Douglas Murray: Racism, Marxism, and the War on the West | Lex Fridman Podcast #296

I think that some people are deliberately trying to completely clear the cultural landscape of our past in order to say there's nothing good, nothing you can hold onto, no one you should revere. You've got no heroes. The whole thing comes down. Who's left standing? Oh, we've also got this idea from the 20th century still about Marxism. And, and no, no. You, you, you, you w- I will not have the entire landscape deracinated and then the worst ideas tried again.

The following is a conversation with Douglas Murray, author of The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity, and his most recent book, The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason. He's a brilliant, fearless, and often controversial thinker who points out and pushes back against what he sees as the madness of our modern world. I should note that the use of the word Marxism and the West in this conversation refers primarily to cultural Marxism and the cultural values of Western civilization respectively. This is in contrast to my previous conversation with Richard Wolff, where we focused on Marxism as primarily a critique of capitalism, and thus looking at it through the lens of economics and not culture. Nevertheless, these two episodes stand opposite of each other with very different perspectives on how we build a flourishing civilization together. I leave it to you, the listener, to think and to decide which is the better way. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Douglas Murray. You recently wrote the book titled The War on the West, which in part says that the values, ideas, and history of Western civilization are under attack. So, let's start with the basics. Historically and today, what are the ideas that represent Western civilization, the good, the bad, the ugly?

I actually don't get stuck on, um, definitions, precisely 'cause as you know, once you get stuck on definitions there's a possibility you'll never get off them.

Yes. (laughs)

Um, I'd say a few things. Firstly, uh, obviously the Western tradition is a specific tradition, a specific tradition of ideas, culture, well known to be perhaps easily defined by the combination of Athens and Jerusalem, the, the world of the Bible, and the world of ancient Greece and, and indeed Rome. Uh, effectively creates West, uh, creates European civilization, which itself spawns the rest of the Western civilizations: America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and others. Uh, but these are the main countries that we still refer to as, as the West. Um, so there's a specific tradition and all of the things that come from it. Uh, my shorthand cheat on this answer is to say, um, you know when you're not in it.

(laughs)

So if you've ever been to Beijing, Shanghai, it's like you know you're not in the West. You're somewhere else, but you know you're not in the West. When you're in Tokyo, you're somewhere extraordinary, but you know you're not in the West. Uh, obviously there are, um, let's say borderline questions, like is Russia in the West? Um, which I sort of leave open as a, as a question. Um, uh, possibly.