Thanks, you are probably right and in general I do try to be less verbose but this one was a bit more special so I let myself write until completion. I will probably rehash this topic in a more analytical way (the why in data) but this is more of an esoterical thing I had in my head
The cultural bit is so bad that I genuinely started to forget German bc I never ever need it in my life outside of reading middle century poetry. Before it was an important language and science and engineering.
The small level I ever managed is now 0 and the issue is that when I asked Germans what could I read, watch etc they were all befuddled, and recommended me American series
Mentioning China in passing is interesting because it's clear China /was/ a parallel to this problem. Traditional Chinese culture was clearly something exhausted, dead, and sterile by the early 1900's. It was actually remarkable how many Westerners actually could adopt traditional Chinese speech/dress/customs/ritual almost perfectly, better than the natives - and actually served the Qing state with remarkable competetence (see: Robert Hart). But that's also partly because like modern European culture, Chinese culture circa 1900 was a sterile museum piece. And like modern Europe, Qing China was at best a geographic entity bound together primarily by creaky political institutions that functioned, but rather suboptimally (much like the EU).
Europe's closest geopolitical and cultural parallel isn't modern China or Communist China - it's clearly China in the late 19th and early 20th century. We are living in the European century of humiliation. In many ways, the cultural dilemma facing Europeans today is the same that faced Chinese intellectuals in the 1900's - which directly led to the May Fourth Movement and the inauguration of modern Chinese culture. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem Europe is quite at that point yet - in fact they still seem ruled by their mandarins and eunuchs!
I mentioned China because they indeed have gone through all of this already in their 19th century but (imo) they still havent recovered from those events. Modern china is a leninist developmental state with liberal aesthetics. They sure like to larp with Confucianism and such but the spirit of liberalism is corrossive and the corrossion can best be seen in the East Asian countries which adopted it the most (consumerism, indviduality, markets replacing immaterial infrastructure, dating articulated around material etc)
I disagree with Aymon but I deeply want him to be right, because it will mean I will see the equivalent of a Taiping rebellion in real time. My only issue is in this scenario I would be in the position of Manchu’s so not that nice. We also have different demographics and most people are materially comfortable enough to not want to try something new. So the eunuchs and mandarins will keep scheming
I have no idea who Aymon de Boisseau is - I am not French/European, actually Chinese (Manchu) - but I am interested in this article which I cannot find.
I think politically leninist but culturally liberal seems accurate (and also Marxism/Leninism is obviously an offshoot of Enlightenment liberalism). The Confucianism thing is I think not even serious enough to constitute LARP - the Confucius Institute thing was primarily orientated towards foreign soft power. References to classical literature (much more common now due to higher human capital) doesn't make a Confucian - or for that matter a Platonist/Stoic/whatever. Part of Chinese national exceptionalism is probably being the LEAST 'Confucian' East Asian nation (definitely far less so than Vietnam/Korea/Japan). A funny WW2 fact is that Imperial Japan/Manchukuo invested heavily in Confucian-style rhetoric/propaganda, which was basically totally ineffective in actual China (where the KMT/CPC mostly talked about anti-imperialism, democracy, freedom, science, modernization, etc.)
That being said, I am not sure if liberalism is actually corrosive in that sense. Infamous Chinese materialism/consumerism is really a traditional Chinese cultural trait lol, not an import of modern liberalism. Your archetypal "dating based on materialism" person is actually less educated and from the countryside! If anything, it probably peaked over a decade ago and is on the decline (luxury brands sell less well and disproportionately to older ppl). Maybe there's kind of a Kuznets curve thing - people get really materially transactional when they leave traditional peasant tradition morality and hit middle development (nouveau riche-style) - but then the materialism declines from there. On the same point, every generation of young Chinese seems more culturally liberal but there was never an attempt to import Anglo-American culture war fights (like "wokisme").
But that point about gerontocracy - which is 100% true about European electorates - makes me question how liberal Europe is. Maybe politically liberal, but culturally conservative. For example, one thing that makes China feel more "dynamic" is widespread optimism over technology and AI, unlike the West. Like the Qing State, the EU justifies itself with values that largely don't exist in the population as a whole - and that it really doesn't really embody that well anymore. The EU's supposed raison d'etre is liberal democratic values, but it actually seems deeply illiberal and not that democratic - kind of a liberal democratic cargo cult.
