Stanley, Tim (27 September 2019). "The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray, review: unleashing a liberal dose of outrage". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235 . Retrieved 7 November 2022. In the end, for all the West’s failings, as Murray says in his chapter on China, the most important question to ask its critics is “compared to what?” Today, the China-Russia alliance presents a chilling glimpse of the real alternative: a pair of genocidal, expansionist regimes, each justifying its crimes in the name of civilisational purity. Allchorn, William (2019). "Beyond Islamophobia? The role of Englishness and English national identity within English Defence League discourse and politics". National Identities. 21 (5): 527–539. doi: 10.1080/14608944.2018.1531840. S2CID 149608896 . Retrieved 3 January 2021. In addition, in Busher's (2015) ethnographic study of EDL activism in the South East, he confirms that – while EDL activists' ideological sources were largely drawn from 'esoteric [Counter-Jihad] authors' – they also 'extended well beyond this niche' to include mainstream 'Islamophobes' such as Douglas Murray and prominent New Atheists Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins (p. 84), whose characterisation of the Muslim faith as 'evil' or 'mad' adds grist to the group's Islamophobic cause.

Taheri, Amir (20 January 2006). "Neoconservatism: Why We Need It". Asharq al-Awsat . Retrieved 3 February 2020.

Geron Pilon, Juliana (2017). "The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam/The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age". Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs. 11 (2): 255–260. doi: 10.1080/23739770.2017.1375282. S2CID 219288742 . Retrieved 7 January 2021. That is a gross over-simplification. In pretty much every Western country, there have been big arguments about immigration. In Australia, the United States, Britain, Germany, Italy, pretty much anywhere one cares to name, politicians have come to realise they will only possess legitimacy if they avert unrestricted immigration. In “The Strange Death of Europe” Murray was profoundly pessimistic about the future direction of the West. In contrast in this book, he is optimistic about the prospects of winning this current culture war. Marx, however, suffers what is in some ways a greater humiliation. He is ridiculed, or treated as a mere curiosity. If one does not wish to pay to enter the cemetery, one can see him through the railings on the southern edge of Waterlow Park, at a distance which reduces the bust to an acceptable size.

Murray has described himself as atheist, having been an Anglican until his twenties. [132] [19] [26] He has also described himself as a cultural Christian and a Christian atheist. [133] [19] Works [ edit ] Hussain, Murtaza (25 December 2018). "The Far Right is obsessed with a book about Muslims destroying Europe. Here's what it gets wrong". The Intercept. Archived from the original on 30 November 2020 . Retrieved 2 January 2021. Susan Sontag called white Western civilisation “the cancer of human history”. Given what Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are up to, it might be fairer, if unconsoling, to see the West as history’s chemotherapy. Traumatic to encounter, in many ways destructive, but the alternatives don’t bear thinking about.Kotch, Alex (27 December 2018). "Who funds PragerU's anti-Muslim content?". Sludge. Archived from the original on 8 November 2020 . Retrieved 20 December 2020. 'Europe is committing suicide,' says British author Douglas Murray in a video published by the far-right educational nonprofit Prager University. The cause? 'The mass movement of peoples into Europe…from the Middle East, North Africa and East Asia' who allegedly made Europe lose faith in its beliefs and traditions Now, Christianity has always had some great values, namely that every human is worth the same (but not “is” the same, as in communism). But people seem to forget that Christianity, traditionally, was also quite intolerant of many things. Murray presumably knows that Michel Foucault was not a Marxist, but it’s important to his branch of conservatism that this is brushed over. The M word serves as a coded way of tying together the humanities, Marx himself and (with a small leap of imagination) the Gulag. The fact that it is now illegal to teach gender studies in Hungary, as decreed by Viktor Orbán (favourite intellectual: Douglas Murray), poses questions as to where the real threat to liberty is coming from. But you won’t find any discussion of that in The Madness of Crowds.

The acclaimed gender theorist Judith Butler is held up as a malignant fraud who hides behind the complexity of her prose. The entire venture of social science is deemed corrupted by its insidious fixation on oppression. Murray turns to recent hoax articles that were published in the academic journal Cogent Social Sciences (a prank that he describes as “one of the most beautiful things to happen in recent years”) as evidence that social and cultural theory is all a sham. The reader is assured – falsely – that this is all a vast Marxist project, aimed at sowing dissatisfaction and discord. bne IntelliNews (24 May 2018). "Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon hails Viktor Orbán's policies at Budapest conference". bne IntelliNews. Archived from the original on 30 August 2018. Bloomfield, Jon (2020). "Progressive Politics in a Changing World: Challenging the Fallacies of Blue Labour". The Political Quarterly. 91 (1): 89–97. doi: 10.1111/1467-923X.12770. S2CID 211395195. In the post‐Enoch Powell era, the UK has evolved a broad, cross‐party consensus that maintains that British citizenship and identity is not defined ethnically. The white nationalist right like Roger Scruton and Douglas Murray reject that. All this implies that the solution, if there is one, must come from the Left. What is needed is a rival movement that caters to people’s aspirations for social fairness and the remission of suffering without recommending that we tear down statues, throw out the Western canon, obsess about superficial aspects of our identities, and so on. It would not be fair, of course, to expect this from Murray, who, as a conservative, is naturally more suspicious of social reform than those of a left-wing temperament, a perspective that is perfectly valid in its own terms. On the other hand, while the defiant stance of his book necessitates a certain combativeness of tone, Murray seems at times to flirt with the notion that any criticism of Western society or foreign policy is an expression of a sinister, vengeful, anti-Western worldview. This inflexibility is not likely to convert any wayward radicals. One can only hope, as Murray probably does himself, that the Left will prove him wrong by showing that there really is another way, that you can be critical without expressing undiluted contempt, and that you can struggle and hope for change without burning everything to the ground.By talking largely to other white, male journalists, Murray is also spared the necessity of having to reflect on his own brand of white identity politics. For him, ‘identity politics’ is something that minority groups have, whereas he doesn’t even consider his identity to be an important factor in his political worldview – which it clearly is. According to Brandon, Murray failed to distinguish Islam from Islamism. [72] Brandon said he attempted to "de-radicalise" Murray to ensure that only Islamists were targeted and not "Muslims as a whole". [72] Brandon writes that Murray has privately retracted some of his comments. [72] In 2010, during an Intelligence Squared US debate titled "Is Islam a Religion of Peace?", Murray argued "[Islamic Prophet] Muhammad was a bad man". [74] [75] [76] Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World: Renewing Transatlantic Partnership" (PDF). Center for Strategic and International Studies . Retrieved 12 November 2010.