now, there are people who won't bake your wedding cake if you're gay. There are some ultra-Protestants who won't marry you in their churches. But these are people who actually want to make it a crime punishable in law in the 21st century in Britain. So I'm afraid that everyone has to concede - liberal or conservative or whatever - that some of the people who the liberals and their attitude towards immigration have brought here have more illiberal¹⁴ attitudes than anyone else in the country. And this is a big problem.

SIEGEL: Yeah. And you represent the other side of that coin, which is someone taking what would be described as a very - your critics would say a very intolerant attitude of immigrants. But you're openly gay and...

MURRAY: Well, I am intolerant - I have to say, I am intolerant of people who want to put me, as a gay man, in prison. Yeah. Yeah, I'm intolerant of that.

SIEGEL: Yeah, there's no - fair enough. But as a gay man, one of the - one of the traditional values that you're saying is under assault is a degree of tolerance that's developed in Britain and other European societies.

MURRAY: Of course. We all - we all know - it's a grade-school question of the level at which you can decide to be tolerant of an intolerant belief.

SIEGEL: Do you accept, though, that there's something odd and almost comical about a Brit saying, we never asked for Pakistanis to come to our country en masse when, in fact, no one on the Indian subcontinent, to my knowledge, ever asked Britain to come and set up an empire there and decide that it was fit to rule over hundreds of millions of people in that part of the world?

MURRAY: It's one interpretation¹⁵ and usage of the word comic. Ironic¹⁶, perhaps, you'd say. But no, if that is the comparison you'd like to make, then I would throw a question back to you.

SIEGEL: Yeah.

MURRAY: Which is everyone agrees that the colonial era was wrong. I'm not an apologist for empire. But in that case, how long does the reverse colonialism happen for? And if you see it as some kind of blowback for colonialism, then what is the end point of this anti-colonialism?

SIEGEL: Well, you're using the construct of punishment. I was saying it's a fairly natural consequence, just as the French have a very large population that are - originates in North Africa, where they had decided¹⁷ for some time they should rule.

MURRAY: Yeah, but this doesn't - this doesn't work...

SIEGEL: It's human nature to do that.

MURRAY: The problem is that this isn't borne out by the facts across Europe. For instance, I mean, where was the Swedish empire across Africa or in the Middle East? Where was it?

SIEGEL: Fair enough. That's not the same.

MURRAY: And so why did Sweden take in 2 percent of its population in addition in one year alone, 2015? It makes no sense. We can all find excuses and reasons for why this is happening. I think it's much better to look at it in the round and see the very complex picture this actually presents and the very complex future it's setting up for us.

SIEGEL: If what you call the strange death of Europe is - if it remains a process rather than a condition, what would be your solution to reverse the process?

MURRAY: The first solution is very straightforward. It is that you slow down the flow. I don't say no migrants into Europe. I don't say that at all. But you've got to massively slow down the flow because a society doesn't have a hope of remaining cohesive¹⁸ when you have migration at these levels. The second thing is you work on the people who are already here more. The third thing is that you make it clear that as well as speaking the language of inclusion in our politics, we have to speak the language of exclusion¹⁹ - what it is that we won't tolerate as well as what it is that we do and what it is we will be tolerant of.

There's a whole set of other things. One of them is a very basic one, which is to try to shrug²⁰ off what I diagnose as, among other things, the guilt-ridden complex that Europe has. I'm not advocating that we become sort of, you know, patriotic²¹ nationalists. You've got to find a balance here. And one of the balances has to be arrived at by recognizing a very simple fact, which is that Europe cannot be the home for everybody in the world who wants to move in and call it home.

SIEGEL: Douglas Murray, author of "The Strange Death Of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam." Thanks for talking with us today.

MURRAY: Great pleasure.

