Join Dutch commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek and British author Douglas Murray as they dive deep into one of today’s most heated debates: illegal immigration. 🇳🇱🇬🇧
👉 Discover their insights on the impact, politics, and the future of Europe amidst this ongoing crisis.
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Douglas Murray also known as Douglas Kear Murray is a British author and a famous political commentator. Douglas Murray is the founder of the Center for Social Cohesion.
Douglas Murray Bio Date of birth 16 July 1979 Age 85 years old Gender Male Net Worth $20 Million Author, Political Commentator, Douglas Murr
I've never felt a need to firmly "place" myself on a political spectrum. The main reason for this (at least until recently) was due to my sheer disinterest in politics, to my current shame. Now, though, the primary reason is that I tend to see the flattening of one's beliefs to align well with a party or a platform as being problematic. I want more, less, or different enough things that I can't easily become a card-carrying anything. That said, whether or not I self-identify as anything politically, I'm assured people do their own identification of me. I can safely say this because a) they have told me, and b) I tend to do the same thing myself. Though I prefer to remain uncategorized politically, I rarely "do unto others". In my defense, this seems to be a reasonably universal human propensity, and it's not even all-bad. In fact, my own desire to avoid labels is likely (in part) motivated by undue vanity. Yes, there's only one me; but I wear skinny jeans & beanies and obsess over U2 about as much as you'd think I would after you took one look at me.
The reason I started this reflection where I started it is because my experience so far leads me to the general conclusion that when I interact with people who tend to be politically "left", I end up looking kinda "right". But when the shoe's on the other foot (as it often is in the church settings I'm familiar with), then I end up looking like a "lefty". I guess you could say I'm politically ambidextrous, to a certain extent. With this in mind, to those who do view me more "left", then it may come as a surprise that I recently read through Douglas Murray's The Madness Of Crowds, and found it quite engaging. By the end of this little reflection, though, I'm hopeful that you'll see why.
To be sure, this is a "hot topic" book, a book which pulls very few punches, and probably punches almost everyone once or twice, in fact. In essence, I would say that Murray's primary target is what we might call "identity politics", a term which is admittedly ambiguous, but which he fleshes out mostly by tugging at the threads of another current buzzword (namely "intersectionality") by unpacking chapters on homosexuality, feminism, race concerns, and transsexual rights. These chapters are separated by three interludes, one on Marxism, one on technology, and (surprisingly yet movingly) one on the nature & importance of forgiveness. Now, I cannot adequately summarize his work in each section, nor can I provide definitions for each term, but it does seem important to at least give a moment to the term "intersectionality", since it is a relatively recent addition to our lexicon. Webster's (online) dictionary defines it as:
"...the complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, and classism) combine, overlap, or intersect especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups."
Visually, a venn diagram (such as this one from womankind.org) might be helpful:
This is a tad editorial, but in my opinion, the dictionary definition of the word really does seem to imply that intersectionality is most often a way of tallying how much an individual is oppressed, a value which can then be used (tacitly or otherwise) to compare against someone else's tally. In other words, it's a concept inherently built upon the understanding of oppression as a "positive" value (a measurable value), not a "negative" value (a value only recognizable in relief to its opposite, freedom). Murray makes no bones about the fact that he sees this "Hierarchy of Oppression" as highly problematic. As he says in the book's conclusion:
"Victimhood rather than stoicism or heroism has become something eagerly publicized, even sought after, in our culture" (pg 252).
This "commodity of victimhood", he posits, is at the nexus of the varying popular concerns which are the main points of his chapters. He questions why at this point in our history, when so many of these battles for equal rights seemed to have been won, are they raging again at a level that seems as fierce as ever, if not fiercer? He cites the work of Kenneth Minogue and his concept of "St George In Retirement Syndrome" (a 3-minute explanation of which is available here) as one potential explanation, the image of a man who had grown so used to slaying dragons that, once all dragons had been slain, was seen swinging his sword at thin air. This is an extreme analogy, to be sure, and this may be a helpful time to remind you that I am not its originator, nor do I necessarily buy into it wholesale. That being said, it does strike a chord with me, to the degree that we in the West can be said to be the offspring of Protestantism in general. Our cultural DNA is coded to reformation; one way or another, we will find something to reform, whether we like it or not.
In the chapter on race, Murray cites several examples of when producers of films or plays cast the "wrong" person for the role, for various (and conflicting) reasons. As he says on pg 144: "...casting [for acting roles] can either be colour-blind or colour-obssessed, but it probably cannot be both." This concept of colour-blindness shows up elsewhere in the book, as well, when he mentions that in his youth this was viewed as a generally positive term, a term that suggested we were moving closer to an egalitarian vision of people being judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character. However, Murray remarks that in recent years, we seem to have begun the process of re-racializing virtually everything. Obviously, in the author's view, this is a negative turn:
"...minimizing difference is not the same as pretending difference does not exist. To assume that sex, sexuality and skin colour mean nothing would be ridiculous. But to assume that they mean everything will be fatal" (256).
"Fatal", he means, not so much personally (though there are individuals on both sides of the conversation who have lost their lives in the fray) as societally. To continue down this line, Murray implies, is to erode our civil foundations:
"...while racial equality, minority rights and women's rights are among the best products of liberalism, they make the most destabilizing foundations. Attempting to make them the foundation is like turning a barstool upside down and then trying to balance on top of it. The products of the system cannot reproduce the stability of the system that produced them" (pg 8).
