Reading Between the Lines in Europe

This article first appeared in New English Review.

The news out of Europe continues to get more and more depressing.From Italy to Sweden, more and more refugees, migrants, and asylum-seekers continue to pour into Western Europe. (The Eastern Europeans, being more sensible, are refusing to accept them.) The predictable result is more terror attacks, everyday street crimes, rapes, and murders being committed by people almost entirely from the Middle East and Africa, predominantly Muslim, people who refuse to assimilate and do not respect the host country’s culture. Not only is the continent no longer safe, but the native populations are in danger of being replaced over time. What would have been unthinkable ten or fifteen years ago is now becoming a fact almost to the point of being irreversible.

Sadly, Europe’s leaders (including the EU) and media remain oblivious to the disaster. Not only do they ignore the objections of the people, they misinform them. A case in point is the media and how they report crime.

In Sweden, for example, newspapers report incidents of crime as being committed by “youths” (ungdomer). That is uniformly the case with the new Sweden. Riots, rapes and assaults in places like the  Rosengård area of Malmö  or the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby are committed by young boys in their teens or men in their 20s. That they are immigrants or Muslims is left out of the report. Names of people arrested are not given until a conviction is obtained. If you were uninformed, you might conclude that there was a serious problem among Swedish youth. There isn’t. You have to read between the lines when you see a term like ungdomer or the actual scene of the offense (no-go zones like Rinkeby) to know who actually commits the crime.

In the UK, offenders have been referred to as “Asians”. To Americans, that implies Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Thais etc. To the Brits, however, their Asian population traditionally comes from South Asia, specifically India, Pakistan, Bangladesh etc. Most of the offenders, including the notorious sex groomers (who prostitute young, drug addicted runaway girls ), originate from Pakistan.

The most laughable example, however, is Germany, where a report out of Berlin or the heavily-impacted Rhineland will refer to unidentified offenders as “southerners”. To the uninformed reader that might conjure up images of beer-soaked Bavarians in lederhosen and funny green hats. They are actually referring to people from “southern countries” (Middle East-Africa). Even Sgt. Schultz would blush in embarrassment.

Similarly, if you watch European cops and robbers shows, which I do regularly, you would think Europe has always had the same criminal element as we Americans. That’s because the bad guys are always either natives or from the former East bloc countries, Russians, Yugoslavians, etc. (They are the most convenient targets.)  Granted, many of the crime shows available here are dated a bit, but safe to say, European shows are as politically correct as our own when it comes to casting villains.

While we don’t (yet) have the same type of problems as Europe, we still lament that the enemy cannot be defeated  if we cannot name him. That is also true in Europe.