On a crisp autumn evening in 2024, two scenes unfold in Europe that could be different continents, or even different centuries. In Warsaw, families stroll calmly past the royal castle with national flags draped around their shoulders, gathering for a candlelight vigil in solidarity with Ukraine’s war victims. Church bells toll and candles flicker under saintly statues; there is grief, but also unity. Just weeks earlier, crowds in Warsaw had likewise lit candles for Israeli hostages of Hamas, their prayers carrying in the cold air. The mood is somber yet anchored – a society drawing on deep wells of faith and historical memory. Meanwhile, in Paris, the streets heave with a different energy. A protest at Place de la République has spiraled into anger after nightfall: green and red Palestinian flags billow above a restless crowd, chants turn to screams, and a synagogue’s windows are shattered by vandals a few blocks away. Graffiti scrawled on a nearby wall reads “Death to Jews.” Riot police form a cordon as fires crackle in overturned trash bins. This is not an isolated scene – in late 2023, Europe’s great western capitals saw a surge of demonstrations that spilled into violence and overt antisemitism, from London to Berlin and Brussels. In France alone, authorities recorded over 1,200 antisemitic acts in the month after the Gaza war erupted – nearly three times the total of the previous year (Interior Ministry, 2023). A Molotov cocktail thrown at a Berlin synagogue and Stars of David painted on Jewish doorways in Germany prompted the German president to lament, “It is unbearable that Jews are living in fear again today – in our country of all places”. Two Europes share the same continent, yet they appear to inhabit different moral epochs.
What explains this stark contrast? Why does Warsaw today resemble Paris in an earlier age – orderly, cohesive, culturally confident – while parts of Western Europe simmer with fragmentation and doubt? The core thesis of this essay is that the Western half of Europe is collapsing under the weight of its own overripe liberalism, succumbing to moral exhaustion and civilizational guilt, whereas Eastern Europe – which adopted the liberal democratic model more recently and selectively – retains a kind of cultural immunity. The East’s late embrace of liberal norms, tempered by historical memory and a stubborn sense of identity, may have preserved virtues the West has lost. As the West sinks into confusion and self-doubt, the East remains anchored. Has the East’s delay in fully “Westernizing” become its advantage, allowing it to avoid the final stage of decadence that afflicts over-satiated societies? Or is Eastern Europe simply enjoying a short-lived immunity, next in line for the same disintegration?
This article will explore these questions through narrative snapshots and analytical lenses – from the streets of Budapest and Paris to the theories of Toynbee, Deneen, and Eastern European thinkers. We will examine how Western liberalism’s triumphant “end of history” has curdled into paralysis, and how Eastern Europe’s late liberalism offers a different trajectory. The stakes are civilizational: in the twilight of Europe as we knew it, could salvation come from the once-peripheral East? Or will the moral frontier now forming across the continent harden into a permanent divide – a new Iron Curtain of values?
Symbolism of Two Europes: The opening contrast is more than anecdote. It symbolizes a Europe split between moral exhaustion and moral clarity. In the West, expressions of national or religious identity have eroded – or curdled into guilt. Crowds in Paris or London chant against Israel with a vehemence once reserved for obvious tyrannies, yet hesitate to condemn the barbarism of a terrorist attack. Leaders in Western Europe often respond with equivocation, fearing to take a moral stand that might offend multicultural sensibilities. By contrast, in Poland, the outpouring of solidarity for Ukraine since 2022 was immediate and unabashed – millions of refugees were taken in virtually overnight, welcomed with church collections and spare rooms. Even as a smaller “pro-Palestine” protest took place in Warsaw in 2023, it was met with official disgust; the Israeli ambassador to Poland denounced the rally’s antisemitic slogans and urged authorities to “stop this blatant antisemitism before it gets out of control”. Polish officials openly warned that such hate “should absolutely not take place”, hinting they would dissolve assemblies that cross the line. Where Western authorities often indulge violent demonstrators in the name of free expression – Paris police, for instance, stood by as thousands rallied under jihadist slogans – Eastern authorities still draw no-nonsense red lines against those who threaten public order or revive old hatreds. Warsaw’s very intolerance for certain “Western” excesses may be what keeps its streets safe and culturally intact.
Thus, “Two Europes” have emerged: one doubts itself so deeply it struggles to uphold basic civilizational norms; the other, having survived tyranny, is re-grounding itself in the fundamentals of nation, family, and faith as bulwarks against chaos. The sections that follow will delve into how the West’s liberal order reached a breaking point, how the East’s different path has conferred resilience, and why a moral curtain is descending across Europe – one that may define the continent’s future more than any political or economic divide.
The Overripe West – Liberalism Beyond Repair
In the afterglow of the Cold War, Western liberal democracy stood unchallenged – “the end of history,” in Francis Fukuyama’s famous phrase. Yet three decades later, that triumphant liberal order seems to be consuming itself. Western Europe today shows signs of a civilization in late autumn: overripe, infirm, and beset by a crisis of purpose. Liberalism’s very victories have bred new pathologies. As political philosopher Patrick Deneen observes, “Liberalism has failed – not because it fell short, but because it was true to itself. It has failed because it has succeeded.” Having achieved unprecedented individual freedom and wealth, Western societies found that unchecked freedom devours virtue. The triumph of open societies gave way to an era of moral self-flagellation, where the dominant ethos is one of guilt and exhaustion rather than confidence.
Toynbee’s Warning Realized: Historian Arnold J. Toynbee argued that civilizations die from suicide, not murder – their creative elites turn into merely administrative ones, losing the civilizational vigor that founded the society. In Western Europe, one sees this in the replacement of vision with technocracy. The great statesmen and thinkers who rebuilt Western Europe after WWII (the “creative minority” in Toynbee’s terms) have given way to moral administrators – bureaucrats and career politicians managing decline. Brussels technocrats issue edicts on everything from the curvature of bananas to mandatory diversity training, as if procedural perfection could substitute for spiritual direction. The EU’s leadership class often speaks in a sterile vocabulary of “values” that no longer inspire, invoking human rights and tolerance while presiding over social fragmentation and drift. Freedom, once a fighting faith that required courage and sacrifice, has been reinterpreted as mere therapeutic self-realization. The emphasis has shifted from conviction to relativism, from daring to “safe spaces.” A culture that once extolled heroes now produces administrators of human resources.
From Self-Critique to Self-Loathing: Western liberal societies long prided themselves on self-critique – the ability to recognize and correct injustices. But somewhere in recent decades, healthy self-critique metastasized into a kind of civilizational self-hatred. Colonial guilt, awareness of past sins like racism or patriarchy, and the horrors of the 20th century have made Western Europe morally timid. Intellectuals preach that Western culture is a litany of oppression; national pride is viewed as dangerous. In elite discourse, nearly any assertion of positive Western identity is suspect: patriotism edges toward xenophobia, defending one’s cultural heritage risks being labeled exclusionary. As French philosopher Chantal Delsol has noted (in La Fin de la Chrétienté, 2021), the collapse of Europe’s Christian faith left a void that has been filled by a new religion of shame. Western Europeans wear their openness and tolerance almost as penance, often tolerating the intolerant in the process. For example, authorities frequently turn a blind eye to extremist slogans in protests or hate preached in migrant enclaves, fearing that a firm response would betray liberal ideals. The result is a paralysis of moral judgment: no stance is taken strongly, for fear of appearing illiberal. This is liberalism in its decadent phase – so committed to openness that it cannot defend itself from internal erosion.
Illustrations of Decay: The symptoms of the West’s overripe liberalism are visible across multiple domains:
- Double Standards and Moral Paralysis: In recent conflicts, Western Europe’s moral compass has wavered. In the 2023 Israel-Hamas war, for instance, massive pro-Palestinian demonstrations in London, Paris, and Berlin often featured openly antisemitic chants (“From the river to the sea…”) and even violence, yet authorities largely stood down or offered only tepid condemnations. At the same time, many Western leaders seemed uneasy about voicing full-throated support for Israel’s right to defend itself, tiptoeing around the issue. The specter of colonial guilt and fear of inflaming domestic minority tensions led to deafening silences on rising antisemitism. In France, home to Europe’s largest Jewish community, over a thousand antisemitic incidents (harassment, vandalism, assaults) were recorded in a single month, prompting emergency marches against hatred. But how did it reach this point? Critics point out that Western Europe’s elites, so preoccupied with tolerance at all costs, long indulged Islamism and far-left radicalism in their midst. Hate preached in certain mosques or the demonization of Israel in academia went excused as “free expression.” The result was a moral double standard: harsh judgment for the West’s own historical sins, but indulgence toward illiberal excesses coming from within minority communities. The West’s much-vaunted “tolerance” curdled into tolerating intolerance. When that tolerance finally snapped – as when a teacher was beheaded in a Paris suburb for showing a cartoon, or Jewish schools required armed guards – the reaction came too late, against a backdrop of frayed social trust.
