Go Back to Where You Came From

by Sasha Polakow-Suransky

  The assumption that ignoring populist politicians or even declaring them beyond the pale will make them go away has been repeatedly proven false. The Dutch centre-left party, D66, won almost as many seats as Wilders in the March 2017 election, largely by taking him on fearlessly. “If you don’t stand up and point out where he’s wrong, that the issues are real and their solutions are fake,” insists Sjoerd Sjoerdsma, the party’s immigration spokesman, then the debate will continue to move further to the right and politicians like Wilders will win the battle of ideas, even when they do not win power at the polls.

  The populists can’t simply be ignored. With or without actual control of the government, they have proved they can exert influence and shape debates without ever wielding formal power. Those who oppose populism need first to understand it. To dismiss the populist impulse as something completely alien is to miss the point and to preemptively lose the political debate.

  “When people talk about populism it starts with the presumption this is irrational,” says Scheffer. The starting point instead needs to be “there is fear on all sides and that there is irrationality on all sides,” he insists. “And then we start arguing.”38

  Accepting that these views exist is not a moral concession; it is political realism. Recognizing that strong nationalist sentiments are not going away does not mean giving in to the policy preferences of the populist right; it means taking them seriously, engaging with their ideas, and defeating those ideas by proving they are unrealistic and will not help people. To ignore and marginalize them, denouncing them as retrograde fascists, while advocating completely unfettered immigration policies that add to their sense of cultural anxiety simply makes it worse. It is seen as a normative threat and provokes those predisposed to authoritarianism to support strong nationalistic leaders.39

  Those arguing for wide-open borders tend to be extremely self-righteous, casting their position as morally unassailable. They are not only making a political mistake likely to cost their side elections; they are also exhibiting a lack of foresight. Many of the arguments for free movement and generous refugee and skilled immigration quotas are morally appealing, but one cannot honestly argue for complete openness without acknowledging that it could result in huge demographic shifts in Europe, America, and poor nations if there is catastrophic climate change in crowded countries. A purely free market of movement could in a few generations cause Greece to become majority Egyptian, mineral-rich African nations like Zambia to become majority Chinese, and poor ones like Mali or Sierra Leone to lose their entire populations to wealthy countries like France and the United Kingdom—economies that are not at the moment prepared to absorb and integrate huge numbers of newcomers in an effective and sustainable way.40

  Today’s far right leaders are dangerous not because they are fascists in the Hitlerian sense but because angry voters, under the right conditions of cultural and economic anxiety, will latch on to their ideas and follow them, falling victim to new political mythologies without any resistance.41 That can eventually take a country in a dangerous direction.

  The first step in any coherent political project to counter right-wing populists is to reject the fear that fuels their popularity and resist the temptation to adopt their policies. Very few leaders have done this. In Holland and Denmark, the centre right and the Social Democratic left have largely caved and adopted certain planks from the populists’ platform. The left has lost much of its old base by appearing to care only about free trade, technological progress, and limitless diversity. This scares many people who used to vote for the Democratic Party, British Labour, or European Social Democrats.

  It is possible for the left to “feel their pain,” without adopting a Trumpian or Le Pen-style agenda. It is not so difficult to tell voters that their resentment of companies that have sent jobs abroad is legitimate or that they are entitled to be uncomfortable about a large influx of immigrants in their hometowns. Whatever one thinks of Bernie Sanders’s policies, his campaign managed to attract millions of working-class voters almost entirely based on economic appeals while denouncing Trump’s nativism and Islamophobia. Others can do it, too.

  In Europe, there are only two leaders who have unequivocally rejected the nativist vision of the far right. Angela Merkel has remained steadfast in her openness to refugees while admitting she has made some policy mistakes. And Emmanuel Macron, France’s new president, has forthrightly refused to take the bait, telling Marine Le Pen to her face during the vicious final presidential debate on May 3, “Who plays upon people’s fears? It’s you, the high priestess of fear is sitting in front of me.” He doubled down on this argument in his May 7 victory speech, insisting to the crowds at the Louvre, “we will not succumb to fear, … to division.”42

  This is easy to say after winning an election; it will be harder if there is another attack. Macron’s challenge will be to stand by his lofty rhetoric when there are bodies in the streets and crowds are baying for blood. Some of Le Pen’s views on terror and immigration have become commonplace even among those who voted against her; the knee-jerk reaction after attacks in most European countries is to tighten immigration controls, but as Macron told her during the debate, closing borders doesn’t stop terrorism, especially in a country like France, where most of the attacks have been perpetrated by French or EU citizens.

