It is true that Western European nations have had greater exposure to immigration than countries of the East. But how has that affected social attitudes?

The Atlantic’s Heather Horn surveyed some of the data recently. According to the 2005-09 World Values Survey, 14 percent of Poles and 24 percent of Hungarians would not want an immigrant or foreign worker as a neighbor. In France, however, the figure stands at an extraordinary 36.5 percent. The most recent World Values Survey, conducted between 2010 and 2014, did not poll Hungary or France. But it showed that the proportion of Germans objecting to a foreign neighbor (21 percent) matched that in Romania (21 percent) — and was three times higher than in Poland (7 percent).

The 2009 Pew Global Attitudes Survey looked at differences between Eastern and Western Europe. It found that Eastern Europeans were less likely to think that it was “a good thing for any society to be made up of people from different races, religions and cultures.” Thirty percent of Hungarians and 22 percent of Poles disagreed that diversity was a good thing, compared with just one in 10 of the French population and 13 percent of Britons and Germans.

But when asked about specific groups, the picture changed. In Eastern Europe, anti-Semitism is prevalent, while in Western Europe people tend to be more hostile to Muslims. The Pew survey found that 29 percent of Poles and Hungarians had an unfavorable view of Jews. Twenty-seven percent of Britons and a full 69 percent of Italians had a negative view of Muslims, while 30 percent of Germans disliked Turks.

Western Europeans, in other words, may appear more tolerant when talking in the abstract, but are as intolerant as Eastern Europeans when it comes to attitudes toward specific groups. The “cultural gap” may just be that Western Europeans are more polished in the language of tolerance, while in reality being equally intolerant.

The largest far-right party in Europe is not in Poland or Hungary, but in France. Ninety percent of the French may say they are at ease with a society comprising different races, religions and cultures, but almost one in five voted for the leader of the anti-immigrant National Front party, Marine Le Pen, in the 2012 presidential election.