Go Back to Where You Came From Quotes

“It's a twisting of basic definitions and legal concepts,s but it has permeated everything. If all asylum seekers are illegal and hence criminals, then draconian policies are easier to justify If it's a "war" against people smugglers, then military deployments are acceptable, and so is the rhetoric of national security threats, like the kind former immigration minister Scott Morrison repeatedly conjured with his talk of going to war on smugglers. The language is not an afterthought; it is part of the policy and serves as a justification for it.”
― Sasha Polakow-Suransky, Go Back to Where You Came From: The Backlash Against Immigration and the Fate of Western Democracy

“the people who saw the victories of the 1960s and 1970s as major battles that had been won, making sexual freedom, women’s liberation, and gay rights an unquestioned part of Dutch society. For a generation that believed its wars against the church were won, suddenly there was a regression; those old victories seem tenuous.”
― Sasha Polakow-Suransky, Go Back to Where You Came From: The Backlash Against Immigration and the Fate of Western Democracy

“In his book on the topic, The Future of Freedom, Zakaria pointed out that the great political philosophers had foreseen the clash as early as the eighteenth century. Immanuel Kant, the intellectual forefather of those who adhere today to the theory that democratic governments are more peaceful, was never a fan of democracies. Kant thought they risked becoming tyrannical. Likewise, James Madison and Alexis de Tocqueville worried about the tyranny of the majority. Populist leaders, they knew then, have no time for courts or parliaments that check their power.”
― Sasha Polakow-Suransky, Go Back to Where You Came From: The Backlash Against Immigration and the Fate of Western Democracy

“It does not matter that some of the institutions they deride are foundational pillars of the American or French republic; courts and constitutions are dismissed as undemocratic for not reflecting the political zeitgeist and the current whims of the masses.”
― Sasha Polakow-Suransky, Go Back to Where You Came From: The Backlash Against Immigration and the Fate of Western Democracy

“Modern liberal democracies have two crucial characteristics: they seek to reflect the will of the majority through elections and to protect the rights of minorities by enshrining them in constitutions and establishing independent judiciaries to check the power of popularly elected leaders.19”
― Sasha Polakow-Suransky, Go Back to Where You Came From: The Backlash Against Immigration and the Fate of Western Democracy

“Far-right leaders are correct that immigration creates problems; what they miss is that they are the primary problem. The greatest threat to liberal democracies does not come from immigrants and refugees but from the backlash against them by those on the inside who exploit fear of outsiders to chip away at the values and institutions that make our societies liberal. By attempting to deal with the challenges of immigration by publicly denouncing judges, casting aside constitutional protections of minority groups, and stripping some citizens of their nationality, many of the world’s most advanced democracies are effectively hitting the self-destruct button rather than take on new passengers.”
― Sasha Polakow-Suransky, Go Back to Where You Came From: The Backlash Against Immigration and the Fate of Western Democracy

“When the two occur at the same time—and the terrorists belong to the same ethnic or religious group as the new immigrants—the combination of fear and xenophobia can be a dangerous and destructive force. Fear of fundamentalist Islam (which poses a genuine security threat) and animosity toward refugees (who generally do not) have been conflated in a way that allows populist far-right leaders across the world to seize upon ISIS attacks as a pretext to shut their doors to desperate refugees who are themselves fleeing ISIS.”
― Sasha Polakow-Suransky, Go Back to Where You Came From: The Backlash Against Immigration and the Fate of Western Democracy