Book Review: The War on the West by Douglas Murray
Murray accomplishes his goal, such as it is.
The War on the West by Douglas Murray. Narrated by Douglas Murray. HarperAudio, 2022. 13 hours (approx.).
Douglas Murray’s The War on the West attempts to prove that there is a cultural war being waged against western nations. He succeeds marvelously in making his point.
However, was this ever in doubt? I don’t think so. A better topic might have been why it’s being waged and what we might do about it. But Murray’s goal is his goal, and we will evaluate his book on whether he achieves it or not.
His argument rests on “two key ideas.” First, only the failings of the West are focused on while its achievements are downplayed or ignored. Second, other cultures are venerated even as they commit similar atrocities. To prove these ideas Murray cites a cornucopia of examples and data. A representative case is the history of slavery.
To be sure, the West has a nasty history with slavery. But every culture on Earth had slavery, and every group of people have been a slave at one time or another. As Bill Maher1 recently pointed out, the word slave comes from Slav because so many central Europeans were forced into bondage. (See also Thomas Sowell’s Black Rednecks and White Liberals).
The Arab slave trade is a particularly conspicuous omission in the discussion. Murray writes:
… estimates on the numbers of African slaves who were put into the Arab slave trade are even wider as well as higher in their range than the Trans-Atlantic trade. The best available figures proposed by scholars such as Professor Ralph Austin of the University of Chicago is that somewhere between 11 and 17 million Africans were traded east in the Arab-runned slave trade.
The number is difficult to estimate because there are no descendants of these slaves; the men were “systematically” castrated.
Downplayed is the West’s role in ending slavery. Murray writes extensively about Britain's efforts to patrol the Atlantic and intercept slave ships. This historical fact was brought up on an episode of Don Lemon Tonight. A British royal commentator said, “2,000 naval men died on the Highseas trying to stop slavery. Why? Because the African kings were rounding up their own people. They had them in cages waiting on the beaches.” (See also Sowell).
Indeed, Murray writes, “... the over whelming majority of slaves taken out of Africa during these centuries [1400s to 1800s] were the result of ‘manstealing’ and selling: when neighbors, enemies and sometimes families of Africans would sell other Africans on.” He cites slave memoirs, including that of Olaudah Equiano, as evidence.
It should go without saying that none of this exonerates the West from its involvement in slavery. What it does is exemplifies Murray’s two points. In regard to slavery and the slave trade the West is somehow uniquely guilty and its efforts to end it are ignored. Meanwhile, non-western nations - such as those in the Middle East - get a pass.
Arab nations are happy to deflect from their 13 centuries of trading human beings to put pressure on the West by focusing on the Atlantic trade. It’s much the same with China’s human rights violations. Despite accusations of genocide, torture, sexual abuse and organ harvesting in Uyghur camps, the Chinese Communist Party shifts focus to the U.S. The Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi said in 2021:
The fact is that there are many problems within the United States regarding human rights, which is admitted by the U.S. itself. In the United States in human rights are deep-seated, they did not just emerge over the past four years, such as Black Lives Matter.
Some of Murray’s arguments are overstated. Writing for Quillette, Gisa Tunbridge notes how Murray occasionally cites as evidence Twitter accounts with fewer than a thousand followers. The moral panics on college campuses Murray relates are disturbing, but hardly representative given the number of colleges and the number of days without such incidents.
For anyone who remains skeptical as to whether there is a culture war on the West, Murray’s book will close the matter for them. Although I wish he had spent more time on why it’s being waged and what is to be done about it, Murray nevertheless accomplishes the goal he set out to achieve.
This was the best clip I could find. If you have a better one, please link it in the comments.
"Despite accusations of genocide, torture, sexual abuse and organ harvesting in Uyghur camps"
Almost every muslim majority country in the world and most muslim people in the world are backing China with respect to Uyghurs. Douglass might want to enquire about why this is.
Many of the reasons are shady.
