I remember a couple of decades ago encountering an assessment of Ann Coulter by a prominent conservative pundit who summed up her contribution to the conservative movement at that time as a net loss. This opinion apparently stemmed from a distaste for Coulter’s style, which quite a few on the right found sufficiently abrasive as to consider it damaging to the cause.
I suppose a person who takes on problems with a sledgehammer is a bit of an irritant to those who’d prefer a softer approach. A blunt, no-holds-barred style of public discourse, when combined with a keen intelligence and massive amounts of research, does increase the unfortunate likelihood of change to the status quo.
But now, all these decades later, the unpopular issues she vocalized (the steady onslaught of migrants over the southern border, for one) with such fearless determination — and lack of finesse — are now on the lips of more than half the electorate. I’ll leave it to subtler thinkers than I to decide whether or not Coulter’s sledgehammer assisted in forging this alteration in awareness, ensuring at the same time that certain ideas became acceptable subjects for discussion.
Regardless, as to the style with which conservatives approach the pressing issues of the day, I can assert unequivocally that I prefer the heavy-handed — even the strident — to polite decorum any day of the week. I was once again reminded of this when the May issue of The New Criterion arrived in the mail this month with a featured article by Douglas Murray.
Despite his vast education and brilliance of mind, whenever I read Murray, I suddenly find myself longing for the ear-splitting sound of heavy-duty steel pounding rapidly into concrete, for if ever there was a conservative whose style of approach proves a net loss to the movement, in my opinion, it is that of Murray. It’s not just that it’s precious; his scrupulous caution when covering grave topics undermines their urgency while securing himself immunity from any unsavory contagion they might carry.
Take, for example, the aforementioned essay in May’s New Criterion titled “The Crime of Noticing.” Murray’s subject is French author Renaud Camus and the phrase Camus chose to describe the immigration crisis facing Europe, “The Great Replacement.”
After briefly describing how the phrase was initially managed into near oblivion by Google’s algorithms, Murray immediately creates moral distance from the term and all it connotes by averring, “It has been cited by some pretty terrible people both in support of its premise and against it.”
This may be true, but that’s all he says before moving on to a brief biographical sketch of Camus. By introducing the phrase and then associating it with “terrible people” unqualified by any contrasting observation, Murray succeeds in positioning the ideas the phrase describes as ideologically suspect. Given the books Murray has written on the reality of the immigration situation in Europe, that is strange.
Further, he spends a considerable portion of the essay shielding the Frenchman from accusations of being a xenophobic barbarian. Murray assures us that “While Camus can be blunt, his thinking can also be subtle — certainly nuanced. He concedes things that no outright racist or sectarian ever would.” Also, Camus “makes concessions where concessions are needed.”
Well, it is nice to know that Camus is capable of objectivity, but in whose service are Murray’s qualifications made?
Murray finally approaches the implications of the phrase when he describes how it was immediately dubbed a conspiracy theory by forces unknown, ostensibly to dissuade people from objecting to the immigration reality taking place before their very eyes. By whom he doesn’t speculate. Apparently, the label simply appeared out of nowhere.
More importantly, Murray concludes that the unfortunate result of this attempt at diversion by unknown agents is that “there now are people who do believe that European post-war mass migration has been a conspiracy. (Those of us who write on these matters hear from them rather too often.)”
To further clarify his own position regarding the possibility that this phenomenon has been purposefully orchestrated, Murray enlists Camus himself to argue against this idea, although he does so by summarizing rather than quoting the Frenchman’s ideas. According to Murray, Camus finds the idea that the Great Replacement is being deliberately contrived as “too simplistic.”
Summarizing Camus further, Murray says, “There is no evidence for the idea that at some point a cabal of some kind decided to punish Europe by making the continent a colony of the developing world, nor that there was ever a memo sent out to the Muslim world telling them to come in and overtake the old continent.” He finally quotes Camus directly as saying, “I’m not sure that anyone, or any group of strategists, ever said to themselves: ‘We’re going to conquer Europe.’”
Perhaps, but that’s a helluva run for an accident.
If there were any lingering doubts concerning where Murray positions himself ideologically, he removes them through his lament that “a man of such complexity and depth should have been reduced not even to book or a phrase but to the interpretation of a phrase by people who have not even absorbed it.” (The dummies!) And what would be the terrible consequence of that? That “some people will pick up Camus’ work and use it for nefarious ends.”
Let us ask, since Murray ventures no further, what ends those might be? Europeans deciding that they deserve their own homeland like any other people? The Anglosphere rejecting the mantra that diversity is a strength rather than a grotesque civilizational liability? The acknowledgment that the leaders of the free world are destroying Western Civilization on purpose for unspecified ends?
Murray doesn’t say. He’s too concerned with wrapping himself up in decorum.
Anyone got a sledgehammer?
Jocelynn Cordes has published several essays at The Federalist, most of which have been published in her essay collection, “Critical Musings from a Traditionalist: 26 Essays.”
Jesus Christ is King
Comments are closed.