On June 1, Poland jolted the globalist movement, with Karol Nawrocki, a conservative historian and defender of national heritage, winning the presidential race in a narrow but decisive victory. His win is not an outlier but part of a broader European trend, in which voters across the continent have increasingly supported leaders who promise to defend their national identity and borders.
A decade after Germany threw open its borders to hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, it is time to confront an obvious truth: The open-border experiment has failed. The promises of humanitarian uplift, cultural enrichment, and economic growth have instead birthed troubling social fragmentation, deepening economic insecurity, and surging waves of crime that are reshaping the continent — and world.
This experiment has been tested in both Europe and the U.S. — the consequences of this leftist, globalist ideology are relatively similar. In the U.S., criminal aliens have victimized innocent Americans like Laken Riley, and violent members of Tren de Aragua have taken over apartments in Colorado. In Europe, migrant gangs in Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and others in the Baltic and Nordic regions have skyrocketed violent crime and spread drugs in otherwise peaceful communities. In Belgium, local imams instead of Belgian law govern parts of Brussels. The Netherlands has struggled with the legacy of Theo van Gogh’s murder by a radicalized Moroccan-Dutch youth. Italy’s southern ports have faced repeated clashes with illegal African migrants. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who is struggling to get migrants to self-deport even with enormous financial incentives, recently acknowledged, “we do have a problem with integration of immigrants.”
The Promise Of Integration Ignored West’s Fundamental Christian Identity
The left, in championing mass migration, promised that integration would follow swiftly, that migrants would adapt to western norms, and that society would emerge stronger. Instead, we see a fractured Europe — its cities dotted with enclaves, foreign customs govern parallel societies governed, and assimilation is not only lacking, but often actively rejected.
Europeans are seeing their communities overrun, feeling estranged in their own countries, and realizing how quickly their way of life can be destroyed by a few bad policies and leaders who refuse to listen to them. To be clear, the “European culture” people are striving to preserve is not a matter of language, cuisine, or architecture — though those elements are important too. It’s Christian civilization — laws, values, and traditions, based on God-given rights. The very sense of the person stems from the Christian worldview.
From the Benedictine monasteries that preserved scripture through the Middle Ages to the Catholic cathedrals that still shape its skylines and the moral frameworks that undergird its legal codes, Christianity defines Europe. To sever the continent from this spiritual root is to erase the source of its identity.
Most Immigrants From Foreign Oppose These Christian Values
But did we have to undergo this nightmare to realize that open borders and mass migration are not a good idea? History offers us a sobering ledger of mass migration, shattering culture and reversing the fabric of society. Enoch Powell’s 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech — which at that time practically ruined his career — vindicates today’s realists. We are witnessing precisely what he warned of: “As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood.’” This was a plea to preserve what bound Britain together — what so many across the west are expressing now in the streets and in the ballot boxes for their own nations. Even in ancient times, the Roman Empire’s importation of Goths and other tribes led to collapse not cohesion.
The illusion that large-scale immigration is sustainable in a liberal society is laughable when those, arriving in great numbers, do not share nor respect its underlying values. The Roman historian Tacitus wrote of the empire: “They make a desert and call it peace.” The inverse is now happening in the West. We are calling it compassion, but we are sowing disunity.
Small, unassimilated minorities are exerting outsized influence, particularly when the majority is told its traditions are bigoted and hateful. In France, Sweden, Belgium, and Germany, police no-go zones, honor killings, Islamist preaching, and gender segregation are common features of neighborhoods that feel far removed from their nations’ founding ideals.
Multiculturalism Is a Failed, Ignorant Ideal
True assimilation requires a commitment to embrace the host country’s national identity, history, and culture — the things that have disappeared from western discourse because of fear of being labeled xenophobic or racist. Immigrants must adopt the morals of their host countries, lest we lose the thin veneer of peace and the richness of our past. As both Europeans and Americans are learning the hard way, these enclaves, with the language, laws, and loyalties of migrant countries of origin exist, will persist unless we demand otherwise.
Multiculturalism, once hailed as the moral response to globalization, has morphed into a quiet surrender. Western nations increasingly accept demands for parallel legal systems, accommodations for illiberal religious practices, and speech codes designed to protect sensitivities rather than truth. Far from enriching liberal democracies, this trend has weakened them, making it harder to enforce the very freedoms that attracted immigrants in the first place.
The rise of far-right movements across Europe is not, as the left claims, a mere backlash rooted in racism or nostalgia. It is the political expression of everyday people who feel ignored, endangered, and betrayed. These firebrand right-wing leaders may lack refinement, but they articulate fears that are undeniably real: that the nations their parents knew are vanishing, and that their children will inherit neither safety nor cultural continuity.
Decline Is a Slow, Painful Death
We should be wary of repeating the patterns of ancient Rome, where uncontrolled migration, weakening civic identity, and internal division paved the way to decline. The fall of great civilizations rarely comes from a single blow — it comes when the people lose the will to defend who they are. The west faces such a crossroads.
The past decade — and the course of history — has provided ample evidence of what does not work. If we do not correct course, the west will continue down a path, not of progress, but of partition. We must not be ashamed to defend what Henry James calls “the local idiosyncrasies” which are “the only thing[s] that is not rather barbarous” about us. To preserve liberty, culture, and peace, we must once again say what is true in history and what too many are afraid to say now: borders matter, and so does cultural identity.