Nor can the backlash against immigrants always be blamed on their failure to assimilate. Anti-Semitism grew strongest in Germany, for example, not when the Jews arrived but precisely when they were integrating, succeeding, even converting. More to the point, it now seems as if a country does not even need to have real immigrants, creating real problems, in order to feel passionately angry about immigration. In Hungary, as Mária Schmidt acknowledged, there are scarcely any foreigners and yet the ruling party has successfully stoked xenophobia. When people say they are angry about “immigration,”
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