  Terrorist attacks have in most cases not been connected to the recent wave of refugees, but the two have been conflated in the public’s mind because Le Pen and those afraid of losing votes to her have deliberately linked the two. The overwhelming majority of French Muslims are just as afraid of terrorism as the FN’s voters; they have been its victims twice over, killed in many of the attacks and collectively punished in their wake by a society that blames all Muslims for the crimes of a few.43

  If Macron can continue to divorce counterterrorism policy from the immigration debate and prove that liberal democracies can be tough on terror without calling for Trump-style travel bans or punitive laws that target Muslims and no one else, it will be a huge achievement, demonstrating that France can fight Islamist terrorism mercilessly without declaring war on Muslims and eroding the rights of the country’s largest minority.

  If terrorists once again manage to strike America, President Trump will likely seek emergency powers just like British and French leaders have in the past—but with far more dire consequences. It is one thing for leaders committed to democratic norms to seek temporary powers to fight terrorism; it is quite another to grant such powers to a nativist authoritarian who regularly flouts those norms by denouncing judges, targeting Muslims for differential treatment, and firing independent officials for disloyalty.

  Security crackdowns and states of emergency after shocking acts of violence are designed to show strength at moments of vulnerability, but ultimately, they can target not just terrorists but other groups as well. As the British law lord Leonard Hoffman wrote in a 2004 decision condemning indefinite detention of foreign terrorism suspects, “Terrorist violence, serious as it is, does not threaten our institutions of government or our existence as a civil community.” He added, “The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these. That is the true measure of what terrorism may achieve.”44

  The immediate reaction to the Manchester terrorist attack on May 22, 2017, seemed to confirm those fears. Within hours of a suicide bombing that killed twenty-two people at a concert, Katie Hopkins of the Daily Mail declared on Twitter, “We need a final solution,” proving that even members of the media elite are not above raising the specter of ethnic cleansing in the heat of the moment. She quickly deleted the overt Nazi reference and apologized, only to declare two weeks later that “our process for dealing with terror cannot be words or vigils. It must be internment and deportation. And we keep deporting until our house is in order.”45

  Liberal democracies are better equipped than a
uthoritarian states to grapple with the inevitable conflicts that arise in diverse societies, including the threat of terrorist violence. But they also contain the seeds of their own destruction: if they fail to deal with these challenges and allow xenophobic populists to hijack the public debate, then the votes of frustrated and disaffected citizens will increasingly go to the anti-immigrant right, societies will become less open, nativist parties will grow more powerful, and racist rhetoric that promotes a narrow and exclusionary sense of national identity will be legitimized.

  The mainstreaming of xenophobic views and policies could eventually undermine the liberal democratic model of government in countries that we today regard as progressive and tolerant. The result would be a watered-down form of democracy that deprives immigrants and ethnic and religious minorities of basic rights. And at worst, it would mean a resurgence of the ugliest nationalist ideologies that marred the history of the twentieth century.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The travel and research for this project would not have been possible without the generous support of the Open Society Foundations. The Open Society Fellowship allowed me to devote an entire year to researching this book and to visit the eight countries covered in it, as well as a few others, for reporting. Thanks especially to Bipasha Ray, Steve Hubbell, Lenny Benardo, Zach Seltzer, and Milap Patel in New York; Sipho Malunga and Fatima Hassan in South Africa; and Jordi Vaquer and his colleagues in the Barcelona office.

  This book was written under many roofs and occasionally outdoors in the middle of nowhere, when I needed to be far away from people and farther from a reliable internet connection. Thanks to William, Michael, and the zebras at Fonteinskloof; to Hilka and Linden in Noordhoek; and to Mario and family at Pera di Basso.