"This is why return is impossible. The young man who grows his beard and retreats into Islam thinks he returns to his grandfather's faith. But his grandfather's faith was lived without question, embedded in community structures, requiring no ideological commitment. The grandsons faith is conscious choice, ideological stance, defended identity. He grasps for living water and touches only the mirror, his own reflection, his own modern consciousness dressed in traditional garments."
I think this is overdone a bit. The Middle East is full of religions. None of them would exist if people just spent pre-modernity living faith without question.
- I wrote this in the context of Europe and modernity. I could probably keep being a Shi'a, crying to Ali and flogging myself in Aleppo. I can definitely not do so in a French Ghetto. Traditions outside their context become mere performances and when it becomes a performance.
- Most muslims dont question their faith because it is a tenet, the literal thing to do when you question anything is go to the Imam, and the imam just spends and explains platitudes about why Abu Bamboo's Hadith doesnt apply or just applies his Islamic sophistry magic on you until you get tired and get back to not questioning.
- In Europe you are in constant contact with modernity and tbh, for reasons I will explain someday, the only strand of Islam that survives effectively the constant contact with modernity is Salafism/Wahabbism (Ibn Tammiyya + Wahab + Qutb) through Darwinian ideological selection. Kinda like how secular brands of Judaism die in America while Charedim through strong isolation from society resist and multiply. Also Islam has through osmosis adopted a lot of Marxsist ideas packages and veiled in traditional words. Jihad is the same word, but the context is anti-imperial now.
Idk if I explained myself correctly on the last point, but any serious practice of Islam in Europe will have to pass through a strand of Islam that resists Liberalism/modernity's corrosive properties, and for now it seems Wahabbism is a winner.
When looking at most immigrants' decision making, cultural and broader identity comes second to material reality.
Retaining the construct of Europe as a fragmented archipelago, the islands are still incredibly enticing when the island you come from is desolate with similar but more radical divides so rather than resembling islands it is like being in a trench.
Once material conditions improve enough, your argument not to migrate could stand firmly but in order for that to happen we do need to talk about policy.
I truly disagree as the material reality being the primal one. If you improve material conditions the void at the center doesnt improve magically. It might mask it or lessen it but the impulses are still gonna be there.
It is a complex matter. And this is going to be long; I am German and very Nerd...😄
Europe has never experienced an influx of millions of migrants from radically different civilizational backgrounds on this scale. In my Substack I analyzed the Spanish case in particular, often arguing with low-IQ alt-right white trash, showing how European integration simultaneously dissolved the last internal coherence of the Francoist legacy of unity. This disintegration has occurred in every EU country; Spain is simply the most exposed, the most fragmented, the most lost. And yes, this is from my German perspective(and I am a Romanist; I know more about Spain than Spaniards themselves, lol)
I want to expose a different case here. Take it as a dialogue; I liked your exposition. Let us take the Visigoths and the way they effectively weaponized Islam for nearly eight centuries in Hispania (yes, weaponized). Goths, Visigoths, Vandals, Suebi, and others... I want to push this further. One day I would like to write this properly, though I am lazy and a nerd. All these peoples, including the steppe Huns, shared a fetish for Rome (Suebi were the more agrarian). But Rome could not be dominated on barbarian terms. Rome absorbs, transforms, and strips. Roman Christianity is not merely stronger than “paganism”; it is simply superior as a civilizational form. Byzantium, the second Rome, is even more brutal in this regard: it systematically de-Gothicizes the Goths. It dissolves ethnic kingship into imperial theology.
This is where Hispania becomes exceptional.
Alaric never conquered Rome in a civilizational sense; he circled it. The Visigoths enter Hispania already half-Christian, already unstable, many still believing in Gaut (Wotan). They embrace Arian Christianity while ruling a majority Nicene population. In Italy, the Ostrogoths are absorbed by Roman administration. In Hispania, however, the Visigothic elite survives longer as itself. The Visigothic kings remain Goths in a way that is no longer possible elsewhere.So the question arises: how did a powerful Visigothic kingdom fall to a bunch of Berbers riding camels?
Well; it didn’t.
The answer is simple: conversion, pact, continuity... civil war.
