We see a vast campaign to undermine and demoralise – well, what exactly? The main target is the English-speaking world, with the attack mainly coming out of the US and spreading. The long-term effect is to discredit the idea of the West (a term I am using as shorthand, as do both admirers and critics) as the main source of modernity and progress (however uneven) over the past three centuries, including as American legal scholars Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic say, “the very foundations of the liberal order, including … legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism and neutral principles of constitutional law”.
For some this attack is deliberate: they claim the West is the root of evil. For others who may not consciously reject Western ideas, it is merely unthinking collateral damage caused by cultural modishness – what philosopher John Gray has called “
a farrago of critical race and gender theories imported from America”. For outright enemies, including Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, it is invaluable propaganda.
There is no agreed name for what is happening: woke of course is colloquial but not very scientific; other terms are cultural Marxism, hyper-liberalism, radical progressivism, even the successor ideology. The profusion of terms shows our uncertainty. Yet there seem to be several evident sources.
One is intellectual. There is a revival of Marxist anti-imperialism going back at least to the 1940s, if not the 1900s.
So a second necessary element is political and ideological
So the third element: institutions. There has been a rapid takeover: beginning with schools, universities, museums, charities and the public service
This is the fourth element: a new expanded professional managerial class: university-educated, metropolitan, involved in politics, non-government organisations, education, culture and human resources and compliance departments of business, often rejecting the nation as a source of evil, and adopting new identities.
The fifth element of course is technology. New means of communication create a far-flung radical movement, spread ideas with unprecedented speed, and provide the tools to organise and exercise power while weakening old loyalties and communities.
Creating a historical narrative is at the heart of a deadly serious ideological and political contest. From Putin to Black Lives Matter, the anti-Western critique is based on interpreting our history as a story of oppression, exploitation, slavery, racism, genocide and injustice.
Lord Sumption said recently in a lecture in Oxford: “Would the world as a whole be a better place if Europeans had never settled in the Americas or Australia? I do not think so.” Neither do I. But I fear many people do, or say they do.
A final thought from a brave new book by Professor Doug Stokes, Against Decolonisation: Campus Culture Wars and the Decline of the West: “If we do deconstruct the West, who or what will replace it?”https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/weaponised-history-is-being-used-to-un...Robert Tombs is an emeritus professor in history at the University of Cambridge.
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Cultural Marxism is everywhere. (Read 38161 times)
