I see that the headlines are filled with reports from Iran, Venezuela, and Greenland. As someone who is interested in geopolitics, I find all of this interesting but also non-existential. The future for us Europeans is not decided in Latin America or the Arctic, but much closer to home. Who cares about Danish ownership of Greenland if the Danes (and other Europeans) are losing control over their home countries? In 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 Muhammad cartoons, forcing the respective cartoonists to live under heightened security ever since. One of them, Kurt Westergaard, had to live under constant police protection for the rest of his life until he died in Copenhagen in 2021. He lived a life under siege for 16 years, being basically underground in one of the supposedly “freest societies on earth.”
If I would be the prime minister of Denmark, I would care more about cartoonists than Greenland, because the former are the true canaries in the coal mine when it comes to the future of the country. Trump might occupy Greenland, but that will not alter the nature of Denmark as much as failed migration policies have done in the last few decades, something that holds true for all of Europe. The existential crisis the old continent is facing is demographic, and everything else is just commentary. Here are just a few numbers:
- 100 Poles will only have 20 Great-Grandchildren.
- 100 Austrians will only have 29 Great-Grandchildren.
- 100 Italians will only have 22 Great-Grandchildren.
If environmentalists would be serious, they would put the average European on the endangered species list. There will be plenty of polar bears frolicking in the Arctic three generations down the road, but how many Italians and Poles will be around by then? Certainly, there will still be a place on the map called “Poland” and “Italy,” but in what way will it be recognizably Italian or Polish? Pasta and pierogi will make place for kebab and halal – and that faster than most are willing to admit.
This is the hard truth that nobody wants to speak aloud: A nation is not just a set of laws or abstract propositions. A nation is a people, sharing history, culture, language, and identity.
You can have a place called England or Germany or Austria on a map, but if 50 per cent, 60 per cent or more of the population is from completely different civilisational backgrounds, if the primary schools are majority non-Western, if the cities are transformed by migration—it is not meaningfully the same country anymore. It is a different civilisation. Liberia has a Western constitution on paper, modelled on the American constitution. This did not prevent it from descending into chaos and cannibalism. The constitution is just paper. What matters is the people—their values, their habits, their cultural understanding of what it means to live together.
Afghanistan proved, definitively, that you cannot impose Western values and institutions by force or decree. After 20 years of American occupation, 20 years of institution-building, the Taliban returned to power within weeks. Values, law, and civilisation are contingent on the people who embody them. You cannot separate the substance of a civilisation from its people.
The Demographic Mathematics
Europe’s non-Muslim population is in decline. The numbers are not matters of opinion or interpretation; they are mathematical facts. Europe’s non-Muslim fertility rate stands at 1.6 children per woman—well below the replacement rate of 2.1. Meanwhile, Muslims in Europe have an average of 2.6 children per woman. Even in a “zero migration” scenario where all immigration immediately ceased, the Muslim share of Europe’s population would rise from 4.9 per cent to 7.4 per cent by 2050, driven solely by natural increase and demographic momentum. In the medium migration scenario, the Muslim share rises to 11.2 per cent by 2050. In the high migration scenario—which represents current policy trends—we’re looking at 14 per cent or more. To put this in perspective: at 15 per cent of the population, any minority group begins to reshape the political and cultural character of a nation state. At 25-30 per cent, you are looking at a fundamentally different civilisation.
This is not hysteria. These are projections from mainstream research institutions like the Pew Research Centre and the European Parliament. This is not something that might happen; it is the baseline projection given current demographic trends.
The Spiritual Dimension of Fertility
Here is what troubles the demographic analysts and what the political establishment refuses to confront: The primary driver of fertility is not economic. It is spiritual.
The only populations in Europe and North America maintaining above-replacement fertility are genuinely religious communities—whether Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, or Jewish. A person who believes that having children is a duty rather than a choice, that procreation is a sacred obligation, will have more children than one who views parenthood as an optional lifestyle choice among many equally valid pursuits. The secularization of Europe did not simply produce a culture of contraception and delayed motherhood. It produced a culture of radical autonomy, where every major life decision—marriage, parenthood, career, sexuality, even identity itself—is treated as an individual choice to be made in isolation from community, tradition, and obligation. In such a culture, having children is a burden. You must sacrifice years of your life, your body, your freedom, your career prospects. For what? To perpetuate some abstract notion of “Western civilisation”? Most people in this mindset will rationally conclude that children are not worth the cost.
