CULTURAL PARASITISM: THE TRANSFER OF FOREIGN CULTURAL MODELS AS A THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY

Abstract

The present study employs the biological metaphor of parasitism as a heuristic analytical tool, and not as a descriptive or normative characterisation of human beings or communities. The author explicitly emphasises that the analogy refers to systemic-functional models of cultural-institutional interaction, and not to individuals or to ethnic, religious or national groups. In biology, parasitism is a form of symbiosis in which one organism – the parasite – extracts resources from another organism – the host – thereby progressively weakening its viability. When the parasitic load exceeds a critical threshold, the host perishes, and frequently the parasite itself perishes with it. This biological analogy proves heuristically applicable to the analysis of processes observed in contemporary European societies: the large-scale and unregulated influx of cultural models that are fundamentally incompatible with the value system of the host society operates according to the same destructive logic. The foreign cultural model does not adapt to its environment; rather, it reshapes that environment, exhausts its institutional resources, and undermines its capacity for self-reproduction.

The paper examines the transfer of foreign cultural models from migrant communities not as a neutral social process, but as a potential threat to national security in its societal dimension. The study is limited to cases of non-integrated communities with persistently incompatible normative systems, and explicitly distinguishes such cases from: refugees from active military conflicts (Ukraine, Syria), persons fleeing totalitarian regimes (Afghanistan, Iran), and economic migrants with demonstrated capacity and willingness to integrate. The territorial scope of the study covers primarily Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom in the period 2010 – 2024.