The Visigothic kingdom was already fractured and aristocratically exhausted. What followed was not a clean military annihilation; it was closer to a civil war with strong religious tones. Large parts of the Arian elite converted. Others became dhimmis under newly converted lords. Trinitarian and Pagans fled to the North and "resist". Islam as religion was closer to their pre-Roman sensibility than Byzantine/Roman Christianity ever was. It offered alliance against Constantinople and the Franks in the north, access to Mediterranean trade, and tangible material gain.
This is not my speculation. Muslim sources themselves describe it this way. And this is why despite the Islamic occupation. There was no sudden demographic replacement. The idea of a total “invasion” is later Reconquista mythology. Islam endured in Iberia for nearly eight centuries; an absurdly long time for a supposedly just a foreign occupation. Al-Andalus was not strong despite the Gothic substrate; it was strong because of it. Administration, landholding, military organization; all inherited from the Goths, and Islam, apparently, made them more efficient because it set them free from Roma and the Byzantine rule.
Today, the pattern is familiar but opposite to what the Islamic Visigoths did.
Islam functions through presence, patience, and demography (demography is very important for Muhammad, after all). Conversion is often passive. Time is the weapon. The conviction is simple; and they do not hide it: Europe will become Islamic once Muslims become the majority. This is not a conspiracy theory; it is openly stated in Islamic political theology.
Accommodation comes first. Once community density is achieved, values harden again.
I did not learn this from theory. A Chechen Muslim woman explained it to me directly. And suddenly everything made sense. Why second- and third-generation Turks in Germany, once secular, once “cool”, are now drifting toward Salafism, sharia, and underground religious absolutism????
Russia and the Slavic world understand this instinctively. They do not want Islam; not as a demographic force, not as a civilizational competitor. Like it or not, they now function as Europe’s external immune system. The EU has none.Don Pelayo becomes a fetish figure for the global alt-right. Franco becomes central, despite his contradictions, despite his marrano lineage, because he represents order against dissolution. Islamophobia spreads underground, even among groups once thought immune to it. In Germany, conservative gay voters increasingly drift toward the AfD; not out of ideology, but out of instinct.
Finally, this must be said: the Islamic worldview is not stupid. Its cosmology is a coherent absurdity. Muslims never truly understood the European myth of linear progress. That is why they are capable of return; they return everywhere to the same values because they really think the world belongs to them. Islam isn't Hegelian; we often forget it!
Maybe, but I really dont think Americans understand how poorly European endemic cultural production is. Music, TV and cinema, technology and ideology. In my own generation they are mostly American made and consumed.
This is more waxxing but there will be a more analytical post of Americanization of Europe
I guess I was mostly disagreeing to the part where you said Americans share and generate a culture together. It is no longer true in my opinion. The same effect of modernity applies on ther culture.
When it comes to the comparison in your comment, I would say that music, TV and cinema have lost a lot of prominence. In terms of culture generation and ideology, there are a few overperformers in Europe. I am mainly thinking of Sweden. They are used by leftist as an example to emulate. They are the cultural avant-garde. They have pewdiepie. They generated 20% of steams revenue. I agree that Europe’s performance in terms of economy and innovation is abysmal but this is probably mostly due to incentives with high tax rates and regulations.
My POV is more that the west is broadly having some “discussion“ online and that while the US is the dominating voice, Europeans still have some weight. (Americans talk about and follow Hungary’s natalist program, UK’s censorship regime, Denmark’s trans child “healthcare“, and apparently the sex of Macron’s wife lol)
The US is lagging Europe by a maximum of 20 years, likely less. People forget now that circa 2005 there were still optimists who believed that a more integrated EU could serve as a counterweight to America, China, or India. MAGA roughly equals EU optimism, I think.
Very good although I couldn’t quite make it to the end.
I particularly liked your comments on secularism or laicite. Quebec right now is responding to some Islamic misbehaviour by enshrining secularism as its defining principle, for example by removing the traditional crucifix from its legislature. This seems to support your point. They seem to be responding to immigrants with self-negation and expecting the same from immigrants.
Interestingly Quebec is the province in Canada that has most enthusiastically embraced MAID. Also interesting is that MAID in Canada is mostly a European phenomenon and immigrants seem to avoid it.
