Douglas Murray on the Rise of Anti-Westernism and How to Defeat It

Thank you to all of you, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much, Marissa, that for that very kind introduction and that very heavy award. Um, I'm uh I'm going to enjoy getting that through the airport later tonight. I was actually just telling Erin backstage that many years ago I I was um in Israel and there was a uh I was in the town of Sterat and the mayor gave me something which then about 15 years ago was uh not very well known but it was a company called from rockets to roses and they were turning uh the Kusha rockets that landed in their town into works of art and um they gave me as a thank you a tall sort of rose that had been made out of this rocket with a very heavy base and as I say the company was new. I was going through Bengurian airport the next day uh to head back to my then home in London and uh the Lal security staff who some of you will have had the pleasure of meeting uh said uh anyone give you anything while you're in Israel and I said yes this and I opened my bag and I showed them this and uh they were looking at it eventually they brought over all their friends and everybody in the airport was looking at the gift that I declared and eventually I explained it and about half an hour later the LA man said uh so uh apart from Kusha rocket anyone give you anything in Israel because um I wanted to just say a few things uh tonight in the time that we're together um as Marissa was very kind to note I uh I left my home in London some five years ago to move to New York and uh I suppose I'm open to offers of where to move next. Um uh and um there's a lot to say about um some of the things that are going on in all of our countries in the west at the moment. But I wanted to talk about two things in particular. Um you know many centuries ago Martin Luther the great figure of the reformation in Europe observed that uh mankind is like a drunkard on a horse. He uh he falls off the horse to the right. He clambers back on and he falls off to the left. Martin Luther was not talking politically, not least because it would be some centuries before the idea of left or right even entered the political lexicon. But it's been on my mind recently this uh idea of falling off the horse to the left or to the right. in uh New York as as you all know uh we've just had somebody who is a self-revoured self-declared completely proud socialist among other things. Uh the president of course says he's a communist. Uh you might all have your own views about that. But it seemed inconceivable until very recently that somebody whose politics are founded in anti-westernism uh should be in charge of the greatest city in the world, the biggest most important city in America. Sorry to those of you who are locals here, but that's just the stats. It seemed impossible to people that you'd actually have somebody who has declared repeatedly that his politics are founded in this anti-westernism that is also of course anti- capitalism of course anti-Israelism. What exactly the ideology of our new mayor is is disputed by some, but I think it's actually rather obvious. Uh his own father laid down the blueprint for his career. Uh his father of course is a Colombia professor and who could think that anything bad could come out of Colombia. The mayor by the way has the the uh extraordinary distinction of having a parent on the faculty of Colombia but couldn't get in himself. Um um but his father's own work is is dedicated to what is known as third worldism. It is the belief that essentially everything that we have in the west is the problem is the cause of all the world's problems. Nothing in the rest of the world can go wrong unless we have made it so. They can look at China will say well aren't there human rights abuses and they'll say well look at the opium wars. this is uh you can say something that is going wrong in the Middle East or the Far East and they will say but colonialism. You'll point out some human rights abuse on the other end of the planet and they will say what about the slave trade as if this was something that only America ever engaged in. this third worldism or anti-westernism has never had such a prominent advocate at the heart of America. And this, it seems to me, presents a huge challenge to those of us on the right, those of us on the conservative side, because we at least have to engage with what arguments people like Mandani put across. Sometimes people put across the argument in response to people like him that there's some specific issue that you can nyx. And I just wanted to say that that's in my view massively understating and minimizing the scale of the challenge that somebody like him poses. Some people in the room I've discussed this with many times before, but essentially what somebody like Mamani is relying on is a set of very basic base human instincts which the conservative side has to be able to respond to. The base instincts are essentially envy and resentment. And you cannot reply to appeals to envy and resentment by merely talking about zoning regulations. You can't. You have to find your own way to appeal to equally deep instincts. And I'll come on to that in a second. But one of the things that's probably on many of your minds as it is on mine at the moment is that just as we've seen people drunkenly fall off the horse on the left, so we've seen some people drunkenly fall off the horse on the right. This is something which it's worth lingering over particularly in this esteemed gathering here tonight because perhaps the greatest critique that the right has been able to have of the American left in recent years is that they haven't been able to keep their extremes away from their center. Remember that just go back five years. What were the most useful things for Republicans that Democrats said? Defund the police. What a stupid slogan. What a stupid, stupid slogan. And the fact that people like Kala Harris and others were willing to entertain this, to flirt with it, to play with it, to pander to it was catastrophic for the Democrats at the ballot box. Every one of the slogans, every one of the things, the deranged