As is the case with all truly interesting people, the least interesting thing about Douglas Murray is his sexuality. He has been a steadfast voice of reason during an age of unreason, and a formidable opponent of the woke activists who presume to speak of his behalf as an openly gay man. A prominent journalist and the bestselling author of several books including The Strange Death of Europe and The Madness of Crowds, Murray has not shied away from touchy topics. The former work addresses immigration and Islam, the latter race, sex and sexuality, both from a contrarian perspective for which many have been fired, doxed, or otherwise humiliated. Murray’s position is, simply put, that immigration and identity politics are not sacrosanct; valid arguments against these topics exist and they ought not to be censored. In a recent interview with the political commentator Dave Rubin, he calls on the silent majority who agree with his perspective to “reassert themselves as adults” by speaking their minds.
Murray specifically chastises employees at Penguin Random House for their attempt to prevent their employer from publishing Jordan Peterson’s upcoming book Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life. He calls the inability to listen to contrary points of view a “generational phenomenon” which has been adopted by children who believe that “speech is harm, and harm is not harm, that silence is violence and that violence is fine.” Murray was addressing my generation, and despite what may be regarded as a sweeping generalization I am not the least bit offended. Not every twenty-something thinks this way, but the most vocal among us do and that is a serious problem: “the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity” (Yeats).
One example of a childish notion is a proposed amendment to the free speech guidelines at The University of Cambridge, which would require faculty members to “be respectful of the diverse identities of others.” Thankfully this amendment has been voted against, but it is still concerning that such a preposterous idea gained widespread support at one of the world’s most esteemed institutions. Like so many other wokisms, the offending phrase seems innocuous at first glance. The danger lies in a definition of “identity” which has been warped and distorted by critical theorists and Critical Social Justice activists. Previously, a call to respect identity was a call to reject discrimination. Article 14 of the United Kingdom Human Rights Act, for instance, prohibits any discrimination which is based on superficial characteristics like race or sex. It does not, however, protect a person’s ideas from being questioned, disagreed with or mocked because of those same characteristics. As James Lindsay has noted, the woke definition of identity is somewhat different: “by ‘identity,’ Critical Social Justice thought means ‘social identity,’ which implies ‘political identity’ in a universe that is only concerned with identity politics.” As such, if an academic is required to respect the “identity” of his colleagues, he must also respect their politics. It should not be necessary to mention that there are certain views which deserve neither respect nor toleration, and which must be actively fought against by disseminating better views. Some in the Cambridge community wish to prevent that from happening, and it is by no means an isolated phenomenon.
A similarly puerile letter was penned by eight student organizations at McGill University in Montreal, in which the students “demand” that the school’s administration overhauls its statement on academic freedom. They begin by saying that McGill was “built on a history of oppression” and that its existence was “made possible by profiting off of the labour of enslaved and marginalised peoples.” Presumably, these vague claims serve as the pretext for the student’s call to reinvent the meaning of academic freedom by prohibiting any ideas with which they disagree. Citing the critical theorist David Gillborn, these students claim that legitimate speech is “dictated by whiteness.” Thus, speech should not be protected if it “harms” marginalized groups. Potentially harmful speech should only be permissible after a professor undergoes “robust equity training.” It is unclear how these students found a platform for their views in a society which is hellbent on silencing them. It is equally unclear how they would proceed if, after participating in the proposed training, a professor continued to believe in freedom of speech. Should such a professor lose his job? Should he be fined? Perhaps he should go to prison. After all, if speech is violence it should be punished accordingly.
There was a brief glimmer of hope in 2017 when Jordan Peterson made international headlines after his opposition to Canada’s misguided Bill C-16. Students at Queen’s University in Kingston had the privilege of listening to him speak one year later about the rising tide of compelled speech in Canada. Only a small group protested after demanding that the lecture be cancelled, but fast forward two years later and the same ideas which Peterson, Murray, Lindsay and others have warned against have been embraced by many at Queen’s, Cambridge, McGill and numerous other universities. Wokism is not being treated appropriately by students, faculty or alumni; the only appropriate response is outrage, and Douglas Murray leads by example because he is willing to say what others believe but are too afraid to say – or, for that matter, too afraid to hear.
