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

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Network FOX News Duration 01:00:58 Scanned in San Francisco, CA, USA Language English Source Comcast Cable Tuner Virtual Ch. 760 Video Codec h264 Audio Cocec ac3 Pixel width 1280 Pixel height 720 Audio/Visual sound, color Notes I liked the use of humour in the book, It helps lighten the tone of an otherwise very negative book. The sections on cultural appropriation seemed correct to me, I dislike the movements trying to create ultra rigid barriers around cultures and insistences of cultural purity. He has cogent points here about the inconsistencies in its advocates. I liked the use of polling data on Americans and racial tensions surrounding the police and more generally. I liked several of his refutations, particularly surrounding Nicholas Ferrar and anti-Cecil Rhodes activists.

People will believe anything they are told; once public opinion has perceived to hit a tipping point. This is the same mechanism that has been responsible for the worst manmade catastrophes in history; from Communism's ~100 million dead in 100 years, to the Holocaust, to many historical genocides. It's properly termed "pathological groupthink." I also appreciated this book’s tone and how he points to the future, what can be done and that it is not too late to minimize the potential consequences of this war on the west. It had an overall more hopeful tone than his previous book. It gave me plenty to think about and I will likely revisit this read again at a later date.For some reason, when I started reading this book I was under the impression that Douglas Murray was a provocateur a la Alex Jones or Milo however-you-spell-his-last-name. I don’t know if I’m just getting tired or if Murray is slowly running out of steam. Honestly, it could very well be both. As vast swathes of Russia, China, Asia, The Middle East, Africa, South America et al continue to lurch from insurmountable misery to insurmountable misery throughout history, there is presumably a sense of comfort and certainty for the critics in turning their attention inwards. They have the luxury of policing the old quotes of western historical heroes and searching for modern day micro-aggressions on social media. As Don Quixote tilted at windmills in the absence of any remaining giants to fight so must they create such chimeras. In recent years it has become clear that there is a war going on: a war on the West. This is not like earlier wars, where armies clash and victors are declared. It is a cultural war, and it is being waged remorselessly against all the roots of the Western tradition and against everything good that the Western tradition has produced..." I've caught at least three inaccuracies (or oversimplifications) - the most obvious is probably the statement about the Slavery Abolition Act: the reasons behind the decisions were obviously more complex than what is presented in the book (e.g., "it will harm our enemies more than us")

Hatred and self-loathing toward Western Civilization and white people, in general, has been a growing trend. Murray traces the roots of this trend to thinkers like Michel Foucault, Edward Said, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Herbert Marcuse out of The Frankfurt School in Germany (although not mentioned in this book) played a large role, as well. Marcuse provided the philosophical underpinnings to neo-Marxists and Critical Theorists; Angela Davis, among the more notable names. I have some problems with this book. The book is hyperbolic with the introduction in particular laced with catastrophising, the book weaves together lurid anecdotes and states this a widespread problem but he rarely shows that they are in fact representative, often he ascribes motivations/attitudes without saying who exactly he is talking about and the books factual accuracy is suspect.As a compendium of the absurdities of our age, The War on the West would be hard to surpass.”— National Review What Murray gets wrong, is that he seems to interpret ressentiment as merely action against someone else. To paraphrase Murray’s idol for this chapter, ressentiment is people not cleaning out their rooms. This is not the same way that Nietzsche explains ressentiment. Instead, Nietzsche considered ressentiment a fundamental expression of slave morality, where, due to their own failings, the slaves forces everyone into a system that project the slaves’ failings onto everyone. But that is not to say that every action that’s external to the individual is an act of ressentiment. The masters in Nietzsche’s moral philosophy can also act externally, but rather than ressentiment their actions are an expression of the will to power. I felt he sidestepped the history of native American-settler relations, yes there was unintended disease spread but there were many massacres to consider as well and he sidesteps tougher questions around Churchill and racism. I also find his moral approach to history of weighing good and bad unconvincing. The Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. Please review our 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.