It is not surprising, Quebecois are the cousins of the French and you imported the same Laïque ideology. As this essay is a reflection of my personal experience and I grew up on France it is only normal it reflects also outre-mer ^-^
That is indeed interesting, who knew the Catholic faith would be the last thread before eugenics
Quebec actually has no tradition of laicite, as it missed out on the French Revolution. It stayed Church-bound until the 1960s, when it threw off Catholicism for the most part. It’s the same kind of “eff you dad!” spirit you have in Ireland and Spain, together with some hand me down French ideology.
They like to paint pre-1960s Quebec as some sort of dark age. However, recently someone posted a video of a 1950s Quebec festival and it looked pretty awesome, sort of like how pictures of Franco-era Spain always look awesome.
The French Catholic Church was all set to retire, but in a vital reaction they have been suddenly overwhelmed by new conversions, causing administrative backlog. The Economist also has the story but paywalled. The surge is double digit and mostly young. Moreover young Catholics around the world want the Latin Mass. The girls are wearing veils.
That is indeed true and when I move to the big city I want to meet the young converts tbh. I think this still goes into the theory or achipelisation. Some archipelagos are just getting stronger.
The effect I also heard is that a lot of boomers are progressive catholics and would be alienated by any trad-cath turn which is why the French Catholic Church still hasnt adapted to the new wave. As with everything in life, boomers win….
your essay would benefit from slightly fewer words - but the problem you point to is real and well laid out
Thanks, you are probably right and in general I do try to be less verbose but this one was a bit more special so I let myself write until completion. I will probably rehash this topic in a more analytical way (the why in data) but this is more of an esoterical thing I had in my head
I enjoy how long your work is, I’ve never read one of your essays and wished they were shorter
The cultural bit is so bad that I genuinely started to forget German bc I never ever need it in my life outside of reading middle century poetry. Before it was an important language and science and engineering.
Hier auch.
The small level I ever managed is now 0 and the issue is that when I asked Germans what could I read, watch etc they were all befuddled, and recommended me American series
Good thing that soon we will be AI generate stuff in any language and human national culture will end.
Mentioning China in passing is interesting because it's clear China /was/ a parallel to this problem. Traditional Chinese culture was clearly something exhausted, dead, and sterile by the early 1900's. It was actually remarkable how many Westerners actually could adopt traditional Chinese speech/dress/customs/ritual almost perfectly, better than the natives - and actually served the Qing state with remarkable competetence (see: Robert Hart). But that's also partly because like modern European culture, Chinese culture circa 1900 was a sterile museum piece. And like modern Europe, Qing China was at best a geographic entity bound together primarily by creaky political institutions that functioned, but rather suboptimally (much like the EU).
Europe's closest geopolitical and cultural parallel isn't modern China or Communist China - it's clearly China in the late 19th and early 20th century. We are living in the European century of humiliation. In many ways, the cultural dilemma facing Europeans today is the same that faced Chinese intellectuals in the 1900's - which directly led to the May Fourth Movement and the inauguration of modern Chinese culture. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem Europe is quite at that point yet - in fact they still seem ruled by their mandarins and eunuchs!
Someone has read Aymon de Boisseau’s article!
I mentioned China because they indeed have gone through all of this already in their 19th century but (imo) they still havent recovered from those events. Modern china is a leninist developmental state with liberal aesthetics. They sure like to larp with Confucianism and such but the spirit of liberalism is corrossive and the corrossion can best be seen in the East Asian countries which adopted it the most (consumerism, indviduality, markets replacing immaterial infrastructure, dating articulated around material etc)
I disagree with Aymon but I deeply want him to be right, because it will mean I will see the equivalent of a Taiping rebellion in real time. My only issue is in this scenario I would be in the position of Manchu’s so not that nice. We also have different demographics and most people are materially comfortable enough to not want to try something new. So the eunuchs and mandarins will keep scheming
I have no idea who Aymon de Boisseau is - I am not French/European, actually Chinese (Manchu) - but I am interested in this article which I cannot find.