- Mass Immigration without Integration: Western Europe threw its doors open in recent decades – a humanitarian impulse and, some argue, a penance for past evils. But it failed at the follow-through: integrating the millions of newcomers into a cohesive social fabric. The result has been the creation of parallel societies. In city after city – Molenbeek in Brussels, Rosengård in Malmö, the banlieues of Paris, Rinkeby in Stockholm – there are districts where unassimilated immigrant communities live largely apart from the mainstream, often plagued by crime, unemployment, and radical influences. French officials euphemistically labeled some suburban enclaves “Zones Urbaines Sensibles” (sensitive urban zones) – effectively admitting there are places where the Republic’s authority barely penetrates. A 2017 report by the French Senate noted around 500 neighborhoods nationwide in which law and order had broken down to varying degrees. In Sweden, the national police regularly publish a list of “vulnerable areas” (anodyne code for no-go zones); as of 2023, 59 neighborhoods were on the list, characterized by rampant crime, gang control, and extremism – housing about 5% of Sweden’s population. These are the fruits of well-intended but naïve immigration policies that imported millions of people with vastly different cultural backgrounds without insisting on integration. Western liberal ideology, with its moral relativism, often discouraged robust assimilation – to demand that newcomers adopt European cultural norms was seen as chauvinistic. The ensuing vacuum was filled by ghettoization and cultural bifurcation. By contrast, Eastern Europe (as we will see) largely avoided this fate by limiting mass immigration – a stance for which Western Europeans chastised them, even as Western cities burned in riots every few years due to these integration failures.
- Bureaucratic Morality and Censorship: As organic moral confidence waned in the West, it was replaced by bureaucratic moralism – top-down enforcement of “good” values through regulations and speech codes. Universities and corporations throughout Western Europe (often following trends set in the U.S.) established elaborate DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) bureaucracies, crafting codes of conduct governing language and behavior in minute detail. While aimed at preventing discrimination, these often slid into ideological orthodoxies. Dissent from progressive viewpoints on gender or race could result in social ostracism or even job loss – a paradox in societies ostensibly devoted to liberty. Governments too have tightened the reins on speech: the EU’s Digital Services Act and hate speech laws in countries like Germany and France empower authorities to police online content aggressively, straining the line between curbing hate and censorship. A report by the Atlantic Council noted that U.S. tech companies operating in Europe are “sweating” under European speech regulations, which impose strict controls that would be unconstitutional across the Atlantic (Atlantic Council, 2023). In effect, Western Europe’s elites have tried to administratively mandate virtue – an implicit admission that virtue no longer rises naturally from the culture. Patrick Deneen has argued that when a society’s shared morals erode, liberalism compensates by expanding laws and therapeutic interventions. Freedom becomes “managed” – citizens treated as subjects to be guided toward correct opinions, rather than free people to be persuaded. This bureaucratic moralism, of course, triggers backlash (populist parties rebel against it), further polarizing Western societies into mistrustful camps.
Philosophical Diagnosis: Thinkers across the spectrum have critiqued Western liberalism’s late-stage decay. Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed (2018) posits that liberalism’s internal logic—to maximize individual autonomy and rational mastery—ultimately hollows out the conditions (community, virtue, shared purpose) that made liberal society possible. In Deneen’s words, liberalism “generated pathologies that are deformations of its claims yet realizations of its ideology,” producing the opposite of what it promised: a drive for ever-greater liberation ends in new forms of enslavement (to vice, to technology, to state oversight). Freedom unmoored from any conception of the good becomes license for self-destruction. The West’s celebration of “liberation” from all social constraints (whether family, tradition, or biological reality) ironically spawned loneliness, instability, and cultural incoherence. Chantal Delsol, in turn, observes that with the eclipse of its Christian heritage, the West retained the language of universal morals but without transcendental grounding – leading to what she calls “Christianity without Christ,” a hyper-tolerance that in reality is a mask for nihilism. Guilt became the last shared emotion linking post-Christian Europeans: guilt over the past, guilt for being prosperous, guilt for any assertion of cultural confidence. It is a moral exhaustion that borders on civilizational suicide. As G.K. Chesterton quipped long ago, “Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down.” Western liberalism’s road, absent correction, seems to be spiraling downward – from healthy self-critique to pathological self-negation, from liberty to licentiousness to soft totalitarianism (the “velvet tyranny” of cancel culture and surveillance).
Western Paradox: Thus, the West’s crisis is fundamentally moral-spiritual, even if it manifests in politics and social strife. A civilization that won every external battle – vanquishing foes from Nazism to Soviet communism – is succumbing to an inner void. Freedom became an end in itself, severed from any higher purpose or common narrative. The result is a kind of free-fall: individuals float in a sea of choice, unbound by ties of history or obligation, while the social fabric thins out to the breaking point. The paradox is that at the peak of its wealth and global influence, Western Europe is suffering a crisis of meaning reminiscent of late Rome. You see it in statistics (plummeting birth rates, declining religious faith, distrust in institutions) and on the streets (riots, anomie, political polarization).
In summary, Western Europe’s liberal order has entered what we might call the phase of entropy – the slow unraveling of the cohesive forces that once made it dynamic. It is liberalism beyond repair, at least from within, because the tools for self-renewal have been blunted by decades of complacency and relativism. This sets the stage for a dramatic counterpoint: Eastern Europe’s trajectory. Could the East, by virtue of its different historical timing and experience, escape the fate that seems to be befalling the West? The next section explores how Eastern Europe’s “late liberals” have approached the liberal project not as true believers in a secular gospel, but as pragmatists inoculated against utopian excess.
The Late Liberals – Eastern Europe’s Selective Immunity
Eastern Europe’s relationship with liberal democracy has always been late-blooming and somewhat ambivalent. These nations emerged from the long night of communism in 1989-1991 hungry for freedom and prosperity, eager to “return to Europe.” Yet, having been force-fed an ideological utopia (Marxism-Leninism) for decades, Eastern Europeans developed a keen nose for ideology in any form. Liberalism – the package of open markets, free elections, and individual rights – was largely embraced as a means to an end (joining the wealthy, secure West) rather than an end in itself. Unlike Western Europeans, who over centuries came to sacralize liberal ideals, Eastern Europeans approached them with a certain pragmatism and even skepticism. Liberalism would be adopted, but on Eastern terms. This has proven to be a kind of civilizational immunity: the East absorbed the strengths of the liberal model (democracy, EU integration, rule of law) while more effectively resisting its degenerative strains (excessive relativism, identity dissolution, ideological absolutism).
No Romanticism of Ideology: A defining feature of Eastern political culture is the lack of romance about grand ideas. After all, nations like Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic or Lithuania had seen how a glorious-sounding ideology (class equality, the brotherhood of peoples) could mask gulags and secret police. Thus, when communism fell, Eastern Europe embraced democracy and capitalism not out of theoretical conviction in “the end of history,” but because very concretely those systems delivered better outcomes and aligned with their repressed national traditions. There was (and is) relatively little utopian leftism in the post-communist East; socialist parties exist, but none advocate anything close to the Marxist fantasies of the 20th century. Even liberalism itself was never seen as infallible doctrine. Ryszard Legutko, a Polish philosopher-turned-politician, wrote that after communism, many Eastern Europeans assumed joining the West meant joining a realm of pluralism and freedom – only to discover that Western liberal-democracies have their own orthodoxies. “Liberal democracy is a powerful unifying mechanism, blurring differences between people and imposing uniformity of views, behavior, and language,” Legutko observes, comparing its homogenizing impulse to that of communism. Such critiques resonated in the East: people who survived a one-party system could more easily spot when a supposedly free society had unwritten party lines (on issues like multiculturalism, LGBT, etc.). In short, Eastern Europe kept an immune memory of totalitarianism, which triggers suspicion whenever a new “correct line” is pushed too hard, even if it comes in the language of human rights or scientific consensus.
