Invaders and immigration
Peter Heather in The Fall of the Roman Empire (2005) lays the blame on failure to deal with external threats from the Persian Sassanid Empire in the East. Roman military misadventures in the East cost huge sums of money and bogged down 20%-25% of its army. Sound familiar? It took 50 years to come to terms with this threat. How long have we had troops in Iraq and Afghanistan? How long has Syria been rumbling on? Added to this, writes Heather, were the later Germanic invasions which finally broke the Empire.
Well nowadays, due to the wonderful way the E.U. works, the threats from external enemies can strike anywhere. London, Berlin, Barcelona, Brussels, Nice, etc. External threats in Syria and Iraq have not been dealt with. Open borders are a disaster that allow terrorists in to the heart of the E.U. where they can strike, then melt away across borders. The Berlin truck attacker escaped from Germany through France and Italy, despite being the most wanted man in Europe.
Both Vegetius and Gibbon cite letting in too many “Barbarians” contributed to the fall of Rome. Vegetius claimed that there was “Barbarization,” and Gibbon gives example of the Barbarians that eventually turned on the Romans. One example is Alaric, who sacked Rome. He was a Visigoth, who arrived as a refugee, after his people were forced out by the Hun. He became a Roman military leader. He turned on the Romans, and eventually sacked Rome. Insiders partly enabled him, such as Stilicho (himself half Vandal). A saving grace is that the Visigoths took on the mantle of the Romans, declaring themselves the heirs of Rome. They were Christian and took on Roman culture, laws, some traditions and so on. Examples can be seen in Visigothic Spain.
John Bagnall Bury’s “History of the Later Roman Empire” tells us that “The Empire had come to depend on the enrolment of barbarians, in large numbers, in the army, and that it was necessary to render the service attractive to them by the prospect of power and wealth. This was, of course, a consequence of the decline in military spirit, and of depopulation, in the old civilised Mediterranean countries.”
The parallels here are all too clear. The E.U. is being swamped with migration. This is from the East, with Syria, Iraq, and others, aand now increasingly from North Africa. Italy took 12,000 in one day and threatened to close the ports. On some islands like Lesbos and Lampedusa migrants in camps already outnumber the locals. Sweden will soon go in to a demographic death spiral of the indigenous population, with over 30% of people from an immigration background. Germany will soon follow with 22.5% of an immigration background. We don’t even bother to count France anymore. A per Vegetius, they are not adapting to our ways and adopting Western values. If anything, they are forcing us to change ours.
We often hear of demographic change, and the need to replace workers in order to prop up pensions, etc. It is often assumed that Western values such as democracy and human rights are held universally. This is not the case. The newcomers are not European, and do not feel European. Unlike the Visigoths of old they do not see themselves as heirs of European culture, or the E.U. They would be quite happy to see their own culture transplant that of the West and the E.U. Merkel is cast in the modern-day role of the enabler on the continent. The stark warning from history is there for us. The E.U. appears to be ignoring it.
The old joke was that Merkel has killed more people than Hitler. No one is laughing any more.
Internal Revolt
During the latter days of the Roman Empire, provinces began to break away. Some were recovered, others broke away permanently. At times Gaul, the Middle East provinces and North African (irony) provinces were rules separately or broke away. There were many reasons for this. One was the increasing social divisions. The Emperor had officially been classed as first among equals. Although this was merely on paper, it was still used. From the late third century A.D. rulers styled themselves “Lord and God” instead. This is reminiscent of Juncker’s power grab and combining the roles of President. What will his official title be, I wonder?
Take this summary (Wikipedia of the time: “Official cruelty, supporting extortion and corruption, may also have become more commonplace. While the scale, complexity, and violence of government were unmatched, the emperors lost control over their whole realm. Meanwhile, the richest senatorial families, immune from most taxation, engrossed more and more of the available wealth and income, while also becoming divorced from any tradition of military excellence. One scholar identifies a great increase in the purchasing power of gold, two and a half fold from 274 to the later fourth century, which may be an index of growing economic inequality between a gold-rich elite and a cash-poor peasantry.”
Sound familiar? The globalist elite in the EU are getting richer, while EU countries suffer high unemployment. National parliaments are ridden over roughshod. The leaders are out of touch with the people. The super-rich make billions, and avoid tax by living abroad, outside the EU. But they then bleat that we should stay in. You all know who I mean. Many of these types look down their noses at the average man in the street. Against this backdrop it is not hard to see why we have the rise of AfD in Germany, Five Star in Italy, Marie Le-Pen in France, to name but a few.
More worryingly we have witnessed the recent violence in Catalonia. The independence referendum was ruthlessly suppressed, with what many are alleging was police brutality. The EU is terrified of any are breaking away. One of the biggest successes of the Roman Empire was extending citizenship to all areas of the empire. This gave them status in law and a stake in the empire. The EU bleats on about citizen rights constantly in Brexit negotiations. However, when it comes to the crunch they will not lift a finger. The EU citizens in Catalonia were abandoned and left to fend for themselves. Silence from Juncker. They do not want Catalonia to leave. It will spark a wave of uprisings from separatist movements across the E.U. If they side with Catalonia, Spain may rebel. Spain may itself threaten to leave the EU. This fragmentation process will only accelerate as the EU problems continue.
Using information from:
Fall of Rome. (2017, March 25). New World Encyclopedia, Retrieved 13:10, August 29, 2017 from here and here
© Jonathon Davies 2017
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