I think politically leninist but culturally liberal seems accurate (and also Marxism/Leninism is obviously an offshoot of Enlightenment liberalism). The Confucianism thing is I think not even serious enough to constitute LARP - the Confucius Institute thing was primarily orientated towards foreign soft power. References to classical literature (much more common now due to higher human capital) doesn't make a Confucian - or for that matter a Platonist/Stoic/whatever. Part of Chinese national exceptionalism is probably being the LEAST 'Confucian' East Asian nation (definitely far less so than Vietnam/Korea/Japan). A funny WW2 fact is that Imperial Japan/Manchukuo invested heavily in Confucian-style rhetoric/propaganda, which was basically totally ineffective in actual China (where the KMT/CPC mostly talked about anti-imperialism, democracy, freedom, science, modernization, etc.)
That being said, I am not sure if liberalism is actually corrosive in that sense. Infamous Chinese materialism/consumerism is really a traditional Chinese cultural trait lol, not an import of modern liberalism. Your archetypal "dating based on materialism" person is actually less educated and from the countryside! If anything, it probably peaked over a decade ago and is on the decline (luxury brands sell less well and disproportionately to older ppl). Maybe there's kind of a Kuznets curve thing - people get really materially transactional when they leave traditional peasant tradition morality and hit middle development (nouveau riche-style) - but then the materialism declines from there. On the same point, every generation of young Chinese seems more culturally liberal but there was never an attempt to import Anglo-American culture war fights (like "wokisme").
But that point about gerontocracy - which is 100% true about European electorates - makes me question how liberal Europe is. Maybe politically liberal, but culturally conservative. For example, one thing that makes China feel more "dynamic" is widespread optimism over technology and AI, unlike the West. Like the Qing State, the EU justifies itself with values that largely don't exist in the population as a whole - and that it really doesn't really embody that well anymore. The EU's supposed raison d'etre is liberal democratic values, but it actually seems deeply illiberal and not that democratic - kind of a liberal democratic cargo cult.
Very interesting points on the 2 first parapgraphs, thank you for the information.
As for the last point, I have a very dim view on European liberalism, I wrote something in French earlier this year (you can translate it if interested https://open.substack.com/pub/larchipel/p/il-ny-a-plus-de-liberalisme-en-europe )
Also, here is an the Aymon article which hits directly at your Qing/EU comparison: https://open.substack.com/pub/aymondeboissieu/p/is-europe-headed-towards-a-century
"This is why return is impossible. The young man who grows his beard and retreats into Islam thinks he returns to his grandfather's faith. But his grandfather's faith was lived without question, embedded in community structures, requiring no ideological commitment. The grandsons faith is conscious choice, ideological stance, defended identity. He grasps for living water and touches only the mirror, his own reflection, his own modern consciousness dressed in traditional garments."
I think this is overdone a bit. The Middle East is full of religions. None of them would exist if people just spent pre-modernity living faith without question.
Real, but:
- I wrote this in the context of Europe and modernity. I could probably keep being a Shi'a, crying to Ali and flogging myself in Aleppo. I can definitely not do so in a French Ghetto. Traditions outside their context become mere performances and when it becomes a performance.
- Most muslims dont question their faith because it is a tenet, the literal thing to do when you question anything is go to the Imam, and the imam just spends and explains platitudes about why Abu Bamboo's Hadith doesnt apply or just applies his Islamic sophistry magic on you until you get tired and get back to not questioning.
- In Europe you are in constant contact with modernity and tbh, for reasons I will explain someday, the only strand of Islam that survives effectively the constant contact with modernity is Salafism/Wahabbism (Ibn Tammiyya + Wahab + Qutb) through Darwinian ideological selection. Kinda like how secular brands of Judaism die in America while Charedim through strong isolation from society resist and multiply. Also Islam has through osmosis adopted a lot of Marxsist ideas packages and veiled in traditional words. Jihad is the same word, but the context is anti-imperial now.
Idk if I explained myself correctly on the last point, but any serious practice of Islam in Europe will have to pass through a strand of Islam that resists Liberalism/modernity's corrosive properties, and for now it seems Wahabbism is a winner.
I agree with the conclusion, just not part of the framing.
An excellent read, thank you!
I disagree with the ending message.
When looking at most immigrants' decision making, cultural and broader identity comes second to material reality.
Retaining the construct of Europe as a fragmented archipelago, the islands are still incredibly enticing when the island you come from is desolate with similar but more radical divides so rather than resembling islands it is like being in a trench.
