Christmas markets across Europe now require armed guards and concrete barriers. In Germany, France, and Austria, what were once joyous celebrations of Western Christian heritage have become fortified zones, protection against attacks everyone has long feared but few dared to name honestly. Even as 2026 begins, these barriers remain a stark reminder that the threat has not diminished.
Then came Bondi Beach in December 2025. Fifteen people were murdered in the attack, and many more were injured. The perpetrators specifically targeted Jews. Australia, half a world away from Europe’s troubles, discovered it faces the same metastasizing threat. This is the consequence of ignoring dangerous narratives.
European conservatives can learn from the struggles of their American counterparts but they must act quickly. What happened at Turning Point USA in late 2025 reveals both the disease weakening Western conservatism and the potential cure, if anyone has the courage to take it.
Shapiro Stood Alone
Ben Shapiro entered TPUSA and confronted the false narratives within his own movement. The audience booed as he challenged election conspiracies claiming votes were stolen without evidence, COVID misinformation that exaggerated dangers or misrepresented mandates and vaccines, and a reflexive anti-institutionalism in which distrust of media, universities, and government replaced reasoned skepticism. Shapiro’s message was clear: conservatives cannot defend Western civilization if they accept distorted or false narratives. Critically examining ideas, even those popular in one’s own tribe, is essential to responding effectively to real-world threats.
The audience’s negative reaction highlighted a deeper truth: it is far easier to follow emotionally satisfying narratives than to question them. But ignoring inconvenient realities does not make threats disappear, it makes tragedies like Bondi inevitable.
When Tribe Trumps Critical Thinking
Days later, Tucker Carlson interviewed Francesca Albanese, a UN official whose historical distortions about Israel have been widely criticized. Carlson challenged none of her claims, presenting revisionism as brave truth-telling while sacrificing accuracy to fit a tribal narrative.
Albanese has repeatedly compared Israel to Nazi Germany, claimed that “America is subjugated by the Jewish lobby,” and framed Palestinian terrorism as justified while portraying Israel as uniquely evil. She describes Israel as a “settler-colonial” project with no legitimate historical connection to the land and recasts massacres, torture, rape, and kidnappings as lawful resistance under international law. Claims that Israel committed genocide in Gaza, or that Jewish claims to Jerusalem are historically invalid, are also repeated as objective truths.
Platforming these distortions matters for understanding Bondi. Narratives portraying Jews as oppressors and violence against them as justified contributed to the attacker’s radicalization. Media figures who present false or misleading frameworks as credible make attacks more likely.
The Pattern of Ideological Violence
Bondi is the latest point in a decades-long pattern of ideological violence in Western societies. From Theo van Gogh’s murder in Amsterdam in 2004 to the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan attacks in Paris in 2015, from the Berlin Christmas market attack in 2016 to Manchester and London in 2017, and the Christchurch mosque shooting in 2019 - attacks have targeted Jews, Muslims, and innocent civilians alike. In 2024, Amsterdam saw assaults on Israeli football fans. Each tragedy demonstrates the same pattern: radicalization fueled by misleading narratives and societies’ inability to confront them honestly.
Europe’s Reality in Early 2026
While Americans debate TPUSA, Europeans live with the consequences. German Christmas markets remain behind concrete barriers. French neighborhoods still see secular law fail to assert itself. Swedish emergency services often require police escorts. British cities continue to grapple with suppressed grooming gang scandals. Amsterdam suffered assaults on Israeli fans, and Bondi proved the threat is global.
Institutions show paralysis. Universities host speakers who support Hamas while banning defenders of Israel. Media obscure perpetrators’ motives. Courts twist secular law to accommodate religious demands. Politicians who speak honestly face career destruction. Discourse has weakened: “Islamophobia” is weaponized to silence critique of political Islam; historical revisionism about Israel is normalized; moral equivalence between democracies and terrorist groups is treated as sophisticated analysis; conspiracy theories about “replacement” undermine rational discussion.
Beyond Individual Attacks
Bondi was more than a massacre, it was a warning. Civilizations fail not only when attacked but when they cannot recognize or respond to threats honestly. Western liberal democracy rests on fundamental premises: that ideas and claims can be critically evaluated, free speech allows correction of error, secular law applies equally, democratic legitimacy comes from consent rather than theology, individual rights supersede group claims, and criticism of ideology is legitimate while attacking people for their identity is not.
Political Islam, post-modern progressivism, and conspiracy-addled pseudo-conservatism all reject these premises. When societies cannot examine narratives honestly, civilization loses its immune system. Everyone suffers: women lose equality, children are indoctrinated, minorities are attacked, free speech dies, and democracy erodes.
What Conservatives Must Do in 2026
European and American conservatives face the same choice: confront false or misleading narratives, or let them determine the agenda. They must challenge dangerous narratives, even within their own movement; separate ideology from people; recognize that secular pluralism cannot coexist with theocratic governance or radical Islamist ideology; insist that institutions uphold standards; and accept the cost of speaking honestly. Ignoring false narratives has far graver consequences than criticism or unpopularity.
Conservatism’s foundation is reasoned analysis and critical engagement, not comforting narratives, conspiracy theories, or reflexive tribal loyalty. When conservatives abandon scrutiny, they become indistinguishable from the post-modern left: tribes defending ideology over evidence. In that vacuum, attackers like Bondi flourish.
Political Islam is explicit: it seeks theocratic governance. Its advocates do not hide their goals, they are in Hamas’s charter, Hezbollah’s sermons, and Albanese’s frameworks. The question for 2026 is whether Western conservatives can identify the threat clearly and act, or continue descending into conspiracism while civilization collapses around them.
Your civilization’s survival, and the prevention of the next Bondi, depends on it.
Dre Lapiello
Independent Researcher | Broker