Unfortunately, the outrage we hear most often is that of woke university students. Their ire has become frequent enough that it should have lost any of the meaning it may initially have had; outrage should be reserved for those moments which are truly outrageous, and not adopted as a default position to society itself (unless one happens to live in a tyrannical society, which we do not). Murray’s response to woke sophistry is powerful because it is sorely lacking. It is difficult to know whether this is a result of fear, cowardice or indifference. Whatever the case may be, students should not read Murray’s latest condemnation of their age cohort as an insult but rather as a challenge. If my generation continues to embrace childish ideas (or continues to humour those who believe them to be sophisticated) we should expect to be talked down to like children. If we have any self-respect we will do what can to distinguish ourselves.
33 comments
Madness of Crowds is excellent. However, the best book that I have seen on this and related issues is Heather MacDonald’s The Diversity Delusion which attacks the woke views on gender, race, culture and science fearlessly.
Murray is good. Journalists usually are compared to social scientists who cannot write a straight sentence without convoluion the obvious. Journalists live in the real world. I should add that reporters are nothing like them. They are servile creatures who will write anything to suit their mendacious masters if not mistresses. Peterson however has some strange ideas. Several years ago getting all excited about blokeyness or some such irrelevence no one actually bothered until he came along. Being courted at the time so he said something because of the opportunity. Pity it wasn’t relevent. As for Orban in Hungary, those who insist he doesn’t fit their definition of demo-crazy, ought to remember what the likes of Soros’s billions try to effect across the social fabric of Europe undemocratically at that. Through prepaid opeds in paid for think tanks. Structuring university courses which are ideologically slanted in the name of academic freedom which denies freedom to deny their ideology for starters. What is worse are the politicians in Europe. They have lost touch with the people who elected them but no longer represent them. And any who stand up for the people are labeled NSDAP just like that. The word -nazi- in Amerika is bandied around without understanding what they stood for and what they achieved and how the world at the time perceived them as well. AngoAmerikanised historians continue to revision history. Then take issue when historians revisionise history back. That then becomes relativism-ism by other elites who have their own burrow to not so much push but dump their digitial manure all over the internet and social media. What a moronic phenomenon information has been mangled into.
Sure, Murray is a charismatic man, and has been paying close attention for a long time – he switched on at an impressively young age. but I’m not sure he’s the man that needs to cometh, as the hour has cometh. Someone above smeared him with Viktor Orban – now, Orban is closer to the sort of apparition that we do need. Orban may shade too thuggish but it’s a fighting time. Murray is too much of an aesthete, and an agnostic. He doesn’t speak from within Christian culture. The author says that his generation “should expect to be talked down to like children.” Frankly it’s an uncompromising thrashing they need, and I can’t imagine Murray standing over a wingeing sophomore wielding the slipper. With his sleeves rolled up. His hair all tousled and flopping..
Ok, this was pure gold.
Vitor Orban has pursued a strategy of shutting down independent media companies, passed a law moving all political campaigning to state media, and generally sought to suppress speech critical of the government in Hungary. A puzzling choice as an example of “what’s needed” when you are posting on a website whose project is founded on protecting freedom of speech.
Orban has been elected by Hungarians on 4 separate occasions. He knows, as any intelligent person should know, that Hungary has been crushed under the boots of a number of other countries for almost 1000 years. Orban is a Hungarian patriot. I salute him.
It is not at all coincidental that those who advocate speech codes, spike news and a heavily regulated if not a socialist economy, are hostile to the basic and fundamental concepts of free minds and free markets.
