The War at Home That Europe Cannot Dodge

It is bad enough that Europe’s spineless leaders have done all they can to avoid taking sides with democratic Israel against Islamist Iran. But it will be even worse if they refuse to fight the intensifying political war on the home front, against the anti-Western alliance that has come out in support of Iran and its terrorist satellites.

Even when the likes of German chancellor Friedrich Merz confessed that little Israel is “doing the dirty work” for Western democracy by fighting the Islamic Republic, and some other EU leaders begrudgingly conceded it was in Europe’s interests to stop Iran acquiring an Islamist Bomb, they were still all squealing about “de-escalation” and pleading with the Ayatollahs to play nice. Europe’s equivocation was exemplified by the UK’s useless Labour foreign secretary, David Lammy, who told parliament that the issue of whether Britain supported the U.S. bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities was not a “binary question.” Just as these people don’t know if a woman can have a penis, they don’t know which side to take in a war between civilisation and barbarism.

Meanwhile, back here in Europe, the enemies of Western democracy have no such reluctance about showing their true colours. Overnight, the ostensibly pro-Palestinian protests in London, Berlin and elsewhere became mass demonstrations of support for Islamic Iran, while Western leftists and trans activists invaded social media to announce that they were #teamIran.

When their outpouring of hate towards Israel was focused on the war against Hamas in Gaza, these people could at least claim they were concerned about Palestinian civilians as victims. (Even though that meant ignoring the fact that Iran-backed Hamas, the perpetrator of the October 7th massacres, is the genocidal death cult in the conflict and is ultimately responsible for every civilian death.)

But once the Islamo-left sided with Islamic Iran against the only democracy in the Middle East, their phoney humanitarianism was fully exposed. 

Which “defenceless victims” of Israeli aggression were they concerned about now? Was it the generals commanding the Ayatollahs’ terrorist Revolutionary Guard, assassinated in surgical Israeli strikes? Or the Islamic regime’s repressive political and morality police, bombed by Israel? Or perhaps the “innocent” embryonic nuclear weapons devastated by President Trump’s bunker bombs?

It should now be clear to anybody with eyes to see that, whatever pretext they use, these protestors are really motivated by hatred of Israel and the West. That is what joins together hardline Islamists and woke leftists today. 

In the case of Israel, this is an unholy alliance of old-fashioned Islamist Jew-hatred and the modern antisemitism given life by leftist identity politics. For the identitarian Left, Jews are at the top of the pyramid of “white privilege,” and so can never be victims, while “the oppressed” who seek Israel’s destruction can never be considered aggressors.

They are also united in their hatred of Israel as a fighting standard-bearer of the wider Western civilisation they abhor. Alongside all the Palestinian and Iranian flags on last weekend’s big hate march in London, the most revealing banners were the pictures of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, bearing the leftist slogan: “Choose the right side of history.”

That the head of a neo-medieval Islamist regime which represses women and butchers opponents should now be depicted as on “the right side of history” speaks volumes about the barbaric outlook of the Islamo-left. They all want to erase the entire history of Western civilisation and culture, whether in the name of religious jihad or radical “de-colonisation.” 

And far from being restricted to a few angry street protestors, the self-loathing forces of the Western left are now at the heart of powerful institutions, from the universities to the mainstream media and the machinery of government.

That is why the threat to our societies in today’s crisis goes far beyond the prospect of Iranian missile attacks, or even the real possibility of Iran-backed terror attacks in Western capitals. Brave Israel has quickly exposed the myth of Iranian military power, even without the full support of the US and the West.

But the reactions to that conflict have confirmed the threat far closer to home, the political dagger at the very heart of European and American civilisation. 

Most of our leaders have cowered in fear at the prospect of being dragged into a war in the Middle East, and breathed a sigh of relief at the chance of a ceasefire. The problem is they look equally reluctant to engage with the enemy within, and to stand up boldly for Western democracy and history against its mortal enemies on the home front.

Last week in Britain, radical activists calling themselves Palestine Action attacked a Royal Airforce base and did millions of pounds worth of damage to British warplanes. The Labour government has since said it will ban them as a terrorist group, alongside the Iranian allies Hamas and Hezbollah. In response, outraged campaigners, MPs, and social media influencers have now united in their defence, behind the slogan “We are all Palestine Action”.

Attacks on defence facilities have nothing to do with “the right to protest,” and idiots such as Palestine Action deserve all they get. But the reaction shows this is not a problem that will be solved by the government trying to ban it. We cannot simply wave a magic wand and make the danger disappear.

While supporting Israel on the front line of the global war for democracy, we also need to wage the culture war at home. That means fighting for the founding principles of modern European freedom: standing up for unfettered free speech, against those who want to ban criticisms of Islam or trans ideology, and using that freedom to mount an uncompromising defence of our civilisation, warts and all.

Instead, the pallid imitations of political leaders we have in much of Europe today back away from the fight. While Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran has been hiding in his bunker, most of our useless rulers have also been bunkered down; not only afraid of siding openly with Israel but also insisting that the great issues of the age “are not binary,” for fear of offending the other side by telling them they are wrong.

Contrary to what those pro-Iranian protestors claim, the future is not pre-determined by choosing their “right side of history.” We can make our own history, as we say at europeanconservative.com, by “reclaiming and advancing the founding principles of European civilisation—and fighting for the future of a free and democratic Europe”. Starting with unequivocal support for #teamIsrael.