Liberalism as Instrument, Not Religion: Consequently, Eastern European nations have treated various liberal policies selectively, keeping those that fit their values and discarding others. Poland and Hungary stand as prominent examples. Both established functional democracies in the 1990s and joined the EU, but in recent years their leaders have openly rejected what they call Western Europe’s “moral imperialism.” In Poland, the conservative government (2015–2023 under PiS) embraced some liberal tenets (free elections, market economy) but fiercely opposed EU edicts on matters like migration quotas and gender ideology. Polish discourse often framed these as foreign values being imposed. Poland refused an EU plan to redistribute Middle Eastern and African asylum seekers, with then-Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki saying “Poland will not have someone else furnishing our home”. This stance—widely popular domestically—reflected a belief that national community and security take precedence over abstract cosmopolitan obligations. Similarly, on cultural issues, Poland pushed back on EU pressure regarding LGBT rights (e.g. towns passing symbolic “family charters” that the Western media dubbed “LGBT-free zones”). While Western critics decried this as illiberal, many Poles saw it as preventing a moral revolution from above. The sentiment was: we will decide our values here, according to our faith and traditions, Brussels be damned.
Hungary under Viktor Orbán has gone even further in crafting a model he terms “illiberal democracy.” After 2010, Orbán’s government tightened control over media and courts (drawing EU ire) but also enacted policies guided by a traditionalist vision: generous family incentives to boost birthrates, constitutional bans on same-sex marriage, and resisting migrant inflows. Orbán bluntly declared in 2018 that “Christian democracy is not liberal. It is illiberal if you like”, staking a claim that Hungary would be democratic but not embrace the left-liberal social values that dominate in Brussels. Budapest famously enacted a law restricting LGBTQ content in school materials, prompting the European Commission to sue Hungary for discrimination. Far from relenting, Orbán held a popular referendum that overwhelmingly backed his stance (though invalidated by turnout rules). Such moves delight supporters who feel Hungary is preserving European civilization’s core (family, nation, Christianity) while the West loses it. Detractors call it authoritarian populism. Either way, it shows Eastern Europe’s tendency to filter liberalism: adopting its forms, but infusing them with local content.
Other countries in the region illustrate Eastern Europe’s selective immunity in subtler ways:
- Czech Republic & Slovakia: These nations are liberal democracies with generally pro-West orientations, yet their societies remain more conservative than Western European ones. The Czechs, for example, are highly secular and socially liberal on some fronts (Prague has a notable LGBTQ scene), but they remain wary of mass immigration and multiculturalism. In 2015’s migrant crisis, the Czech Republic took only a small number of refugees and insisted on strict vetting – a stance supported by most Czechs. Slovakia, a Catholic-majority nation, only legalized same-sex civil partnerships in 2023 and still constitutionally defines marriage as between a man and woman. Both countries have populist movements that criticize “Brussels dictates.” The point is that even the more moderate Eastern European states have not fully inhaled the late-modern Western ethos. They still prioritize societal cohesion and retain a communitarian streak at odds with extreme individualism. Liberal democracy functions, but is tinted by a traditionalist or pragmatic hue (e.g., low tolerance for political correctness, higher emphasis on law-and-order).
- Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania – having lived under Soviet lies and coercion – are fiercely devoted to freedom and the Western alliance, yet they, too, are guarded about ideology. Their liberalism is anchored in vigilance. For them, liberal democracy is less a theory than a security necessity (tyranny = Russian domination). These countries integrated into the EU/NATO swiftly, but also maintained a strong sense of national identity and memory. They have enacted policies to bolster their languages and cultures (sometimes drawing criticism for limiting minority – i.e., Russian – language use). Culturally, the Baltics lean West, but they have little patience for Western European indulgences like open-border romanticism – especially when they face a hostile giant next door. When Belarus weaponized migrant flows in 2021 by pushing Middle Eastern migrants across the border into Lithuania and Latvia, those nations responded with hardline measures (fences, pushbacks) and received broad domestic approval. Again, liberal ideals gave way to pragmatic self-defense. The Baltics also exhibit relatively low crime and high social order, akin to their Nordic neighbors but without large migrant enclaves. In effect, they chose which aspects of Western European models to emulate (digital governance, market reforms) and which to be cautious about (radical multicultural policies).
- Ukraine: Though not an EU member (yet), Ukraine deserves mention as an Eastern European society where moral clarity resurfaced under duress. The Russian invasion in 2022 galvanized Ukrainian identity and a binary understanding of right and wrong that feels almost archaic in the West. Suddenly “evil” was not a relative term but a concrete invader burning towns and committing atrocities. Ukrainians, from President Zelenskyy on down, began speaking in a moral language that many in Western Europe seemed to have forgotten how to use. Zelenskyy’s addresses to Western parliaments invoked good vs. evil, freedom vs. tyranny in stark terms, implicitly chiding Western liberal complacency. One British journalist noted that Ukraine’s fight reminded Europe that “yes, evil does exist and must be fought,” cutting through the West’s post-modern cynicism. The war also infused Ukrainian society with a sense of purpose and sacrifice – values that appear increasingly alien in consumerist Western cultures. Ironically, Ukraine’s embrace of those core liberal political values (democracy, independence) has been fueled by decidedly illiberal virtues: patriotism, martial valor, even religious faith (the prominence of prayers and icons among soldiers). Eastern Europe’s largest country, in resisting conquest, has reset its moral compass, and in doing so perhaps shamed some in Western Europe for whom such language of duty and courage had begun to sound old-fashioned.
Cultural Contrasts – Refugees and Safety: The differing immune responses of East and West are starkly visible in how each handled the influx of refugees in recent crises, and the resulting social outcomes. When Russia’s war on Ukraine sent millions fleeing westward in 2022, Eastern Europe welcomed Ukrainian refugees with open arms. Poland alone took in over 1.5 million Ukrainians within weeks – the largest refugee wave in Europe since WWII. Ordinary Polish families spontaneously drove to the border to offer rides, converted schools and stadiums into shelters, and organized donation drives. A “Solidarity lanes” program saw trains ferry refugees for free to dozens of Polish towns. Crucially, these refugees were culturally similar – fellow Slavs, Christians (for the most part), many with friends or family already in Poland or Romania. Integration was swift and relatively smooth. Within a year, over 80% of Ukrainian refugees in Poland were either employed or in training programs, facilitated by the linguistic and cultural closeness and Poland’s emergency measures to grant work rights. Social tensions remained minimal; crime rates among the Ukrainian newcomers stayed low. In short, Eastern Europe proved it could assimilate a large population – when that population shared its civilizational fabric. As a Chatham House analysis noted, shared history and proximity made Eastern response warm and humane, illustrating how much capacity Europe has when the fit is right. The same Poland and Hungary that refused EU-mandated quotas of Middle Eastern migrants in 2015 eagerly shouldered the burden for Ukrainians in 2022. Critics cried double standards (and indeed it was a double standard), but from the Eastern perspective it was simply common sense: you help those you can truly integrate, while rejecting what would otherwise tear your social fabric.
Western Europe, conversely, has faced repeated migrant crises from culturally distant populations – and the record is fraught. In 2015, Germany’s Angela Merkel flung open the doors to refugees from Syria and beyond with her famous “Wir schaffen das” (“We can do it”) ethos. Millions settled across Germany, Sweden, Austria, France, etc. The humanitarian impulse was laudable, but integration proved halting at best. By 2020, significant percentages of those refugee cohorts remained unemployed and linguistically isolated. More troublingly, ghettos swelled and social tensions spiked. Europe saw a string of terror attacks from 2015–2017 (Paris, Brussels, Nice, Berlin, Stockholm…), most perpetrated by Islamist extremists who exploited refugee flows or incubated in Europe’s parallel societies. Even aside from terror, everyday crime statistics showed overrepresentation of some immigrant groups in sexual violence and gang activity – a taboo topic for officials to acknowledge. When this combustible mix met socioeconomic frustration, it periodically erupted: riots in French cities (2005, 2017, 2023) by second-generation immigrant youths protesting police or living conditions; Sweden’s surge in gang shootings (reaching the highest gun homicide rate in Western Europe by 2023, largely concentrated in immigrant neighborhoods); or the New Year’s Eve sexual assaults in Cologne, Germany (2015) where mobs of mostly North African men harassed hundreds of women – a scandal initially hushed by authorities loath to stoke “xenophobia.” Each incident chipped away at public trust and provided ammunition to nationalist parties. While Western elites preached the mantra “diversity is our strength,” many average citizens experienced diversity as social fragmentation. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam’s research found that in the short term, higher ethnic diversity can erode social trust and community participation (Putnam, 2007). Western Europe’s trajectory seems to confirm this: trust in neighbors and institutions fell in multiethnic urban centers, while political tribalism increased.