I’d be much more onside with this piece if you didn’t treat Petersen and Murray as if they are speaking The Holy Truth. It’s to his credit that Peterson himself has made some of the more dubious parts of his own character explicit, speaking openly about his own failings, and we should not ignore his efforts. Students “had the privilege of listening to Petersen speak” did they? OK, sure. He makes a lot of sense on many topics, others less so – listen to him talk way out of his depth on climate change for example, it’s gets tiresome fairly quickly.
It’s a privilege to listen to a world-renowned public intellectual speak for free…
Calum-
I think one skill/emotion that has going missing in today’s society is the ability to feel gratefulness. Gratefulness falls under the emotion of happiness. I suspect you don’t encounter a lot of woke people who have a full range of emotions.
The Peterson lecture is a useful example because while only a small minority of students protested the event, that minority appears to be more influential on university polices than the silent majority (which is why Murray’s interview is a useful example).
“OK, sure. He makes a lot of sense on many topics, others less so – listen to him talk way out of his depth on climate change for example, it’s gets tiresome fairly quickly.”
Economics is another subject that tends to stretch Peterson a little thin. For someone who rails against Marxists, he has internalized one of Marxism’s fundamental concepts – income inequality. You see this phenomenon among many academics, where they clearly see and disagree with the radicals in their midst without realizing that the radicals are simply logical extensions of their commonly held ideological beliefs.
Helen Pluckrose is another. She clearly recognizes the illiberal dangers posed by CT, CSJ, and the Woke, while she embraces the same fundamental worldview outside of the narrow scope of her critical work here. One wonders if they have at least given pause at realizing they share the same policy goals as the people they also recognize are tearing Western civilization apart.
gmmayo70-
I agree with your observations.
I wonder how many academics have ever held a job in the private sector not teaching. Academia, in my opinion, is well-insulated from the realities of the free market (not corporatism) and unintended consequences. Government is similarly protected from the unpleasant consequences the riffraff (everyone else) copes with as a result of their decisions.
By the way, if you enjoy reading essays on economics, you may be interested in some of the work on mises.org. Cafehayek.com also has some good pieces. Both these sites provide ideas based on Austrian economic theory.
gmmay70 – income inequality is an empirical observation not an idea. Economists of all shades have written about using their different lines of thinking. Not sure I see what you are getting at…
Income inequality, in the Marxian context I mentioned, is held up as causative (indeed prima facie evidence) for a number of societal ills. Economists who tend to agree with this rely more on ideological persuasion than empiricism. Peterson has used income inequality in the same fashion.
The author makes a number of good points in this essay. However, I am not so sure that Douglas Murray is someone who should be held up as the voice of reason that everyone needs to listen to. I mean: Does Murray really believe in free speech and all the other values of a liberal society, or does he just hate the “woke”? There is a difference. I believe the question must be asked in light of the fact that Murray once said of Hungary’s autocratic leader Viktor Orban that he was a better sentinel of “European values” than George Soros. I don’t care how much one dislikes Soros or his position on refugee resettlement in Europe or anything else; Viktor Orban, with his assaults on freedom of the press and freedom of speech in Hungary, is no sentinel of liberal values, period. And if Douglas Murray is willing to overlook that in order to make some point about immigration, then I think that it is fair to ask whether or not Murray’s commitment to free speech is at least in part dependent on who is speaking.
I don’t think an endorsement of free speech needs to be buttressed by the fact that the person offering the endorsement once said/thought/did something objectionable. The sentiment he is promoting is sound, and university students should be on board with it. They are welcome to critique and disagree with Murray and anyone else; they are not welcome to try to prevent anyone from stating their case or speaking their mind.
There isn’t a single person on earth who isn’t flawed, who doesn’t have skeletons in their closet. Who should we look up to if the standard is perfection?
Viktor Orban is a great man, and a great Hungarian leader, who has been popularly elected 4 separate times. He is not an authoritarian. He is a popular leader in the populist tradition. Murray rightly identifies him as a great leader.
