Germany is on its feet again, ja, so what can go wrong? This week Good Germans have been taking to the streets to counter-protest the PEGIDA (the Bad Germans) and their ‘anti-Islamisation’ rallies that began in Dresden; Europe’s media is horrified, if also slightly fascinated, with the clear subtext being ‘if the rest of Europe can’t go in for flag-waving there’s no way you lot can’.
Not that media hostility will make much difference, I imagine; across western Europe the anti-politics movement is also anti-journalism. Large numbers of people feel that the broadcast and broadsheet media gives an inherently distorted account of multiculturalism, which its journalists view as a tenet of their faith, a faith most Europeans don’t share. Large numbers of people feel that way because it is broadly true.
Perhaps it is that multiculturalism to the Left has always been a morality play in which the protagonist (the white liberal) rescued the stranger/underdog from the hostile prejudices of the conservative.
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