The assassination of Charlie Kirk and much of the reaction to the assassination has shown the extent to which Western liberals and liberal ideas have become corrupted by their inability to stand up to the left, and by their allegiance to the principles of the ‘liberal world order’. Thank heavens this post-war period is ending.
At the end of the Second World War, there was a justifiable sense that the world needed to be re-ordered to prevent such a cataclysmic event ever happening again. Nationalism was clearly to blame; after all, the Nazis’ full name was the National Socialist Party. That the Nazis were not nationalists but imperialists who wanted to subjugate the whole of Europe was ignored. Similarly, probably due to communist sympathies, the fact that the Nazis also saw themselves as socialists was also conveniently ignored.
This anomaly continues to this day. Jordan Peterson points out that communists have killed multiple-fold more people, and have created hugely more misery than the Nazis, yet Communism and Marxism are acceptable. (There are communist parties in South Africa, the USA, in many countries in Europe and the East, and a plethora of splinter communist parties in the UK.) However, being called a Nazi is the ultimate insult. Western liberals, it seems, are quite willing to accept and tolerate leftist authoritarianism.
With the condemnation of nationalism, the Western elites believed that it was necessary to establish what became known as the post-war ‘liberal world order’. It was important to establish international organisations like the IMF, the UN, the World Trade Organisation, the international courts, and a range of other organisations which would go about ordering the world to prevent a repeat of the world war. Nation states had to become subservient to these global organisations, and penalties were imposed on those states which disobeyed and did not have the power to resist punishment.
This became known as the ‘rules-based order’, where countries would behave according to the rules laid down by these international organisations rather than based on national self-interest and national power. This is clearly a tempting concept, but it is always a problem when you separate where power lies and where decisions are made. The result was that while many countries obeyed the rules, they were being weakened by other countries like China and Russia, which broke the rules and had the power to resist punishment.
This globalist idea is essentially anti-democratic, because it contends that nations must act not in the interests of their electorates or according to democratic mandates, but rather according to the dictates of these global organisations. The pervasiveness of this thinking throughout the Western political class was seen when Keir Starmer recently said he would choose Davos rather than Westminster.
Globalisation
So Western countries began to ignore national interests and the interests of their people in favour of globalisation. The electorate in many Western countries have repeatedly voted against this globalisation but were powerless to prevent it, because all the political parties, until recently, supported the liberal world order. Even Brexit, which is probably the most obvious example of this rejection, has not changed the approach of successive Conservative and Labour governments.
The current people’s revolt in the democratic world from the USA to Japan is a direct consequence of this undemocratic process that means ignoring the will of the electorate.
This global focus has developed over the last 80 years, but was given a huge boost by the ‘end of history’ thesis by Francis Fukuyama. Fukuyama’s initial article and later book provided a far more sophisticated view than was generally promoted. However, the idea was that the end of the Soviet Union in the 1980’s represented the final triumph of liberal democracy. All other forms of government had been discredited, and it was only a matter of time before all nations became liberal democracies.
This idea worked hand-in-glove with the globalist agenda: it was no longer necessary to defend liberal democracies or liberal values. Instead, authoritarian regimes would be welcomed and treated as equals. Hence China was accepted into the World Trade Organisation, even though it did not conform to requirements and had no intention of following the trade rules.
This was not a problem because, it was believed, China would soon, and inevitably, become a liberal democracy. So the ‘liberal’ world order through these global organisations became ripe for corruption by leftist take-over. One need only look at all the sub-units of the UN; the response of the WHO to the Covid epidemic; the pandering to China by the WTO and the hostility of most of these organisations to true liberal values.
All people and all cultures
The globalist view is premised on the idea that all people and all cultures are the same, and none is better than any other. So, for example, according to the neocons in the USA, if you invade Iraq and set up democratic institutions, Iraq will automatically become democratic, regardless of the cultural patterns of the people. Or, if you move people with no democratic values or traditions to democratic countries, they too will suddenly and without any integration or education become democratic.
The relevance of this is that, with globalisation, free trade came to mean not only the free movement of goods but also the free movement of capital and people. Capital flowed out of Western countries, as companies moved mainly to China to increase their profits. This of course benefited the global elite in all countries due to the increase in the value of their shares and assets, but caused economic devastation and de-industrialisation in numerous countries (including South Africa).
The free movement of people meant that borders were opened, resulting in an unregulated influx which reduced wages for indigenous workers, caused a shortage of housing, put huge strain on the welfare system and undermined national cultures.
