If we are to believe our declared enemies, especially those in our midst, we have a lot to answer for in the West. Apart from natural disasters, nothing has been more apt to produce inequality, want, and misery in the world than our civilization. Supposedly, our sins are plentiful.
As if expected by the whole world to make up for the past, Westerners on both sides of the Atlantic go to great lengths to conform politically and make amends in accordance with the ritual requirements of the day. Straining themselves to the breaking point to appear open-minded, welcoming, and accommodating, they occasionally demean themselves. The theatrical pretense of repentance may be downright nauseating to witness. A poisonous amalgam of old-school Marxism and anti-Western identity politics is the source of this absurdity. Inextricably linked with historical injustices against people originating from other parts of the world, from which arises the suspicion of racism, the West has fallen out of favor with the progressive movement.
It is, to be sure, the hour of reckoning. The revisionist tribunal at colleges, on social media, and in the U.N. has been assembled to correct the injustice of history. The West stands accused of having enriched itself at the expense of the Third World. While some — i.e. the “aggrieved party” of the show trial, ranging from dispossessed to extremely privileged natives of former colonies — are allegedly entitled to compensation for political oppression and economic exploitation, others — i.e. the “offending party,” taxpaying minions of former colonial powers — are held responsible for abhorrent shadow sides (e.g. Atlantic slave trade) of a world order from before the French Revolution (or, at least, the American Civil War).
The ideological showdown with the West, however, goes well beyond postcolonial revisionism. Actually, it concerns every Western enterprise operating in the Third World. Thus, as a matter of course, multinational corporations founded in the West are suspected of social injustice. Before the ideologically inflamed tribunal, they must defend themselves against accusations of “neocolonialism.” Moreover, it is immediately assumed that Western citizens with origins in former colonies have an old score to settle.
It requires a historical — and psychological — perspective to realize the full scope of the ideological conflict. The ultimate targets of socialist attacks are the open society and capitalism — well, human nature itself. The purging hawks of the tribunal, the Jacobin revolutionaries of our time, are not likely to rest until the great struggle — whatever its guise here and now (i.e. a struggle between the “classes of society” or the “races of the world”) — is over. However, it never will be. The driving force behind the attacks is, in the end, not an exaggerated sense of justice in the group of political activists, but a maladaptive, unreasonably intrusive, and conceited approach to life in the individual. As soon as the “external enemy” is defeated, he will turn his paranoid attention to the “internal enemy,” the reactionary shadow warrior, real or imagined, who constantly plots sabotage and threatens to rob the righteous of the fruit of their sacrifices (cf. the fable Animal Farm by George Orwell). Thus, the revolutionary never rests. He is an uncompromising totalitarian at heart. The outside world is his cynical pastime.
The guiding idea in Marxism, which continuously adapts to survive as a refuge for the maladapted, is that every relationship between people, also between man and woman (between parent and child, between binary and non-binary person etc.), can be interpreted as a power struggle between an oppressor and an oppressed. Marxism, aiming to destroy the institutions in which we usually put our trust, enthusiastically appropriates any conflict that might serve to promote the downfall of the West. The approach is as opportunistic as it is malicious. In the absence of Western civilization, the rest of us would become desperately alienated and homeless.
With no stake in events dating back centuries, modern-day people in the West are made to believe that they are nevertheless indebted to the Third World, as it stands today, and unworthy to judge others as they should properly judge themselves. Self-doubting and repentant, though truly bewildered, they prepare to account for the past and take the punishment as it comes. As if they were babbling idiots, they are compelled to feign indulgence in the face of Third-World lawlessness, brutality, and tyranny. Who are they, after all, but sinners? Nobody would like to be “the first to cast a stone” (John 8:7).
Indeed, it is nothing but a gigantic hoax. With the appearance of Christian penitence, but in reality the expression of moral confusion, suggesting the decline of an entire civilization, the modern phenomenon of Western self-denial is destructive of everything that we normally depend on: (a) morality, (b) justice, and (c) the rule of law. The self-denying attitude inspired by woke activists, whose agenda revolves around the destruction of Western values and institutions, including freedom of speech and the separation of powers, reflects not only a resigned and self-tormenting, but also a false and deeply irresponsible, understanding of matters.
Atonement for the mother of all crimes, racism, may very well be completely out of reach. Therefore, we are instructed to allow for the righteous anger of colonial victims — or, rather, their descendants — and compensate them on demand. By contrast, we, the sinners, are expected to condemn our own past and deny ourselves. The sectarian, self-betraying style in the media evokes memories of forced confessions during the Reign of Terror or Maoist re-education. As something unprecedented in world history, Westerners call on each other to tear down symbols of their civilization and tolerate humiliation indefinitely as punishment for something of which nobody alive is guilty. The absurdity has reached unimaginable heights, because we have allowed it to happen.
The contrast between the conspiracy theories of woke mythology and reality are striking. From the farthest corners of the world, people struggle to reach the West and settle down. Happily unaware of the Western suicide game, they know from their own lives the difference between (a) oppression and freedom, (b) poverty and wealth, and (c) chaos and the rule of law. Both the political and economic refugees (asylum seekers) of the world are therefore heading for the same place.
It is fair to say that probably nowhere in the world are people as tolerant as people in the West. Thanks to our civilization, which has recovered from several setbacks since the Renaissance, latently threatened by secular movements, e.g. socialism and fascism, we enjoy orderly conditions, taking civil liberties for granted, including freedom of speech, the right to vote, and the right to own property. The notion that bigotry is particularly widespread in the West is a delusion. Only, the problem is never publicly debated in other parts of the world where tyranny is the dominant form of government.
After the end of World War II, the West has received millions of immigrants from all over the world and invested enormous resources in integrating them into our society. The majority of them come from failed states without law and justice, “shithole countries” in the words of a former president — deprived beforehand of any prospect of social mobility and prosperity. If the inflow of immigrants becomes sufficiently large, however, integration cannot keep up. In that case, they are left to their own devices.
On foreign soil, immigrants will typically seek something that reminds them of home. Accordingly, they become very sensitive to the influence from political-religious leaders of the moment. Surrounded by fellow countrymen, they invariably fall back to norms of behavior familiar from home. In doing so, they will transplant the culture from which they have fled to the West; our institutions will be in danger of collapsing sooner or later. It is a question of the demographic balance.
Honestly, should the West really owe the rest of the world to go under? Is there any limit to our delusional self-torture? For the time being, it is up to us to decide for ourselves.
Image: Public domain.
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