Love your website. Keep up the good fight.
“…these students claim that legitimate speech is “dictated by whiteness.” Thus, speech should not be protected if it “harms” marginalized groups.”
The irony of such a “woke” position is that PC and cultural Marxism are themselves dictated by whites. It is completely white European centric. White supremacists couldn’t have concocted a better means to racial segregation. And this is the argument I use whenever confronting cultural Marxists. Usually I’m met with blank stares, which means they are thinking….
Exactly
Mark-
Please don’t forget that 49% of the population is below average in measures of intelligence. One standard deviation above the mean is slightly more cognitively adept than average.
Over time, I’ve learned to not be shocked by any behavior humans produce and realize that under the right circumstances, anyone is capable of doing anything. Humans can fairly easily be manipulated as the tend to conform to a group standard.
At the same time, I understand the value in having people hear an opposing opinion.
It may be true that half the population is below the 50th percentile of intelligence, but those are NOT the people who are embracing “wokeness” at the speed of synaptic discharges. It is the people in the UPPER percentiles who are embracing CSJ, and the people in the middle are rushing to copy their “betters” and ape their elite manners.
The people on the bottom half of the percentiles, like those on the bottom half of the economic charts, are not only not the ones driving this lunacy, they are actively being ATTACKED by the cognitive elite Brahmin Left as backward, racist, sexist, transphobic, savages. Meanwhile, they often have little idea what is going on and why they are being attacked.
Only people with a certain degree of verbal intelligence are capable of deluding themselves into believing utter bosh because the description on the box contains so many fancy polysyllabic words. As Jonathan Haidt pointed out, one of the things humans do best with our intelligence is use it to rationalize incredibly stupid ideas.
Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
G.K. Chesterton
Micheal-
I think the term you were searching for is “useful idiot”. Long ago (I started practicing last century), I realized that irresponsible behavior and poor problem-solving skills respect no educational, professional, financial boundaries. Intelligent and wealthy people often think and do some magnificently stupid things. Common sense and intelligence are not the same thing.
Often, the more privileged individuals in society also have much higher levels of mental health dysfunction than those in lower SESs. That is my experience. My experience, of course, does not represent the entire universe of possibilities. At the same time, some data does support my observation. I have my own explanations for the dynamic.
As to rational thinking, I’m fond of remarking that humans mistake rationalization for rationality. By the way, some research supports the notion that intelligent people are easier to dupe than less intelligent people. It appears to be associated with the ability to consider a wider array of option as workable/possible.
This was the 70’s argument against IQ and standardized tests which blacks score disproportionately lower than other racial and ethnic groups even today. So why are so many blacks abandoning theories of relative intelligence versus education and giving in to Marxist European culture? Beacuse more and more blacks receive higher education, indoctrinated by the same rich white aristocratic eurocentric ideology as their white middle class peers. Hating western civilization is a luxury, like owning yachts. But in the future there will be no black people on yachts apart from celebrities and servants. How to help them from a future of reintroduced slavery? History must repeat itself, sorry to say. The Democrats won the war after all. Took them 150 years….
‘Murray’s response to woke sophistry is powerful because it is sorely lacking. It is difficult to know whether this is a result of fear, cowardice or indifference. ‘
For that answer I refer you to an earlier article on this site
https://newdiscourses.com/2019/12/academics-cowards-grievance-studies-academic-pursuit/
The answer being mostly understandable cowardice. When an mere accusation of bigotry can get you fired and blacklisted from the job you slaved to get for most of your life, as is happening everywhere in the Anglosphere, yeah, you keep your head down. They’ll still come for you (witness the insanity of the Ford Foundation President having to grovel for the speechcrime of ‘ableism’ for using the phrase tone-deaf when referring to the then cancellation of the Philip Guston exhibit, but it won’t be right away. As long as you mouth the right slogans and scream during the two-minute hate loud enough.
