Douglas Murray, National Review, September 12, 2018

In response to The McCarthyite Attack on Ron DeSantis

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One of DeSantis’s crimes is apparently that he once spoke at a conference in Florida which also featured: “a critic of multiculturalism who has written that ‘Europe is committing suicide’ by welcoming large numbers of refugees and immigrants.”

The link in the article makes clear that they are talking about me. {snip}

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In any case — it might be worth making a response to the Post’s idea of investigative journalism. There are many odd presumptions in Beth Reinhard and Emma Brown’s article. One is that the authors think that speaking at a conference that has also hosted James Damore or Ben Shapiro is somehow embarrassing or way-out-there. Another is that the school of journalism known as “I’ve danced with a man who’s danced with a girl who’s danced with the Prince of Wales” is a devastating journalistic tactic, rather than a signifier of an ultra-partisan hit-job in which the facts have been found to fit the politics of the authors.

But let me make the more substantial point, which is an invitation to the Washington Post’s investigative brains to spend any time at all outside their small-town bubble. Because in their intense, untraveled parochialism, Reinhard and Brown appear to think that there is something odd or out there about being “a critic of multiculturalism.” Allow me to let them into a secret: In Europe today, absolutely everyone is a critic of multiculturalism — prime ministers, presidents, even the chancellor of Germany is a critic of multiculturalism. Eight years ago Chancellor Merkel said it had been a failure and three years ago she described it as a “sham.” This was even reported in the Washington Post, which wrote up the 2015 speech in which the German chancellor also said, “We want and we will reduce the number of refugees noticeably.” What a far-right nutter the chancellor must seem in the eyes of Reinhard and Brown. I hope there are no plans for her to meet any American politicians in the future. They should no-platform her for sure.

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Consider the final leaders debate before Sunday’s election in Sweden. At one point in the debate the head of the Moderate party (the Moderate party) attacked the prime minister over integration and its purported “successes.” Which successes was he thinking of, asked the head of the Moderate party? What was the prime minister happiest with? “The shootings? The unemployment?” He went on to list all the negative consequences of mass immigration that his country is experiencing. Perhaps it would be wisest if Americans especially refuse to engage with Scandinavians in the years ahead.

At the behest of the Washington Post, it would probably be best in the years ahead if no European ever speaks to any American. {snip} Only then can the U.S. political class be prevented from encountering an opinion that is not just mainstream, but held by the majority of the public in every nation of Europe.