Meanwhile, Eastern European societies remained remarkably safe and cohesive by comparison. One telling metric is crime and personal security. According to EU statistics, several Eastern EU members boast the lowest crime rates on the continent. For instance, Slovakia and Poland have among the lowest overall crime indexes in the EU (Eurostat, 2022). In 2023, an EU survey found only about 5% of Poles reported recent neighborhood crime or violence, versus over 20% in some Western European countries (Eurostat Social Survey, 2023). Women’s safety is an even starker contrast. In Warsaw or Prague, it is unremarkable for women to walk alone at night in most areas; public spaces remain broadly secure and free of the harassment episodes that have sadly become common in parts of Western Europe. By contrast, a 2021 YouGov poll found that majorities of young women in France, Belgium, and Sweden felt unsafe going out at night in their cities – a sentiment far less prevalent in Eastern capitals. Indeed, travel forums and expatriate surveys frequently remark that cities like Budapest, Kraków, and Tallinn feel as safe or safer than any in Western Europe, with low street crime and little of the gang menace that haunts say, parts of London or Marseille. This “safety gap” correlates with Eastern Europe’s relative homogeneity and social discipline. To put it bluntly, Eastern Europe avoided importing the pool of disaffected young men who in the West have formed a volatile underclass. The result is visible to any visitor: the vibe in Vilnius or Bratislava is closer to a pre-1990s Western Europe – orderly, somewhat conservative, people bound by a common social code – whereas parts of today’s Western Europe have a post-modern edginess, a feeling of living atop simmering conflicts.
Memory as Immunity: A key source of Eastern Europe’s selective approach is historical memory. These countries remember empire and oppression viscerally. Poland’s motto “For our freedom and yours” harks back to centuries of fighting invaders – from Turks to Nazis to Soviets. This imbues societies with a certain wariness about internationalist ideologies and borderless utopias. A Pole or Hungarian over 50 can recall life under a system that promised paradise and delivered misery; that breeds cynicism towards today’s grand narratives (whether climate salvation, global governance, or wokism). Even young Eastern Europeans grow up surrounded by monuments and stories of heroism and betrayal, which instill a grounded perspective: the world can be harsh, evil is real, and identity – national, religious – is worth preserving. As a result, Eastern Europe’s liberalism carries a nationalist flavor that Western intellectuals often find perplexing. In Poland, schoolchildren learn of the 1920 “Miracle on the Vistula” when Polish forces repelled the Bolsheviks – a triumph of nation defending faith and liberty against godless tyranny. Such collective memories reinforce the notion that nationhood and freedom are intertwined, not oppositional. Western Europeans, by contrast, often view nationalism as a spent force or even a dangerous one (given where extreme nationalism led in the 20th century). But for Easterners, nation was the shield that ultimately shattered Soviet chains. Thus they won’t apologize for cherishing it, EU lectures notwithstanding.
Anchor Thinkers: Several Eastern European thinkers articulate this civilizational confidence. Ryszard Legutko, mentioned above, argues that Eastern Europe’s so-called “illiberalism” is in truth a defense of real pluralism against a new totalizing liberal creed. To him, the liberal West increasingly demands ideological uniformity, enforcing it via social pressure and supranational institutions – ironically mirroring the communist party line. Eastern resistance, then, is less about rejecting freedom than about refusing to bow to an “emptiness”: the moral void of relativism. Roger Scruton, a British conservative who had deep ties in Eastern Europe’s anti-communist underground, observed that the peoples east of the Iron Curtain retained a deep “soul of the world” (to borrow the title of one of his books). By this he meant an attachment to transcendent values – truth, beauty, the sacred – that Western secularism was fast eroding. Scruton’s work with Czech dissidents in the 1980s taught him that ordinary people can endure great hardship if they feel grounded in real communities and shared loves (family, church, homeland). Eastern Europe, having suffered the hard school of history, still values those fundamentals. It is telling that church attendance and identification with religion rebounded in many Eastern countries after communism – Poland’s churches, for example, are full on Sundays, and even officially atheist Czechia has seen a revival of interest in spiritual heritage. While Western Europe empties out its churches and fills its shopping malls, Eastern Europe, though hardly free of consumerism, hasn’t entirely severed the sacred from public life. These differences may seem intangible, but they profoundly influence how societies respond to moral and political challenges.
In sum, Eastern Europe’s “late liberal” journey is one of adopting modernity without slitting its own civilizational wrists. By arriving late, the East could witness the West’s mistakes and decide not to repeat them wholesale. By suffering more, it learned to cherish basic identity and order as non-negotiables. This is not to idealize Eastern Europe – it faces its own problems (corruption, emigration of youth, sometimes reactionary tendencies). But in the grand tableau of where Europe is headed, the East today stands out as a place where common sense and continuity have not yet been entirely overwhelmed by the fads of late liberalism. The next section will explore the growing confrontation between these two Europes – a clash not of armies, but of moral hierarchies. Brussels and other Western centers increasingly push “European values” as they define them, effectively demanding Eastern capitulation on issues like migration and cultural norms. But Eastern capitals are pushing back, claiming the right to chart a different course. This clash is rapidly becoming the defining battle for Europe’s soul.
The Clash of Moral Hierarchies
Beneath the formal unity of the European Union, a moral civil war is being waged. It is not fought with weapons, but with words, laws, and the power of the purse. On one side is the liberal establishment centered in Brussels, Paris, Berlin – which insists that all member states adhere to a common set of “European values” as defined by the EU treaties and charters. These include commitments to liberal democracy, human rights, pluralism, and anti-discrimination. On paper, Eastern European governments agree to these – they are part of the club, after all. But in practice, definitions diverge sharply, especially on social and cultural questions. What Western Eurocrats deem fundamental values, Eastern conservatives often see as ideological overreach. Thus we have a clash of moral hierarchies: is the highest good a uniform pan-European liberal order (as Brussels claims), or is it the right of nations to preserve their distinct moral outlooks (as Warsaw and Budapest assert)?
Brussels’ Moral Enforcement: The EU was originally an economic project, but over the past two decades it has increasingly taken on an identity as a values project. The Treaty of Lisbon (2009) and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights commit the Union to principles like equality (including LGBTQ rights), rule of law, and respect for minorities. As long as all members seemed broadly in sync, these remained motherhood-and-apple-pie statements. But around the mid-2010s, real cracks appeared. Western leaders and much of the EU bureaucracy started viewing developments in Poland and Hungary as existential threats to these common values. In response, Brussels innovated new tools: tying funding and legal penalties to compliance with what it terms the Rule of Law and EU values. This is unprecedented in scope. For instance, the European Commission in late 2022 froze billions of euros in cohesion funds for Hungary and Poland over concerns ranging from judicial independence to LGBT discrimination. By 2023, some €22 billion allocated to Hungary was suspended pending reforms to strengthen courts and anti-corruption mechanisms. Poland, under its previous government, saw €35 billion in COVID-recovery grants and loans withheld because the PiS government had altered the judiciary in ways the EU said undermined judicial independence (creating a disciplinary chamber for judges, etc.). These moves signaled that Brussels was willing to weaponize the budget to enforce norms – a serious step given how vital EU funds are to Eastern economies.
Beyond money, the EU has wielded legal processes. Both Poland and Hungary have been subjected to the Article 7 procedure (often dubbed the “nuclear option”), which in theory could strip them of voting rights for breaching core values – though in practice it’s stalled due to needing unanimity (and Poland/Hungary protect each other). Nevertheless, the symbolism is clear: the EU’s mainstream considers the Eastern holdouts not just policy disagreements but heretics in a moral community. European Parliament resolutions have condemned Hungary as an “electoral autocracy” and Poland for “LGBT-free zones,” urging further action. In 2021, the Commission even floated the idea of cutting regional funds to Polish municipalities that adopted anti-LGBT family charters – a micro-intervention unthinkable a decade prior. The message: conform or pay up. As one Brussels diplomat put it, “EU money is taxpayers’ money. We will not bankroll governments that trample our values.”
From the Western establishment perspective, this is about defending liberal democracy from backsliding. But from the Eastern populist perspective, it looks like ideological coercion. Orbán loves to frame it as Brussels acting like the old Soviet commissars, dictating to proud nations. Polish PiS leaders similarly portrayed EU dictates as attempts to impose alien moral codes on a Catholic nation. Both governments often note the hypocrisy of Western Europe lecturing others: e.g., “Rule of law” concerns are raised about politicized courts in Poland, but Spain’s government at one point tried to pack its constitutional court without an EU peep; or the argument that Western Europe has its own corruption and democratic deficiencies (lobbying scandals, media bias) yet only the East gets spotlighted. There is some truth to the double standards argument, but also truth that Poland and Hungary have indeed pushed the boundaries of independent institutions more than any peers.
