January 15, 2016

Source: Shutterstock

I hope the Cologne mass sexual assaults will be of lasting and huge significance to European history, and I even think they might. (Recently arrived Arab migrants sexually assaulted large numbers of German women in front of the Cologne Cathedral on New Year’s Eve, in case you have been in a catatonic trance for a fortnight.)

Why did these attacks happen?

A large number of Muslim boys, sexually frustrated, drunk because unused to drink, surrounded by attractive, infidel girls”€”these are a large part of the reason. But I think part of it is a desire to demonstrate that they are conquerors. And this is partly on a subconscious or symbolic level. And it is what they may, in a sense, already be. I wonder what Mircea Eliade or Carl Jung would have said, or Sir James George Frazer of The Golden Bough.

It is also simply a repetition on German soil of behavior that is commonplace in the lands from which the migrants come.

“€œWhat was more extraordinary than what happened in Cologne was the fact that it was carefully covered up by the police, the city hall, and the Rhineland government.”€

Shamil Shams, a Pakistani journalist working in Germany, has written:

I have been very skeptical about the German government’s decision to allow thousands of refugees into the country without much scrutiny of their backgrounds…. I was sure that the migrants”€™ influx would ultimately disturb the harmony and balance of German society. I feel that Islamic culture and European norms are not compatible…. What happened in Cologne happens regularly in my homeland, Pakistan. The men are never ashamed, never feel guilty, never show remorse about the way they treat women in that part of the world. The men who sexually harassed girls in Cologne were not demented; they knew what they were doing. And I am sure they did it with absolute contempt for the European culture, its norms and its people.

A Syrian woman friend of mine tells me that Syrian girls are routinely insulted, harassed, and groped by young Muslim men in Syria. It makes no difference whether the girls are Muslim or Christian, she says.

It was a very good thing that this happened this past New Year’s Eve. Had it not it would have happened next year or in a couple of years”€™ time, when millions more migrants have been admitted. In the same way it is very good that ISIS have been murdering people in Europe now rather than waiting ten years. Europe has a chance to step back from the precipice. Will it?

What was more extraordinary than what happened in Cologne was the fact that it was carefully covered up by the police, the city hall, and the Rhineland government. They all lied and lied and lied. News got out because of the social media and an invaluable news website called Breitbart.

The authorities tried then to deny that the culprits were recent migrants. Most extraordinary, to me, was that the left-of-center press and the BBC then had to run with the story, albeit five or six days after it happened. In the end the BBC even had to admit that the alleged assailants were Middle Eastern, not drunken Teutons.

The Cologne cover-up has been a very good thing as well because it will persuade Germans not to trust the media or their leaders on the subject of migrants. The authorities, which were not able to prevent the attacks (fair enough”€”they had no warning), leaped into action to censor “€œhate speech”€ on social media.

Rhineland interior minister Ralf Jaeger said that while the attacks were bad, Germans must not allow right-wing anti-immigrant forces to gain legitimacy.

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