But Islam—and genuinely Christian communities that still believe in Christianity—do not frame parenthood this way. Islam frames parenthood as a duty, as an obligation, as part of a sacred mission. A Muslim woman, believing sincerely in her faith, will accept the burdens of motherhood as part of her religious duty. And she will have more children as a result.
The Church’s Institutional Suicide
This creates an almost insurmountable problem for those who want Europe to remain European: You cannot manufacture a Christian revival on demand. You cannot decree that secularised Europeans suddenly embrace religious conviction. The conviction either exists or it doesn’t.
More troubling still, the churches themselves are intellectually bankrupt and have largely abandoned Christianity as a living faith. The Anglican Church, which should be defending Christian civilisation, instead has become a beachhead for progressivism, ordaining female bishops and kowtowing to trans ideology. The Catholic Church, once the institutional guardian of Christendom, has become a vehicle for leftist social policy. Why should anyone believe in institutions that no longer believe in themselves?
Yet there is a silver lining. I have observed that younger, genuinely Christian communities are beginning to emerge—churches that combine traditional Christian teaching with modern cultural awareness. These communities are growing precisely because they offer an alternative to the spiritual emptiness of secular modernity and the institutional corruption of mainline Christianity. The question is whether this revival can grow fast enough to reverse the demographic decline, or whether Islam will simply outpace Christian Christianity through sheer fertility.
The School Composition Question
Walk into primary schools in Vienna, Berlin, Amsterdam, or any major European city and look at the composition of classrooms. In some London schools, immigrant-background children comprise well over 50 per cent of the student population. In Amsterdam, over 70 per cent of students in some schools come from non-Western backgrounds. In Brussels, many primary schools are majority Muslim.
This is not a problem in the future. This is the present. These are the future voters, workers, citizens, and leaders of Europe. In 10-15 years, these children will be voting. They will be running businesses. They will be shaping their societies. And Europe’s political elites are proceeding as if this is all perfectly normal and unproblematic.
What happens when a generation of primary school students, majority from immigrant backgrounds, becomes the electorate? They will vote their interests. They will vote for policies that benefit their communities. They will support political candidates who reflect their backgrounds and values. It’s not malicious or conspiratorial; it’s simply how democratic politics works.
What Could Be Done (But Won’t Be)
Let me propose what a serious European response would look like, recognising fully that it will almost certainly not happen:
First, acknowledge clearly that mass immigration from incompatible cultural backgrounds has not “worked” as sold. Stop the pretence. The data is clear: Integration has failed. Social cohesion has declined. Crime has increased. The benefits claimed for immigration have not materialised. A serious political leadership would acknowledge this and change course.
Second, establish firm borders and enforce immigration law. This is not radical; most countries do this. Decide what immigration policy serves your national interest, and enforce it consistently.
Third, implement systematic cultural integration requirements. If you come to live in a country, you adopt its values and law. This includes linguistic integration, legal compliance, and acceptance of secular rule of law. Religious law can supplement civil law in private matters, but never supersedes it. Honour killings, forced marriage, female genital mutilation—these are crimes, and they will be prosecuted regardless of religious justification.
Fourth, where integration fails, facilitate return. Some people will not assimilate. They will not accept the legal and cultural norms of the host country. For these individuals, their home countries should be engaged to accept their return, and if necessary, incentivised to do so.
Fifth, crack down ruthlessly on parallel societies and honour-based violence. No Sharia courts. No cultural supremacy masquerading as “diversity”. One law, one set of rights, one system of justice—equally applied to all.
Sixth, address the demographic crisis head-on. This is the hardest part. Making family formation economically viable for native Europeans requires ending the financial extraction that currently makes families impossible. It requires housing policy that favours families. It requires ending the cultural narrative that treats parenthood as an optional lifestyle choice and replacing it with a narrative that honours and celebrates sacrifice, duty, and children.
But none of this will happen. Because doing so would require politicians to admit they were wrong. It would require acknowledging that the entire post-1968 multicultural project was a civilisational error. It would require breaking ranks with the international elite consensus. And European politicians lack the courage for such an admission.
Europe treats its civilisation as an embarrassment to be dismantled