Migration and Gender – Flashpoints: Two issues more than any other have come to embody this clash: migration quotas and “gender ideology.”
The EU’s migration redistribution scheme has been a running battle since 2015. After the initial plan to distribute refugees among all EU states failed (due to Eastern opposition), a new Pact on Migration was negotiated by 2023. It introduced a mechanism where countries must either take a quota of asylum seekers during crises or pay a fee per each refused (a form of solidarity contribution). This passed by qualified majority vote – over fierce objections from Poland and Hungary, with Czechia and Slovakia also skeptical. At an EU summit in October 2023, Orbán and Morawiecki blocked a joint statement on migration, simply to signal protest. Morawiecki accused Germany and others of a diktat and insisted “Poland does not agree to have someone else furnishing our home”. Poland even held a nationwide referendum in 2023 (alongside its elections) asking voters if they reject EU migrant quotas – over 90% said yes (though the referendum failed to meet turnout thresholds formally). The Polish and Hungarian stance is that who enters our country is a sovereign decision tied to national security and identity. To cede that to Brussels is to surrender a core attribute of sovereignty. Western EU members retort that solidarity is a two-way street; you can’t take EU money and shirk responsibility on common challenges. Germany’s frustration boiled over when Chancellor Scholz scolded countries “with staunch anti-immigration lines” for simultaneously letting migrants slip through to Germany unchecked. This tug-of-war shows how irreconcilable moral priorities have become: Western Europe sees helping refugees (even by compulsion) as a moral imperative and matter of burden-sharing; Eastern Europe sees limiting non-European mass migration as a moral imperative to protect one’s community and way of life.
Similarly, on “gender ideology” (a catch-all term Eastern conservatives use for progressive social policies on gender and sexuality), the conflicts are sharp. The EU has increasingly taken liberal stances: endorsing LGBTQ rights, funding Pride events, pushing measures like the Istanbul Convention (on combating violence against women, which some Eastern governments balked at because its text on gender roles offended traditionalists). Hungary’s 2021 law banning dissemination of LGBT content to minors was a red flag to Brussels – 17 Western EU countries signed a letter decrying it, and the Commission launched legal action, calling it a violation of minority rights and dignity. The Hungarian government doubled down, framing it as protecting children from inappropriate sexual material and outside influence. Poland under PiS similarly made “family values” a policy plank, restricting abortion laws and resisting sex education approaches favored in the West. The European Parliament in 2020 declared the whole EU an “LGBTIQ Freedom Zone” in direct response to perceived Polish homophobia – a largely symbolic rebuke, but indicative of ideological polarization. What Brussels defines as anti-discrimination, Warsaw sees as moral intrusion. As a Polish bishop quipped during a clash over sex education: “Europe is losing its mind, and they want us to lose ours too. We will not!” The degree to which religion plays a role cannot be ignored – much of Eastern Europe remains culturally Christian (Catholic or Orthodox), and while church attendance varies, traditional teachings still influence public sentiment. Western Europe is far more secularized and thus often incredulous that policies on gay marriage or transgender self-identification could be seriously opposed on moral grounds in the 21st century. They view it as backwards; Eastern opponents view the Western stance as decadent.
Illiberal or Just Different Liberalism? The Western narrative often labels Eastern dissidents as “illiberal” and authoritarian, a threat to democracy. Certainly, leaders like Orbán have used nationalist rhetoric as cover to entrench power, and PiS meddled in courts and media in ways that did weaken checks and balances. However, beyond those institutional concerns, there is the deeper question: is a democracy that chooses a more conservative value-set still a democracy? The EU’s implicit answer has been “not fully” – hence terms like “illiberal democracy” (which implies a flawed democracy). But consider: Polish and Hungarian governments were repeatedly elected (multiple free elections) on platforms openly challenging liberal pieties. Their voters wanted a tougher stance on migration, a defense of Christian heritage, a challenge to cosmopolitan elites. In other words, a significant portion of these societies used democratic means to pursue a different vision of the good. To then be told by Brussels that this vision is illegitimate strikes many Easterners as fundamentally undemocratic. It suggests a hierarchy where EU technocrats’ interpretation of “European values” overrides popular will in any given country. This breeds resentment and cries of “colonialism.” Indeed, Polish and Hungarian officials often say the EU is behaving like an empire, treating newer members as wayward provinces. Even many liberal opposition figures in the East, while disliking their own regimes, bristle at heavy-handed EU punishments, fearing it sets a precedent of external meddling in domestic affairs.
One might frame it thus: Western Europe insists on procedural liberalism (independent courts, free press, minority protections) but also increasingly on substantive liberalism (certain policy outcomes must align with progressive norms). Eastern Europe is okay with the procedures (democracy, rule of law in principle), but wants leeway on the substance (family policy, migration, cultural identity). There’s a philosophical debate whether liberalism requires neutrality (allowing communities to choose conservative values if they wish) or whether it must enforce open society principles universally. Deneen would say the latter is exactly why liberalism fails – it cannot tolerate alternatives to itself once in power. Legutko goes further, arguing that the liberal project has become quasi-totalitarian in that it demands homogenization of thought across different societies. He writes, “today’s liberal-democratic ‘dialogue’ is a peculiar kind because its aim is to maintain domination of the mainstream orthodoxy…all-inclusiveness rhetoric conceals a right-is-might mentality”. In plainer terms, Brussels isn’t really interested in dialogue with Polish or Hungarian traditionalists; it wants to convert or isolate them. And indeed, some Western European voices have contemplated whether the EU might be better off without recalcitrant members blocking deeper integration.
“Illiberalism” as Refusal to Submit: A pointed way to encapsulate this clash is: Eastern Europe is accused of illiberalism not because it squashes freedom – Poles and Hungarians are largely as free in daily life as any European – but because it refuses to worship at the altar of liberalism. It’s a sin of impiety, not of cruelty. To the liberal mind, that is a grievous sin, since liberalism casts itself as the guarantor of dignity and autonomy. But Eastern critics see liberalism as having become an empty cult – venerating diversity and choice detached from any cultural core or higher purpose. As one Hungarian commentator put it, “They demand we bow to nothingness, to a secular nihilism where all cultures are equal and all truths relative – we will not bow.” This language of “refusal to worship emptiness” echoes across Eastern European conservative circles. It’s hyperbolic perhaps, but captures the sentiment that Western Europe has hollowed out its soul and then dares to proselytize this hollowness.
Economics and Power Dynamics: It’s worth noting this is not purely about lofty values; real power and money are involved. Eastern states depend on EU funds (billions in development aid) and access to the common market. Western Europe’s enforcement tools leverage that dependence. In Hungary’s case, Orbán’s defiance has real costs – GDP growth has suffered from withheld funds, and he has had to tread carefully to avoid losing all subsidies. In late 2023, facing economic woes, Orbán signaled possible judicial reforms to get some money flowing. Poland’s previous PiS government similarly was caught between nationalist pride and the need for EU recovery funds – and its defeat in 2023 elections was partly attributed to voters wanting to unblock relations with the EU. The new liberal Polish government (as of 2024) has quickly moved to restore rule-of-law standards to unlock €100+ billion, demonstrating how effective Brussels’ pressure can be. So one could interpret the clash cynically as well: perhaps these “Eastern values” weren’t so solid if a budget squeeze can force compliance. Time will tell. But even if governments change tack for pragmatism, the cultural divide among populations remains. EU leverage might force legal changes, but it cannot easily change hearts and minds on issues like migration or gender roles. In Poland, even under a liberal government, there remains a broad societal consensus against accepting migrant quotas or radically liberalizing abortion, for example. Similarly in Hungary, Orbán’s party still enjoys strong support precisely because it embodies national defiance – if he yielded too much, challengers on the right would pounce.
The Stakes – A New Iron Curtain? What makes this clash more than a family quarrel is the possibility it could reshape or even break the EU. If Brussels pushes too hard, Eastern publics might grow more Euroskeptic and at some point refuse to ratify key EU reforms or even flirt with exiting (though “Polexit” or “Hungexit” still have low support). Conversely, if Eastern resistance mounted – say a coalition of several countries regularly vetoing EU policies on cultural grounds – it could paralyze the union’s functioning. Already, Poland and Hungary have used vetoes to block things like an EU statement on migration or a budget adjustment for Ukraine aid, leveraging their position. The EU thrives on consensus; a deep values rift corrodes that. Some in Western Europe mused whether a “two-speed Europe” might emerge – with a core forging ahead in integration and a skeptical fringe left behind on certain projects. In essence, a moral curtain descending: liberal cosmopolis on one side, nationalist traditionalists on the other. It wouldn’t be as geographically neat as the Cold War’s Iron Curtain, but the East-West pattern is undeniable.
