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Western Civilization Is Under Threat from Without and Within

(Spiked-UK) Brendan O'Neill - On numerous occasions in 2023 I've wanted to call out both barbarism and its intellectual apologists, to express disgust for these new enemies of Western civilization. From Hamas to the radical Islamists in Europe who feel inspired by Hamas to the West's own sons and daughters of privilege who make excuses for Hamas - all have proven themselves to be the adversaries of truth, culture and reason. Surely no one will now deny that Western civilization is under assault on two fronts: from without and within. The apologism for Hamas in privileged circles has been mind-blowing. Hamas' bestial violence against the Jews has been denied, downplayed or outright justified. A "day of celebration" is how one privately educated pretend radical in Britain described the racist butchery of 7 October. The sympathy shown by woke Westerners for Hamas' apocalyptic violence reveals a moral kinship between these two sections of society. It exposes their shared contempt for Western civilization, their shared indifference to human suffering, and their shared loathing of freedom. We cannot afford to underestimate how significant it is that many of our young sympathize with Hamas and view the Jews they butchered as oppressors. Both wokeism and Islamism scorn the idea of Western civilization. Both disavow Enlightenment as Western arrogance. And both hate Jews. One side views them as pigs and monkeys, the other as an oppressor class. Jews have come to be seen as the embodiment of modernity, and therefore the enemies of modernity, whether that's the civilization skeptics of our own elite universities or the civilization attackers of radical Islam, turn on them. Viciously. There is a reluctance, these days, to speak of a clash between civilization and barbarism. Yet its existence can no longer be ignored. On one side, there are those who have abandoned reason, on the other, those of us who wish to defend it.
2024-01-05 00:00:00
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