Once material conditions improve enough, your argument not to migrate could stand firmly but in order for that to happen we do need to talk about policy.
Thanks for the comment!
I truly disagree as the material reality being the primal one. If you improve material conditions the void at the center doesnt improve magically. It might mask it or lessen it but the impulses are still gonna be there.
War determines all social relations so I don't see how "religious" justification overrides that. Nerd essay
Awesome writing
It is a complex matter. And this is going to be long; I am German and very Nerd...😄
Europe has never experienced an influx of millions of migrants from radically different civilizational backgrounds on this scale. In my Substack I analyzed the Spanish case in particular, often arguing with low-IQ alt-right white trash, showing how European integration simultaneously dissolved the last internal coherence of the Francoist legacy of unity. This disintegration has occurred in every EU country; Spain is simply the most exposed, the most fragmented, the most lost. And yes, this is from my German perspective(and I am a Romanist; I know more about Spain than Spaniards themselves, lol)
I want to expose a different case here. Take it as a dialogue; I liked your exposition. Let us take the Visigoths and the way they effectively weaponized Islam for nearly eight centuries in Hispania (yes, weaponized). Goths, Visigoths, Vandals, Suebi, and others... I want to push this further. One day I would like to write this properly, though I am lazy and a nerd. All these peoples, including the steppe Huns, shared a fetish for Rome (Suebi were the more agrarian). But Rome could not be dominated on barbarian terms. Rome absorbs, transforms, and strips. Roman Christianity is not merely stronger than “paganism”; it is simply superior as a civilizational form. Byzantium, the second Rome, is even more brutal in this regard: it systematically de-Gothicizes the Goths. It dissolves ethnic kingship into imperial theology.
This is where Hispania becomes exceptional.
Alaric never conquered Rome in a civilizational sense; he circled it. The Visigoths enter Hispania already half-Christian, already unstable, many still believing in Gaut (Wotan). They embrace Arian Christianity while ruling a majority Nicene population. In Italy, the Ostrogoths are absorbed by Roman administration. In Hispania, however, the Visigothic elite survives longer as itself. The Visigothic kings remain Goths in a way that is no longer possible elsewhere.So the question arises: how did a powerful Visigothic kingdom fall to a bunch of Berbers riding camels?
Well; it didn’t.
The answer is simple: conversion, pact, continuity... civil war.
The Visigothic kingdom was already fractured and aristocratically exhausted. What followed was not a clean military annihilation; it was closer to a civil war with strong religious tones. Large parts of the Arian elite converted. Others became dhimmis under newly converted lords. Trinitarian and Pagans fled to the North and "resist". Islam as religion was closer to their pre-Roman sensibility than Byzantine/Roman Christianity ever was. It offered alliance against Constantinople and the Franks in the north, access to Mediterranean trade, and tangible material gain.
This is not my speculation. Muslim sources themselves describe it this way. And this is why despite the Islamic occupation. There was no sudden demographic replacement. The idea of a total “invasion” is later Reconquista mythology. Islam endured in Iberia for nearly eight centuries; an absurdly long time for a supposedly just a foreign occupation. Al-Andalus was not strong despite the Gothic substrate; it was strong because of it. Administration, landholding, military organization; all inherited from the Goths, and Islam, apparently, made them more efficient because it set them free from Roma and the Byzantine rule.
Today, the pattern is familiar but opposite to what the Islamic Visigoths did.
Islam functions through presence, patience, and demography (demography is very important for Muhammad, after all). Conversion is often passive. Time is the weapon. The conviction is simple; and they do not hide it: Europe will become Islamic once Muslims become the majority. This is not a conspiracy theory; it is openly stated in Islamic political theology.
Accommodation comes first. Once community density is achieved, values harden again.
I did not learn this from theory. A Chechen Muslim woman explained it to me directly. And suddenly everything made sense. Why second- and third-generation Turks in Germany, once secular, once “cool”, are now drifting toward Salafism, sharia, and underground religious absolutism????
Russia and the Slavic world understand this instinctively. They do not want Islam; not as a demographic force, not as a civilizational competitor. Like it or not, they now function as Europe’s external immune system. The EU has none.Don Pelayo becomes a fetish figure for the global alt-right. Franco becomes central, despite his contradictions, despite his marrano lineage, because he represents order against dissolution. Islamophobia spreads underground, even among groups once thought immune to it. In Germany, conservative gay voters increasingly drift toward the AfD; not out of ideology, but out of instinct.