One of the reasons is the alliance between the CCP and islamists and the vast sums of money China pours into islamist and very conservative muslim causes around the world
Another reason is the tens of billions of dollars Chinese pours into global woke causes.
The new book "Snakes in the Ganga", whose forward was written by Peter Boghossian, describes some of the large flows of Chinese money to woke Harvard and other woke elite universities.
And finally, many muslims around the world are deathly afraid of Al Qaeda, Daesh/ISIS for cause. As long as the CCP can persuade muslims they are fighting Al Qaeda, Daesh/ISIS and related extreme islamist groups,, most muslims will back them.
Much the way most of the muslim world backed the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and Afghan National Army until 2021, when they were defeated and overrun by a Pakistani Army backed invasion. (the 100,000 Afghan National Security Forces who died in combat fighting for freedom's cause is a terrible tragedy.)
Why does Douglass think that nonmuslims around the world, especially but not exclusively the global nonmuslim woke, back very conservative sunnis and islamists sunnis against liberal muslim heritage peoples?
The discussion of slavery, lbgtq+ suppression, girls suppression, feminist suppression, liberalism suppression, and the mass suppression and slaughter of liberal muslim heritage peoples by Islamists is taboo to discuss in the nonmuslim world. This practice supports islamists and very conservative muslims against liberal muslims.
Why does Douglass think that the muslim world with large exceptions has become vastly more conservative and islamist since 1918? I would argue that nonmuslims, including the English, bare much of the blame for this.
Until 1918, gay homosexuality was legal in the Ottoman Turkish empire, including in Ottoman ruled Palestine, which use to have a vibrant lbgtq+ community.
Today homosexuals are frequently administered the death penalty by Gazan judicial courts after a trial. Including the equivalent of the chairman of the joint chiefs of the Gazan army (Hamas' army) Mahmoud Ishtiwi in 2016.
Gaza, and Hamas which rules Gaza, pays few of their own bills and are almost completely funded by foreign aid, including from places such as England. If the nonmuslim world, including the English, demanded that Gaza **PARTLY** respect lbgtq+ rights the way over 70% ethnic Palestinian Jordan does; Hamas (which rules Gaza) would have no choice but to comply.
Yet the nonmuslim world, including the English, almost never make this demand. Doesn't this make the English people and nonmuslim world partly complicit? I think it does. How does Douglass respond to this?
In England, over the last 30 years about 1 million females age 17 and younger have been raped by Sunni Pakistani males. This is close to half of all rapes of under age females in the UK over the last 30 years. I would argue that the main blame for this is on the English people and their policy of backing very conservative muslims against liberal ones. How many muslim UK citizen girls have been raped by Pakistani sunni males and been too afraid to report it (because they and their family members could be killed and injured by islamist honor violence)? We don't know. But I suspect the number could be astronomical. Isn't this intentional failure to protect a a crime against humanity and a crime of commission by the English people against British muslim under age girls? Is Douglass guilty about this? Is he apologetic about this? What does he say about this?
Some data on mass honor violence in England against muslim females is here: https://www.brownpundits.com/2017/12/01/why-nonmuslims-treat-muslims-so-badly/
Note that only 5% of of the British females who demand justice for honor violence against them even go to trial. Only 2.5% result in convictions. The rate for nonmuslims in the UK is vastly higher. And these are the cases the muslim females report to the police in England. Many cases go unreported because of threats of retaliation and because the Crown Police and social services demonize the muslim females who come forward (as islamaphobes, white supremacists, supporters of the patriarchy etc.) This too is a crime against humanity by the English people against their muslim female co-citizens. Does Douglass address this?
In addition, Douglass often doesn't seem to recognize that globalization between Europe, Asia, North Africa and East Asia is over four thousand years old. This means that many or most of the achievement and culture of the "West" are shared with much of Asia, North Africa and East Africa. Including what is called "liberalism" and freedom of art, thought and speech. While Douglass is correct that the English achievements are great, they are built on this shared tradition and foundation.