How Are the Mighty Fallen: The End of Europe and Hollywood

Spectator : In his brilliant book on the precariousness of Western Civilization, How to Save the West: Ancient Wisdom for 5 Modern Crises, scholar Spencer Klavan cites an epic historical change that took place in a single moment.

It was the Visigoths burning the city of Rome in 410 AD, observed by Saint Jerome. “Who would believe that Rome would fall, she who had been built up by the conquest of the whole world?” Jerome wrote. Klavan captured the irony that evaded even the saint. “But even as he wrote these words, Jerome himself had already completed a Latin translation of the Bible which would serve as a foundation stone of Christendom in western Europe.”

Then the movie men themselves betrayed the industry. They let politics replace art, and feminists replace filmmakers.

Two transformative events last week made me feel a bit like Saint Jerome, minus the sanctity and the city-torching barbarians — and I’m writing this on the 84th anniversary of another cataclysmic instance in time, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. One was the European Union imposing a €120-million fine on Elon Musk for essentially refusing to censor posts on X. The other was Netflix’s purchase of Warner Brothers for over $82 billion. Both signify the further fall of something great into virtual rubble.

In truth, Europe — Britain very much included — has been in a state of collapse for the entire 21st century, tragically succumbing to a destructive force which it had heroically defeated — communism. After the 1917 Russian Revolution made Marxism a global menace to freedom, western Europe took the right side of the Cold War and survived formidable Soviet threats. They included the Hamburg Uprising (1923), the NKVD in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the Iron Curtain on Eastern Europe and East Germany (1945-1989), and the Cambridge spy ring inside British Intelligence (exposed in 1963 but active for 30 years).

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