Suppose – and I know this is a stretch – you are a football fan. Then further suppose your national team wins a match against all odds.
How do you celebrate? You can punch the air and scream “Yes!!!”. You can shout “You’ve got to see this!” at the wife who is hiding in another room because she thinks your love of footie is pathetically infantile.
You can then crack a bottle of something bubbly or, for the sake of stylistic integrity, pop open another can of lager. Or, if you are a gregarious type, you can meet your mates down the pub and sink a pint or two toasting your team. A choral rendition of “Ere we go, ere we go, ere we go” may be slightly annoying to other patrons, but hey, no real harm done.
All of the above? Some of it? And that’s it? In that case, let me tell you: you are one boring, possibly anally retentive, git who either has no sense of joy or doesn’t know how to express it with real exuberance. Moreover, I’d venture a guess you aren’t Moroccan.
For Moroccan residents of the Low Countries (and they don’t call them ‘low’ for nothing) know how to rejoice, especially when they have something to celebrate. And do they ever have that, in this case.
For at the on-going World Cup the lowly Morocco team wiped the pitch with mighty Belgium, ranked second in the world. The Moroccans, I’ll have you know, are a sizeable minority in both Belgium and Holland, so their presence is always felt, if not always in a positive way.
Legally, there are about 500,000 of them in Belgium and just under 400,000 in Holland, but the outnumbered Moroccan diaspora punches well above its weight, and I use the verb advisedly. In Holland, for example, Moroccans commit 10 times as many crimes as the native-born Dutch.
Some of this activity is organised: the Moroccan Mafia is a dominant force in the drug trade throughout Europe, but especially in the Low Countries. Most crime, however, is sheer individual initiative: some mugging, some burglary, some rape, the odd bit of murder, that sort of thing.
Far be it from me to suggest that Moroccans, or Muslims in general, can’t be properly assimilated in Europe. But one thing for sure: yesterday the Moroccan ‘community’ (have you noticed that any group is now a community, such as a ‘transgender community’, an ‘animist community’, a ‘MeToo community’, you name it) definitely failed the Tebbit test.
Conservative MP and former minister Norman Tebbit had his doubts about any possible assimilation of millions of arrivals from Third World countries. A true measure of success, he suggested, would be to see which cricket team the Pakistani ‘community’ in Britain supported when England played Pakistan in a Test match.
There is no hiding from the fact that the Moroccan ‘community’ didn’t pass that test yesterday. That’s upsetting enough, but not nearly as bad as the manner in which it celebrated the footie triumph.
Riots broke out in Brussels, Antwerp and Liege, with the Moroccan ‘community’ in Amsterdam, the Hague and Rotterdam also pitching in out of solidarity. Cars were torched, shop windows smashed, metro stations shut, bus shelters vandalised, cities sealed off, water cannon and tear gas deployed by the police trying to ward off attacks by hooded youths – and great fun was had by all.
If that’s how those people express their joy, I wonder what they’d do if they were unhappy. I can just see explosions rocking Belgian and Dutch cities, with ornate gables falling into those cute canals. What I refuse to see is “the River Tiber foaming with much blood”, remembering the trouble another Tory MP, Enoch Powell, got in for quoting that line from Virgil.
I also wonder what this outburst of unbridled joy will do for interracial relations in Belgium and Holland. I have a gnawing fear that the cause of multiculturalism, so dear to my heart, may suffer. And it’s already not doing especially well, as I’ve had many occasions to observe.
Every time I drive to Amsterdam to see our close friends, I park at a garage run by some genial Francophone Arabs, who I assumed were Moroccans. I always chat to them in French, which effort they reward with slight discounts.
That amity was almost destroyed when I asked them how long ago they had left Morocco. They were mortally offended: “We are Algerians, not bloody Moroccans!” However, they graciously accepted my profuse apologies.
Amazing how one little exclamation can speak volumes, isn’t it? What upsets me is that I suspect many Dutchmen or, for that matter, Belgians may be as ignorant about the salient differences as I was. Why, some may even feel that no differences exist, salient or otherwise.
P.S. I’m happy to report that, though I’m still the founder and chairman of the Charles Martel Society for Multiculturalism, I’m no longer its only member. Brian C. of California has met all the exacting entry requirements, and I’m pleased to welcome him to the swelling roster.
Ethnic Mexicans living in the USA citizens native born act the same way when the Mexican national team beats the USA national team. Tells you where their sentiments really are.
Enoch Powell was right to in so many ways. The man was prescient as they say. A time traveler perhaps?
Ghana is the team that has won my heart.
The future is African.
Mentioned by name in an article here? And afforded all the honors and benefits of membership in the society? A red-letter day, for certain!
When one of our local teams made the finals we joked about which riots would be worse, those in celebration of victory or those expressing the anguish of defeat. Teams I support have won a few titles. However, I have yet to break my first shop window or set ablaze my first car.
I can attest to BertE’s observation. It can become a little uncomfortable. Of course, true supporters of the U.S. men’s soccer team are few and far between.
Living in Canada now, I am more disappointed by Italy’s unqualifying for the tourney than glad by Canada’s doing so. And I can vouch that most, if not all, of the white European expats that I know here would all cheer for their native France, Belgium, Germany, etc. over Canada if they were to play a match.
However, if what Mr Boot reports about Moroccan riots in Belgium are true (and who can you believe if not Boot?), then this is unspeakably disgusting behaviour and insolence toward a country that has welcomed you.