The scene of the shooting at the Jewish Museum of Brussels. Photo: Screenshot.

You may not have noticed, but, over the weekend, Europe died.

“The First World” basically succumbed to a long illness. It gave up the ghost as an economic force, as a culture and even as a continental political entity.

Here are two very different signs:

• “Anti-Europe” politicians swept to power in the European Union (EU) parliament on a crest anger at leftist EU bureaucrats who built up layers of regulation of daily life that are unpopular with millions of people;
• A well-trained terror squad murdered four people in Brussels, the seat of the EU—only the latest episode of Jew-hatred in Europe’s greatest cities. from London, Paris, Toulouse, Marseilles, Copenhagen.

“Oh don’t worry about the Fascists and Right-wingers who won one small election, and don’t get alarmist about one incident of extremism,” say the feel-good crowd, but they are fooling themselves and trying to fool others.

The anti-EU vote in the European Parliament elections is not just a passing phase, and it is not just an eruption of “fascist,” “nativist” or “right-wing” emotions.

There is significant anti-EU feeling among responsible and intelligent people in many countries in Europe—people who have seen years of fat-cat EU politicians living in a fantasy world of statist theories that leave economic and social chaos.

Greece—a country that endlessly rewards incompetence and then gets bailed out—is a prime example. Some Greeks get 14 monthly salaries in 12 months.

Official unemployment continues to rise in most European countries—England, France and even Germany—but the real joblessness has climbed over 20-percent in countries like Spain. Meanwhile, people in England, France and Germany no longer want to pay pensions for slack workers in Greece and Spain.

Frail European economies and the falling value of the Euro currency are not as disturbing as the collapsing values on the streets of London, Paris, Marseilles, Toulouse, Rotterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Brussels.

Europe’s core cities have become quite uncomfortable areas if you are not a Muslim immigrant. They are dangerous “no-go-zones” if you are visibly Jewish.

Slick salesmen coined the phrase “buy now, pay later,” and Europe is now paying.

Europe bought cheap manpower, importing young men from Pakistan, Morocco, Turkey to make up for the loss of European men in two bloody world wars. It was acceptable as a short-term policy, but Europe got addicted to cheap Muslim labor.

Europe made this worse with its very low birth rates, then sped up the import of Muslims laborers, without educating them about European values and history. These men kept to the edge of society, becoming bitter: good recruits for crime and terror.

Then the EU tried to buy the affections of the young immigrants and their second-generation families with big welfare programs. But you cannot buy love or loyalty.

Many of the Muslims felt un-British, un-French, un-Swedish. They could speak the language, but they had no appreciation of living in a mixed modern society.

Instead, many Muslim immigrants reverted to the authoritarianism of their home cultures and their tribal values. Extremist Muslim preachers-dispatched years ago to the West by Saudi money—grabbed the chance to turn the disaffected Muslim workers into a crop of jihadis.

The first target of the jihadis today, like the first target of fascists and Nazis in the 1930″²s, is the Jews. Jews are an easy target and popular target.

But Jews are also a weather vein and a lightning rod. They tell us which way the wind is blowing, and they tell us a storm is coming. Jews are the default choice for hatred whether it is Hitler, Stalin or Osama Bin-Laden.

And the Jews have noticed. Jews are leaving Europe, and Europe will regret it. Nations that welcome Jews get richer in many ways. (Check out the Nobel Prize list.) Countries that evict or kill their Jews—whether the Spain of the Inquisition or the modern Arab states—get poorer.

The synagogues in Europe are mostly empty. Many of the Jewish sites in Europe are really memorials or museums, but it is Europe that will itself be just a memory.

Yes, it will take a few years, but it really happened this week.

This article was originally published by Front Page Magazine.