The extent of the damage to social cohesion this has caused has recently been highlighted by the academic David Betz (his area of specialisation is civil conflict) who suggests that the UK is now in the preliminary stages of a low-grade civil war. The same applies to France, the Netherlands and Germany. The primacy given to immigrants and the disrespect for local citizens was shown by the recent court case relating to the migrant hotel in Epping in the UK, where the government’s lawyers argued that the rights of migrants should receive precedence over the rights of UK citizens. This was accepted and stated explicitly by the judge in his ruling.
In parallel with this globalisation, we had the left implementing ‘the long march through the institutions.’ This is true not only of the global organisations but also of the institutions in many democratic countries. The political philosopher Antonio Gramsci suggested that the elite in any country maintain their wealth and position through dominating and controlling the institutions. If this is true, it is a small step for the left to realise that a country could be captured, not through violence or through the ballot box, but by slowly taking over the institutions.
Relentlessly pursued
And this has been relentlessly pursued in the West, starting in the universities, where a bridgehead would be established through the appointment of a leftist academic who would then make sure that other leftist academics were appointed, until the point has been reached where at the elite universities like Harvard, there are virtually no conservative academics.
Commentators such as Jonathan Haidt and Niall Ferguson have documented this comprehensively. This provided the left with the power to indoctrinate future generations of the elite into Marxist ideology, as can be seen today at the elite university campuses of the USA. It also provided them with the power to decide what scientific research was conducted and how the results of that research were presented. As a result, almost all academic research is liberal or leftist in orientation. Domination of academic journals has meant that research which supports the leftist narrative is accepted for publication.
It also provided the power to influence society more broadly. Academics are presented as ‘experts’, whose views are given prominence. (In South Africa there are still a few brave voices at UCT who stand up against this infiltration.)
This long march has extended way beyond the universities into the school education systems, where children are influenced towards into the principles of Critical Theory, into corporations which support DEI policies and into government. It was clear during Trump’s first term that he was continually undermined by a recalcitrant administration when implementing his democratic mandate.
Liz Truss, the short-lived (but likely to soon be vindicated) prime minister of the UK has spoken comprehensively of the impossibility of the elected prime minister being able to implement policies which the electorate voted for, but which the entrenched liberal / leftist bureaucracy opposes.
The international NGOs are in a class of their own when it comes to being captured by the left. It’s the same with international organisations like the UN and WHO. I will not even attempt to talk of the legacy media. All of this is anti-democratic. (It is noteworthy that the Muslim Brotherhood has adopted this policy – known as entryism – and has made Islamist inroads into the bureaucracy in France.)
Corrupted and co-opted
Western liberalism has, I believe, become so corrupted and co-opted by leftist ideology that it is today difficult to distinguish in the West between liberals and Marxists. The liberal concept of free and open debate in society to arrive at the best understanding is hugely important in good governance in a democratic country.
But it has been replaced by a denigration of anyone who has opposing views as ‘deplorables’ (Hillary Clinton, a liberal), ‘people who cling to their bibles and guns’ (Barack Obama, a liberal), ‘Fascist scum (off our streets)’, Nazis, Hitler, far-right, populists etc. This has been copied by the UK Labour government over the last week with its co-ordinated attack on Nigel Farage as racist, Islamophobic, anti-gay, misogynist, and authoritarian. David Lamie, the Deputy Prime Minister, even claimed that Farage supported the Nazi youth. (He has since apologised).
Charlie Kirk was important because his signature was his belief in free, respectful, and open debate. His whole approach was to engage in combative but respectful debate with students who had different views, under the slogan ‘Prove me wrong.’ And the reaction to his assassination from western liberals and the left has ranged from a flood of posts on Tik-Tok and Blue Sky celebrating his assassination; through articles in the legacy media on how he had it coming, ( ‘provoked’ is the word often used) because he put forward ‘hateful’ views; to the jeers and boos from members of the Democratic Party in the USA Congress and from members of the European Parliament during the moment of silence to commemorate his assassination.
Even in South Africa, the Daily Maverick published a snide article with the term “rabble-rousers” in the title, which was either wholly ignorant and uninformed or intentionally misleading and malicious. That Western liberals no longer believe in free, open, and democratic debate is clear. It has all been truly sickening.