  I am grateful to everyone who hosted me over the past two years. Thanks to my mother, Val Polakow, and stepfather, Simon Baseley, for housing and feeding me during two stints of fourteen-hour-per-day writing sprees in Ann Arbor and for taking pity on me and giving me a nice new monitor after seeing me try to write a book on a little laptop; to my father, Len Suransky, for providing me with an air mattress, wheels, and a printer while in South Africa; to my stepmother, Carolina, and my sisters, Sarafina and Sonya, for putting me up on many visits to Holland and giving me occasional advice on the intricacies of Dutch politics; and to my brother, Shael, and sister-in-law, Cynthia, (and most recently my niece, Selah) for welcoming me on many whirlwind visits to New York.

  Thanks to Eubie and Nduduzo in Johannesburg; Louise, Hans, and Jasmine in Amsterdam; Sune, Lindsay, Sofia, and Viggo in Copenhagen; my uncle David in St. Ives; Anna Rubbo and Diana Hosking in Sydney; Benjamin and Evelyn Choi in Hong Kong; Sepideh Farkhondeh, Thomas Williams, and Valentine Faure in Paris—and especially to Marlow Cora Williams, the most astute analyst of French politics under the age of five, for temporarily moving out to allow a remplaçant with a strange accent to colonize her bedroom.

  A book like this is never possible without the many connectors who lead journalists to their sources by sharing emails, phone numbers, and addresses. There is a long list of people who do not appear in the text or endnotes but without whom I would never have managed to find those I’ve quoted. I am indebted to Søren and Kresten Schultz Jørgensen, Sijbolt Noorda, Saïd Mahrane, Zoé Reyners, Clélie Mathias, Olivier Guez, Sascha Lehnartz, Thomas Bagger, Don Markwell, Mran-Maree Laing, Monique Corah, Anthony Bubalo, Katie Engelhart, Abdelkader Benali, Chantal Suissa-Runne, Haroon Sheikh, Sisonke Msimang, Jennifer van den Bussche, Atossa Abrahamian, Thomas Bøje, Tarek Omar, Arnon Grunberg, Jacques Faisant, and others whom I’ve probably forgotten to include here. I am especially grateful to the more than one hundred people who agreed to be interviewed for this book, especially those who were happy to talk despite our political disagreements.

  Thank you to Isabelle Daumont for her excellent transcriptions of several French interviews and to Vinti Vaid and colleagues at Indian Scribes for their transcriptions transcriptions of many others. Thanks also to Erwan and Guillaume at the Jungle in Calais for letting me in and showing me around and to the Tällberg Foundation for inviting me to Lesbos to see the refugee crisis up close in Greece.

  I am grateful to Reihan Salam, Daniel Levy, Stéphanie Giry, Dimi Reider, Dan Smokler, Sameen Gauhar, and Adam Kuruvilla Lelyveld for their friendship and advice; to Benjamin Moser, Thijs Kleinpaste, and Felix Marquardt for connecting me with sources and offering detailed editorial suggestions; to Sune Haugbølle and Eusebius McKaiser for being both generous hosts and scrupulous editors; to Elaine Pearson, Timothy Snyder, James Angelos, Ben Doherty, David Caron, Maureen Eger, and Rasmus Brygger for reading portions of the manuscript and offering valuable comments; and to Sewell Chan, Trish Hall, Clay Risen, Aaron Retica, Rebecca Appel, Louise Loftus, Ceylan Yeginsu, Steve Erlanger, Alison Smale, and all my former New York Times colleagues for their advice and support along the way.

  Meline Toumani and Seth Anziska deserve credit for introducing me to Scrivener and telling me (correctly) that forty-dollar software could change my life as a writer. Dan Kurtz-Phelan assured me at a low point in the editing process that cutting thirty thousand words from a manuscript is really not so much. Ivan O’Mahoney told me about an Australian reality television show with an unforgettable title. And Jonathan Shainin and David Wolf at the Guardian pushed me to write an early overview of this book as a “Long Read” and helped shepherd me through their merciless but ultimately rewarding editing process. I owe all of them.

