What’s wrong with multiculturalism and mass immigration? Don’t you want to live in a country where all the colours of the rainbow are represented? Wouldn’t it be bland and boring to live in a place where everyone is the same?

Hardly a minute goes by without liberals asking these tired questions. Yet there is a simple answer: mass immigration and multiculturalism tend to erode cohesive cultures and societies. When pushed too far, they become engines that place heavy strain on the social fabric of host countries.

Here’s why: culture, by its very definition, must be shared and expressed at a community level, otherwise it ceases to exist.

A fragmented society made up of countless enclaves—each with different customs, traditions, and norms—will always struggle to be a strong, cohesive nation. As communities become more diverse, it becomes harder to engage in celebrations, to share the same cultural memory, savour the same food, sing the same songs, worship the same God, host school plays, observe common religious and cultural holidays, and on and on. These building blocks of culture break down the more diverse societies become.

Culture must transcend localities and find group participation at a community level, a city level, or a national level—scaled up to whatever group you want to have some semblance of unity. When scaled down far enough, culture simply becomes family traditions or neighbourhood parties.

Consider Christmas—a time of year where culture and shared meaning still unite millions across the West. Homes and cities transform together, offering one of the last remaining examples of broadly shared cultural life.

It’s true that many immigrant groups engage with Christmas to some degree, but Muslims largely do not. If a city were to become 50% Muslim, can anyone seriously claim that the public expression of Christmas would not change? Of course it would. And this just illustrates the broader problem: mass immigration without assimilation inevitably reshapes and weakens existing culture.

In a country that enthusiastically assimilated newcomers and did not tolerate cultural fragmentation, immigration might strengthen a country. But the current model of mass immigration with little assimilation cannot continue, so destructive has it become.

I want to live in a country where I hear my native language on the streets and on the metro. I want shop signs I can read and restaurants that serve my culture’s food. I want to celebrate the same holidays as my countrymen, worship the same God, pursue the same civilization goals, and honour the same events from our history. This is not about ethnicity. It is about immigration and cultural continuity.

It is love of culture that causes immigrants to cling to their home country’s traditions and culture, but this same love of culture should cause every patriotic European to resist the mass immigration that undermines their own.

Let us avoid turning our countries into balkanized societies where nothing is shared and no one is connected. Such nations may function while the sun is shining and the honey is flowing, but they are far less likely to endure a prolonged catastrophe or major civilization crisis.

We must find the nerve and resolve to end mass immigration, strengthen assimilation, and rebuild national unity among those already here—before that test arrives.