It’s not the profs who are to blame, it’s the administrations who are at fault. For refusing to tell the CRJ crowd what they are, White Supremacists, intent on locking every minority into intellectual cages and culling those who step out of line. Isn’t it funny that most of their ‘heroes’ and ‘men of words’ that they worship are dead white males?
Actually I’ve found their tactics and rhetoric to be quite reminiscent of things you saw out of the NSDAP in the late ’20s and after, especially the insane focus on “race” as defining everything (they even have their race enemies). Their focus on essentially canonizing anyone (so long as they’re the correct race, of course) who has a bad encounter with the police is reminiscent of what the NSDAP did with Horst Wessel.
The profs are complicit to the degree they advocate “social action” by their students as components of the typical SJ courses in the pseudo disciplines of ethnic studies and gender studies.
I would say that college administrations are enacting the theories advanced in these courses in their policies of Diversity Equity and Inclusion.
Combine this with the business model of higher ed that treats students like customers who must be appeased with every grievance no matter how absurd and you get the current anti-reason climate spreading throughout higher ed.
I really see no end to this trend.
Calum-
The human brain is not fully matured (cognitively and physiologically) until at least the age of 25. That probably helps to explain why college students and younger people are so easily influenced by certain ideas.
States in America, for example, have different a set of laws (status laws) they apply to people under the age of 18. That’s because the legal system recognizes adolescents do not have the ability to reason out their actions as well as an adult.
Contemporary parenting styles in conjunction with government nannyism have produced far too many people stuck in perpetual adolescence.
Well said. The internet has allowed many to plug their limbic system into society without the moderation of a ‘conversation’ between real people – that you interact with where you are forced to empathise and recognise fellow humans with opposing views.
If the current discourse over issues of ‘social justice’ seems adolescent, that’s because it is. The amygdala and brain stem of kids has been liberated, unconstrained by the normal tension and push back that is part of cultural ‘learning’ modalities that requires adults to know their role.
And who is most to blame? I think it is those who abandoned their adult responsibility when their children found the matches. They stood back and could find no good reason to impose on their kids and watched as they flicked fire into the superstructure of their own future. When university students became ‘clients’ and we backed away from mentoring in order to listen to tantrums, as if they were the wisdom of babes, we retreated as far as any civilisation can go – to our infancy. In the process we cheated our own children of parents. And a child who has never had adults in their lives with make a bad parent.
The age of brain development may have very little to do with this. It is not like most humans are knuckle-dragging Neanderthals until and only upon reaching any particular age.
I think the reasons for all this student “unrest” are rather multifaceted, but we can certainly suspect two prime agents: the rise of social media (in a particularly abusive and anti-social manner) and the peculiar and specific qualities of education currently – that being from baby school (the jury is still out on that one) and the last 20 years’ worth of K-12 education, finished off nicely in the halls of higher ‘learning.’
I wafted through the educational industrial complex in the 1950s and 1960s. Receiving a remarkably adept mixture of what was foundational to continue a long life of curiosity and inquiry. At no time was I in receipt of ideology. In spite of the fact that yes, certain archaic facts, figures and pronouncements did exist, they were gradually eroded away with the sands, winds and rains of time.
Instead of being toxified by ‘whiteness’ or any other color, I was challenged to learn how to think. For myself.
I was heartily on board with that, being a decided non-joiner of anything other than Boy Scouts for three rollicking good years of my boyhood.
One wonders now, does an education teach a student how to join the human race, or instead only to swell the numbers of a mob?
I can hardly imagine the width and the gap between a contemporary mob and the congregation that Martin Luther King led to Washington. As if – no-one quite knows how to do that anymore.
I could say we are in need of leadership in general, and students of all ages in particular. Instead, they get indoctrination.
Although I readily admit that a strong familial and parental foundation is a powerful start in life, I knew many people my age, in my youth, who were not blessed in that way, yet still grew up knowing how to think for themselves. The why of that does not mystify me in the least. They were not ‘messed with.’