“If politicians play down migration, extreme parties come to power” Rat plague: Munich wants to make the animals infertile

Bret Stephens is one of the liberal New York Times’ most interesting and widely read authors. The 50-year-old political scientist just published a column summarizing arguments in favor of Donald Trump (“The Case for Trump – by Nobody Who Wants Him to Lose”), which attracted almost 3,000 comments from readers.

In it he wrote the following sentence: “The mass migration from south to north and from east to west is perhaps the most important geopolitical event of the century.”

Is the influence of migration on politics and society really as great as you write?
Bret Stephens: Let me say this first. I support legal immigration. I am the son of a refugee myself; my mother survived the Holocaust as a Jewish child in World War II. Immigrants are a huge asset. But when migration is largely uncontrolled, as is the case in this century, and when it occurs without the necessary assimilation, then migration becomes a problem. It is therefore not surprising that the population in the US, but also in many European countries, is responding to this – and turning away from politicians and parties who ignore or downplay this problem.

The fact that migration has such a major influence on elections is not only due to the large number of immigrants, but also because they integrate too little?
Do immigrants adapt to the culture of their host country, or does it happen the other way around? There are entire neighborhoods in Europe that look more like the Middle East than France or Belgium. It’s not just about appearance, it’s about the social interaction of migrants, about their attitudes towards women, minorities, LGBT people and also towards Jews.

Are the government parties not taking these concerns seriously enough?
Many parties on the left or in the center do not notice how explosive these issues are – or do not want to notice them. As a ‘Never-Trumper’ (someone who has always been against Trump, ed.) I say: Donald Trump was the first candidate to address the migration issue directly and very forcefully. It is the main reason he was elected president in 2016.

An anti-migration party also recently won elections in the Netherlands, and in Germany the right-wing AfD achieved record high poll numbers.
Many of the parties winning now represent a mix of legitimate concerns and ugly prejudices against all immigrants. The fact that the AfD is successful in Germany is clearly due to the fact that they aggressively tackle the issue while the other parties ignore it. The taboo also contributes to success. In many European countries it has long been unthinkable to talk about uncontrolled mass migration – especially of people who do not share democratic values ​​– without automatically being labeled racist.

The German government, consisting of the SPD, the Greens and the FDP, is responding to the rise of the AfD by tightening its foreign policy. It has even introduced border controls with Switzerland. Is this the right way, or will it only further strengthen the extreme right?
It is correct as long as these measures serve to solve the problem. If the established parties close their eyes to the immigration issue, truly dangerous right-wing extremist parties could come to power. We saw that in Poland. It is not inconceivable that the same will happen to Le Pen’s party in France. I fear that extreme forces will also increase massively in Germany. The only way to combat this is for governments to take people seriously and take action instead of pretending the problem doesn’t exist.

Is US President Joe Biden not taking the problem so seriously that he is currently behind Trump in the polls?
We now have probably the biggest crisis at the southern border in as long as I can remember, maybe even in history. This has a lot to do with the fact that when Biden took office in 2021, he made it abundantly clear that he would have a much more lax immigration policy than Trump. This sent a fatal signal south and attracted migrants. Now we have a border crisis almost every week. The government has tried to deny this for a long time. She then brought in Vice President Kamala Harris to do it. Yet she never visited the border region for a long time.

How do you evaluate this behavior?
This is a denial of reality. Ultimately, this is a colossal political failure. Not just in Washington, but in many Democratic-controlled states that are failing to get the problem under control. I fear that this situation could be the decisive factor that ends Democrat Biden’s presidency.

Can Biden still respond to this now or is it too late?
He just has to do the right thing now or he will surely lose the common people. We don’t know exactly how many people are crossing the southern border, we can’t count the people who slip through. But from what we hear, we have never experienced migration on this scale. The consequences are mainly felt by the working class, who are therefore increasingly switching from Democrats to Republicans. It doesn’t help Biden much when he says he’s a pro-union supporter.

Among those who benefit from this are parties and politicians with authoritarian tendencies. Will migration become a stress test for democracy?
Trump’s presidency tested American democracy and the rule of law. The settings turned out to be quite robust. But the repetition of the lie about election fraud does not leave democracy untouched. If extremists are in power long enough, they will eventually control all the levers of the state.

How can this be prevented?
The forces at the political center are being challenged as never before. We saw in Germany in the 1920s what happens when the center fails: the Nazis on one side and the Communists on the other grew stronger. The center must be able to recognize problems, name them, tackle them seriously and solve them. The extremists are only good at identifying and naming problems, but not at solving them.

And the center can do both?
It has to be done. Things are not going well in Germany at the moment, and I don’t just mean migration: Olaf Scholz’s government has not achieved anything convincing in terms of economic policy or how to respond to the war in Ukraine.

How will the two wars – in Ukraine and Israel – affect the US elections?
It is a tragedy that Trump has turned the Republican Party, which once believed in conservative, committed internationalism, into a party of isolation. This has far-reaching consequences. Many Americans now don’t care or would even be happy if Putin won in Ukraine. I think that would be a geopolitical catastrophe of the first magnitude.

Joe Biden supported Ukraine with weapons and lots of money.
Yes, he’s here on the right. His mistake, however, was that he was too hesitant. The United States should have armed Ukraine more quickly so that the Ukrainians would have been ready for their counteroffensive a year ago. This opportunity was missed.

When it comes to the Gaza war, Republicans are very clearly on the side of Israeli democracy.
Yes, they support Israel’s right to self-defense without compromise, while old anti-Israel reflexes exist on the left fringe of the Democratic Party. The wars between Ukraine and Israel are politically related. If Ukraine or Israel falls, it will soon be the turn of the next free country. Unfortunately, many people in the US and Europe are not aware of how much both Ukraine and Israel do for us: for our freedom and democracy, but also for our own security.

You were at the WEF in Davos this week, do you have the impression that at least the elite gathered there is aware of this?
My impression was that, yes, the majority of people in Davos would like to see Ukraine win on the battlefield. Unfortunately, I’m not so sure if this also applies to Israel. (aargauerzeitung.ch)