The Strange Death of Europe

The Strange Death of Europe
Cover
Author Douglas Murray
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Subjects Politics, immigration, Islam
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date
 May 4, 2017
Media type Print
Pages 352
ISBN 978-1-4729-4224-1

The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam is a 2017 book by the British journalist and political commentator Douglas Murray. It was published in the United Kingdom in May 2017, and in June 2017 in the United States.

The book's title was inspired by George Dangerfield's classic of political history The Strange Death of Liberal England, published in 1935.

Thesis

Murray explores two factors that explain why European civilization as we have known it will not survive. The first is the combination of mass migration of new peoples into the continent together with Europe's negative birth rates. The second is what Murray describes as “the fact that… at the same time Europe lost faith in its beliefs, traditions, and legitimacy”.[1]

Reception

Sam Harris lauded the book as "wonderful".[2] Writing in the National Review (for which publication, Murray is a fellow contributor), Michael Brendan Dougherty praised it as "informed by actual reporting across the Continent, and a quality of writing that manages to be spritely and elegiac at the same time. Murray's is also a truly liberal intellect, in that he is free from the power that taboo exerts over the European problem, but he doesn’t betray the slightest hint of atavism or meanspiritedness".[3]

In The Daily Telegraph, Juliet Samuel summarised Murray's book by saying, "His overall thesis, that a guilt-driven and exhausted Europe is playing fast and loose with its precious modern values by embracing migration on such a scale, is hard to refute".[4]

Conversely, writing in The Guardian, the political journalist Gaby Hinsliff described Strange Death as "Chapter after chapter circles around the same repetitive themes: migrants raping and murdering and terrorising; paeans to Christianity; long polemics about how Europe is too 'exhausted by history' and colonial guilt to face another battle, and is thus letting itself be rolled over by invaders fiercely confident in their own beliefs".[5]

References

  1. ↑ Abrams, Elliott (12 July 2017). "The Strange Death of Europe". Council on Foreign Relations. Retrieved 13 July 2017.
  2. ↑ "Waking Up With Sam Harris #85 - Is this the End of Europe? (with Douglas Murray)". Retrieved July 14, 2017.
  3. ↑ Dougherty, Michael Brendan (30 May 2017). "The Manchester Attack and the Death of Europe". National Review. Retrieved 26 June 2017.
  4. ↑ Samuel, Juliet (6 May 2017). "Yanis Varoufakis and Douglas Murray: why Europe is weary". The Telegraph. Retrieved 18 July 2017.
  5. ↑ Hinsliff, Gaby (6 May 2017). "The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray review – gentrified xenophobia". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 June 2017.
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