Non-Fiction Book Review - 'The Madness of Crowds' by Douglas Murray
This is the first book I’ve read by the author and journalist Douglas Murray.
I first came across him in a very interesting YouTube video where he’s in conversation with Andrew Doyle; the link to it is at the end of this post.
To be honest, I wasn’t that aware of either of them; it was the title of the video that caught my attention – ‘Resisting Wokeness’. In it, Murray talks of his latest book, ‘The Madness of Crowds’ and, by the end of the video, I knew I had to read it.
‘Douglas Murray examines the twenty-first century’s most divisive issues: sexuality, gender, technology and race. He reveals the astonishing new culture wars playing out in our workplaces, universities, schools and homes in the names of social justice, identity politics and intersectionality.
We are living through a postmodern era in which the grand narrative of religion and political ideology have collapsed. In their place have emerged a crusading desire to right perceived wrongs and a weaponization of identity, both accelerated by the new forms of social and news media. Narrow sets of interests now dominate the agenda as society becomes more and more tribal – and, as Murray shows, the casualties are mounting.
Readers of all political persuasions cannot afford to ignore Murray’s masterfully argued and fiercely provocative book, in which he seeks to inject some sense into the discussion around this generation’s most complicated issues. He ends with an impassioned call for free speech, shared common values and sanity in an age of mass hysteria.’
In the ‘Introduction’, Murray states, “In public and in private, both online and off, people are behaving in ways that are increasingly irrational, feverish, herd-like and simply unpleasant.”
He talks about the way different groups – mainly gays, feminists, those campaigning against racism – fought over the years against established beliefs and won. Except they then ended up replacing previous dogma with their own, possibly more extreme, beliefs.
Murray uses the brilliant analogy of a train reaching its desired destination but, instead of stopping, “it suddenly picked up steam and went crashing off down the tracks into the distance. What had barely been disputed until yesterday became a cause to destroy someone’s life today. Whole careers were scattered and strewn as the train careered along its path.”
In exploring this notion, he focusses on four issues – Gay, Women, Race and Trans. In between these main chapters, he talks about Marxist foundations, the impact of technology and the concept of forgiveness.
In each of the main issues, Murray sifts through the contradictions, harmful outcomes and injustices that have resulted from the actions of the so-called woke social justice warriors. He explores how – just like that train about to reach its destination – we thought we’d arrived at the new, accepted way of being, only to find we’re speeding, hurtling, towards another, more extreme way.
Our train has been hijacked by the aforementioned social justice warriors. That many of the causes mentioned have now been, for the most part, resolved, it’s as if these ‘warriors’ need to justify their place in the world by making even more excessive demands, regardless of the ramifications on our society as a whole.
Thanks to ‘identity politics’, we’re no longer seen as complex individuals; instead, each person is slotted into a group “according to sex (or gender), race, sexual preference and more. It presumes that such characteristics are the main, or only, relevant attributes of their holders…”
Anyone who steps outside of the invisible ‘boundaries’ of the group they’re seen to belong to is ‘banished’. So, Murray’s conservative views mean he’s seen as the wrong kind of gay; Kanye West is not considered black because he supports Donald Trump; Germaine Greer – of all women – apparently is not a feminist because she doesn’t believe Trans women are women.
Murray explains something called ‘St George in retirement’ syndrome; after killing the dragon, St George continues to look for more dragons, to engage in more fights, until he comes to the point of “swinging his sword at thin air, imagining it to contain dragons.”
Throughout the book, Murray gives many examples of the existence of this syndrome. “Our public life is now dense with people desperate to man the barricades long after the revolution is over… a demonstration of virtue demands an overstating of the problem which then causes an amplification of the problem.”
He argues that issues like “racial equality, minority rights and women’s rights… make the most destabilising foundations…” because “each of these issues is a deeply unstable component in itself.”
We’re told that these issues have already been settled even though “the endless contradictions, fabrications and fantasies within each are visible to all…” But we’re not allowed to point out anything that might question the ‘agreed narrative’; we’re “asked to agree to things which we cannot believe.” No longer is there room for discussion; it is simply ‘not allowed’.
“We are asked to believe things that are unbelievable and being told not to object to things… which most people feel a strong objection to… As anyone who has lived under totalitarianism can attest, there is something demeaning and eventually soul-destroying about being expected to go along with claims you do not believe to be true and cannot hold to be true.”
We now live in an age where anyone who questions this new dogma – specifically, ordinary people – risk losing their jobs and their reputations if they so much as hint at a dissenting view. Without a doubt, social media (despite its good points) has contributed to this – “In an age of shouting for attention on social media the mechanism rewards outrage over sanguinity.” Yet, not that long ago, it was perfectly acceptable to question, to discuss… to agree to disagree. Now, the expected, accepted modus operandi is to play the victim over the smallest supposed transgression.
In talking about victimhood, Murray quotes HW Brands’ biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt in which he writes of the men of that generation – they “‘were expected to meet misfortune with a stiff upper lip… When everyone was a victim at one point or another, no one won sympathy by wearing victimhood as a badge.’”
Whereas the ‘victims’ of that age were in genuinely dire situations because of the uncertainty of economic turmoil or of war, these days, anyone who is oppressed or is claiming to be oppressed is seen as a ‘victim’. “Victimhood rather than stoicism or heroism has become something eagerly publicized… To be a victim is in some way to have won, or at least to have got a head start in the great oppression race of life.”
Attached to that is the weird belief that, somehow, such victims are better than those who aren’t deemed victims. Yet, a person’s sexuality, sex or colour of their skin has no bearing on the quality of their character.
In the ‘Conclusion’, Murray states that “the aim of identity politics would appear to be to politicize absolutely everything” and I’m inclined to agree. It seems as if everywhere we turn, “every aspect of human interaction” is becoming “a matter of politics… every human relationship [becomes] a political power calibration.”
It’s part of human nature, surely, to disagree over all sorts of things, even to disagree with those you love. Each person discusses their view; by keeping an open mind, people may even learn things they were previously unaware of. It’s possible to ‘agree to disagree’ and move on, the relationship intact, be it with family or friends.
But, “if one party finds their whole purpose in life to reside in some aspect of that disagreement”, any chance of a decent discussion is dead in the water and, most likely, so is the relationship.
Murray suggests we “retain an interest in politics but not to rely on it as a source of meaning.” For the vast majority of us, if asked what gives our lives meaning, it is love, not power; love for our family, friends, our pets, our homes… however that manifests in our lives. Surely that should be what determines our relationships with one another. Surely it’s still possible to take into account every element that makes up a human being, not simply their race, sex or sexuality.
When I started this book, I had no idea it was going to open my mind and broaden my thinking as much as it has. I will definitely be reading it again. And I would urge anyone who’s looking for a clear, calm voice of reason in the midst of “the madness of crowds” to read Douglas Murray’s book.