Douglas Murray - The War on the West

"If fascism ever comes to America, it'll come in the name of liberalism"

Ronald Reagan: 60 minutes 1975

Of course, its very easy to quote from the past and attach it however liberally you like to pretty much anything you want in order to back up your beliefs. Just take a look at how many people quote Orwell out of context or any host of eminent academics of the past.

Yet having devoured Douglas Murray's latest book "The War On The West" my mind was immediately drawn to this Reagan quote from almost 50 years ago before I had even finished the introduction.

Divided neatly into 4 easily digestible chunks and 3 very interesting interludes, the final conclusion leaves not only Murray admitting he has no definitive answer, but to leave the reader in the belief that at this point even token resistance is futile. In fact, what I found was most interesting about the whole book was one could imagine Murray typing himself into a depressed stupor and leaving the book alone for weeks on end before once again steeling himself to carry on his work, As Churchill once said "we shall fight them on the beaches" Douglas was having his own personal fight with his inner demons as so much nonsense was paraded before his very eyes as he researched each subject.

In fact, I watched quite a few of his interviews since the book dropped and I couldn't help but get a sense that this book had taken something out of him. He was by no means broken, but had definitely lost some of his usual spark

Thankfully after those first few almost apologetic interviews, that twinkle in his eye seems to have returned. The success of this book will very soon see the Doug Murray many know and love back in full flow I'm sure.

In Murrays easy reading style, its very long introduction really sets everything you're about to read rather beautifully. In spite of his obvious high standard of education he easily manages to convey his message without having its reader needing an accompanying thesaurus. Whilst I enjoy the work of Jordan Peterson, Murray does have the ability to cover subjects in a much more pragmatic tone, which is very refreshing

In the books first chapter he discusses the issue of race, quite possibly the best chapter of the whole book

From CRT to moral panics & racist babies (yes, you read that right) he cleverly carves out and presents in a very real and terrifying manner how damaging this kind of thinking is to the western world. If you push back against it, you are inherently a racist or a fascist, the irony of which is stunning. In fact, if you were to ask a capitalist on his thoughts of the anti-racist, anti-fascist movements he or she would probably applaud such initiative and entrepreneurship.

As beginnings go. its pretty explosive stuff and while the rest of the book doesn't quite reach such spectacular heights, it's still more than interesting enough to keep readers engaged

Covering a whole host of topics from the continued rise and threat of China, the wests myopic focus on one particular period in history, the proposal of slave reparations, religion, culture you do wonder what else he could possibly fit in. But, while I at times felt he was re-treading old ground of his previous works, I also felt he missed out on more than a couple of things also.

Make no mistake, this is (in spite of his own best efforts) a very "American" view, as a British reader there were many times I was constantly badgering him in my mind to have a deeper look at how this is all playing out in his home country. While he does touch on it lightly here and there, by the end I was feeling (ever so slightly) short-changed. While the west has indeed spread out from Britain to the countries of North America, Australia and New Zealand, their journeys are quite different over the past 200 years or so. Hopefully, at some time in the future he will explore this in depth. 

Of course I wouldn't expect him to know what its like growing up and living on the sink estates of Britain and how damaging this all is to them. But I feel if he had spent some time watching daytime Tv in the UK as part of his research he would have found it quite alarming. And dont even get me started on the output of channel 4 these days!

As it continues to fly off the shelves and the plaudits keep rolling in, this latest piece will go down as yet another warning from history laid out bare before our eyes. 

Yet I cant help thinking something inevitable is going to happen, something many have seen coming for quite some time.

And it seems there is absolutely nothing to stop it.