The youth of Europe and the Commonwealth are in open rebellion against the fundamental assumptions and principles of the modern West. Multiculturalism, diversity, immigration, and civic nationalism — pillars of the today’s political order — are all being questioned by increasingly angry brigades of young men. And who can blame them?

Over the past 65 years, the West has been transformed. Many Europeans now live in cities they barely recognize — full of foreign peoples, languages and customs. They have become strangers in their own home. Social cohesion has been destroyed, ethnic conflict is commonplace in many European cities, cost-of-living is crushing middle class families, and young people see little hope of ever owning a home.

And when young men notice and protest the obvious degradation of their countries and their civilization, they’re dismissed as racists, bigots, antisemites, or Nazis. No solutions. No dialogue. No consideration. They’re simply told to shut up and live in the world that has been built for them.

But what if they won’t?

A sense of desperation and hopelessness is taking root among young conservatives, and with it a resolve to not simply accept the conditions being handed down by their elders.

The question beneath all of this is simple but profound: What makes a nation? Shared culture? Religious unity? Ethnic cohesion? As Europe dissolves into a patchwork of competing enclaves with no central identity, these questions are front of mind for all thoughtful people. So here, in the quiet of these pages, let us address them fairly.

The mainstream answers tend to fall into two camps: the first is that a nation is a chunk of earth, and anyone within its border is considered part of the whole. From this view, America is just a geographic descriptor, so when Middle Eastern or African immigrants arrive in the United States, they immediately become as American as those who have lived there for centuries. The second answer is based in culture or civic nationalism. The West, we are told, is a set of values and institutions, and anyone willing to adopt them is welcome to immigrate.

The first view simply justifies the ethno-linguistic fragmentation of Western nations, but the second is more complicated. After all, people who look differently can unite around a set of ideas, surely? But both arguments avoid the other important question: where does culture come from, if not people? Why is Europe Europe? Why is China China?

Is it geography, environment, climate, proximity to resources?

Whatever the answer, one truth is becoming unavoidable: we have drastically overestimated the transmissibility of culture.  

Values, inclinations, customs, beliefs may not be absorbable within five, ten, twenty years, and perhaps not even within several generations. Culture is deeper and quieter than we pretend. And it’s more than just high-level values like women’s rights, democratic processes, or the rule of law. It’s the poems that echo in our minds, the songs that hum in our souls, and our connection to place and people. It’s the ghosts of our ancestors walking the paths around us. It’s the places we see when we close our eyes. It’s the nursery rhymes we sing to our children, the dreams that move us, and our collective memory of what once was.

Mass immigration will always fail because our modern conception of culture and heritage—of nation—is shallow and empty. And I think in our hearts we are all beginning to understand this. Whatever it means to be British, or American, or German, or French: it is more than geography. It is more than the mechanics of governance. It is more than sets of laws and dispute-resolution bodies.

This article has asked more questions than it has provided answers, but this is in keeping with so-called ‘far-right’ movements. If one thing unites these disparate new groups, it is this: a refusal to accept the fundamental assumptions of the older conservatives who presided over the West’s decline.

Where all this leads, I don’t know. But I do know that attempting to stifle this debate will lead to chaos and conflict. The West is in crisis, and the youth of Europe insist that this conversation be had openly—without reflexive accusations of Nazism, racism, or fascism.

To the older conservatives: if nothing else, get out of the way.