This is a brilliant turn of phrase, at least, if not also a brilliant insight. That's one of the things that bears saying about this book: it is masterfully crafted. Murray has done years of successful work in journalism, and not only does his research show that, but so too does his prose. Yes, he's perhaps just a touch snarkier than might be ideal (particularly for someone who's advocating for more civil online & offline dialogue), but the same could be said of me... and likely has.
Now, an easy pushback on Murray's thesis would be to say that all this talk of "going too far" and the like are merely ways of perpetuating his views on & enjoyment of positional power. I mean, he'd obviously not want to upset the status quo, right?! He's as white as they come, very clearly male, well-educated, well-spoken, and well-placed in any known hierarchy. This guy's got it made, and so he just wants everyone else to sit down, shut up, and enjoy the ride. The only snag with that interpretation is that he's outspokenly gay. Not merely same-sex attracted (a distinction I would prefer made from my viewpoint), but a practicing homosexual. In other words, he's got intersectional "cred" (at least, some).
Now, he spends some time in the book talking about what happens when an individual from what are often known as "marginalized groups" takes a stand that deviates from what is perceived to be that particular group's majority opinion (see Kanye in a MAGA hat for any further questions), but we won't get into that here. Suffice it to say (to paraphrase him), Murray may be gay, but he might not be "gay". In fairness, I have noticed an awful lot of Christians applying the same distancing tactics over the past few years...
Ah, and now's a good time to make one more little note: Murray would be an uneasy ally for some Christians, since he would either (or variously) seem to consider himself agnostic or atheistic. Either way, he would not consider himself a Christian, and even less-so an evangelical. Yet, there is a small group of public intellectuals partially like himself (Jordan Peterson, Jonathan Haidt, and Tom Holland, to name just a few examples) who end up getting retweets from the broader evangelical world, which I find worthy of note. Many of the things these folks say end up aligning with Christian values (a phenomenon that Tom Holland would in no way be surprised about, given his thesis that Christianity effectively built the liberal West), but those articulated thoughts are not consciously rooted in faith. This might not be a problem... but it also might be a problem. Maybe we'll look more at that another time.
I really need to wrap this up, even though I've hardly cracked the surface of the content in the book. Murray's look at how forgiveness holds us together is a crucial takeaway from the book, as is his tip to pursue fact-to-face conversations over online monologues (a key to change the world for the better). I also appreciated his suggestion that we ask "Compared to what?" when faced with claims of the various degradations of society; this, to me, is an unprejudicial opportunity to consider the facts of the case for both parties involved. On pg 232, he cites the work of Daniel Patrick Moynihan who posits that "...claims of human rights violations happen in exactly inverse proportion to the number of human rights violations in a country. You do not hear of such violations in unfree countries."
Even though I really want to unpack his rhetorical question "The same, or slightly better?", I'll save that for another day, and end by reflecting on a comment Murray makes on pg 31 when discussing an ongoing theme in the book (namely, the interplay between what he calls "software issues" & "hardware issues"; psychology v biology, or nurture v nature):
"For the time being the 'gay gene' remains elusive. Which is not to say that it won't be found at some point. Only that the war that goes on around it is telling. In general, fundamentalist Christians and others want a 'gay gene' not to be found, for the discovery of such a gene would seriously harm one of the foundations of their own view of the world ('God makes people gay?') and would have to affect their own stance on the matter..."
This is exhibit A for the uneasy relationship between Murray and some Christians who might want to use his thinking to bolster their own. This statement reveals a general misunderstanding of the Christian view of human nature, since it does not in any way take into account that Christians typically believe all humans are prone to behaviours and beliefs that are contrary to the will of God, whether or not you can identify a specific line of genetic code that points it out. Even if you could, it wouldn't mean that God purposefully "made" them that way. That's a weak understanding of causality.
There's obviously way more in there than I should take the time to unpack right now, but seeing that line written down in a book that I found to be so thought-provoking reminded me of the following:
1- To go full-circle, you can't really fully "peg" anyone. There's no one individual who can label themselves well enough for you to unthinkingly agree with/imbibe all of their viewpoints... other than Jesus, that is.
2- There are so many disagreements within the Church-at-large over issues of doctrine & interpretation that it really ought not to have shocked me to have seen someone who is culturally informed by a Christian worldview but does not have strong direct-access to those teachings currently to misrepresent just such a view. Let's not just blanketly-believe what people say about the Bible, about the Church, or about Jesus. Let's look into it for ourselves.
3- If you count yourself (like I do) as a follower of Jesus, then let's always remember the way He labelled us: salt & light. In conversations both simple & complex, let's be flavourful & illuminating. Let's not worry about being right or left; let's camp out at the intersection of salt & light, of truth & love.
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Other notable quotables:
"The special mark of the modern world is not that it is sceptical, but that it is dogmatic without knowing it. -- G. K. Chesterton" (title page)
"The manner in which people and movements behave at the point of victory can be the most revealing thing about them." (pg 16)
"...privilege as an issue is repeatedly raised because it is assumed to be something that other people have." (pg 87)
"Equality in the eyes of God is a core tenet of the Christian tradition. But it has translated in the era of secular humanism not into equality in the eyes of God but equality in the eyes of man. And here there is a problem, which is that many people realize, fear or intuit that people are not entirely equal..." (pg 168)
"You cannot tell people simultaneously 'You must understand me' and 'You cannot understand me.' -- Mark Lilla" (pg 240)
