How terrorism is deforming the face of Europe
Does Europe even recognize itself anymore?
Terrorism is beginning to disfigure the face of Europe. Besides the price of the carnage itself, terrorism is changing the character of Europe's politics, threatening to make the arrangements of the EU look like utopianism, and leading to new restrictions and hassles for the lives of Europeans.
Tuesday's terrorist attacks in Brussels, which ISIS claims as its own handiwork, killed dozens and injured hundreds. Officials there say they expected some kind of retaliation for the recent arrest of Salah Abdeslam, who was wanted in connection with last year's attacks in Paris. Until more evidence surfaces, it is impossible to know if this attack was that retaliation or something planned further in advance. Police forces have also turned up evidence that Abdeslam was also planning an attack before his arrest, perhaps this one.
Belgium is a small country, and hundreds of its Muslim residents have traveled to fight in Syria for ISIS and then returned. The security and surveillance demands this threat imposes already overwhelm Belgium's rather limited policing and intelligence resources. At a time when the problems posed by poorly integrated Muslim communities are leading to a renewal of Euroskepticism, the threats to Europe from within Belgium call for something like the opposite: more cooperation on security throughout the continent. How can Germany or France be doing their own job of protecting their citizens if, as last November proved, Belgium can be the source of serious terrorist threats?
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
But most frightening is the way Europe is changing after each attack. When security is threatened, liberty goes soon afterward. After the November attack in Paris, France's own military deployed in French streets, acting as a semi-permanent guard to synagogues and other Jewish institutions. The former certainties of continental politics are also changing. The Schengen Agreement that allows Europeans free travel across EU borders, perhaps the most tangible way Europeans enjoy modern Europe's peace, is now threatened by the upheaval from terrorism.
At the same time, the inability of Europe to deal with this threat of terrorism, or to maintain even the illusion of control over immigration into the continent fuels the rise of populist nationalism. These new parties, challenging the traditional center, right, and left alike, would do more than erase the Schengen accord should any of them achieve real power in one of the major European states.
Popular frustration over immigration is even starting to bring back early 20th century politics where popular movements dress in uniforms and march through hostile neighborhoods to express themselves and provoke reactions. See the way the English city of Luton has become a stage for an ongoing set of rival productions, Islamist or anti-immigrant.
Some attempts to deal with the problems caused by unassimilated migrants become a sick farce. After what seemed like a night of coordinated mass sexual assault on New Year's Eve, Cologne Mayor Henrietta Recker, an advocate for the cause of refugee resettlement in Europe, advised women to "stick together in groups, don't get split up, even if you're in a party mood.” She also said that perhaps European women needed a “code of conduct” that indicates they are unavailable to be groped by strangers in the street. At the very moment when the defining feature of Western life — freedom to show one's face in public — was temporarily occluded, a political leader was making a backhanded tribute to Sharia law, suggesting that unaccompanied or "frisky" women would meet danger.
When a sense of order and security disappears from a nation, freedom disappears soon after. Europe's leaders denied for decades that they had problems of assimilation, then convinced themselves that radicalization within the modern European ghetto would burn itself out. Now they have almost convinced themselves that a nearly uncontrolled wave of migration carries no significant risks to Europe. But, slowly, the steady pace of attacks, the threat of popular electoral revolt, and a foreboding climate of fear and self-censorship are transforming Europe into something it never intended to be.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Michael Brendan Dougherty is senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is the founder and editor of The Slurve, a newsletter about baseball. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, ESPN Magazine, Slate and The American Conservative.
-
Nigeria's worsening rate of maternal mortality
Under the radar Economic crisis is making hospitals unaffordable, with women increasingly not receiving the care they need
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published
-
'Elevating Earth Day into a national holiday is not radical — it's practical'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By Harold Maass, The Week US Published
-
UAW scores historic win in South at VW plant
Speed Read Volkswagen workers in Tennessee have voted to join the United Auto Workers union
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Sydney mall attacker may have targeted women
Speed Read Police commissioner says gender of victims is 'area of interest' to investigators
By Julia O'Driscoll, The Week UK Published
-
Why are kidnappings in Nigeria on the rise again?
Today's Big Question Hundreds of children and displaced people are missing as kidnap-for-ransom 'bandits' return
By Julia O'Driscoll, The Week UK Published
-
Deaths of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies hang over Sydney's Mardi Gras
The Explainer Police officer, the former partner of TV presenter victim, charged with two counts of murder after turning himself in
By Austin Chen, The Week UK Published
-
How the idyllic Galapagos Islands became staging post in world drug trade
Under the radar Ecuador's crackdown on gang violence forces drug traffickers into Pacific routes to meet cocaine demand
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published
-
Armed gangs, prison breaks and on-air hostages: how Ecuador was plunged into crisis
The Explainer Gangs launch deadly revenge after president declares state of emergency following escape of feared drug boss from prison
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published
-
Ecuador tips toward chaos amid prison breaks, armed TV takeover
Speed Read New President Daniel Noboa authorized the military to 'neutralize' powerful drug-linked gangs after they unleashed violence and terror across Ecuador
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Prague shooting: student kills 14 people at university
Speed reads Police believe suspect, who killed himself, may have shot his father before carrying out mass murder
By Arion McNicoll, The Week UK Published
-
Ex-US diplomat confessed spying for Cuba to undercover agent, FBI says
Speed Read DOJ says former US ambassador Manuel Rocha perpetrated 'one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the United States government by a foreign agent'
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published