Aftermath
It is noteworthy that in the aftermath of the assassination there has been no hateful rhetoric from conservatives, there have been no riots, no burning of buildings, no attacking the police and no looting. The free speech march in London brought together probably close to half a million people with the only trouble and violence being in response to attacks by counter-protestors. The most ‘hateful’ thing was their singing “Keir Starmer is a wanker”, which, considering the performance of his government, is probably a reasonable opinion.
An issue related to the importance of free and open debate was highlighted by James Myburgh in an interesting recent The Common Sense podcast, hosted by Gabriel Makin and under the auspices of Frans Cronje’s Social Research Foundation. Myburgh spoke of the concept of “the politics of responsibility” versus “the politics of the ultimate end”. The politics of responsibility understands that politics and governance are always the art of the possible. There are advantages and disadvantages in all the options available, and there are consequences to actions.
The issue at play is to weigh up these advantages and disadvantages and make the appropriate choice. This is the true liberal democratic approach. The politics of the ultimate end is utopian and says that politicians must always do what is ‘right’, regardless of the consequences.
So if it is ‘right’ to fight climate change, then that is what you must do, regardless of whether it will destroy your economy by hugely increasing the cost of energy. If it is ‘right’ to aim at racial equality, then that is what you must do, even if the policies impoverish the poor and only enrich a small elite. This utopian approach is leftist, but has come to dominate much of the elite thinking in ‘liberal’ democracies. While liberal Western governments have been seduced by a global utopian approach, interestingly, the Chinese government acts clearly in the national interest.
Related to this is the rule by ‘experts’. Experts are presented as those who know ‘the correct thing’ to do and should therefore be obeyed without question. The problem with ‘experts’ is that their approach is invariably single-issue, while governance is a complex range of often conflicting options. So health experts during the Covid epidemic will call for a full lockdown without any consideration of the economic impact. Hence the stupidity of the response to Covid, hence the insanity of the net-zero policies of European governments, hence reserve banks harming economies in the pursuit of preventing inflation.
Against ‘populists’
Within democratic countries the corruption of Western liberals is also shown by the use of the legal system against ‘populists’ in the USA, in Romania, in France, in Belgium, in Brazil and in Germany. The undermining of democracy has occurred throughout the Western world by a refusal to implement democratic mandates because they did not suit the interests of the elite or the global liberal world order.
The rule of law has been undermined through support for the violence during the Black Lives Matter protests and the tolerance of inciteful chants during pro-Hamas protests. The undermining of equality before the law has been shown through what has become known as two-tier justice in the UK and Europe (and South Africa). The extent of this was shown recently in the UK, where an advisory body recommended that white men should be given harsher sentences than other offenders.
That the liberal belief in reason and in science has been corrupted is shown in the scientists’ approach to Covid and lies about the disease, in the insanity of the net-zero climate change approach and in the promotion of the trans ideology. The corruption is shown by the ignoring of the rape gangs in the UK so as to maintain ‘community relations’, and by the Anglican church, which recently condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza but ignores the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Christians by Muslims in northern Nigeria and northern Mozambique.
Not all civilisations are equal. The truly Western liberal approach has resulted in the most free, just, and successful societies. These Western values need to be rejuvenated and restored.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk is an important moment in the West. Elon Musk in his presentation to the ‘March for Free Speech’ in London made a call to arms to defend democracy. It is a call to liberals to join conservatives against the illiberal left, to save Western civilization and values. In South Africa, liberalism has not been corrupted to the same extent, but we need to see the corruption of western liberalism as a warning.
It is time for South African liberals to join conservatives against the left, and stop the continual snide sniping about Trump and the ‘far-right’. Commentators who claim that the end of the corrupted liberal world order is a slide into authoritarianism should now look carefully at what is happening in the Western world.
Anti-democratic
It is not Trump who is anti-democratic; it is those who deny free speech. It is those who celebrate violence. It is those who denigrate and dehumanise their political opponents. It is those who use the legal system against their political adversaries. It is those who try to deny legitimacy by referring to people as the ‘far right’ and as populists. It is those who no longer support equality before the law. It is those who no longer believe that people should be judged by the content of their character rather than by the colour of their skin. It is those who betray the interests of the poor and vulnerable on the altar of BEE which promotes the interests of a small elite. It is those who deny the validity and importance of national identity and of national and cultural differences.
It is time for those in South Africa who believe in true liberal values to take a stand.
[Image: https://www.piqsels.com/en/public-domain-photo-jrdpo/download]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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