It is a supreme historical irony: the fault line in Europe is no longer capitalism vs communism, but liberal universalism vs pluralist traditionalism. And unlike the Cold War, this time it is the West trying to impose an orthodoxy, and the East that plays the role of dissenter seeking some autonomy. Both sides feel existentially justified. The West sees liberal democracy itself at stake – “if we let Hungary go authoritarian, we betray 80 years of post-war progress.” The East sees national survival at stake – “if we let Brussels dilute our identity and population, we cease to be us.” This is why the conflict has become so intractable and emotional.
In this clash, Western progressives often accuse Eastern leaders of using nationalism cynically to entrench their own power and divert from corruption. There’s truth there too – patriotism can be a refuge for scoundrels, as they say. But one must also acknowledge that Eastern peoples legitimately prioritize certain values differently due to their history. Equating all Eastern dissent with fanaticism or ignorance is a mistake (and only fuels the resentment). At the same time, Eastern actors should recognize Western Europeans’ horror of nationalism is rooted in their own historical scars – they fear anything that even remotely smells of the 1930s. Thus each side caricatures the other: “They are authoritarians,” versus “They are nihilists.” In reality, Europe is trying to balance unity and diversity in a profound sense: not just ethnic diversity, but diversity of moral visions. How it manages that (or fails to) will decide the union’s fate.
As the battle lines sharpen, one wonders if an accommodation is possible. Can the EU allow a Hungary that is democratic but avowedly illiberal in values? Or a Poland that is pro-EU economically but culturally bucks the zeitgeist? Perhaps some new form of moral federalism could emerge – agreeing to disagree on social matters while cooperating on core interests. However, present signs suggest hardening positions. The clash of moral hierarchies thus seems set to continue, if not intensify, in coming years. And just as a physical war has redrawn maps in Ukraine, this moral war could redraw Europe’s internal map – creating zones of incompatible cultural order.
The eastern Exception – Consequences – The New Civilizational Border
Europe today is increasingly divided by an invisible frontier more decisive than any wall or fence – a civilizational border between West and East. Three decades after the Iron Curtain’s fall, a new curtain has descended, woven not of barbed wire but of values, attitudes, and lived social realities. Call it a Moral Curtain or Cultural Iron Curtain. On its western side: societies grappling with fatigue, relativism, and fragmentation; on its eastern side: societies marked by continuity, security, and a measure of faith (both religious and civilizational). This new divide is shaping everything from demographics to politics, even as formal alliances and institutions still span the continent.
Demography and Social Fabric: Western Europe’s major countries are undergoing profound demographic shifts. Immigration, low native birth rates, and the growing share of second- and third-generation immigrant communities have made cities like London, Paris, Brussels into microcosms of the globe – multicultural hubs but also sites of ethnic tension. In London, native Britons are a minority; in Brussels, nearly 70% of residents are of foreign origin. Such diversity can be enriching, yet it has coincided with what one might call demographic fracture. Communities often live in parallel, with uneven integration. For example, the Muslim population in France has swelled to an estimated 8–10% (the highest in EU), and while many are well integrated, there are stark concentrations of poverty and radicalism: by 2020, reports indicated hundreds of French quartiers where Islamist networks exerted influence and republican principles waned. Rising antisemitism in Western Europe is one by-product. In Paris or Berlin, Jewish communities now regularly beef up security around schools and synagogues, and surveys show European Jews feel markedly less safe than a decade ago. As noted, incidents from swastikas on graves to violent attacks have multiplied since the mid-2010s. A chilling example: in October 2023, two hooded men in Berlin threw Molotov cocktails at a synagogue – an incident that, ironically, German officials had feared could never happen again “here of all places”. In 2025, a knife-wielding assailant even attempted to ram a car into pedestrians near a synagogue in Manchester, England, killing two – a grim reminder that the virus of hate, thought banished, finds new hosts in unsettled times.
Meanwhile, Eastern Europe’s homogeneity remains largely intact. Poland, Hungary, the Baltics, etc., have small immigrant shares (usually under 5%, except for temporary Ukrainian refugees). Their populations are aging too and sometimes shrinking (a challenge of its own), but the social fabric is comparatively uniform and cohesive. There are no “no-go zones” or banlieues in, say, Bratislava or Riga – the concept would scarcely be understood. Ethnic minorities exist (e.g., Hungarian minorities in Slovakia and Romania, Russian speakers in the Baltics), yet these are historic communities, not recent mass arrivals from distant cultures. Crime and social disorder, as discussed, are lower. Take Budapest, Prague, Warsaw: these capitals have cosmopolitan flair and tourism, yet they retain a feeling of cultural continuity with their past – the overwhelming majority of people one encounters share the same broad cultural reference points, speak the same language, celebrate the same national holidays, often adhere (at least nominally) to the same religion. This homogeneity can yield social trust and safety. Eurostat’s surveys of trust in one’s neighbors and feelings of safety consistently rank Eastern European societies on par with or even above Western Europe, despite lower wealth. It seems a paradox: Poland, for instance, is significantly poorer than France, yet Poles report feeling safer in their neighborhoods than the French do (Eurostat, 2019 & 2021). The likely reason: less internal division and cultural friction.
Relativism vs Rootedness: Another consequence of the moral border is differing attitudes toward truth and identity. In Western Europe’s intellectual mainstream, relativism reigns – truth is seen as contextual, identities as fluid. This has implications such as the rapid mainstreaming of gender theory (e.g., teaching that gender is a spectrum, encouraging personal pronoun choice, etc.) and the reluctance to assert any cultural preference (e.g., saying Western democratic values are superior to other systems is now often avoided or caveated). Eastern Europe, by contrast, remains more rooted in certain first principles: that there are fundamental differences between right and wrong, man and woman, good and evil. For example, while a country like Spain moved in just 15 years from legalizing gay marriage to intense debates on transgender rights and mandatory LGBTQ-inclusive curriculums, a country like Romania in 2018 held a referendum to simply cement that marriage is between a man and woman (supported by 93% of those who voted, though turnout was too low to validate it). The point is not which side is right, but that the social zeitgeist is markedly different. An educated 25-year-old in Amsterdam might sincerely believe that patriotism is anachronistic and religions are benign myths at best; an educated 25-year-old in Warsaw is far more likely to feel patriotism is virtuous (Poland’s independence narratives are strong) and might even still attend church or at least respect the Pope. Eastern Europe’s youth are hardly medieval – they use TikTok and watch Netflix like others – yet national and religious identities remain salient. The persistence of these identities serves as a cultural immune system, giving Eastern societies a kind of inner coherence that Western societies are losing.
Political Realignments: The new civilizational border also manifests in politics. Western Europe’s politics have become extremely volatile and fragmented, with traditional center-left and center-right parties losing ground to insurgents (populist right or radical left). This reflects a citizenry pulled apart by different realities – native working classes vs migrant communities vs urban liberal professionals – each drifting into their own echo chambers. By contrast, Eastern European politics, while lively, often feature more stable dominant parties that claim to represent the national consensus or soul (e.g., Fidesz in Hungary, PiS was that in Poland until recently, SNS in Serbia, etc.). The cleavage lines in the East tend to be less about identity groups (since society is more uniform) and more about degree of reform or corruption or attitudes to Russia/EU. Of course, as Eastern countries become a bit more diverse (through gradual immigration and generational change), they too might see Western-style polarization increase – but for now, the political climate east of the moral curtain is one of debate within a shared paradigm, versus West of it, debate about the paradigm itself. Put another way: In Budapest the argument might be “how do we keep Hungary Hungarian and prosper?”; in Brussels or Stockholm the argument is “what is ‘our’ identity in a post-national, multicultural context, and how do we manage a society with fundamentally different subcultures?”
Ukraine Crisis – Mirror to the Divide: The war in Ukraine has dramatized the civilizational border in unexpected ways. Eastern Europe (Poland, Baltics, Czechia, etc.) emerged as unwavering in solidarity with Ukraine, often chiding Western European powers for hesitancy toward Moscow. Poland sent tanks and planes before Germany could make up its mind; the Baltics gave military aid far above their GDP share and took security risks in doing so. For these countries, Russia’s aggression was a blindingly clear moral case – reminiscent of past fights against tyranny. Western European states, while ultimately supportive, had moments of wobbly indecision (French and German leaders making frequent calls to Putin early on, or Italy worrying about gas supplies). Some of this was due to geography and economic ties, but some was arguably psychological: Western Europe, having embraced a “post-heroic” worldview, was slower to accept the necessity of confrontation. Eastern Europeans openly talked of “evil” – e.g., Poland’s president said Russia is an evil that must be defeated, Ukraine is the front line of civilization. Western rhetoric was more restrained. This led to friction: a Polish MEP famously lambasted France and Germany for “dealing with the devil in the Kremlin” and lacking moral spine. In effect, Eastern clarity vs Western equivocation. Over time, Western positions hardened (especially after atrocities like Bucha came to light), but the episode underscored the moral divide. Ukraine’s own discourse, as mentioned, sounded closer to Warsaw’s than to Paris’s.