The Bible burned in Murray’s example was burned on US soil, disrespected by someone who, most likely, was brought up in a Christian culture and carried out his act in a country that’s majority Christian. The burning of the Qur’an, however unknowingly, was carried out by an occupying military force from a foreign culture in a Muslim majority country. The situations were totally different, and as the responses were different. Far from being a nationalistic defence of the West, the book is actually sympathetic to a genuine cosmopolitan, liberal outlook. As Murray points out: To someone who has not followed modern western politics/culture/social trends in the last ~decade or so, the book would read like absurd satire. Indeed, in 2022, it is becoming increasingly difficult to discern satire from reality... Long story short, Douglas Murray yet again managed to raise awareness on some very sensitive topics, and also to show that too much zeal leads to absurdity. To denigrate an entire civilization and its culture because of what happened in the past is useless. It's the present that counts and what can we do to make it better: There are estimated to be over forty million people living in slavery around the world today. In real terms, this means that there are more slaves in the world today than there were in the nineteenth century. So this is not a question of historic what-aboutery. It raises the question of what might practically change for people today if we spent even a portion of the time what we focus on past slavery focused, instead, on present-day slavery. And what we might be able to do about this modern horror.The distillation of his implicit beliefs around equality in the chapter 'gratitude' is interesting. His critique of Kendi's circular definition of racism seems correct to me and its application invites policy confusion. The author also pointed out this was similar across the pond, believing there’s a religious element to this culture war. In celebrating the West’s whiteness, Murray is, for once, off-target. Ideas of racial identity are not the West’s destiny, but our enemy. The antiracists are not wrong that such thinking is a poisonous legacy of slavery and imperialism. Their mistake is to imagine that the answer is simply to swing racial prejudice in the other direction. Murray quotes well, throughout the book. This from Chinua Achebe: “The legacy of colonialism is not a simple one but one of great complexity, with contradictions – good things as well as bad.” Murray also shares quotes from Damon Albarn and June Sarpong, unfortunately for them. The author is eminently quotable himself as well. Murray’s writing is cogent, pithy and not without a wry sense of humour. The book entertains, as well as enlightens. Although Murray will doubtless be condemned by some for his supposed heretical thinking, he should be celebrated. Murray has a rich well to draw from with regular misunderstandings of facts and statistics as social media crowds whip themselves up into a frenzy. The audiobook in particular makes for a good listen as he gives the angry, irrational outbursts a suitably deranged voice for quotations.

When one peers behind the curtain, to reveal those who would have us blindly follow an anti-Western mindset, one will encounter an old and familiar enemy. “Marxist thought” may be deemed an oxymoron and “Marxist hypocrisy” a tautology. I will leave some (rather long) quotes, to be considered. My only question to this kind of statements is this: who benefits from it? Because I don't think people do, no matter what colour they are. Regarding Murray’s distinction between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation, that completely misses the point. On an individual level an artist can apricate a culture different from their own, but the culture around them is what makes it cultural appropriation. The issue with Michael Tippett’s usage of spirituals in his music is that Tippett himself wanted to create spirituals. It’s that his renditions of the spirituals became the versions people knew. Not only affording Tippett the ownership over songs he didn’t create, but removing the complex, racial history of spirituals from versions that entered the popular culture. Mr. Murray, I may not agree with everything about your politics but I am proud as an American that you had the courage to write this book. It is a clarion call for all of us to reject this noxious divisiveness that is happening around race. The War on the Westby Douglas Murray is not necessarily a history book, but it is one of the most important books that any historian should read this year. Historians (and students of history) are well placed to show that the story of the West is not just a litany of shame. There is plenty in the traditions of the West that should be celebrated rather than condemned.

And just to comment on the framing of Murray himself. I can’t really see how the progressive project is projecting their own failings out to everyone else. What is most prevalent in the progressive discourse is that the failing of the individual is not down to the individual, rather that the system, within which the individual is forced to act, is acting against the individual. The progressive doesn’t want to change the system because they can’t succeed in it. They want to change the system because the system won’t let them succeed. And it is here that Murray makes some interesting points about a hero for many who proclaim their opposition to racism, slavery and Empire: Karl Marx. A man who ‘Inspires’ contemporary anti-capitalists today. Surely Marx was a die-hard anti-racist who hated Empire? His headstone stands largely undamaged in Highgate cemetery today – none have pulled it down. Yet, as Murray notes Marx was clearly: So, Murray asks – why is Marx (or Mao) exempt from criticism, when other European thinkers aren’t? Why has no-one ‘cancelled’ those thinkers? Why are Marxist groups and parties not tainted by all this? But I don’t think it’s the gotcha that Murray thinks it is. While I don’t go out of my way to interview every Marxist I meet, I can’t say I’ve heard any of them say that their concept of material politics, dialectics, historical positivism, and economics rests on whether or not Marx held Jews in low esteem. Marxism is a living philosophy, and Marx might be the founder, but he’s not the building.