The scenes of burning cars, looted businesses, attacks on police officers, and violent demonstrations across European cities have raised questions about the political and social forces driving the continent’s growing instability. France has become the most prominent example, with the recent unrest spreading from student demonstrations over deteriorating schools into widespread violence and confrontations with the authorities. Similar tensions have emerged in Italy, Spain, and elsewhere. While the immediate explanations differ from one country to another, the broader question is whether Europe is experiencing a temporary period of political unrest or the consequences of much deeper failures that have accumulated over several decades.
British author Douglas Murray has long argued that Europe faces a crisis rooted in two interconnected developments. The first is the scale of immigration into European societies and the failure of governments to ensure that newcomers are successfully integrated into the cultures, institutions, and political traditions of their host countries. The second is a loss of confidence among European political and intellectual elites in the value of their own civilisation. Murray developed this argument in his 2017 book The Strange Death of Europe, and has returned to it in his commentary on the latest disturbances in France. In his assessment, the unrest cannot be adequately understood without considering how immigration, multiculturalism, national identity, and the decisions of political establishments have interacted over time.
At the centre of Murray’s argument is the proposition that European governments permitted immigration on a scale that exceeded the capacity of their societies to absorb newcomers successfully. Immigration itself, in this interpretation, need not undermine social cohesion, provided that those entering a country integrate into its laws, political institutions, language, and fundamental cultural expectations. The difficulty arises when immigration proceeds without a corresponding expectation of integration. Murray argues that successive governments increasingly treated integration as an optional process, while multiculturalism became an end in itself. The result, he contends, has been the growth of communities that remain socially and culturally separate from the societies around them, sometimes holding markedly different views on religion, secular government, freedom of expression, and the rights of women. These divisions have, in his analysis, contributed to growing mistrust and weakened the foundations of a common national identity.
This leads to the second part of his argument, which concerns the changing attitudes of Europeans towards their own history and civilisation. Murray contends that many European institutions have become increasingly reluctant to assert the legitimacy of the cultural and political traditions on which their countries were established. A growing preoccupation with historical guilt, particularly concerning colonialism, racism, and other past injustices, has in his view encouraged a belief that European societies have little moral standing to insist on the acceptance of their own values. He argues that this has created an important contradiction. Governments continue to depend on the institutions and freedoms associated with liberal democracy, yet are increasingly uncertain about defending the historical and cultural foundations from which those institutions emerged. The consequence, he suggests, is a loss of confidence in what European societies stand for and what they expect of those who wish to become part of them.
A third element is the widening divide between European voters and the political establishments that govern them. Across much of Europe, immigration, border security, public order, and national identity have become central political issues. Murray argues that mainstream parties have repeatedly promised to respond to public concerns but have often failed to deliver meaningful changes. At the same time, he contends, political leaders, media organisations, and academic institutions have too readily dismissed opposition to existing immigration and integration policies as evidence of prejudice or extremism. In this interpretation, the effect has been to prevent legitimate disagreements from being resolved through ordinary democratic debate, driving growing numbers of citizens to conclude that the political system is unwilling to respond to their concerns. The resulting erosion of trust has created opportunities for movements outside the traditional political establishment and intensified the polarisation of European politics.
There is another dimension to the crisis which The Common Sense regards as central to understanding the unrest. Europe’s accelerated transition towards renewable energy, combined with increasingly stringent environmental regulations, aggressive carbon taxation, and the premature closure of fossil fuel and nuclear-generating capacity, has in this newspaper’s assessment severely undermined the continent’s economic competitiveness and reduced living standards. These policies have contributed to substantially higher electricity and heating costs for households, while raising the price of energy throughout the production and distribution of everyday goods. The resulting green inflation has fallen particularly heavily on lower-income families, for whom electricity, heating, transport, and food account for a larger proportion of household spending.
The consequences have extended into European industry, where high energy prices have placed energy-intensive sectors such as chemicals, steel, and manufacturing under severe pressure, contributing to factory closures, job losses, and the movement of industrial investment to economies offering cheaper energy and less burdensome regulation. This process leaves the continent with a diminished productive base and fewer employment opportunities.
The political significance of these developments is that they intersect with the cultural and institutional failures identified by Murray. Citizens who believe that their governments have failed to control immigration, preserve national cohesion, or respond to their concerns are simultaneously confronting rising household costs, weaker employment prospects, and declining confidence in the economic future.
These pressures have reinforced one another. The erosion of political trust described by Murray has reduced the willingness of voters to accept further economic sacrifices imposed by political elites, while the costs of Europe’s climate policies have strengthened the perception that those same elites are pursuing ideological objectives without sufficient regard for their consequences for ordinary citizens. The resulting frustration cuts across questions of immigration, living standards, public services, industrial decline, and political accountability, helping explain how otherwise separate grievances can converge into broader movements of protest.
Murray argues that radical political movements have helped transform legitimate social grievances into wider attacks on the political and social order. He identifies elements of the radical left, anti-capitalist organisations, environmental activists, and militant pro-Palestinian groups among those involved in the disorder. In his analysis, the presence of these movements reflects a broader hostility towards established Western institutions and provides a means through which existing social tensions can be exploited. The important distinction is between the grievances that initially bring people on to the streets and the political forces that subsequently seek to direct or intensify the unrest.
The question of law and order adds another dimension. Murray argues that European governments have become increasingly hesitant to enforce common standards consistently when doing so raises politically sensitive questions concerning identity, religion, or immigration. When citizens come to believe that governments cannot prevent violence, protect property, or apply the law fairly, confidence in the state is further weakened.
The danger is that public disorder, declining trust, and political radicalisation begin to reinforce one another and the challenge facing Europe’s governments is therefore not just to restore order on the streets of its cities but beyond that to reverse the climate and cultural policies that lie beneath the current tensions.
Source: www.thecommonsense.co.za