Interestingly, Ukraine itself, by resisting, has arguably pulled Western Europe a bit Eastward morally – reminding it of concepts like bravery, sacrifice, even patriotism as virtues. There were pro-Ukraine rallies even in places like Berlin and London that had a different tone: EU flags and national flags flying together, people singing anthems – not typical fare for cosmopolitan Westerners. It suggests the border of values is not absolutely fixed; Western Europe can still reconnect with older virtues under certain circumstances. But absent such extreme events, the general trend remains divergence.
“Paris Before the Fall, Warsaw Today”: A fitting metaphor heard in Eastern Europe is that “the streets of Warsaw today look like Paris before the fall.” By “before the fall,” they mean before Western Europe’s descent into the current chaos – perhaps Paris in the 1950s or 60s, when it was still relatively homogeneous, confident, and safe. Indeed, a visitor strolling through central Warsaw on a summer day sees families licking ice cream, couples on park benches, kids in school uniforms on outings – a scene of ordinary contentment that could be any European city of old. There is diversity (one hears some foreign languages, sees a few non-European tourists or students), but nothing like the head-spinning plurality of modern London or Paris. Churches dot the cityscape, busy on Sundays. The city’s crime mostly involves petty theft or the rare burglary; gun violence is exceedingly rare, political terror unheard of. It evokes an image of Europe before the storms – a kind of last redoubt of the “European way of life” that EU leaders rhetorically defend yet many say is vanishing in the West.
To Western progressives, such a picture might actually seem like a fall – they would see a lack of diversity, a stifling cultural homogeneity perhaps. But to many ordinary folks, there is undeniably an appeal in a society that feels familiar and secure. As Western Europe grapples with imported conflicts (e.g., pro-Israel vs pro-Palestine protests turning violent) and internal ideological battles, Eastern Europe seems, by comparison, calm. During the 2023 Gaza war tumult, while Berlin and London mobilized thousands of police to prevent clashes and hate crimes, Warsaw had candlelight prayers for peace where a few hundred people showed up quietly. The difference is striking. The moral curtain ensures that certain upheavals simply do not cross eastward – not because Eastern Europe is immune to geopolitical issues, but because the sociocultural preconditions for those issues (large radicalized communities, excessive identity politics) aren’t there.
Data Points: Quantitative indicators reinforce the narrative of two Europes:
- Crime: The intentional homicide rate in Eastern EU members like Poland, Czechia, Slovenia is around 0.6–1.2 per 100k, similar to or lower than many Western countries (France 1.2, UK 1.2) and far lower than some hot spots like the Baltics (where it’s higher due to different issues) or the US. But more telling is perceived violence: only 10% of people in the EU on average report experiencing or witnessing crime in their area recently, but it’s heavily weighted to a few Western countries (e.g., over 20% in the Netherlands, Sweden) while in Poland it’s closer to 5% (Eurostat, 2023). Also, sexual assault rates reported: Sweden, UK, Belgium have among highest per capita in Europe, whereas Eastern countries report much lower (though underreporting may play a role, the gap is large).
- Social Trust: The European Values Study and other surveys show a wide gap in interpersonal trust. Western nations like Denmark, Sweden have high generalized trust (60%+ say most people can be trusted), whereas Eastern ones like Romania, Bulgaria are very low (10-15%). At first glance this contradicts our narrative (East being cohesive). But note: those Eastern numbers reflect historical distrust in strangers and institutions (a legacy of communism). If asked about trust in family/neighbors, Eastern scores are high. The difference is that Western Europe’s trust was historically high but has been declining in heterogeneous settings; Eastern Europe’s trust is narrowly focused but within that circle still strong. Moreover, trust in institutions like government swings with politics – in Poland under PiS, trust in the EU actually dropped significantly (from ~70% to near 50%), showing how the clash impacts public opinion.
- Religion and Identity: According to Pew (2018), Central and Eastern Europeans are far more likely to consider religion and birthplace important to national identity than Western Europeans. For instance, roughly 64% of Poles and 58% of Hungarians said being Christian is important to truly being Polish/Hungarian, whereas only 13% of French and 7% of Swedes said likewise for their nationality. And while majorities in Western Europe accept a Muslim or Jew as family or neighbor, in Eastern Europe those were minorities in most countries (a fact that can be read as prejudice, but also reflects the value placed on cultural similarity). These numbers draw a clear East-West line in terms of openness vs particularism.
- Antisemitism and incidents: Data compiled by watchdogs like the ADL or EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency indicate that the bulk of antisemitic incidents in Europe occur in a handful of Western countries (France, UK, Germany, Belgium) whereas Eastern countries (Poland, Hungary, etc.) have lower incident counts (though antisemitic attitudes in surveys can be high in some Eastern countries, the lack of actual Jewish populations and strict law-and-order keeps incidents fewer). In 2022, France recorded 436 antisemitic acts (despite Jews being <1% of population), whereas Poland with a tiny Jewish community recorded only a few isolated incidents of vandalism. The nature of antisemitism also differs: in the West, perpetrators are often from extremist Islamist or far-left circles; in the East, it’s usually far-right ultra-nationalists (a smaller fringe today). Both are toxic, but the scale and intensity differ.
- Economic Confidence: Western Europe struggles under economic stagnation and debt, which saps public confidence. Eastern Europe, though poorer, has been converging economically and its people often feel things are getting better, not worse. Before recent global inflation, countries like Poland enjoyed years of robust growth, boosting national pride. This matters: a society optimistic about the future (even modestly) is less prone to internal collapse than one convinced of its decline. Westerners widely report pessimism about their children’s prospects; Easterners, while hardly overly optimistic, often report at least similar or slightly better expectations for the next generation than themselves, owing to finally catching up to the West economically.
All these factors accumulate into a picture: to the West of the Moral Curtain, entropy and dilution; to the East, resilience and distinctness. The border is not perfectly sharp – countries like Austria or Italy exhibit mixtures, and within countries like Poland there are liberal cities versus conservative countryside. But zooming out, the East-West gradient is undeniable.
This new civilizational border is arguably as consequential as the Iron Curtain of old. Then, it was tyranny vs freedom; now it’s nihilism vs tradition (as each side might label the other). And just as the old division defined global geopolitics, this new one could define the fate of Europe’s identity and influence. If the West continues down its current path unchecked, one scenario is a slow-motion collapse: failing social cohesion leading to more unrest, economic drift, and strategic impotence. The East might then be left as a lonely guardian of a heritage the West abandoned – or it too could eventually be overwhelmed by the trends (through cultural import or EU pressure). Alternatively, the West might undergo a course-correction (perhaps inspired by Eastern example or internal revival), bridging the gap.
For now, the immediate consequence is a Europe that cannot speak with one voice on fundamental issues. It’s split in its soul. The next and final section will turn to the larger implications of this reversal of moral geography – and whether there is hope for synthesis or renewal. Can the West recover its sense of purpose? Will the East avoid the same mistakes as it modernizes further? The answers will shape Europe’s fate in the 21st century, as surely as any treaty or war.
What the old Iron Curtain divided by force, the new moral curtain now divides by choice.
Conclusion – The Reversal of Moral Geography
At the dawn of the 1990s, as communism crumbled, Eastern Europeans looked westward for inspiration. “We want to be like the West,” was the refrain – free, prosperous, modern. History’s irony is that a generation later, it is the West that might need to look East for salvation. The moral compass of Europe has seemingly reversed its poles. Qualities once associated with the West – confidence in its mission, cultural dynamism, internal solidarity – have migrated East. Conversely, ailments once familiar in the East – cynicism, societal breakdown, loss of faith – now plague parts of the West. This reversal of moral geography does not mean Eastern Europe is perfect or that Western Europe is doomed. But it suggests that the old notion of the West as the moral and civilizational vanguard of Europe no longer holds. The “periphery” has preserved something precious that the “center” squandered: a living connection to Europe’s roots and raison d’être.
