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Shortly after the Trump administration’s temporary travel ban on seven unstable states caused fury in civilised society, Chatham House carried out a poll of 10,000 people in 10 European states. The public were invited to agree or disagree with a statement far beyond the ambition of the Trump order, viz: “All further migration from mainly Muslim countries should be stopped.” A majority of the public in eight out of the ten countries agreed with the statement. In Britain “only” 47 per cent of the public wanted to stop all future Muslim migration.
Two things struck me. First, majority opinion across Europe had ended up being sterner than me on this subject. For a long time my own feelings have been that we need to reduce levels of immigration into Europe dramatically, especially from Muslim-majority societies. But I do not think that the number should be precisely “zero”. Nevertheless, I now accept that the public are less liberal than me on this issue. Second, one of the people who unveiled the poll was the politics professor and TV pundit Matthew Goodwin, who used to berate me publicly for pieces of mine in Standpoint on these very subjects. My articles back then were, among other things, a vain effort to avert the growing disconnect between the public and their representatives on the issues of Islam and immigration. Goodwin is one of those who, in his own little gatekeeperish way, should take a bow for helping to make matters worse than they needed to be across Europe.
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Which brings me back to Goebbels, or at least to his former secretary, Brunhilde Pomsel, who recently died at the age of 106. Reading the obituaries, I was particularly struck by Pomsel’s recent observation about the people who today claim that they would have done more for the “poor, persecuted Jews”. “I really believe that they sincerely mean it,” she said. “But they wouldn’t have done it either.” I suppose that from Hollywood to Holyrood, people do think that they are fighting the Nazis at present. But they’re not. They’re fighting the people. And just calling them Nazis. Which isn’t quite the same thing.
Shortly after the Trump administration’s temporary travel ban on seven unstable states caused fury in civilised society, Chatham House carried out a poll of 10,000 people in 10 European states. The public were invited to agree or disagree with a statement far beyond the ambition of the Trump order, viz: “All further migration from mainly Muslim countries should be stopped.” A majority of the public in eight out of the ten countries agreed with the statement. In Britain “only” 47 per cent of the public wanted to stop all future Muslim migration.
Two things struck me. First, majority opinion across Europe had ended up being sterner than me on this subject. For a long time my own feelings have been that we need to reduce levels of immigration into Europe dramatically, especially from Muslim-majority societies. But I do not think that the number should be precisely “zero”. Nevertheless, I now accept that the public are less liberal than me on this issue. Second, one of the people who unveiled the poll was the politics professor and TV pundit Matthew Goodwin, who used to berate me publicly for pieces of mine in Standpoint on these very subjects. My articles back then were, among other things, a vain effort to avert the growing disconnect between the public and their representatives on the issues of Islam and immigration. Goodwin is one of those who, in his own little gatekeeperish way, should take a bow for helping to make matters worse than they needed to be across Europe.
***
Which brings me back to Goebbels, or at least to his former secretary, Brunhilde Pomsel, who recently died at the age of 106. Reading the obituaries, I was particularly struck by Pomsel’s recent observation about the people who today claim that they would have done more for the “poor, persecuted Jews”. “I really believe that they sincerely mean it,” she said. “But they wouldn’t have done it either.” I suppose that from Hollywood to Holyrood, people do think that they are fighting the Nazis at present. But they’re not. They’re fighting the people. And just calling them Nazis. Which isn’t quite the same thing.
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