The prominent British political commentator and author Douglas Murray introduced his new book this week entitled “The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason.”
In a new Youtube video, the author is interviewed by the well-known Canadian academic Jordan B. Peterson on the main topics included in the new book, such as anti-Westernism, the war on Whites, and the spread of cultural Marxism.
When Murray writes on anti-Westernism, he is not referencing the Russian or Chinese types, just to name two examples, but instead he is referring to the indigenous European anti-Westernism, and its claim that everything that the West has ever produced is bad; its culture, its history, its religions, etc. These fundamental elements of the West all have negative intrinsic value and should be abolished, or so the thinking goes. On the contrary, this astonishingly naive and simplistic ideology also claims that everything that comes from outside the West, especially that is contrary to its values, is intrinsically good.
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Murray points out that the current progressive elites refuse to remedy colonialism by returning these former colonial societies to their original state. Instead, they want to introduce Marxism into the so-called oppressive Western societies to “fix” them for this original sin, while also placing Marxism as a tool into the hands of the victim groups that the West has allegedly created. So, the current goal is to replace one destructive Western influence, in this case colonialism, with another destructive Western ideology, Marxism.
As a result of this effort, any appreciation of one’s own culture is depicted as a backward attitude generated from the desire to reinstate old oppressive goals, while the veneration of foreign cultures is presented as a sign of sophistication. The foundational heroes that previous generations grew up with are therefore coming under fire. The interpretational historical assault on Churchill, Jefferson, and Lincoln, for instance, is in fact all directed against Western culture as the ultimate target. The thinking goes that if they can take down Churchill, they can take down British patriotism. If Thomas Jefferson is ruined in the eyes of an entire nation, then the entire American ideal, the heroic story that imbues the nation with a collective spirit, can also be destroyed.
In these efforts, even racism is taken out of context, and instead of being a shameful undercurrent existing in Western societies, it is regarded as the foundational guiding principle of Western history. This is, according to Murray, completely false. Racism was by no means what drove Western history and civilization.
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The British author also refers to Friedrich Nietzsche’s work, “The Genealogy of Morals,” where the German philosopher points at people who talk of justice but mean revenge instead. Liberal scholars are simply not interested in a fair analysis of the West, its history or its culture. They are interested in revenge, claims Murray. They are interested in tearing down the West, and making sure Westerners experience what they think was the experience of those subjected to racism. People of the “revenge kind” are very keen on using tools that they claim to deprecate, so long as they can further their own political goals while at the same time providing no real evidence for any of their claims.
Murray thinks that when it comes to slavery itself, neo-Marxist liberals realize that the practice was not limited merely to Western countries, but was a phenomenon that can be traced through the entire world. Yet, they claim that the Western slavery was worse than others because it was race-based, even though there were and sadly still are countless societies in which individuals were enslaved for belonging to another ethnic group. Even in the modern era, there are an estimated 40 million slaves worldwide, and almost none of these slave networks exist in Western nations.
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At the same time, points out Murray, there was no other culture than Christian Western culture that did so much for the abolition of slavery and for actually defining it as harmful and immoral. He points out that thousands of British sailors lost their lives patrolling the seas in the 19th century while boarding slave ships to eradicate the practice. Therefore, as far as the question of reparations is concerned, such historical facts should be taken into account, when certain victim groups demand compensation from nations such as Britain, which has, despite its colonial past, actually fought against slavery. Therefore, if anyone wants to talk about restitution for the wrongs of the past, then they must also actually look at what steps have already been taken in the past to correct these wrongs, points out Murray.
According to him, there are also activists and groups who consciously tear open old wounds and then scream how much they hurt. This is the reason why society features a form of oppression that presents itself in the guise of the victim. Using their victim status, they bully and force their cultural and political will on the rest of the population. There are people who claim to be suffering from historic wrongs, using this power to grant themselves dominance they would not otherwise have. This victimhood status effectively grants them the authority to appoint themselves both judge and jury over the rest of society, and anyone who questions this narrative is subjected to immediate attacks from an entire network of victim groups and their supporters.
Power is now best exerted by wielding oppression as a tool to beat others, says Murray, but it only works because only our Western culture in the present era cares about racism, but despite claims otherwise, the reality is that it is the West the finds the concept appalling.
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The question then becomes what everyone else in the world doing about racism while we continue to detest and berate ourselves over the sins of our ancestors?
Finally, the British author asserts that today there is an outright war on White people in the West, and currently, Whites are the only group that can be targeted with socially acceptable racism. Murray says it is an extraordinarily dangerous game to play, and people’s futures in the workplace are being decided based on whether they are White or not. Meanwhile, both schools and universities are rejecting White applicants in favor of ethnic minorities simply due to skin color. In certain areas of the U.S., Whites are even being rejected for medical treatment simply because they belong to the wrong race.
The assault on White people is therefore tied up with the general assault on the West’s legacy. It is driven by a desire for revenge, concludes Murray.