Thesis Restated: The West finds itself in twilight, not from external conquest but from internal exhaustion. The East, late to liberal democracy, still has the cultural daylight to perhaps extend Europe’s civilizational life. The crux is simple yet profound: the West had time, the East still has belief. Western Europe had decades of unparalleled peace and wealth to refine its liberal model – and in the end, overripe liberalism bred a loss of belief in itself. Eastern Europe, unfree until the 90s, did not marinate as long in postmodern skepticism; its people still believe in certain fundamentals (nation, family, objective truth) that Western elites often now question or reject. Those fundamentals may turn out to be the seeds of Europe’s renewal – if they can be nurtured and if the East itself doesn’t drift into the same temptations once material comfort grows.
Will Eastern Europe Avoid the West’s Fate? That is a pressing question. Some caution that Eastern Europe’s apparent exceptionalism might be temporary. As these countries grow richer and more globalized, will they too secularize, individualize, and follow the same trajectory? It’s a valid concern. Already, one sees generational shifts: younger people in urban Eastern Europe are more liberal on issues like LGBTQ rights and less tied to organized religion than their parents. Consumer culture and social media spare no one – a teenager in Bucharest scrolls the same Instagram and Netflix content as one in Berlin. Prosperity might also dull the hard-earned clarity; complacency could set in once EU funds have built the highways and malls. Indeed, in some Visegrád countries, birth rates are low and emigration high – signs of the same malaise that hit the West (though governments are trying to counteract with pro-family policies). Eastern Europe is not immune to human nature.
However, a few factors could help the East avoid an exact repeat of the West’s decline. First, historical memory in the East is kept fresher through deliberate education and commemoration. Poles will likely never forget the trauma of losing their state in the 18th century or the Soviet domination – it’s seared in identity. This makes wholesale abandonment of nationhood unlikely. Second, Eastern Europe is more homogeneously religious and cultural at the base, so changes happen slower – there is a kind of societal inertia that resists abrupt value shifts. Third, having witnessed Western Europe’s errors, Eastern societies might be able to chart a consciously different path (for example, encouraging some immigration for economy but with stringent integration and cultural expectations, so as not to import Western Europe’s strife). The analogy might be East Asia: countries like Japan or South Korea modernized yet kept a stronger cultural core than the West did – Eastern Europe could similarly modernize in a more guarded way. Ultimately, much will depend on leadership and intellectual direction: will Eastern European thinkers and politicians articulate a model of late liberalism that embraces freedom and progress without the nihilism? If they can frame a positive vision (not just be reactive against wokeness or Brussels), Eastern Europe could indeed be a civilizational trendsetter.
Can the West Recover? History is full of surprises. The West is down, but perhaps not out. One must recall that Western Europe still has immense strengths – world-class universities, innovative economies (for now), a tradition of self-critique that, ironically, might catalyze a course correction. It’s conceivable that Western Europe could undergo a cultural renaissance or at least a stabilizing reform. For instance, the rise of moderate patriotic movements (as opposed to extreme far-right) that push for assimilation, law and order, and a reclaiming of national narratives – in effect, learning from Eastern counterparts. We see early signs: public opinion in places like France has swung in favor of tougher integration policies; Sweden has started deporting criminal migrants and debating its failed policies. There is a growing acknowledgment in Western discourse that some lines must be drawn (e.g., pro-Hamas hate marches are finally being prosecuted in Germany and France, a taboo broken). If Western Europe can find new creative minorities (to use Toynbee’s term) – leaders or thinkers who inspire a moral and spiritual reawakening – it could yet rejuvenate itself. The question is, does it have time and social capital left? Every year of unrest and drift makes it harder.
One intriguing possibility is a kind of West-East synergy: Western Europe leveraging Eastern Europe’s vitality, and Eastern Europe leveraging Western Europe’s experience and technology. In the best case, rather than a bitter standoff, there could be a learning exchange – say, Western cities adopt some Polish or Czech approaches to community-building and identity, while Eastern administrations adopt some Western best practices in governance without the ideological add-ons. Stranger things have happened. But for now, political polarization makes such cross-pollination difficult. Western elites often scorn Eastern “backwardness,” and Easterners resent Western arrogance. Perhaps the generational turnover will help – younger people from both sides meet in Erasmus programs, etc., and see each other beyond stereotypes.
Civilizational “Event Horizon”? A darker view is that Western Europe may have already passed an event horizon – a point of no return where the forces of disintegration are too strong to reverse. Spengler’s Decline of the West famously argued that civilizations have life cycles, and the West is in its “winter.” If that’s true, Eastern Europe’s fortunes might ultimately be tied to managing the decline – essentially preserving pockets of the heritage as the wider environment changes. Think of monasteries preserving knowledge through the Dark Ages; perhaps Eastern Europe becomes a kind of “monastery” for European civilization, keeping traditions and identity alive in some form while the West goes the way of Rome. This is admittedly a melancholic scenario. Yet, one hears echoes of it: some Eastern European conservatives talk of their countries as “arks” to carry forward the European essence through turbulent times, even as Western secular liberalism self-destructs. Whether that is noble or hubristic is up to the reader.
“In Europe’s twilight, salvation may come from the periphery.” That line encapsulates a hope that the very nations once deemed marginal – Poland, Hungary, etc. – might illuminate a path forward. These nations have a concept called the “Intermarium” (lands between the seas) which historically was about geopolitical alliance, but it could take on a spiritual dimension now: a belt of countries from the Baltics down to Croatia forming a counterweight that re-energizes European civilization. They are not anti-European – on the contrary, they often feel more European (in the classical sense) than the post-modern West. If they stand firm in their convictions and also avoid internecine quarreling, they could collectively influence the EU or at least create a thriving sub-civilization that others gravitate towards. Already, one sees conservative intellectual networks linking Warsaw, Budapest, Rome – a budding “counter-elite.” Time will tell if they can gain traction or if they will be smeared and sidelined by the much stronger Western liberal establishment.
As we conclude, it’s worth stepping back to a higher altitude. The drama playing out in Europe is part of a larger story of civilizational renewal or decline. Arnold Toynbee wrote that civilizations don’t “fall” because of external blows alone; they fail when they can no longer respond creatively to challenges. Western Europe’s responses of late – doubling down on technocracy, censoring dissent, denying societal stress – seem more like avoidance than creativity. Eastern Europe, by injecting fresh perspective, could be the source of a new creative response: reaffirming that liberty must marry virtue, diversity must rest on unity, and progress must respect heritage. These are not new ideas; they are very old. But Europe’s future might depend on rediscovering them.
In closing, one cannot improve on the poignant symmetry: decades ago, Pope John Paul II (a Pole) referred to Europe needing to “breathe with two lungs – East and West.” For a long time, the West’s lung was dominant while the East’s was collapsed by communism. Now, the roles have shifted: the East lung is inflated with life, the West’s wheezes. Only with both lungs working can Europe truly thrive. Perhaps this period of estrangement is a precursor to a new balance, where Eastern candor and Western openness combine. Or perhaps one lung will give out entirely, and Europe will limp on halved.
As the sun sets over the spires of Oxford and the neon ads of Piccadilly, it rises over the misty Carpathians and the golden domes of Kraków at dawn. Europe is at once in twilight and daybreak. The question that remains: will the light of renewal spread westward, or will the darkness of exhaustion spread eastward? The answer may determine whether the story of European civilization in the 21st century is one of renaissance or requiem.
In this twilight hour, unlikely voices offer guidance. A Polish proverb says, “Gość w dom, Bóg w dom” (“Guest in the house, God in the house”) – a reminder of charity and hospitality, which Eastern Europe showed Ukraine. And an English hymn, echoing older wisdom, advises, “New occasions teach new duties; time makes ancient good uncouth; we must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.” Perhaps Europe’s ancient good – its very identity – needs repurposing for a new age, not discarding. To keep truth alive, Europe might indeed move upward and onward – by rediscovering foundations thought uncouth by the recent West yet held dear in the East.
The final scene is not yet written. For now, those concerned with Europe’s fate would do well to pay attention to its “eastern exception.” In the forests of Poland, the plains of Hungary, the hills of Romania, something stubborn and hopeful endures. It might just be the spark that lights a revival beyond the Moral Curtain. Or as a Hungarian saying goes, “Akié a múlt, azé a jövő” – “Who owns the past, owns the future.” Eastern Europe still owns the past (it has not fully disowned it as West has). Perhaps, then, it will own a bigger share of Europe’s future. In that possibility lies a paradoxical hope: that renewal comes not from the celebrated centers, but from the steadfast peripheries – from the Eastern exception that refuses to conform to the West’s late liberal suicide, and thereby might save the essence of Europe for all Europeans.
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