1 migration   

n.迁移，移居，（鸟类等的）迁徙

参考例句：

• Swallows begin their migration south in autumn.燕子在秋季开始向南方迁移。
• He described the vernal migration of birds in detail.他详细地描述了鸟的春季移居。

2 incremental   

adj.增加的

参考例句：

• For logic devices, the incremental current gain is very important. 对于逻辑器件来说，提高电流增益是非常重要的。 来自辞典例句
• By using an incremental approach, the problems involving material or geometric nonlinearity have been solved. 借应用一种增量方法，已经解决了包括材料的或几何的非线性问题。 来自辞典例句

3 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

4 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

5 opposition   

n.反对，敌对

参考例句：

• The party leader is facing opposition in his own backyard.该党领袖在自己的党內遇到了反对。
• The police tried to break down the prisoner's opposition.警察设法制住了那个囚犯的反抗。

6 radical   

n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的

参考例句：

• The patient got a radical cure in the hospital.病人在医院得到了根治。
• She is radical in her demands.她的要求十分偏激。

7 secondly   

adv.第二，其次

参考例句：

• Secondly,use your own head and present your point of view.第二，动脑筋提出自己的见解。
• Secondly it is necessary to define the applied load.其次，需要确定所作用的载荷。

8 migrations   

n.迁移，移居( migration的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• It foundered during the turmoils accompanying the Great Migrations. 它在随着民族大迁徙而出现的混乱中崩溃。 来自辞典例句
• Birds also have built-in timepieces which send them off on fall and spring migrations. 鸟类也有天生的时间感应器指导它们秋春迁移。 来自互联网

9 differentiate   

vi.(between)区分；vt.区别；使不同

参考例句：

• You can differentiate between the houses by the shape of their chimneys.你可以凭借烟囱形状的不同来区分这两幢房子。
• He never learned to differentiate between good and evil.他从未学会分辨善恶。

10 metaphorical   

a.隐喻的，比喻的

参考例句：

• Here, then, we have a metaphorical substitution on a metonymic axis. 这样，我们在换喻（者翻译为转喻，一种以部分代替整体的修辞方法）上就有了一个隐喻的替代。
• So, in a metaphorical sense, entropy is arrow of time. 所以说，我们可以这样作个比喻：熵像是时间之矢。

11 straightforward   

adj.正直的，坦率的；易懂的，简单的

参考例句：

• A straightforward talk is better than a flowery speech.巧言不如直说。
• I must insist on your giving me a straightforward answer.我一定要你给我一个直截了当的回答。

12 tolerance   

n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差

参考例句：

• Tolerance is one of his strengths.宽容是他的一个优点。
• Human beings have limited tolerance of noise.人类对噪音的忍耐力有限。

13 permissible   

adj.可允许的，许可的

参考例句：

• Is smoking permissible in the theatre?在剧院里允许吸烟吗？
• Delay is not permissible,even for a single day.不得延误，即使一日亦不可。

14 illiberal   

adj.气量狭小的，吝啬的

参考例句：

• His views are markedly illiberal.他的观点非常狭隘。
• Don't be illiberal in your words to show your love.不要吝啬自己的语言表达你的情感。

15 interpretation   

n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理

参考例句：

• His statement admits of one interpretation only.他的话只有一种解释。
• Analysis and interpretation is a very personal thing.分析与说明是个很主观的事情。

16 ironic   

adj.讽刺的，有讽刺意味的，出乎意料的

参考例句：

• That is a summary and ironic end.那是一个具有概括性和讽刺意味的结局。
• People used to call me Mr Popularity at high school,but they were being ironic.人们中学时常把我称作“万人迷先生”，但他们是在挖苦我。

17 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

18 cohesive   

adj.有粘着力的；有结合力的；凝聚性的

参考例句：

• She sealed the parcel with cohesive tape.她用粘胶带把包裹封起来。
• The author skillfully fuses these fragments into a cohesive whole.作者将这些片断巧妙地结合成一个连贯的整体。

19 exclusion   

n.拒绝，排除，排斥，远足，远途旅行

参考例句：

• Don't revise a few topics to the exclusion of all others.不要修改少数论题以致排除所有其他的。
• He plays golf to the exclusion of all other sports.他专打高尔夫球，其他运动一概不参加。

20 shrug   

v.耸肩(表示怀疑、冷漠、不知等)

参考例句：

• With a shrug,he went out of the room.他耸一下肩，走出了房间。
• I admire the way she is able to shrug off unfair criticism.我很佩服她能对错误的批评意见不予理会。

21 patriotic   

adj.爱国的，有爱国心的

参考例句：

• His speech was full of patriotic sentiments.他的演说充满了爱国之情。
• The old man is a patriotic overseas Chinese.这位老人是一位爱国华侨。