Illusion of Permanence

When Did We Lose Europe?

Donald Trump has issued a warning to the EU from Scotland: “On immigration, you better get your act together.” He added, “You’re not going to have Europe anymore.” The U.S. president has told European leaders to their faces what almost everyone already acknowledges in private. The Great Replacement was not a conspiracy theory. It is a sad reality. And perhaps Trump’s words are a good opportunity to go back to the beginning and, frankly, answer the big question that concerns all Europeans: When did we lose Europe?

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, Illusion of Permanence

Family disintegration, not housing, is behind Anglosphere misery

The decline in wellbeing among young people is an all-too-familiar trend. Less understood is that the situation is significantly worse in the Anglosphere — Britain, Ireland, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — than in Western Europe. The contrast is documented, chart by chart, in a new report for the Financial Times. Drawing on data from the World Happiness Report, John Burn-Murdoch argues that the “worsening in young adult mental health over the past decade is primarily, if not exclusively, an Anglosphere phenomenon”.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCultural Insanity, Decline & Fall, Illusion of Permanence

Is The West About To Implode?

Suddenly it is all too clear. There is very little that binds together the different sections of what used to be called the Western world. The ascendancy of the 2025 Trump Presidency has crystallised the trend towards the fragmentation of global westernism. America looks inward and an all too ignored Europe knows that its fragility and weakness stands exposed.

The current conflict between Europe and America is not reducible to contrasting approaches towards Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Nor is this simply a conflict over tariffs and trade. Yes, we see the forceful assertion of American national interest but the dynamic set in play is not merely the latest version of the usual competitive positioning between different powers.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inDecline & Fall, Illusion of Permanence

How the Sons of St. Patrick Preserved the West

From the fall of Rome to the apex of the medieval ages, it was the ‘Sons of St. Patrick’ who reintroduced Western civilization to the West.

When rattling off the names of those who have played a pivotal role in shaping Western civilization, figures such as Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, Henry V, Christopher Columbus, William Shakespeare, the American Founding Fathers, Napoleon Bonaparte, and a handful of others — popes, princes, saints, and soldiers — spring readily to mind. One name which is often left out of the catalogue of greats, but without whom Western civilization may not exist, is that of St. Patrick.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inIllusion of Permanence, Ireland

George Orwell’s Green and Pleasant Land

George Orwell

Though I haven’t read all his works, I consider myself a fan of George Orwell, who died 75 years ago today. If having a copy of 1984 on the bedside table is enough to get the UK Government’s ‘Prevent’ programme sweating, my bookcase would have them both shaken and stirred.

A personal favourite is his 1939 novel Coming Up for Air, set in the run up to the commencement of the Second World War. The novel’s protagonist, George Bowling, is a lower middle-class, middle-aged man dissatisfied with his lot in life who feels a deep anxiety about the coming global war and is simultaneously perplexed by the seeming indifference of those around him.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inIllusion of Permanence

The barbarians are laughing at us

Culture warriors are losing the battle for civilisation

There are many contenders to be the world’s predominant civilisation in the remainder of the 21st century. In Moscow in March, a group of top clergy and pious entrepreneurs from the Kremlin’s inner circle lauded their country’s role as creators of the so-called Russian World. This was defined as a “spiritual and cultural-civilisational phenomenon” stretching far beyond the state’s legal borders, embracing all those who recognised the Russians’ self-imposed mission, which was to restrain evil across the globe.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inIllusion of Permanence