things that the left did in recent years was incredibly advantageous to Republicans. What greater gift did the Republican party have in recent years than the squad? Donald Trump couldn't have hoped for a better group of critics than the squad. And the fact that the Democratic Party seemed incapable of distancing itself indeed became completely wrapped up with the most extreme bits of their own side. They they got wrapped up with the people who believe that none of us are born with any genitalia that's discernible. Doctors just sort of guess it. A bigoted nurse decides it's a boy or a girl. And this stuff was devastating for the political left. Well, I would say we now on the political right have things that are equally potentially devastating. The most potentially devastating one we have at the moment is something which people in this room have been close to, I've been close to. There are individuals, some of whom were friends, some of whom may be able to remain friends at some point or be friends again. But we have people on our own side who are playing with things that are utterly disastrous for the conservative cause. The most obvious one, the most obvious one, the stupidest one, so stupid that again I can't believe it hasn't been somehow mandated by the Democrat party's headquarters, is the fact that prominent conservative commentators and podcasters would be playing with the most evil viruses of the 20th century. Nothing is more delegitimizing for the conservative side than to have people who claim to be on the conservative side playing footsie with Nazis and anti-semites and racists. Nothing can be more destructive for our side than people like Tucker Carlson who give the most virulent hardedged attack interview they possibly can to Senator Ted Cruz and then play the fluffer to Nick Fuentes. [Applause] If if the political right doesn't address this and say you can say what you want but it doesn't mean that we have to beguard you as an ally then we are in real trouble. You know I've noticed since I've moved to America that something I said would happen some years ago has been happening which is in the moral vacuum the moral disaster of the last 20 years there are several things that stand out. One is that after the 2008 financial crash, it was not inevitable that if young people couldn't accumulate capital that they would become capitalists. We have to address that problem. But it also seemed to me that into the religious vacuum that had emerged in recent decades, things would tread. Now we saw the left. They had the gender ideology, the uh sexual ideology, the race and all of that. And for a time for them uh going around and waving banners every Saturday and so on provided them with meaning. It was also inevitable that the right would have to address this hole, this vacuum as well. And some people have, but some of the people who've trotten into that have done so in an incredibly ill-advised way, partly because they have not listened to good mentors like Dennis Prager has been to so many. They have fallen into clerical attitudes, very far right-wing Catholic attitudes, very ill-informed in which they seem to think, for instance, I am not kidding or exaggerating when I say this, that they would effectively like to have, for instance, Catholic clerical law in the United States in the 21st century. I said to one of the advocates of this a little a little while ago, you know, I'm not in favor of that. Partly because although I wasn't alive in Europe in the 16th century, I did hear about it. And by the way, for those who are Catholics who think that in any way a Christian America would accept Catholic cardinal law, they ought to realize that they themselves would be a religious minority in such a state and would be hanged from the lamposts by the Protestants. This is, to put it mildly, unbelievably frivolous, but also dangerous stuff to be playing with. When the Heritage Foundation had its town hall the other day, a young woman said to Kevin Roberts that she was opposed to what she called Christian Zionism because she said she regards it as a heresy. Who told her it was a heresy? Tucker Carlson told her it was a heresy. I can tell her some other heresies and I could list off many more than she can in her short time in the Catholic faith. I could talk to her about, for instance, the fact that Pope John V 6 said many decades ago that the relationship between the Jewish people and the Christian people was absolutely central to the future of Christianity as well as Judaism. I could point her to the works of Joseph Ratzinger or the vital and significant work that Pope John Paul II did for Christian Jewish relations. I really hope that young people like that don't go through what the continent I'm from went through for centuries. There's a reason why Queen Elizabeth I said one of the most important things about religion that anyone has said when she said, "I do not make windows into men's souls." Those people from the American right who really do wish to open windows into men's souls and judge other Americans by these standards should just consider what will happen if it comes to them. And I would place one on the table straight away. Some of these people on the new American right like to blame the Jewish people for the fact that for instance there are prominent Jews in various positions who say things they disagree with. They often point to the fact which is a fact that many open borders organizations are dominated by prominent liberal Jews. That's absolutely true. And there's not one of those organizations that I haven't criticized. However, these people who like to say that as a result, Jews should be held responsible for open borders policies might take this little warnings from this non-atholic from Britain. The most prominent open borders advocate in recent years has been the pope. