THE Current Thing is one hell of an intoxicant. Just a few months ago, countries across Europe were on the brink of imposing mandatory vaccination for all citizens. So great was the threat from Covid-19 that the fundamental bodily autonomy of people was to be overridden.
Now, it’s as if it never happened. Measures to ‘limit the spread of coronavirus’ have all but been abolished across mainland Europe. Spending two weeks in Germany, all there was to see were the Abstand Halten! (keep your distance) and Maskenpflicht (mandatory mask) signs, left over like traces of a forgotten civilisation. Many still wear masks, but you won’t be barked at if you choose not to.
Nor was I even asked for my negative Covid test when leaving the UK: supposedly a requirement for any unvaccinated Untermensch such as I.
What you do see are signs of the new Current Thing: Ukrainian flags, and a lot of them. Signs made by children stuck to street-facing windows declaring ‘Mr Putin – you should be ashamed!’ No doubt when Vladimir is ambling down Unterschnitte Straße he will feel a gnawing sense of shame.
The signs were not for Papa Putin’s consumption, of course, but for passers-by. I cannot say for sure, but I suspect these windows would but a few weeks ago have been decorated with signs about Covid-19. Given that Germany doesn’t benefit from having Our Glorious NHS and its Healthcare Workers With Halos, though, I am not sure what they might have said.
Sceptical minds might wonder why each Current Thing is so enthusiastically promoted by the Establishment’s many propaganda organs. Unfailingly, government and media fall into lockstep the second a new Thing appears, diverting the public by over-saturating the airwaves and the minds of the populace with terror and panic.
This is to ensure that eyes are kept firmly off the bigger picture. While we are obsessed with meaningless minutiae, the civilisational car crash carries on apace.
Strolling the streets in Germany, this is not hard to see. The landmass of ‘Germany’ means nothing – it is the culture, values and beliefs of those who inhabit it that make it ‘Germany’ to us.
Yet Germany is a land of old Germans and young migrants. In most small towns in Germany, the sense that the country stands on the brink of a revolution can be avoided only by wilful ignorance.
At night, the picturesque streets of Bad Wildungen – about as stereotypically Deutsch as you could get – are almost empty, save for a few migrant men loitering. By day, young mothers from across the developing world push prams, their older children in tow.
Looking at the labelled buzzers in front of every house, one discovers that more than half are occupied by recent arrivals. The Schmidts, Müllers and Schneiders among them are, no doubt, already advanced in years. Having not bothered to have enough children, they leave their country to the more fecund and assertive.
Owing to the culture war our civilisation is embroiled in, such facts cannot be mentioned in polite company. It is left to those without any sway in the political process and lacking any meaningful representation to try and make the obvious cared about.
Yet one of the things that history shows is that a small number of dedicated people can have power far in excess of their numbers. The tragedy is that this has, for decades, been solely to the benefit of those who want to see the West demolished. It does mean however, that it is still not too late.
Do not be huckstered into being blinded by the Current Thing. We live in an age of the continuous present, which has forgotten the past and doesn’t believe in a future.
Concentrate, instead, on the things around us that have taken centuries, if not millennia, to create. Think of the innumerable challenges which each generation faced and overcame, guided by their faith in absolute values of truth and beauty. We are the inheritors of these great traditions: we need to show we are worthy of keeping them.
This appears in Frederick’s Newsletter and is republished by kind permission.
