<p>The rise of right wing nationalism comes with a massive side dose of bad faith arguments. So argues Sasha Polakow-Suransky, the author of &#8220; <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Back-Where-You-Came-Immigration/dp/1568585926" type="external">Go Back to Where You Came From: The Backlash Against Immigration and the Fate of Western Democracy</a>," which examines the explosion of far-right anti-immigration politics in both Europe and the United States.</p> 
<p>People like Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen are reactionaries, Polakow-Suransky told me on "Salon Talks," but they like to hide behind liberal values like equality and secularism when launching attacks on Muslim immigrants.</p> 
<p>&#8220;What these parties are doing, especially in France and Holland, is they&#8217;re telling gays, they&#8217;re telling feminists, and they&#8217;re telling Jews even, &#8216;We are the only ones who will protect you,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The threat all of you face is from Islam and Muslims and we&#8217;re the only party that can stand up to that.&#8217;&#8221;</p> 
<p>These politicians want voters to believe they&#8217;re not neo-Nazis and skinheads, he continued, but in reality, they&#8217;re &#8220;weaponizing secularism to target a specific group.&#8221;</p> 
<p>Polakow-Suransky, who is an Open Society Foundations fellow and has held previous positions as an op-ed editor at the New York Times and as a senior editor at Foreign Affairs, says he sees similarity in how &#8220;our president reacts to a horrible terrorist attack,&#8221; such as the murders in New York City on Halloween, and other crimes.</p> 
<p>&#8220;You see a real gulf between the reactions to any crime perpetrated by an Islamic extremist and crimes committed by white nationalists or other groups,&#8221; Polakow-Suransky said. &#8220;I think that shows they&#8217;re targeting a specific group rather than talking about universal values that we all share.&#8221;</p> 
<p>Watch <a href="https://www.facebook.com/salon/videos/10155452605286519/" type="external">our full "Salon Talks" conversation</a> on Facebook.</p> 
<p>Tune into Salon's live shows, "Salon Talks" and "Salon Stage," daily at noon ET / 9 a.m. PT and 4 p.m. ET / 1 p.m. PT, streaming live on <a type="internal">Salon</a> and on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/salon" type="external">Facebook</a>.</p>
Far-right leaders have double standards for immigrants