Polakow-Suransky has offered well-researched book about the populist trend in Western Democracies, especially in the wake of the refugee crises in Europe in 2015-16, and has analyzed how this phenomenon affected the French national elections afterwards. I was impressed by the author's avoidance of political rhetoric to determine the motivations of the electorate and how populists take advantage of their fears. It's a dense read, but very much worth the time to understand this complex subject.

The author has put forward a well researched book about the populist trend in Western Democracies especially in the light of the refugee crises in Europe in 2015/16 and has analyzed how this impacted the national elections up to the French presidential election earlier this year. It would have been easy for the author to just pick sides and tell the left/right what they are doing wrong, but he has chosen to look behind the political rhetoric and figure out what motivates the electorate and how populists take advantage of these existential fears.

It's a dense read, but very much worth your time in order to understand this current trend. Polakow-Suransky focuses mostly on Europe in his investigation, but also touches on Australia and South Africa and draws some parallels to the 2016 election in the USA.

This book is in my top 2 non-fiction reads of 2017 right next to "Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right" and I will recommend it to anybody that is interested in current events and political science.

I had high hopes for this book, but whether it was my expectations differing from the actual content of the book, or something else, we just didn't gel. I was hoping there'd be more proper interviews, oral history type reporting, but a lot of it was more dry analysis and academic history. Whilst there is nothing wrong with this, it wasn't that accessible for me, coming from a non academic background in terms of history and sociology. The other thing I will say is that this book is extremely thorough, touching on Trump, Le Pen, and many different countries including Europe and America.

Go Back to Where You Came From has a lot packed into its 350 pages. First and foremost, it charts the refugee crisis from Syria and other conflicts and how the surge in refugees has given rise to populist parties such as The National Front in France, Danish People’s Party in Denmark and The Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, and even Donald Trump in the United States just to name a few. These parties/politicians are blending anti-immigrant rhetoric with economic based appeals to working class voters to siphon votes away from mainstream parties and shake up governments throughout the globe.

That is nothing that hasn’t been put out before. Where this book differs is that it goes into the broader implications for democratic governance. As these far right parties/politicians gain seats, mainstream political parties adapt in an attempt to win back the voters that they have lost. In order to do this however, they end up adopting harsher immigration policies and rhetoric (Australia is profiled in depth as an example.) Taken to a point of extreme, this leads societies to become illiberal and undemocratic.

Equally damning of both the political left and political right in their treatment of and rhetoric regarding refugees and serving as a political wakeup call to the “political establishment” to open up their eyes and understand the conditions and circumstances that have made these anti immigrant and/or outsider voices, so appealing to some.

I wish that this book was just hyperbole and extremism at its worst, but it is not. This is an excellent, and thorough examination of how our current political climate has came to be. Issues we are facing her in the United States are also prevalent across the globe. The process from which this current political climate was created has been brewing for some time, and at this present trajectory, this ascension will not subside anytime soon. If you only read a few pages of this book, make them the first few pages of the epilogue, which creates the simplest explanation of how Donald Trump gained so much popularity, and was able to win the 2016 presidential election.

Eye-opening and informative read. Polakow-Suransky expertly weaves the past with our current political climate to shed light on our history with immigration.