Authored by Fred Fleitz via American Greatness,
I recently spoke at Chatham House in London, one of Europe's leading globalist think tanks - and hostile territory for American conservatives. While there, I heard firsthand some of the factors and the stark denialism behind the horrific riots that erupted in France and other European countries this month.
What began in late September as student blockades of overcrowded, understaffed high schools in the Paris suburbs exploded on October 17 and 18 into some of the worst violence France has seen in decades. More than half a million people marched against rising living costs and failing public services. Rioters, many carrying Palestinian flags, torched cars and a town hall, damaged or looted at least 3,000 businesses, and injured about 1,000 police officers, gendarmes and firefighters, according to the interior ministry. Nearly 2,400 people were arrested, and the government imposed curfews in parts of Paris and other cities. Similar protests spread to Belgium and Italy.
Amid a steady stream of bashing on foreign policy, domestic security, and the president personally, a U.S. academic on one Chatham panel stunned me with her counter-reality view of President Trump's border policies.
On border security, she claimed that the real goal of last year's U.S. National Security Strategy and President Trump's efforts to stop illegal immigration is to promote Christian white nationalism. I replied that this is false: President Trump has never called for any such thing, and it is nowhere in the National Security Strategy. When she insisted that this is what the document "really" means, I pointed out that she had just conceded it does not say this - she was reading her own views into it. I also noted that the Trump administration is fully supportive of immigration as long as immigrants come to our country legally. She countered that talk by Trump officials of saving Western civilization from uncontrolled immigration amounts to a plan for a white Christian nation. It does not. The strategy warns that Europe faces "civilizational erasure" - a warning about uncontrolled migration and falling birth rates, not race. My final response was that this was a typical liberal distortion: equating conservative efforts to secure borders and protect our nation with racism.
I should add that the audience offered no pushback to the academic's comments but plenty to mine. Video of the panel is available here.
A panelist made an equally absurd claim at a second closed Chatham House panel, held under the Chatham House Rule, asserting that Europe is far freer and offers a much higher quality of life than America, with far more opportunities for young people. I was dumbfounded, even more so because no one in the room pushed back. These claims are clearly contradicted by America's lower taxes, greater economic opportunities, easier path to starting businesses, lower unemployment, and numerous other well-documented advantages. As for freedom, it is Europe, not America, where citizens are arrested and prosecuted for social media posts. The panelist later explained that Europe is better because of all the "free stuff" - free health care, free college, generous social benefits, government pensions, and so on.
This explanation wasn't very convincing. These claims in fact reflect the global elite's view of Europe as a paradise and of Trump's America as a primitive backwater. The reality is that nothing is free. Europeans pay for these benefits through some of the highest taxes in the developed world, and governments that cannot cover the bill borrow the rest. France's public debt now exceeds 110 percent of GDP, and its borrowing costs have hit their highest level in more than two decades. The recent disastrous and violent demonstrations in France and other European nations made clear that Europe is neither superior to America nor a paradise for most young Europeans.
The core reason is that Europe's massively expensive socialist welfare state does not work. The French riots began in high schools so overcrowded and understaffed that students blockaded them in protest. A state that spends lavishly on pensions and benefits cannot even keep its classrooms staffed. Meanwhile, European economies and security are under siege from a huge influx of migrants from the Middle East and Africa, which has imposed enormous costs in government benefits while contributing to surges in crime and radical Islam.
The denialism I heard in London is everywhere. Consider a recent New York Times opinion writer who drew the implausible conclusion that the French riots were part of a student revolution to build a better France. Or the BBC calling the Paris riots "mostly peaceful." Or a panelist on MS NOW who made the absurd claim that although we don't know who is behind the riots or their motivations, we know Trump is responsible.
What these elites refuse to admit is that Europe is in deep trouble because socialist and globalist policies are destroying European civilization - and that radical change is needed to save it.
Fred Fleitz is vice chair of the America First Policy Institute Center for American Security. He previously served as chief of staff of the Trump National Security Council.