The Open Society’s Suicide Pact

It is nearly ten years since former German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened Europe’s borders in September 2015 in a gesture of boundless openness that now marks the unravelling of liberal society. This two-part series examines Islam, multiculturalism and migration in Europe and the forces reshaping the continent’s future.

Part 2:

Eighty years after Karl Popper sketched his vision of an open society, Europe risks collapsing under the weight of growing Islamisation and its own contradictions.

It will soon be a decade since former German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the borders. The date marks the triumph of boundless openness over reason and common sense. At the same time, it marks the overture to the finale of liberal society, sealing Europe’s downfall by rolling out the red carpet for the Islamisation of the continent. Since September 2015, we have been witnessing how Popper’s project is rapidly failing because of its own internal contradictions.

Viennese thinker Karl Popper, who fled to New Zealand to escape the Nazis, wrote The Open Society and Its Enemies in Christchurch during the Second World War. In it, Popper settled scores with historicism and the totalitarian approaches of Plato, Hegel and Marx. He developed a model of society that was egalitarian, secular and largely free of ideology, based on individual achievement and as little state intervention as possible. For Popper, communism, collectivism, fascism and utopianism were all forms of the “closed society” that had to be overcome.

The decades before his book was published had produced an unprecedented series of man-made disasters: world wars and civil wars, bloody dictatorships, expulsions and famines. In this context, it was understandable that the elites wanted to exorcise the ghosts they held responsible for the previous atrocities. They adapted Popper’s ideas and created communities that they sought to purge of national and religious resentments, dogmas and particularistic identities. The approach was honourable. Unfortunately, they threw the baby out with the bathwater.

In their eagerness to banish the demons of the past, they promoted an increasingly aggressive cultural relativism that denied all civilisational differences and attacked the West exclusively. Intellectuals pounced on Europe’s sins. While the barbarism of Islam enjoyed protection, they deconstructed Christianity and the Enlightenment.

Their flagellation required only courage in the face of the dead and the weak, not genuine introspection or even active repentance. In this respect, it remained a narcissistic charade.

Western Europe has been the destination of more and more religious Muslims for a good 60 years. When an open society collides with a closed one, conflict is inevitable. The intensity of these conflicts depends on whether and how easily the differences between the ‘open’ and ‘closed’ mentalities can be resolved.

If they are fundamentally incompatible, as is the case between secularised Christianity and Islam, the numerical ratios play a key role because they reflect the power potential of the respective population groups. The United Kingdom, for example, will be predominantly Islamic by 2063. By then, immigrants will have turned the Christian European indigenous population into a minority. I do not know what the forecasts for Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands or Germany look like. But long before that, Muslims are likely to have far more young men of fighting age, which will be decisive in any civil war scenarios.

Even without headscarves, Salafists and marches for the caliphate, the atmosphere of Islamisation is palpable. Germany has become more ethnically diverse and significantly more religious, but by no means more relaxed and easy-going. The light-heartedness I remember from the pre-Merkel era has largely evaporated. When it comes to sensitive issues, the terrain is now mined, even in private circles. At the same time, more and more topics are becoming taboo. While freedom of expression is dying a slow death, imported hatred of Jews is becoming the new normal throughout Western Europe.

Islam-friendly language and dietary regulations are spreading. They are still packaged as ‘woke,’ but behind them the alliance of the post-colonial left and immigrant ‘holy warriors’ is already shining through. The muezzin’s call is heard more and more often in German cities, while the Greens in Berlin are calling for Ramadan lighting.

Popper once pointed out that tolerant communities remain tolerant only as long as they do not tolerate too much intolerance. Presumably, he could not have imagined what is happening in Europe. I, too, would never have dreamed that politics, the media, the judiciary and state-funded NGOs would form a repressive cartel of silence to cover up, trivialise and fail to punish the notorious misconduct and intolerance of Islamic colonisers.

It never occurred to me that left-wing party officials, many of whom call themselves ‘anti-fascists’ could be so blind as to senselessly trivialise and court a violent, death-loving ideology, even though this ideology deeply despises and wants to destroy their culture. Perhaps they court Islam precisely because it promises to eliminate their culture. Others, such as those in the offices of the EU Commission or public media organisations, do so because they fear losing their source of income and raison d’être.

Far beyond all pain thresholds, Western societies are committing themselves to tolerance, trimming their language, justice and bureaucracy to accommodate invaders, without any consideration for the local population, to the detriment of quality of life, internal security and the future of their own culture. British courts approve Sharia mediators. Schools allow little girls to wear headscarves. Universities stand by and watch as men and women are seated separately in lecture halls. In view of this, it should come as no surprise that gay people demonstrate in support of Gaza, even though Hamas describes their homosexuality as a ‘satanic perversion’ and punishes it with lynching.

This reveals the deep misery of a hopelessly insecure and inwardly gutted society that either no longer knows its own values or no longer dares to name them for fear of being immediately labelled ‘racist’ or ‘Islamophobic.’

As a result, blasphemy laws that were abolished long ago and believed to have been overcome are now experiencing a revival under the heading of ‘hate speech.’ The new heresy is no longer criticism of Christianity or any other religion, but of Islam. Those who mock the Pope and ridicule Jesus are met with shrugs or approving applause. Anyone who caricatures Mohammed must expect to be shot or publicly beheaded.

Israel can be called a ‘Zionist criminal state’ and Jews can once again be publicly wished dead with impunity, but anyone who points out that and how many Christians worldwide are being slaughtered by activists of the Prophet is considered Islamophobic and socially untouchable.

The double standard to one’s own detriment is breathtaking. Popper could not have foreseen that Antonio Gramsci’s disciples would turn it into a project for the self-destruction of the West and the demolition of Europe. But this is precisely where the ‘Open Society’ has arrived eighty years after the publication of his book – from Brussels to Berlin.

In his essay ‘The Crescent and the Guillotine – How Tolerance Became a Suicide Pact,’ Paul Friesen notes that the driving force behind this premature submission is fear. Fear of fatwas, shitstorms, riots and cancelled funding. ‘Islamophobia’ is the blasphemy club of secular societies, but it does not serve to protect believers; rather, it is intended to intimidate sceptics and silence critics.

For Friesen, the greatest achievement of the West is the separation of truth from tribal thinking, the idea that people should not be judged by their origin, skin colour or beliefs, but by their behaviour. That women enjoy the same rights as men and are not their property. Because words are not violence, and doubt is not a crime against gods and violence-loving religions, but a sacred right.

The vast majority of Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and Shintoists probably see it this way too. Only strict Muslims see it differently. They are convinced that only their God exists and that it is the duty of all their fellow believers to submit to him. Anyone who refuses to do so is the devil.

Therefore, Muslims must eliminate all doubters, apostates and infidels from the world. This is the will of Allah, the commandment of jihad, and if they die in the process, they die as martyrs and go straight to heavenly paradise.

This is how the ‘Open Society’ is currently burying itself. The question is whether we want that. Just as crucial, however, is whether this is what the freedom-loving Muslims want, who once went to Europe because they were fed up with stupidity, poverty and arbitrariness and wanted to live in a world where they could choose their tribe and change clans in order to live in a little more knowledge and prosperity.

(The author is an historian and novelist. He is currently working on a book on Germany’s migration crisis. Views personal.)