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Not just this pope, but his predecessors. The people of the island of Lampaduza in Italy, where I was when I was writing my book, The Strange Death of Europe, are fed up with popes coming to Lampaduza expressing sympathy for migrants and none for the people who live on Lampaduza. But here's the thing. Do you want us who are not Catholics to blame Catholics in America for your liberal open borders popes? I hope not. You wouldn't like it if we did. So don't do it to the Jews. Let me say just a couple of other things. The first is I said earlier we have to find things to respond not just to the right where it's gone wrong but also of course to the left. And by the way, what a what a great sign it would be in this country if whereas the left can't control its borders politically, socially, hygienically the right could. What a good thing that would be for the right in this country. But I said that we have to find ways to reply to the deep things. And I believe on these issues, as Dennis Prager and others have said for years, we have all of the best cards. Let me give you one. The left, as I said with Mandani and others, is focused on the politics of envy and resentment. How do you counter that? I'll give you a couple of examples. One, the greatest example in America of all, aspiration. Aspiration. the knowledge that if you work hard, you will improve your lot in life and the lot in life of the people you love. If we make this work in America, we can destroy the left's appeal to resentment. Let me give you two others. Gratitude. Gratitude. You know, the people who are currently playing with the darkest aspects against religious freedom should remember the great luck we have here in America. Most countries in the world do not have religious freedom. What did Thomas Jefferson ask to be put on his gravestone? Most of you here will know this, but Mr. Jefferson himself asked on his gravestone to be written that he was the author of the Declaration of Independence, the author of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom and the father of the University of Virginia. because these were the things he was proudest of. That the statute on religious freedom broke something that had torn Europe apart for years and solved it. These are gifts we have been given in America. Many many other gifts exist in this land as well. But if we remind people that what we have we are lucky to have and not just random luck but because it has been given to us by people who thought and judged wisely and that is why we're here. [Applause] Finally, I wanted to say the other thing on the side of the American right and conservatives is the significance of the individual. The left talks in grandiose terms, but also nonhuman terms. It talks about class struggle. It talks about economics. It talks about all its vaguely Marxist or watered down Marxist views of how society works. But what they cannot account for ever is the individual. And you might say, well, the great man, the great woman theory of history, that's so dated. No, it isn't. That is a deliberately derinating and demoralizing line of the left to pretend that individuals don't make the course of history. They do. And it's not just that the course of history is made by presidents, by kings, senators, even some congressmen. it is that it is made by every individual including those in this room. Let me finish by citing something that has been much on my mind in the last few days. Some years ago um I did an uh interview a video for Prageru in the great book series that Michael Nolles was doing. You know, Michael Nolles, he's very shoddy looking, badly dressed guy, deeply in need of a tailor. Um, uh, the wonderful Michael Nolles, uh, Dennis's suggestion, decided to do a set of interviews with people about great books. It's a wonderful series. I hope that, uh, many of you will know it. As with so many of the Prebeu videos, it's gone so far and so wide. And uh Michael asked which great book I wanted to do and I said to him I'd like to do I said this is a bit of a cheat but I'd like to do King Lear which is of course a play not a book but it's published in a book form so I thought I could get away with it. There's something in that that I mentioned to Michael during that interview which I'd like to finish with by sharing you here tonight. At the midnight of the play, something extraordinary happens. Gloss though, one of the few good people in the play is going to be blinded. His eyes used to be torn out by two of his enemies, one of Lear's daughters and her husband. And whenever I think about King Leer, I always think about this scene. But I also think of something that one of the great Christians of the 20th century, CS Lewis, said about this play. And I wanted to share it with you. He asks how we as humans can act in the world. And he asks it by going to this scene, act three, scene seven of King Lear. I hesitate talking about any play in the presence of a great actor like John Voit but allow me to get away with it. [Applause] This is what CS Lewis says about our position in life. He says we are not the playright, we are not the producer. We are not even the audience. We are on the stage. To play well the scenes in which we are on concerns us much more than to guess about the scenes that follow. In King Lear act 3 scene seven. He says there is a man who is such a minor character that Shakespeare has not even given him a name. He is merely first servant. All the characters around him, Rean, Cornwall, and Edmund, have fine long-term plans. They think they know how the story is going to end. And they are quite wrong. The servant has no such delusions. He has no notion how the play is going to go, but he understands the present scene. He sees an abomination, the blinding of Glouester, and it's taking place, and he will not stand it. His sword is out and pointed at his master's breast in a moment. Then Rean stabs him dead from behind. That is his whole part. Not even eight lines all told. But if it were real life and not a play, that is the part it would have been best to have acted. We don't know which scene in the play we're in. We don't even know if it's a comedy or a tragedy, some combination of both. But one thing we do have a say in, as Dennis Dennis Prager has shown, as some remarkable people in this room continue to show, and as Dennis continues to show, the one thing we can choose is to act the best we can in the times we find ourselves in. So, thank you.