  I’m also indebted to my friends Josh Yaffa, Noy Thrupkaew, Bill Wheeler, Andrew Woods, and Shahin Vallée, who offered comments when this was just a grant application and a half-formed idea. Tom Mayer, Basharat Peer, and Sonia Faleiro gave advice on early versions of the proposal and, more importantly, introduced me to the Wylie Agency. Tracy Bohan, Kristina Moore, and Andrew Wylie believed in this project from an early stage when some others were hesitant to take it on, and they have been there for me every step of the way. Their unwavering commitment to big ideas and serious nonfiction is refreshing.

  I am grateful to my editor, Alessandra Bastagli, for her advice on restructuring the book and for her patience through numerous drafts that were invariably submitted late. Thanks also to Michael Dwyer and Jon de Peyer at Hurst in London for their early enthusiasm for the book and for helping bring out the UK edition; to Stephanie Summerhays for getting the book through the production process; to Sara and Chris Ensey for carefully copyediting it; and to Josie Urwin, Lindsay Fradkoff, and Alison Alexanian for making sure that people see and read it.

  Stuart Reid’s keen editorial eye (and scalpel) was crucial; without his expert help, this book would not have been finished anywhere close to its deadline or prescribed length.

  And finally, thank you to Jen Choi for putting up with my constant travel (and joining me for some of it)—and for her love, support, and understanding ever since that morning in February 2015 when I woke up before dawn, announced I would quit my job, and started frantically typing the proposal for this book.

  NOTES

  INTRODUCTION: THE THREAT WITHIN

  1. Angelique Chrisafis, “‘It Looked like a Battlefield’: The Full Story of What Happened in the Bataclan,” Guardian, November 20, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/20/bataclan-witnesses-recount-horror-paris-attacks.

  2. Michel Houellebecq, Submission (New York: Picador, 2016).

  3. Alain Finkielkraut, L’identité malheureuse (Paris: Gallimard, 2015).

  4. Eric Zemmour, Le suicide français—Ces quarante années qui ont défait la France (Paris: Hachette, 2014).

  5. Finkielkraut’s parents were Polish immigrants. Zemmour’s parents came from Algeria and, as such, were not technically immigrants. They held French nationality at the time they left Algeria for mainland France because Algeria, at that time, was still a French colony and regarded as France.

  6. My citations are drawn from the French translation of the book. Thilo Sarrazin, L’Allemagne disparait: Quand un pays se laisse mo
urir, trans. Jean-Baptiste Offenburg (Paris: Editions du Toucan, 2013).

  7. Bat Ye’or, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson, 2005). Ye’or is a pseudonym for Gisèle Littman, an Egyptian-born Jewish writer.

  8. Doug Saunders, The Myth of the Muslim Tide: Do Immigrants Threaten the West? (New York: Vintage Books, 2012), 15–18.

  9. Ibid., 14.

  10. Bruce Bawer, The New Quislings: How the International Left Used the Oslo Massacre to Silence Debate About Islam (New York: Broadside, 2012), e-book.

  11. Jean Raspail, The Camp of the Saints, trans. Norman R. Shapiro (Petoskey, MI: Social Contract Press, 2015), 260.

  12. Marine Le Pen’s Twitter feed, posted September 1, 2015, https://twitter.com/mlp_officiel/status/638959623215706112.

  13. Raspail, The Camp of the Saints, 53.

  14. Ibid., 67–69. When his beloved refugees land, France is thrown into chaos, his wife is raped, and he is shot.

  15. Ibid., 4.

  16. Ibid., 164–165.

  17. The French legislature debated a similar law and voted it down, though Marine Le Pen has vowed to pass it if she becomes president.

  18. Timothy Snyder, “Donald Trump Acts Like He Wants Regime Change—in the United States,” Guardian, February 6, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/06/trump-authoritarianism-judiciary-regime-change.

  19. These minorities could be electoral minorities or ethnic ones.

  20. Cas Mudde, “The Populist Radical Right: A Pathological Normalcy,” West European Politics 33, no. 6 (November 2010): 1167–1186.

  21. Opposition to decisions made by the European Union are far more defensible given that those institutions are more recent and less democratically accountable to citizens of member countries.