The radical right is correct that the west is waning. But it’s rampant capitalism and endless wars that are causing its collapse, not ‘wokeness’
This century has one overarching theme: the fall of the west, that is, the US and its European allies. Every major crisis accelerates the unmistakable trend. The war in Gaza is just the latest manifestation. Western newspapers are now littered with articles full of the panicked realisation that more is buried in the rubble of Gaza than just thousands of unidentified bodies. “The damage to Israel’s reputation,” writes Matthew Parris in the Times, “so much less manifest than shattered hospitals in Gaza, is incalculable.” Yes, but it would be an error to believe that it is Israel’s problem alone. When the former Palestinian negotiator Diana Buttu told me this was an “Israeli-American attack”, she summed up what much of the world sees. That Israel faces a catastrophic strategic defeat and reputational calamity is dawning on even its most ardent supporters; soon it will be widely understood that this applies to its western cheerleaders, too.
The west’s decline long predates this current crime of historic proportions, but it is the radical right which has, to date, monopolised this conversation. For it, the explanations for the downfall are, variously, immigration, multiculturalism, Islam, “wokeness”, “gender ideology”, the disintegration of the nuclear family, and so on. Liz Truss’s forthcoming book, Ten Years to Save the West, raging against a supposedly leftwing establishment blocking free-market innovation, is the latest addition to this genre. In fact, the explanation is really rather simple. In the aftermath of the Soviet collapse more than 30 years ago, western elites became intoxicated with a premature triumphalism. The hubris of the US neoconservative Midge Decter, speaking after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, sums it up well. “It’s time to say: we’ve won. Goodbye,” she stated grandly.