Finally, this must be said: the Islamic worldview is not stupid. Its cosmology is a coherent absurdity. Muslims never truly understood the European myth of linear progress. That is why they are capable of return; they return everywhere to the same values because they really think the world belongs to them. Islam isn't Hegelian; we often forget it!
I agree with you that Europe is doing poorly but I think you exaggerate American cultural greatness
Maybe, but I really dont think Americans understand how poorly European endemic cultural production is. Music, TV and cinema, technology and ideology. In my own generation they are mostly American made and consumed.
This is more waxxing but there will be a more analytical post of Americanization of Europe
I guess I was mostly disagreeing to the part where you said Americans share and generate a culture together. It is no longer true in my opinion. The same effect of modernity applies on ther culture.
When it comes to the comparison in your comment, I would say that music, TV and cinema have lost a lot of prominence. In terms of culture generation and ideology, there are a few overperformers in Europe. I am mainly thinking of Sweden. They are used by leftist as an example to emulate. They are the cultural avant-garde. They have pewdiepie. They generated 20% of steams revenue. I agree that Europe’s performance in terms of economy and innovation is abysmal but this is probably mostly due to incentives with high tax rates and regulations.
My POV is more that the west is broadly having some “discussion“ online and that while the US is the dominating voice, Europeans still have some weight. (Americans talk about and follow Hungary’s natalist program, UK’s censorship regime, Denmark’s trans child “healthcare“, and apparently the sex of Macron’s wife lol)
The US is lagging Europe by a maximum of 20 years, likely less. People forget now that circa 2005 there were still optimists who believed that a more integrated EU could serve as a counterweight to America, China, or India. MAGA roughly equals EU optimism, I think.
Good heavens! With us 🇺🇸 contracting Europe will breathe again, that and the passing of the Boomers.
I’m American.
Happy Holidays
Very good although I couldn’t quite make it to the end.
I particularly liked your comments on secularism or laicite. Quebec right now is responding to some Islamic misbehaviour by enshrining secularism as its defining principle, for example by removing the traditional crucifix from its legislature. This seems to support your point. They seem to be responding to immigrants with self-negation and expecting the same from immigrants.
Interestingly Quebec is the province in Canada that has most enthusiastically embraced MAID. Also interesting is that MAID in Canada is mostly a European phenomenon and immigrants seem to avoid it.
It is not surprising, Quebecois are the cousins of the French and you imported the same Laïque ideology. As this essay is a reflection of my personal experience and I grew up on France it is only normal it reflects also outre-mer ^-^
That is indeed interesting, who knew the Catholic faith would be the last thread before eugenics
Quebec actually has no tradition of laicite, as it missed out on the French Revolution. It stayed Church-bound until the 1960s, when it threw off Catholicism for the most part. It’s the same kind of “eff you dad!” spirit you have in Ireland and Spain, together with some hand me down French ideology.
They like to paint pre-1960s Quebec as some sort of dark age. However, recently someone posted a video of a 1950s Quebec festival and it looked pretty awesome, sort of like how pictures of Franco-era Spain always look awesome.
The French Catholic Church was all set to retire, but in a vital reaction they have been suddenly overwhelmed by new conversions, causing administrative backlog. The Economist also has the story but paywalled. The surge is double digit and mostly young. Moreover young Catholics around the world want the Latin Mass. The girls are wearing veils.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/263349/france-sees-record-10384-adult-baptisms-in-2025-45-percent-increase-as-young-catholics-lead-revival
That is indeed true and when I move to the big city I want to meet the young converts tbh. I think this still goes into the theory or achipelisation. Some archipelagos are just getting stronger.
The effect I also heard is that a lot of boomers are progressive catholics and would be alienated by any trad-cath turn which is why the French Catholic Church still hasnt adapted to the new wave. As with everything in life, boomers win….
Boomers are dying. They die as they have lived:Badly
Americans are also writing essays saying the same things about their country.
Europe is ripe for conquest, pray the conquerors are European- if so let them win.
Why author, how modern of you “But why this should continue, what purpose French civilization serves,”
Tres Chic 😉