Fuck Western Europe
There’s a presumption that Europe is oh so much more better and more evolved than the United States. Not to mention the barbarians in Eastern Europe. Their public intellectuals are celebrities! Safety net! CULTURE!
Fuck all of that. First of all, the issue of the refugees: a lot of Syrian and Iraqi refugees come through the Bulgarian-Turkish border. Most of them want to go to Germany or Britain. But enough have decided to stay in Sofia that there’s a thriving Arabic community. This is a good idea, frankly. Bulgaria is inexpensive. And while Bulgarians are pretty much as racist as everyone else, there haven’t been serious acts of violence against them, as in Britain, where there have been riots.
I have two theories: Bulgaria doesn’t have the psychotic superiority complex of an a dead Empire. And, in Bulgaria—contrary to cliches about Eastern Europeans guzzling bathtubs of vodka—it’s really not accepted to get very drunk. And never in public. Even though alcohol is everywhere, I have not once gotten drunk to the point of next-day hangover.
I’ve seen precisely two groups of very heavily inebriated people. They were Irish and British tourists, watching soccer and making the waitress earn her salary by demanding round after round after round. The people around, nursing a beer or a glass of wine, would just kind of snicker when they’d burst into the British national anthem, or, one time, when one group learned I live in Brooklyn, treated me and everyone else at the pub to a loud, slurred rendition of, “New Yoooooork! Concrete jungle where dreams are made of, there’s nothing you can’t do! LET’S HEAR IT FOR NEW YORRRRK!!!!!” It makes me think that the riots against the refugees, like the riots after a soccer match with an unfavorable outcome, are alcohol-fueled. You don’t riot after having your morning tea (though who knows anymore).
Britain recently passed a law to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, which has now been deemed safe. Aslyum seekers are terrified after recent riots.
”The atmosphere in the country is really terrifying. I volunteer with other asylum seekers at a repair shop but was told to go home early on Wednesday in case we were attacked,” a Western African seeker told the Times.
These rioters – I don’t understand them. Destroy shops, fighting against the police, and then tomorrow you need the same police to defend you. Rioting is not the way. The only thing bringing me hope? The thousands of counter-demonstrators out on Wednesday night. That showed a different, more positive side of Britain.
Another was staying at a hotel that was attacked:
I was in the Rotherham hotel when it was attacked – the other asylum seekers and I were terrified. Thankfully, we’ve now been moved and the police are protecting us. I used to think Britain was a safe and peaceful country, but my impression has changed.
When I hang out with my Syrian friends in Sofia, older people give looks sometimes but no one says anything and after what they’ve been through looks do not faze them.
Say what you will about the States—and there’s a lot to say—but most of the monstrosity occurs at the policy level. People say they worry about “immigrants” in the abstract but communities are welcoming, especially ones where all the young people either leave or are felled by addiction. See what happened to the ridiculous Haitian cat thing. Every incel with their iPhones descended to find proof and actually just captured the locals defending the Haitians and telling them to fuck off. Then they descended on Pennsylvania after Trump or Vance said something stupid, and were met with the same response. A chef’s kiss was one man going, “I bet you don’t have a girflriend. Oh you do? Call her now.”
“OK you got me there I don’t have a girlfriend,” guy sheepishly replied.
Meanwhile, Germany and Austria are electing Nazis. What the Hell? Americans don’t want to elect the fascist but he might win. But, because history repeats itself and Kamala Harris sucks. It seems that in Western Europe there’s a nationwide surge in fascist sentiment painted as '“populism” at the expense of refugees, the most vulnerable people.
Anyway fuck Western Europe.
An elderly friend of mine who escaped the holocaust as a child and became a Vermont leftie once told me, "I only have one prejudice. Europeans."
I have really appreciated your insights into Bulgaria. I think you're right about Western Europe, or at least the UK. I worry that you overestimate American receptiveness toward immigrants and asylum-seekers.
There's a good side and a dark side. The good side comes out when neighbors have personal or community connections to immigrants, as in Springfield, Ohio, and Charleroi, PA. In the very blue city of Nashville, where I live, we celebrate our large immigrant population, which includes the largest Kurdish community outside of Kurdistan. The "good side" was exemplified when Trump's ICE agents showed up at an immigrant family's house and tried to detain a father and son as they got in their van to head to work. The neighbors formed a human chain around the van and would not let ICE past them. Local police arrived and refused to help the ICE agents, who eventually left. The neighbors then moved the father and son to a safe location.
But the bad side comes out when Americans are presented with immigrants as a depersonalized abstraction. It's a nasty streak in our history going back to the wave of Irish immigration in the 1840s, when a nativist party arose that was commonly called the "Know-Nothings" (a good fit for today's MAGA, too). Trump and Vance clearly decided to push all their chips in on the anti-immigrant strategy. I think it's no coincidence that this is the moment the polls showed Trump gaining some momentum after two months of struggle. MAGA is betting on hate and racism, and there's a pretty good chance that it's a winning strategy. Maybe they're not yet burning buildings where asylum-seekers live. But maybe that's also just a matter of time. It's definitely part of our national character.