Two kinds of people are rioting these days in the City of Light — Parisians and parasites.
The Parisians are high school kids frustrated that there’s no money in the budget to upgrade their crumbling schools.
The parasites are a toxic mix of leftists, Palestinian sympathizers, and so-called anti-fascists attaching themselves to the legitimate protesters and burning France down.
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The problem isn’t just that ecoles and lycees need new blackboards and chalk. And the problem isn’t just that France is broke, running massive, unsustainable deficits.
The riots sweeping across France are symptomatic of a much greater concern — the collapse of one of the world’s greatest civilizations because Europe is ashamed of its past.
Western Europe has never gotten past the guilt and shame of the Holocaust. As a result, postwar Europe has become a post-Christian society, where people can’t believe that their religion allowed for one of the world’s most heinous crimes, the Nazi slaughter of almost 40 million innocents across the continent.
As a result, Europeans have abandoned their religious faith and no longer believe in the tenets of Western culture. They marry late, if at all. They have few children. Some say it’s because they just want to enjoy themselves. The sorry truth is much deeper. Europeans no longer believe their world is worth passing on to future generations.
The answer? Europe needs to go back to church. They need to return to their religious roots and recognize that they have a civilization worth defending. Otherwise, Europe as we know it is finished.
Europeans gave up the true God of their faith to worship false gods — socialism, environmentalism, and what author Gad Saad calls “suicidal empathy.” Let’s see how well that’s worked out for them.
Socialism has gutted the economies of France, Italy, and much of the rest of Western Europe. Taxes are cripplingly high so as to fund a cradle-to-grave welfare state. People are so dependent on government that “self-reliance” is a term that translates into no known European language.
All-powerful labor unions force employers to keep and pay disruptive or incompetent workers for nine months after they should have been summarily fired. This dysfunctional economic system kills innovation by making it impossible for entrepreneurs to start and grow businesses. When was the last time you heard that something other than a handbag, watch, box of chocolate, or scarf was “Made in Europe?”
Environmentalism sounds great in theory — who could be for poisoning the environment? But Europe’s Green movement throttles economic activity, destroys jobs, and imposes cripplingly high costs on business. Tens of thousands of the elderly died during the heat waves this past summer, due to the Greens’ stubborn opposition to, of all things, air conditioning. They’re protecting the planet by killing Grandma.
And then there’s immigration. Europe’s colonial past, combined with its lingering Holocaust guilt, meant the addition of millions of immigrants with zero interest in assimilating into Western culture. Far from it. They bring their barbaric behavior to civilized Europe — witness the Charlie Hebdo murders, the Paris kosher supermarket shootings, the killing of 90 people at the Bataclan theater in Paris, the beheading of a schoolteacher, and the murder in the Netherlands of Theo Van Gogh.
Those are just the headline-grabbing events. You’ve also got grooming gangs in the United Kingdom assaulting young women with no legal consequences, drug-related shootings in heretofore peaceful Sweden, car rammings and rapes in Germany … the list goes on and on.
The connecting point: Europe has abandoned its religion and culture. Christianity teaches personal and community responsibility. It stands for marriage and family. In the absence of religious faith, people find other things to believe in. Socialism. Environmentalism. Suicidal empathy for immigrants who want to destroy, not build, the very countries that offer them refuge. Which is to say that Europeans are praying to gods that will not save.
The pearl-clutching legacy media refer to any politician with economic or political sense as “far right.” But hasn’t the Left done enough damage without its journalistic cheerleaders demonizing anyone with a more sensible approach?
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France is broke. The kids are right to protest over the lack of funding for schools. But France is broke for a reason. It’s because the French, like the rest of their Western European neighbors, have bought into a post-spiritual economic and social system that’s unraveling, one burned-out town hall at a time.
It’s time for Europe to stop rioting and start praying. Until it rediscovers its spiritual core, Europe is le toast.
Michael Levin is a two-time New York Times bestselling author. His next novel, 2028, A Political Thriller, will be published by Morgan James in April 2027.