Giulio Meotti is an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, a Middle East Forum fellow and writer of a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author, in English, of the book "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, published by Encounter and of "J'Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel" published by Mantua Books, in addition to books in Italian. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Gatestone, Frontpage and Commentary.
Bread and circuses…
It is not my mantra and it is not one coined today. Same effects for the same causes: train the masses, buy social peace.
Shortly before he died, the celebrated historian Walter Laqueur told me: “You will not end up like Pompeii, but as a museum and a cultural amusement park for the new rich of globalization."
France is now rejoicing at the announcement of a mega Saudi investment of 6 billion euros that promises to generate more than 20,000 jobs: a new Dragon Ball theme park outside Paris.
The entertainment division of the Saudi fund will finance the entire project.
The site chosen for the Saudi park is as impressive as it is revealing: precisely on the spot where, in 1987, the first national amusement park dedicated to fairy tales and the great French novels was born (the statue of Gargantua is still there, a Rabelaisian giant reduced to a pitiful wreck), a monumental leisure complex dedicated to the Japanese universe will soon rise, backed by Islamic investors and under the complacent gaze of the public authorities.
Qatar recently gave 50 million euros to the Municipality of Venice “to meet the pressing needs of the city in the management of a unique and extremely complex heritage that transcends borders and represents a treasure for humanity."
Their “gifts" are never free.
Who is one of the main donors of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London? A Saudi with 5 million pounds.
The same Victoria and Albert Museum that censored a painting of Muhammad?
Senile Europe has decided that its destiny is to entertain. Not to produce, not to invent, not to defend. No: to entertain.
We are no longer the subject of history. We are the object of consumption. The new rich of globalization (Chinese, Arabs, Russians, Indians) come to us to have fun, to buy pieces of the past, to photograph themselves in front of monuments that we are no longer capable of defending.
We, meanwhile, discuss inclusion, decarbonization and gender-neutral rights, while our productive capacities emigrate and die.
We have turned our territories into stage sets for the rich and for sovereign wealth funds. The same territories conquered by the new demography that works in those parks.
A strange and sad destiny of ours, isn’t it?
They will not conquer us with weapons. They will conquer us with sovereign funds, with theme parks and with our own desire no longer to be serious.
Mark my words: they will sell us submission as a form of entertainment. It will arrive with an entrance ticket.