There are straws in the wind, sometimes more telling than bigger events. If the West does not believe in itself, it will struggle, may not even survive, culturally, politically, socially and militarily. When a person, institution or culture loses belief in itself, it decays, declines or dies.
Here are three disparate signs, none decisive, all revealing. The EU has long been beyond parody and I have often jokingly referred to it as essentially the work of the devil. As usual, reality overtook satire. The European Commission recently produced an authoritative internal document, Union of Equality, a guide to inclusive language. Naturally, its first ruling was that no official document, and no approved usage, should include reference to Christmas. Therefore an expression like “the Christmas period can be stressful” had to be changed to “the holidays can be stressful”. It was similarly verboten to use Christian names in any instructive literature. Don’t say John and Mary are a European couple but use generic names like Malika and Giulio.
There were a lot of other obnoxious, idiotic instructions in this document. No one, for example, was ever again to begin remarks at an EU function with the words “Ladies and gentlemen”. But it was the anti-Christian animus that was most revealing. It provoked a furious reaction even from Pope Francis, politically the most left of centre, and certainly the most woke, pope in the past 100 years. He accused the EU of colonialism, trying to impose its illiberal religious identity against the indigenous religion of Europe, which is Christianity.
Christianity, according to the Pew Research Centre, is the most persecuted religion in the world. While a universal religion open to all, it is also the foundation of Western civilisation and especially of Europe. I have never known a follower of any other non-Christian religion object to Christmas in Western societies. This is rather the work of illiberal, coercive, uber-secularists, typically lost in the swamp lands of postmodern identity fanaticism.
This particular document was so absurd it was later withdrawn, but it demonstrates the EU’s dismaying shame and denial of Europe’s Christian heritage.
Example two is more serious. Recently a bus load of Jewish children in London were celebrating the Hanukkah festival. A group of adult men abused them, striking the bus, spitting, making Nazi salutes. The BBC, in reporting the incident, claimed there were anti-Muslim slurs shouted from the bus. Everyone on the bus denies this. The BBC later changed its report to one anti-Muslim slur, but this too is denied and may have been misheard Hebrew language cries for help.
First, let’s remark on the hideous, vile, putrid nature of this incident: children abused for attending a religious festival. It is a standard feature of contemporary anti-Semitism to hold Jews of any nationality, citizenship or age responsible for all actions, real and imagined, of the Israeli government. But the BBC’s performance is the most bizarre element.
Can you imagine if the group of abused children was any background other than Jewish the BBC straining so desperately to find some matching instance of prejudice from among the innocent victims? The BBC is forever desperate to find an Islamophobic element to balance any anti-Semitism it reports.
Here’s the rub. Judaism, like Christianity, is a foundation stone of the West, even though the West has its own hideous tradition of anti-Semitism. One element of contemporary anti-Semitism found on the left and among Islamists is to hate Israel and by extension Jews precisely because they are part of the West. The BBC cannot bear to defend Jews, much less Israel, lest it unintentionally find itself defending the West.
The third example comes from Rod Dreher, in a brilliant blog on The American Conservative on Sunday that had the headline “America hates you. Now go fight for her”. One key demographic for the US military has always been conservative mid-westerners. Another, interestingly, is Hispanics. Many active duty soldiers are telling Dreher the contemporary US military has become so self-consciously woke that they feel their culture and values are impugned.
US military recruitment ads, 15 or 20 years ago, were the best in the world. They knew that soldiers had to be warriors because they might have to fight wars. They knew this was a vocation of sacrifice and heroism, born out of love for nation and community. I remember one classic with only these words: “The few. The brave. The marines”, which was magnificent. These ads typically featured men and women. They showed the military’s diversity, as they should, incidentally. There were almost always recognisably white, black and Hispanic soldiers and sometimes others as well. The ads were not about your pre-military identity but your future of military service. The US military, as Colin Powell described in his classic memoir, was one of the first US institutions to racially integrate, one of the first where black men routinely gave orders to white men.
Dreher includes three military recruitment ads, one Chinese, one Russian, one American. I can’t understand the Chinese or Russian words but they look like traditional US recruitment ads, emphasising tough training, heroic service, potential military conflict, which is what military service actually consists of.
The American ad is a cartoon about a little girl and her two mums. The video follows their family life – the two mums marry each other. The whole family goes on protest marches. And then, to find personal fulfilment, the little girl, after college, joins the military. Her reason for doing so is self-realisation: “I needed my own adventures, my own challenges.” She doesn’t cite any ridiculous, anachronistic, too-square-to-bear military purpose like defending her nation. The only wider justification for joining the military is to “shatter some stereotypes”.
This is a species of madness, of which the Australian military has a goodly portion, though much reduced under Peter Dutton. It is of course wonderful that a child of two mothers, or indeed a child of anyone, should join the military. But this ad removes the central purpose, to prevail in war, and the central reality, the potential sacrifice of your life for your country, entirely from the military story. The only enemy is the old society that you came from and the whole of military life is presented as performative social liberalism with a high quotient of existential self-centredness.
These examples are self-explanatory. They show elite institutions hostile or indifferent to their own culture and history, and now perhaps going mad.
Greg Sheridan discusses his new book, Christians: The Urgent Case for Jesus in Our World, Polding Centre, level five, 133 Liverpool St, Sydney, next Monday, December 13, 6.30pm. Bookings: https://sydneycatholic.eventsair.com/msb/sheridan/Site/Register
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