The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason

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He makes objective claims about the best art which just sound immature, is very triumphalist about free-market capitalism, and somewhat disingenuously remarks that everyone wants to be involved with the culture and economy and politics of the west because it’s just plain better than everywhere else. But Wiesenthal, though a member of the same ethnos, was too far removed from the situation to pass comment in such a way. He says that 'few people wished to defend the maintenance of confederate statues' after the George Floyd protests erupted, yet many did defend the statues including the President of the USA.

This generation isn’t brainwashed or immature or unrealistic, it’s merely responding to the problems of the day, at a time when the old narratives have begun to crumble, and access to information is at an all-time high. History changes: new facts and new perspectives are brought to light and so the events can be reinterpreted through these lenses; no one history of any event exists, that’s why there’s so many bloody history books on offer—they’re all arguing subtly different interpretations of the events and their impact. Yes, the backlash has its own propaganda to promulgate, but don’t act like you’ve got objective reality on your side because there’s no such thing.

For a start, bringing Nietzsche into a debate about politics is something of a double-edged sword, because the arguments here deployed against the social justice warriors Murray disdains can just as easily be applied to things he values and respects, notably Christianity (a religion based, in Nietzsche’s view, on slave resentment).

So impressively certain they are of the inherent superiority of the west that they can’t imagine that these societies might have been happy with their own way of forging ahead through life.When he gets to the consequences of the decline of religion he somehow ends up talking about education. It’s not as though people don’t pay attention to Chinese human rights abuses; I’ve seen quite a bit on the Uighur genocide. Conservatives have a sense of the sanctity of their nation, their leaders, their history, but many young people don’t feel such an affinity, and it’s not out of some sort of immaturity or ignorance.

One of the tweeters being a maths teacher, Murray warns of the risk that mathematical standards in education “will be lowered or expunged altogether” as a result of such ideas and reminds the reader of the obvious parallels to be found in “George Orwell’s most famous book. His critique of Kendi's circular definition of racism seems correct to me and its application invites policy confusion.We are written over our ancestors in a sort of invisible palimpsest, and with a bit of poetic imagination, it is possible to read between the lines.

Their anti-western influence is spreading across religious, cultural and business institutions—even the National Trust—imbuing them with a crushing sense of guilt. I will continue to support diversity, I will continue to condemn racism in all its forms and I will continue to appreciate the contributions of and uplift people from all backgrounds, cultures and ethnicities.

The War on the West is not only an incisive takedown of foolish anti-Western arguments but also a rigorous new apologetic for civilization itself. In a section bemoaning moral panic around racist incidents that didn’t happen, he picks on a handful of hysterical campus cases, and a few celebrities tweeting stupid things, including the claims of Jussie Smollett that he had been victim of a hate crime that were later proven false. Having decided that the world is starting to see through the horrors of Critical Race Theory, he brings up an interview with Christopher Rufo, an anti-CRT activist, who was asked what made him proud to be white. Douglas Murray breaks down “The War on the West” by showing how the basic tenents of America’s foundation have been eroded.