While there, I heard firsthand some of the factors and the stark denialism behind the horrific riots that erupted in France and other European countries this month.

What began in late September as student blockades of overcrowded, understaffed high schools in the Paris suburbs exploded on October 17 and 18 into some of the worst violence France has seen in decades. More than half a million people marched against rising living costs and failing public services. Rioters, many carrying Palestinian flags, torched cars and a town hall, damaged or looted at least 3,000 businesses, and injured about 1,000 police officers, gendarmes and firefighters, according to the interior ministry. Nearly 2,400 people were arrested, and the government imposed curfews in parts of Paris and other cities. Similar protests spread to Belgium and Italy.

Amid a steady stream of bashing on foreign policy, domestic security, and the president personally, a U.S. academic on one Chatham panel stunned me with her counter-reality view of President Trump's border policies.

On border security, she claimed that the real goal of last year's U.S. National Security Strategy and President Trump's efforts to stop illegal immigration is to promote Christian white nationalism. I replied that this is false: President Trump has never called for any such thing, and it is nowhere in the National Security Strategy. When she insisted that this is what the document "really" means, I pointed out that she had just conceded it does not say this - she was reading her own views into it. I also noted that the Trump administration is fully supportive of immigration as long as immigrants come to our country legally. She countered that talk by Trump officials of saving Western civilization from uncontrolled immigration amounts to a plan for a white Christian nation. It does not. The strategy warns that Europe faces "civilizational erasure" - a warning about uncontrolled migration and falling birth rates, not race. My final response was that this was a typical liberal distortion: equating conservative efforts to secure borders and protect our nation with racism.

I should add that the audience offered no pushback to the academic's comments but plenty to mine. Video of the panel is available here.

A panelist made an equally absurd claim at a second closed Chatham House panel, held under the Chatham House Rule, asserting that Europe is far freer and offers a much higher quality of life than America, with far more opportunities for young people. I was dumbfounded, even more so because no one in the room pushed back. These claims are clearly contradicted by America's lower taxes, greater economic opportunities, easier path to starting businesses, lower unemployment, and numerous other well-documented advantages. As for freedom, it is Europe, not America, where citizens are arrested and prosecuted for social media posts. The panelist later explained that Europe is better because of all the "free stuff" - free health care, free college, generous social benefits, government pensions, and so on.