Immigration Has Inspired a Civilizational Reckoning

Speech given on November 6, 2025 to the International Network of Immigration Research

The rise of the America First movement in the U.S. has ushered in a new geopolitical paradigm that raises issues of national and civilizational importance to a priority. We are done with merely debating policy. We are confronting the very conditions for the civilization and having a full force, twenty-first century style reckoning.

Nothing has invited this reckoning more than the negative consequences of mass illegal immigration from culturally distant nations. Both under Biden in the US, and for about a decade in Europe, the Left has pursued open-border policies, having absolutely disastrous consequences for civil society – innocent citizens murdered or assaulted by violent, unvetted migrants who do not share our values or respect their hosts.

Why has the Left pursued this course of action, or cultural suicide? Largely because they see the civilizational questions differently than we do.

They disdain the very culture that made the West prosperous and free – they are afflicted with what some of the intellectuals in our movement call oikophobia—the hatred of one’s own home. They reject the family and the church as an authority of faith.

We’re arriving at the civilizational reckoning is because mass migration has been a dramatic failure. In the past few years, the rise of the right in both Europe and the US was very much a result of these consequences, it’s got so bad, and people are waking up because these things are hitting close to home.

In Europe, citizens are realizing they no longer recognize their home. Particularly in the UK, sustained waves of migrant crime have instigated protests—protests by ordinary citizens who are now finding it more important to fight for patriotism, even risking punishment, social ostracization, etc.

It’s important to note that in these moments of citizens in Europe recognizing their home, something vital happened: they realized they had one and that it is surely worth defending. The Left has blinded many to that truth, but not everyone. Those citizens hit hardest by the demographic change in their community are seeing how their home is distinct, that it has been altered, and that it must be restored.

That inheritance is now under attack—from two great primary civilizational adversaries.

The first is Leftism, which seeks to dismantle the West by eroding faith, family, and national identity. The second is Islamism, whose political expression (notably Sharia Law) is fundamentally incompatible with Western values and ordered liberty.

In the United Kingdom, this has been made plain: the decline of civil society, the rise of parallel systems such as Sharia courts, and the breakdown of community trust have given rise to a citizen movement reclaiming national identity.

The historic surge in migration to the U.K, from Muslim-majority countries has led to unassimilated parallel societies in places like Birmingham, Bradford, Manchester, Leicester, Tower Hamlets in East London, and elsewhere. In many of these areas, Muslim immigrants do not just reside there, but dominate the local councils, police departments, code enforcement, and other public institutions. British political scientist and commentator Matt Goodwin has predicted that non-white Britain will be a minority in 2063, and by 2,100 one fifth of the British population will be Muslim.

I’ve found in my conversations with both ordinary Brits and members of the English right, that they are protesting not out of hate, but out of love—for their nation, their traditions, and their way of life.

Arnold Toynbee warned that civilizations die by suicide. In our age, the modern Left is not only committing suicide—it is encouraging both suicide and murder. Europe’s reckoning comes not only from mass migration, but from a profound breakdown of trust between the governed and the governing.

The modern elite is faithless, prideful, detached – their attitudes would SHOCK the statesmen of the eighteenth century. I really believe that if you put them all on a panel like this one, they would be awed at today’s leaders having no reverence for God, no sense of stewarding tradition, and no sense of duty to their people.

I’ve spoken about what I’ve observed in Europe this year, but I think it’s worth mentioning that both President Trump and J.D. Vance have done a lot to lead the reassertion of civic nationalism—a tying of national security to national identity, and of politics to first principles.

When Vance spoke at the Munich Security Conference in February, he said, “We’ve heard a lot about what you need to defend yourselves from, but less about what you’re defending yourselves for.”

That is the question of our civilization.

And so, to answer it, we must return to first things.

A nation is much like a family, held together by covenantal bonds, not contracts. It is love that binds a people together—love that forges duty, directs care, and orders our affections rightly. From love of family grows love of community, and from there, patriotic love of nation. From our love of place comes a love for the way of life that place represents. The right ordering of this love does not seek domination or imposition on others. It seeks preservation.

It is a funny thing to observe this in ourselves, whether we come from huge cities like Paris that everyone visits or quiet towns in the middle of nowhere—we love our hometowns not because they are perfect in any objective sense, but because they are ours.

Common loves are the source of common loyalties, and common loyalties are the foundation of civilization.

There are many on the Left, but also some on the right, who see nation as a mere economic zone. Hence their insistence on mass migration. But even on their own terms, this fails: illegal immigration has not proven to grow economies, but to strain them, while hollowing out civic unity and causing major negative consequences.

The way out of this is not going to be easy – it’s a policy area that is uniquely hard to stop in terms of reversing the mass movement of people.

The America First approach should be a guide to all our Western allies, who wish to return to their values and repair their nation’s foundation of freedom, faith, and sovereignty. Not just the policies themselves like securing one’s borders, initiating mass deportations and insisting on English as the official language, but in the mentality. The America First mandate could never be fulfilled without the strong-willed leadership our president is showing – courageous statesmanship in standing up for his people and his policies and I firmly believe that every ally in this fight needs that in order to effectively fight back against today’s Leftists.

There is no underestimating the need to fight.

The first question of governance must be: who does the government serve?

The government must serve its citizens first. Of course, how that looks will vary nation by nation, but I believe that is the essence of this civilizational identity crisis.

When we say America First, we must first ask: “what is America?”

It’s not an economic zone to contribute to an economic powerhouse – many believe this. It’s also not just a constitution that lays out a plan for government, and we know that because John Adams said, “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.”

In reflecting on our nation at the 150^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, President Coolidge spoke of our founding fathers like this – he said “They were a people who came under the influence of a great spiritual development and acquired a great moral power. No other theory is adequate to explain or comprehend the Declaration of Independence.” Coolidge too, emphasized the people in the creation of our great country.

So, in the age of America First, we should ask, “what is America?”

The answer is America is its people, bound together by tradition, culture, faith.

To our allies, your nations are your people. Unless the civilizational reckoning we’re experiencing now responds with a rising up to defend them, there may be no going back.