Intolerance is at the Heart of Liberalism

The incoherence of liberalism is going to need a better defense than the one offered by Douglas Murray.

Liberalism, as Douglas Murray rightly points out in his Spectator piece, is in the dock and subject to a new “cultural revolution.” Murray’s piece reflects an ever-growing pessimismacross western societies that the edifice upon which liberalism was built is giving way to a “woke” progressivism concerned with curtailing free speech and toppling statues. In this new world, young people exhibit an illiberalism that would, in Murray’s mind, not be out of place in a “Talibanised” society.

For Murray, Britain and the West face an existential crisis. Saving liberalism requires the idea to be defended and reasserted. Liberalism today is facing challenges from within and without, most notably because of the rise of nationalism. This well-trodden and rather pessimistic forecast is captured in Edward Luce’s gloomily titled book, The Retreat of Western Liberalism. Yet Murray and his fellow crusaders recall a mythical liberalism that has never actually existed. In reality, liberalism has all too often been co-opted by eurocentrists, imperialists, racists, and white nativists (like Murray) that place European civilization above all other cultures.