Engines of Destruction

Two pivotal developments will transform the West. One is mass migration, which, in tandem with declining birthrates, is producing demographic change in Europe and North America. The other is the green transition and the massive amount of capital allocated to build a new economy. The first erodes the quality of life for ordinary people in the West. The second is likely to produce a lower standard of living. Both dynamics are overseen and ideologically justified by today’s elites. The dissatisfaction and disorder they will create will put great stress on our political and cultural establishments. In all likelihood, the coming years will see the West pivot toward a post-democratic era as elites clamp down on populist dissent and nullify electoral results that run counter to their plans.

On various occasions during the past decade, I’ve participated in debates about immigration. I’m not “anti-immigration” (although anyone who advocates reduction of the present influx is invariably called that). The ability to attract and assimilate immigrants has been a great American strength. But what has struck me in these debates is the obtuse mentality of those who oppose my calls for restraint on immigration. I point out that the non-native-born are reaching a historic high of nearly 15 percent of the total population, and that immigration rates are accelerating. At some point (20 percent? 25 percent?), won’t the country become culturally incoherent? In response, my interlocutors insist that the country is already multicultural, and imply that it would be better if it were even more diverse. They rarely allow that there can or should be any limits to how many can arrive. I point out that we should discriminate among those we welcome, partly on the basis of their potential for easy assimilation. One need only to look to France or Sweden to see that large-scale Muslim immigration presents more significant challenges than does the arrival of Christians from Latin America. Again, my interlocutors refuse to make such determinations, often saying (in so many words) that to do so amounts to a xenophobic sin.

This stance baffles me. Is it so difficult to see that cultural continuity and social unity are essential common goods? And that demographic change often threatens both? Cultural continuity and social unity are not the be-all and end-all for healthy society. We also cherish freedom, dynamism, and hospitality, which along with other goods can run against continuity and unity. But those in charge seem to have lost any sense of the trade-offs and of the need to correct course when things go awry.

In Return of the Strong Gods, I outlined the development of an “open society” consensus after World War II. In its initial stages, this consensus endorsed a proper balance of dynamism and stability, of individual freedom and communal belonging, of welcoming strangers and taking care of one’s own. But even then the “openness” imperative had the upper hand, and as time went on the balance was lost. The triumph of “openness” has become ever more evident over the past three decades, along with the punitive monitoring of dissent. Those in positions of cultural power never miss an opportunity to denounce “nativism” and “xenophobia.”

The openness-is-always-best mentality dominates our society. Politically speaking, the Biden administration has every reason to take firm measures to tighten the border with Mexico and curtail illegal crossings. Doing so would deprive Donald Trump of one of his leading issues and go a long way toward defusing populism. But the administration refuses. Nor will Britain and other European governments stop illegal migrant inflows, which are given the patina of legality under the infinitely elastic notion of “asylum,” which in practice accords nearly everyone who comes ashore the right to stay.

Contemporary Christian leaders baptize the openness-is-always-best mentality. Catholic social teaching states: “People have the right to migrate to sustain their lives and the lives of their families.” Like “asylum,” this “right” receives expansive interpretation, so much so that in the eyes of ecclesiastical eminences anyone from a poor country enjoys a “right” to go to a richer country. In a fashion typical of a great deal of recent Christian thinking about migrants, Pope Francis assimilates the vocation of the Church as a universal institution that welcomes all persons to the nature and purpose of the nation, which has a duty to promote the good of its own citizens first and foremost. As a result, Francis invariably urges a spirit of “welcome” and never acknowledges the need to restrict the influx of newcomers. Gaudium et Spes defines a right to one’s own culture. Apparently, that right does not apply to those in the West. The Catholic Church is by no means unique. Many Christian denominations endorse the functional equivalent of open borders.

Recently, the Sunak government in Great Britain negotiated to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. A panel of five judges on the UK supreme court unanimously struck down the agreement, the House of Lords signaled that it would block renewed attempts to implement the policy, and the BBC wailed about the grievous injustice of such a plan. No doubt an American president would face similar pushback in the form of lawsuits, judicial injunctions, and a storm of outrage from every corner of elite opinion.

The existence of a vast and effective apparatus that nullifies efforts to stem immigration suggests that our power elite either wants mass immigration, or—and to my mind this is a major factor—its members fear being ranged among the “nativists.” As a result, elite-driven policies clash with the outlook of the general public and fuel populism. Polling in Europe and America suggests that voters want fewer newcomers. This desire runs counter to the “openness” consensus. That consensus regards the desire to restrict immigration as pathological, a sign of “xenophobia” and “fear of difference.” It would therefore be irresponsible and, indeed, immoral to acquiesce in the popular will.

Again, Christian leaders often baptize this nullification of the popular will. When Belarus cynically massed Muslim migrants on its border with the European Union, Jean-Claude Cardinal Hollerich denounced the Polish and Lithuanian decisions to close their borders. Hollerich repeated Pope Francis’s claim that EU borders were becoming “a huge cemetery.” In effect, the Vatican sides with Muslim migrants against the residents of formerly Christian Europe and echoes the rhetoric of the Rainbow Reich, for which open borders serve as a key dogma.

In The Strange Death of Europe, Douglas Murray recounts the history of immigration debates. In the late 1960s, polling indicated that a super-majority of British voters desired greater restrictions on immigration. Those restrictions never came about. Indeed, simply to call for them was denounced as racist. The pattern has been repeated in every decade, not only in Great Britain, but in most countries in the West. Voters want less demographic change; they always get more.

I don’t wish to gainsay the judgments of leaders who refrained from imposing limits on immigration. Without immigration over the past two generations, the low (now very low) birth rates among what one might call “legacy” Europeans might have caused severe labor shortages and economic decline. And without large-scale immigration perhaps the United States (which likewise now has low birthrates) would not have seen steady GDP growth. I’m willing to concede both possibilities. But of this I am certain: Happy talk about multiculturalism is mendacious. One does not need an advanced degree in sociology to recognize that wave after wave of newcomers puts a strain on social coherence and communal trust.

That strain falls on Fishtown (Charles Murray’s label for native-born, working-class America) rather than Belmont (home of the upper end of society, where one finds lawn signs announcing “No Human is Illegal”). A high concentration of recent immigrants undermines neighborhood solidarity, reduces school performance, and breaks down the already fragile political coalitions that serve the interests of non-rich American citizens. Meanwhile, those who endure these declines in quality of life are subjected to pious sermons about the wonderful benefits of “diversity,” a project that rarely includes them. (The Trump-supporting grandchild of a Mexican immigrant does not contribute to “diversity.”) And the children of those harmed by mass immigration are educated to believe that their country is inherently racist, nativist, and otherwise unworthy, while elites clothe themselves in the new virtues of diversity, equity, and inclusion, which are seen to provide legitimacy for wealth, power, and privilege.

Perhaps the ideology of multiculturalism has staying power. Anti-Western pedagogy is designed to reduce loyalty to the West, a necessary step to clear the way for the utopian dream of multiculturalism, a society without a center, a way of life with no unifying vision other than the rainbow promise. To a striking degree, median voters throughout the West have been docile before this enterprise. Nevertheless, it beggars belief that the great mass of citizens in Western countries will calmly accept the cultural (and therefore political) transformations of their societies under the relentless pressure of demographic change. The recent and dramatic electoral success of Geert Wilders (a figure reviled by Western elites for decades) in the Netherlands suggests that voters are turning against the openness-is-always-best mentality.