Last week, tens of thousands of anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian demonstrators flooded the streets of Italy, most notably in Milan, clashing with police, setting fires, blocking roads and ports, and paralyzing schools and public transit.
The reason? Italy refused to recognize a Palestinian state, a move that would legitimize Hamas’s brutal terrorist regime. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni felt compelled to justify Italy’s position, explaining that recognition of a Palestinian state would come only once Israeli hostages are freed and Hamas is excluded from any future government.
But while Meloni had the courage (for now) to stand up to the radical pro-Palestinian agenda taking root in Italy, many other Western nations did not. France, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and Portugal all recognized a Palestinian state – effectively sending the message that much of the West will indeed now negotiate with terrorists, and that if a noisy, radical minority throws enough rocks at police and harasses enough Jewish students and businesses, those in power will cave to their demands.
It’s imperative that we ask how we got here – not only when it comes to tolerance and even support for Hamas terrorism, but also acceptance of a broader campaign by anti-Western subversives to systematically undermine and destroy Western civilization. Decades of imprudent immigration policies and misplaced “compassion” have now put the West on a path to cultural suicide.
Not only have Western nations imported millions of people from regions openly hostile to Western culture, but their ethnic conflicts have migrated as well, most notably the one in Gaza. These foreign conflicts are now being fought with the help of home-grown left-wing allies, reshaping the life of Western citizens in ways that are increasingly hostile to cultural tranquility, including in the United States.
Of course, people can debate Israel’s ongoing military response to the Hamas terrorist attack. They can and should discuss whether one considers the humanitarian disaster in Gaza to be a genocide or the catastrophic result of war. They can even debate President Donald Trump’s recent peace plan and the feasibility of a two-state solution.
But none of the answers to these questions changes the deeper reality: the Israel–Palestine conflict is no longer confined to the Middle East. It has been transplanted into Western cities, championed not only by some immigrant communities, but also by anti-Western elements who have been pushing mass migration policies for decades.
From the war’s outset after October 7, 2023, this was obvious. Even before the destruction in Gaza escalated, hundreds of thousands marched through New York and London under Palestinian flags. Many demonstrations went beyond solidarity with Palestinians; some openly celebrated Hamas’s massacre.
This movement cannot be explained away as concern for “human rights.” As the Capital Research Center has documented, so-called “pro-Palestinian” activist networks in America and Europe have become vehicles for a much broader agenda. In the U.S., the study found a 3,000 percent surge in violent rhetoric and a 186 percent increase in anti-American and anti-police messaging after October 7.
Chants of “globalize the intifada” and “bring the war home” are not poetic slogans. They are explicit calls to import terrorism into Western societies.
Pro-refugee groups, framed as humanitarian charities, have morphed into hubs of anti-Western grievances, fueled by mass immigration and protected by elites in government who demand “tolerance” from their citizens while excusing the intolerance of the immigrants they continue to import.
This is the very “paradox of tolerance” that the liberal philosopher Karl Popper warned about: a society that tolerates the intolerant will end by destroying itself. Yet Western leaders have turned this warning upside down, wielding tolerance not as a safeguard, but as a weapon against their own people.
Citizens who wave their own national flag or criticize anti-Semitic bigotry can expect to face police harassment in London or Manchester, while chants of “glory to the martyrs” and “from the river to the sea” are ignored. In one recent viral case, a British man was arrested for speaking out against Pakistani rape gangs – even as actual rapists walk free.
The same alarming trends are now visible in America.
For example, in Michigan, Dearborn’s mayor recently told a Christian resident that he was “not welcome” in the city after the man objected to renaming an intersection to honor Arab-American journalist Osama Siblani, who has a history of praising Hezbollah and Hamas. This came on the heels of a public outcry over the broadcasting of the Islamic call to prayer from a mosque’s loudspeaker at 5 AM, despite the fact that doing so violated a local noise ordinance.
The situation in the United States and throughout much of the West today has become the inverse of what liberals so often claim is the case. Far from immigrants being “marginalized” or “oppressed,” many native-born Americans have been ostracized and become outsiders in their own communities, while imported ideologies and traditions are replacing American ones.
The anti-Western movement we’ve seen across American college campuses and within Europe’s borders has dovetailed seamlessly with the pro-Palestinian cause, producing a movement that is not about peace, but about dismantling the West itself. For many, the plight of Palestinians merely serves as a convenient cover for their anti-ICE, “no human is illegal,” pro-immigration goals.
Many immigrants to the United States, including those from Muslim-majority countries, still come here with legitimate desires to work hard, obey the law, assimilate, and live out the American Dream. They should be welcomed. But it is now undeniable that there is a systemic, intentional campaign underway to abuse America’s immigration system to infiltrate the country, set up ethnic enclaves, and wage war on American culture.
For far too long, newly arrived immigrants have been immersed in a form of anti-culture that says America is illegitimate and founded on stolen land. All the mechanisms for assimilation have been abandoned in favor of “multiculturalism,” which in reality encourages the exact opposite of assimilation into a dominant host culture.
And so we must also do a better job of promoting and protecting American culture, while screening those who are coming in to ensure that every new addition bolsters traditional American values rather than tears them down.
Voters should demand that their elected officials acknowledge this reality and adjust accordingly. The Trump administration’s efforts to deport legal and illegal immigrants who spread hatred for America are a good start, as are growing talks of remigration throughout Western Europe.
The Milan riots are not an isolated outburst, but another glimpse into the West’s future if current immigration policies continue unchecked. The question is no longer whether immigration reshapes culture; it already has. The question is whether Western nations will summon the will to defend their own civilization before internal ethnic strife destroys it from within.
Unless Europe and America break from this failed experiment and reassert their right to defend their borders, culture, and national identity, riots from foreign subversives over the next international conflict will not be the exception, but the rule.
Adam Johnston is a writer whose work has been featured in The Federalist, The Blaze, and the Daily Caller. He is also the creator of the Substack publication “Conquest Theory,” where he regularly writes about politics, history, philosophy, and technology. You can find him on X @ConquestTheory.
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