Martin Amis: Has Feminism cost us Europe?

A while ago, Martin Amis got into some trouble for 'adumbrating' 'an urge' to take collective action against Muslims. In an attempt to defend himself, he wrote to the Independent that "the mood, the retaliatory "urge" soon evaporated, and I went back to feeling that we must, of course, build all the bridges we can between ourselves and the Muslim majority, which we know to be moderate."

So how's the bridge building going?

He was interviewed last Tuesday by Johann Hari, again in the Independent. Amis had been reading a book by Mark Steyn, who I had not previously come across, but appears to be a Canadian racist who makes a living by writing about how the Islamists are going to take over Europe. I'll let Johann explain what happened next:

"Amis says Steyn is "a great sayer of the unsayable". Muslims are indeed reproducing at a faster rate than the rest of us, he says, and they will eventually outbreed us and become a majority: "One of the mathematical beauties of democracy is that you can look at the figures and be pretty sure how it's going to fall out. It's not PC. It's so saturated in revulsions that people can't go near it. [But] we should go near it... Just because there have been horrible abuses based on this [way of thinking] doesn't mean that it's not worth considering, or that it's so radioactive that you don't dare go near it. That is the defeat of reason."

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"He then drags Steyn's arguments into a whole other swamp of reaction. "He doesn't even dare say it actually," he says, "but his thesis is that when you allow women to choose [through contraception and abortion], you will face demographic disaster, because they won't choose to have the necessary amount of children. The reason that America is the only First World country with a non-declining birth rate is because of all those things we hate about it, you know – [it's] patriarchal, church-going. I'm going to take this up because I think it's such an enormous question – has feminism cost us Europe?""

Building bridges with moderate Muslims? Not so much. "Has feminism cost us Europe?" Coming soon to a bookshop near you. It is greatly to Johann Hari's credit that he attempts to try to reason with this mad racist drivel, rather than edging away from Martin and doing a runner.

And here, right on cue, is Nick Cohen to explain how Martin Amis is much misunderstood and is being persecuted by the beserk libruls.

More on this here.