by Walter Laqueur
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Product Description
• In Brussels in 2004, more than 55 percent of the children born were of immigrant parents
• Half of all female scientists in Germany are childless
• According to a poll in 2005, more than 40 percent of British Muslims said Jews were a legitimate target for terrorist attacks
What happens when a falling birthrate collides with uncontrolled immigration? The Last Days of Europe explores how a massive influx from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East has loaded Europe with a burgeoning population of immigrants, many of whom have no wish to be integrated into European societies but make full use of the host nations’ generous free social services.
One of the master historians of twentieth-century Europe, Walter Laqueur is renowned for his “gold standard” studies of fascism, terrorism, and anti-Semitism. Here he describes how unplanned immigration policies and indifference coinciding with internal political and social crises have led to a continent-wide identity crisis. “Self-ghettoization” by immigrant groups has caused serious social and political divisions and intense resentment and xenophobia among native Europeans. Worse, widespread educational failure resulting in massive youth unemployment and religious or ideological disdain for the host country have bred extremist violence, as seen in the London and Madrid bombings and the Paris riots. Laqueur urges European policy makers to maintain strict controls with regard to the abuse of democratic freedoms by preachers of hate and to promote education, productive work, and integration among the new immigrants.
Written with deep concern and cool analysis by a European-born historian with a gift for explaining complex subjects, this lucid, unflinching analysis will be a must-read for anyone interested in international politics and the so-called clash of civilizations.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 I dont know what to think, 2008-11-16
I read the reviews and the book, and ended up feeling disappointed in the end, but not sure why. The arguments made by the author are simplistic. Either that or the author did excellent job explaining his points. The book seemed to be repeating. Solutions seemed to be absent from the book. The author is convincing in the end that future is dim for Europe and its people.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Highly recommended, 2008-08-21
Off the bat I'll say that I happen to be a huge fan of Mr. Laqueur, who I consider one of the greatest living english-language historians. It is fortunate, then, that he is also one of the most prolific. In The Last Days of Europe, Mr. Laqueur describes primarily the social and economic ailments that will almost certainly hinder Europe's Great Power pretensions in the 21st century. It is not a happy book, predicting a schlerotic Europe beset with sectarian and ethnic problems stemming from the combination of a social and economic system that is unsupportable in the long-term, as well as masses of culturally incompatible illegal and legal immigrants who largely have no intention of assimilating into mainstream European society.
Although altogether depressing, the work is a needed corrective to progressive/socialist panegyrics forcasting a united, self-confident European community that will present a more acceptable alternative to perceived Yankee ideological, economic, and social backwardness. Europe ain't it.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
 Pessimism is justified, 2008-04-06
This book could not be discussed in the mainstream European media. Because it would act as an eye-opener to all of those who are not already seeing what lies ahead of us: the end of our civilization in its very birthplace, if no reaction or opposite trend appear ( do not hesitate to compare this with the fate of the Roman Empire). And political correctness does not allow that.
Walter Laqueur manages to give a sober, dispassionate and erudite account of the continent's very gloomy future. And with his track-record as a professor and author of numerous books, he cannot be suspected of right-wing sympathies.
The birthrate amongst native Europeans is desperately low and below reproduction rate; it has been low since 1900 but is now reaching pathetic levels. Europe is shrinking, Europe is dying.
Meanwhile, an alien population of Muslims, introduced to Europe from the 1960s without consulting its local population, is growing fast. In its majority, even amongst the second or third generation, it seems to be unable to integrate into Western European society and is even rejecting its values with increasing force. For years, focused on other issues, Europeans did not see how much of a problem these opposing demographic evolutions would cause.
Even now, politicians and the media are focusing on the problems that the aging population is bringing; who will pay for pensions and health care? Nobody seems to realize that at some point, in 20 to 30 years' time, when the baby-boom generation will have rejoined its ancestors, Muslims in Europe will most probably represent 25% if not more of Europe's population, an even bigger proportion of its younger age groups, those that represent the future, and a clear majority in a number of large cities and their surrounding regions.
That would happen even if immigration should stop today. But it is not stopping but accelerating, with all those poor and illiterate people attracted by the magnet of European prosperity, seeing the " hen with the golden eggs".
Muslims in Europe are optimistic. They know all they have to do is to wait, because Europeans are either not realizing what is happening, or refusing to admit it, and therefore are not reacting. Why? Because European civilization lost its vigor on the battlefields of WWI and WWII, lost its self-confidence and pride, does not believe in its own fundamental values enough to defend them, because the process of European integration (that has largely ground to a halt) cannot replace that emptiness.
There might be a radical yet acceptable approach and Laqueur does not speak of it. Europe should seal its borders as much as possible, introduce managed immigration, keep Muslims out, favor migrants from other parts of the world, and above all that, set up natalist policies that reverse the trend. But I repeat: all that is not compatible with the political correctness prevailing today and natalist policies remind Europe of fascism.
But who knows, if we try dreaming a bit, Europe's problems might also contain within themselves the welcome germs of change. Aging will cause the final collapse of the welfare state as we know it, reducing the attractiveness of Europe to fascinated outsiders, and it will no longer be affordable (sadly)to keep people alive beyond a certain age. There will also be less unemployment as this was largely created by the arrival of the baby-boomers on the job market. The renewed job opportunities as well as the capital left behind by these same baby-boomers will encourage their less numerous children to reproduce with more enthusiasm...
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
The Future of America, 2008-02-16
This book is very important not just because it shows the European future, but, it also predicts the future of America, as America has similar problem, even dual, due to threat of illegal immigration plus muslim immigration. American tolerance towards both threats is suicidal.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
An important standard, 2008-02-10
Walter Laqeur, who is an expert on terrorism No End To War: Terrorism In The Twenty-first Century has decided to put his pen to paper on the historr and fate of Europe. After examining European history he shows how endless wars, and the shame of the Holocaust, caused a great melancholy to sweep the continent. It resigned itself to its fate under Communism and when it survived that threat it met challenges by not working and vacationing and abandoning its CHristian heritage and abandoning its western-secular heritage and giving in to the cult or moral-relativism, self-loathing, nihilism and post-modernism.
Multi-culturalism drove Europeans to excess in their excuses and appologies for the hateful people they important as immigrants and the intolerant cultures they allowed to grow in their midst. They supported the birth of immigrant children even as they realized demographics were against them. in Laqueur's view Europe has simply dug its own grave and these are its last days. THis book is more depressing than likeminded essays by Oriana Fallaci,The Rage and The Pride, and Norman PodhoretzWorld War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism but it is no less important. Although some such asDecline and Fall: Europe's Slow Motion Suicide andMurder in Amsterdam: Liberal Europe, Islam, and the Limits of Tolerence have given less or more extreme views this book is sure to make an important impact.
Seth J. Frantzman
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