Narrator: On the night of November 13, 2015, a series of coordinated terrorist attacks plunged Paris into a state of horror. Gunmen and suicide bombers struck a soccer stadium, restaurants, and the Bataclan concert hall, leaving 130 people dead and a nation in shock. In the immediate aftermath, as France declared a state of emergency, a predictable political narrative took hold across the West. Far-right leaders seized the moment, conflating the actions of a few ISIS-affiliated terrorists with the plight of millions of refugees fleeing violence in the Middle East. The attacks became a powerful justification for closing borders, scapegoating immigrants, and demanding a crackdown on Muslim communities.

This reaction, however, reveals a deeper and more dangerous trend. In his book, Go Back to Where You Came From, author Sasha Polakow-Suransky presents a chilling and counterintuitive argument: the greatest threat to Western democracy is not immigration or terrorism, but the nativist backlash against it. He argues that by exploiting fear, populist leaders are chipping away at the very liberal values and institutions—like constitutional protections and independent judiciaries—that they claim to be protecting.

Narrator: The book argues that the panic-driven response to immigration poses a greater existential threat to liberal democracies than immigration itself. This is not a new phenomenon. Polakow-Suransky draws a haunting parallel to the events preceding the Holocaust. In 1938, a distraught 17-year-old Jewish refugee named Herschel Grynszpan assassinated a German diplomat in Paris to protest the persecution of his family. The Nazi regime cynically used this isolated act of a desperate individual as the pretext for Kristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass," a wave of orchestrated violence against Jewish communities across Germany. A single act was twisted to justify mass persecution.

Today, a similar dynamic is at play. Terrorist attacks, like the one in Paris, are exploited by populist leaders to justify sweeping policies that target entire populations. They use fear to erode civil liberties, expand surveillance, and undermine the rule of law. The book’s central thesis is that this self-inflicted wound is far more damaging to the democratic fabric of a nation than the external threat it purports to fight. As Polakow-Suransky writes, the real danger comes "from the backlash against them by those on the inside who exploit fear of outsiders."

Narrator: For decades, European nations believed they had a handle on integration. The Netherlands, for example, relied on a system called "pillarization," where different religious groups like Catholics and Protestants coexisted in separate but parallel social structures. When Muslim guest workers from Turkey and Morocco began arriving in the 1960s, the Dutch government assumed this model could be applied to them as well. It failed spectacularly. Unlike the established Catholic community, these new immigrants lacked a unified leadership and a shared cultural history with the Dutch.

The failure of integration, combined with economic anxieties, created a fertile ground for resentment. This tension reached a boiling point with two shocking assassinations. First was the populist politician Pim Fortuyn in 2002. Then, in 2004, filmmaker Theo van Gogh was brutally murdered on an Amsterdam street by a Dutch-Moroccan extremist. The killer pinned a note to van Gogh's body with a knife, threatening his collaborator, the Somali-born politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali. These murders shattered the Netherlands' self-image as a tolerant society and marked a definitive turning point, fueling the rise of anti-immigrant politics and proving that old models of integration were no longer viable.

Narrator: One of the most significant political shifts in recent years has been the blurring of the traditional left-right divide. Far-right parties have discovered a powerful new strategy: welfare chauvinism. They combine fierce anti-immigrant rhetoric with a strong, pro-welfare message exclusively for "native" citizens. This has allowed them to capture working-class voters who feel abandoned by traditional left-wing parties.

In France, this is personified by Fabien Engelmann, the mayor of the post-industrial town of Hayange. Once a fervent left-wing union activist, Engelmann is now a member of the far-right Front National. He won power by appealing to the economic anxieties of a deindustrialized community, promising to protect their jobs and social benefits from outsiders. One of his first acts as mayor was to evict a well-known charity from its office, accusing it of being too "pro-migrant." Similarly, in Denmark, the Danish People's Party has successfully courted union voters by advocating for a larger public sector and more welfare, but only for Danes. This strategy reframes the political debate away from economics and toward a battle over national identity and resources.

Narrator: As the refugee crisis intensified, some European politicians began looking to a radical and controversial solution: the Australian model. Australia has effectively outsourced its refugee problem by intercepting asylum seekers at sea and detaining them indefinitely in offshore camps on remote Pacific islands like Nauru and Manus. This policy is admired by European nativists because it keeps refugees out of sight and out of mind, allowing governments to avoid the difficult work of integration.

However, the book exposes the devastating human cost of these policies. It tells the tragic story of the Vaziri brothers, Vahid and Abolfazl, who fled Afghanistan and lived in Denmark for nine years. Despite being well-integrated, their asylum claim was denied. In 2015, Danish police deported them back to Kabul. Shortly after arriving, the brothers were robbed, and 16-year-old Abolfazl was kidnapped and murdered. This story reveals the deadly consequences of "get-tough" policies that treat human beings as political problems to be exported, rather than as individuals with a right to safety and due process.

Narrator: Polakow-Suransky powerfully argues that xenophobia is not an exclusively white, Western phenomenon. To illustrate this, he turns to post-apartheid South Africa, a nation founded on the ideals of racial equality. There, a virulent form of xenophobia is directed not by whites against blacks, but by black South Africans against fellow African immigrants from countries like Zimbabwe, Congo, and Nigeria.

The book introduces Mary Louw, a black South African woman who was once a passionate activist in the Young Communist League. Today, she is a fierce anti-immigrant advocate. Disillusioned by unfulfilled economic promises after apartheid, she blames foreigners for crime and for "stealing" jobs and resources. "We are slaves of this democracy, not recipients," she writes in a WhatsApp message. Her story is a startling reflection of the grievances felt by working-class Europeans. It demonstrates that when economic anxiety, frustrated expectations, and the need for a scapegoat converge, xenophobia can erupt anywhere, challenging simplistic narratives about race and prejudice.

Narrator: Underpinning much of the modern anti-immigrant movement is a conspiracy theory known as "The Great Replacement." This idea was popularized in a 1973 French dystopian novel, The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail. The book depicts a "fleet" of impoverished refugees from the Third World invading and overwhelming France, leading to the collapse of Western civilization. For decades, it was a fringe text, but it has since become a foundational document for the global far-right.

Its influence is seen in the rhetoric of figures like Marine Le Pen in France and, most notably, Steve Bannon, who served as a key advisor to Donald Trump. Bannon frequently referenced the book, seeing its dark vision as a prophecy coming true. The theory provides a simple, powerful, and terrifying narrative: that immigrants are not just arriving, but are being sent as part of a deliberate plot to replace white, Christian populations. This paranoid worldview has moved from the fringes to the centers of power, shaping policy and fueling a politics of fear and division.

Narrator: The ultimate takeaway from Go Back to Where You Came From is a stark warning. In their response to the challenges of immigration and terrorism, liberal democracies are in danger of sacrificing their most fundamental principles on the altar of fear. The rise of welfare chauvinism, the adoption of cruel deterrence policies, and the mainstreaming of paranoid conspiracy theories are not signs of strength, but symptoms of a deep-seated democratic decay.

The book challenges us to look beyond the simplistic rhetoric of populist leaders and understand the legitimate economic anxieties and cultural fears that fuel their support. The critical question it leaves us with is not whether we can stop immigration, but whether we can address the grievances of our own citizens without abandoning the values of tolerance, human rights, and the rule of law that define a truly liberal society. The greatest threat, it seems, is already inside the gates.