Political Backflow From Europe
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Welcome to the Astral Codex X podcast for the 11th of February, 2026. Title, Political Backflow from Europe. This is an audio version of Astral Codex X, Scott Alexander's Substack. If you like it, you can subscribe at astralcodex10.substack.com.
The European discourse can be, for lack of a better term, America-brained. We hear stories of Black Lives Matter marches in countries without significant black populations, or defendants demanding their First Amendment rights in countries without constitutions. Why shouldn't the opposite phenomenon exist? Europe is more populous than the US and looms large in the American imagination. Why shouldn't we find ourselves accidentally absorbing European ideas that don't make sense in the American context? In my post on baby boomers, I argued against claims that America keeps raising taxes on the young so it can award larger pensions to the old. In fact, social security payouts per person have become less generous over time, not more, although total subsidies to the elderly are rising because of increasing longevity and health insurance costs.
Several European readers wrote in to say that whether or not this is happening in America, it definitely happens in Europe. Here's Sokal, quote, The anti-boomer take has been imported in part from the EU and the UK, where the pension system is not the same. And here's a link to the Pensions Act 2007 section of the Wikipedia article on the state pension in the United Kingdom. There is a lot of similar things in France that I could dig up, such as all attempts to tax benefits being defeated.
What does 'America-brained' European discourse mean?
And from The Fall, quote, Scott writes, So maybe this is one example of European issues leaking to a less appropriate American context. Are there any others? In Understanding America's New Right, Noah Smith asks why American conservatives are so interested in European affairs. He answers that their ideology centers around the idea of Western civilization, which is kind of him. A more paranoid analyst might make a similar argument around white identitarianism. Since Europe is the home of Western civilization, it's especially galling for it to be ravaged by immigration or whatever. This may be true, but I propose a simpler explanation. The American conservative narrative on immigration is mostly true in Europe, mostly false in America, and it is more pleasant to think about the places where your narrative is mostly true.
The conservative narrative on immigration is, to put it uncomfortably bluntly, that immigrants are often parasites and criminals. As our news sources love to remind us, this is untrue in the American context. The average immigrant is less likely to claim welfare benefits and less likely to commit crimes than the average native-born citizen. This is a vague, high-level claim. The answer can shift depending on details of how you ask the question, and it's certainly not true of all immigrant or native subgroups. Still, taken as a vague, high-level claim, the news sources are right and the conservative narrative is wrong. In Europe, the situation is more complicated. There are still some ways of asking the questions where you find immigrants collecting fewer benefits than natives, for example because immigrants are young, natives are old, and pensions are a benefit.
But there are also more options for asking the question in ways where, yes, immigrants are disproportionately on welfare. the European link between immigrants and crime is even stronger, especially if the conservatives are allowed to cherry-pick the most convincing European countries. This makes it tempting for US right-wingers to center their discussion of immigration around stories, narratives, and images from Europe. No-go zones, grooming gangs, rape statistics, Sharia law, and asylum seekers are all parts of the European experience with limited relevance to an America where most immigrants are Mexican, Central American, or Indian. For example, in my research on Scott Adams, I came across the following Dilbert strip, which is apparently supposed to take place in the US.
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