The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity; THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER Paperback – 3 Sept. 2020

If you are one of those who draws breath in bewilderment at the latest pronunciation from the zealous left in respect of what is acceptable and what is not re sex, race, religion & creed, then this remarkable book from the pen of Douglas Murray may well help you breathe more easily!When I cite “one of those” I refer to the silent majority; those of us who are often referenced or preached to but barely heard as in recent times it would seem that the mainstream has not only lost its allure, but also its voice. Well in this book, Murray not only offers you a voice but goes a long way in ridiculing a dogma were “Kill all men” and “cancel white people” can be viewed as mere harmless satire, but “America is a colour blind society” is racist. In short it is a brilliant and compelling read for those like myself who are a little tired of being told how to think or that they somehow harbour subconscious & malicious intent towards their fellow human beings. If this rings a bell.....then read on.So, how did we reach such heights of insanity in such a short space of time? Murray argues that the roots can be found in mostly educated people preaching the new religion known variously as “social justice”, “identity politics” or “intersectionality”. His take is that this is essentially Marxism transposed form the workplace to the "thought-place" & then poured from the class war flask into the race-sex-gender glass where meaning can only be realised through struggle against those who commit "wrongthink". Throughout the book he describes (and destroys) the many surreal arguments spewing from this new breed of & self-anointed, self policing preachers (think Salem Witch trials transposed onto twitter, Instagram, Facebook etc) where the race to achieve purity of thought has led to multiple schisms even amongst the faithful. The book cites multiple examples of this including the case of Rachel Dolezal (the woman who passed herself off as black despite being conceived white). The wave of vitriol Dolezal personally received aside, when philosopher Rebecca Tuvel asked whether since transgenderism is possible, transracialism should also be, complete hell broke loose resulting in the journal she published in prostrating themselves before the Twitter authorities before they in turn issued a formal apology (for this blatant example of wrongthink) and subsequently all of the journal's editors resigned. In fact whilst I gained enormous relief from reading this book (the proverbial weight being lifted) the sheer number of injustices Murray catalogues, the 100’s of reputations trashed, careers ruined or ended amidst a tidal wave of stifled intellectual freedom, I was left with the feeling that perhaps more so than ever it time for the silent majority to finally speak up.I enjoyed this book immensely, it went a long way in restoring my belief that sanity may ultimately prevail, stopped me from thinking I was alone in the worngthink stakes and provides us all with a rigorous and robust exposé of those who worship at the altar of left-modernist faith politics. Simply put – it is a must read.Ps. And before it is too late, almost unbelievably as I write this review I hear on the news that transracialism seems to be slowly creeping out of the worngthink shadows into the glorious sunlight of acceptable-think. We have been warned.

Douglas Murray has written what will be another bestseller. He deserves his success. In his latest book, and his previous work on the migration crisis, he writes about a very worrying thing indeed which links the two works: the collapse of our ‘grand narratives’.Under all the mattresses of Mr Murray’s logic, reason, research and dry wit there is a pea of pessimism lurking. It’s difficult, after reading both works, to have any hope for the future of our culture. One cannot slot-in a new foundation once the house is built. The house is in the way. The house has to fall before a new foundation can be inserted. That’s bad enough in itself. But once our culture has fallen what could the new foundation be?In Europe the grand narrative was the Christian one. It was the narrative upon which European culture was founded and up from this percolated our traditions, our laws; our art and architecture and so on. In ‘The Strange Death of Europe’ Mr Murray writes of the Christian faith as possibly the greatest source of energy for the continent:‘It drove them to war and stirred them to defence. It drove Europe to the greatest heights of human creativity. It drove Europeans to build St Peter’s in Rome, the Cathedral of Chartres, the Duomo of Florence and the Basilica of St Mark in Venice. It inspired the works of Bach, Beethoven and Messiaen, Grunewald’s altarpiece at Isenheim and Leonardo’s Madonna of the Rocks.’He then describes the works which had the effect of undermining the grand Christian narrative: works by Eichhorn, Strauss and, most famously, Darwin. Mr Murray states: ‘The condition of the argument for the divine scheme after Darwin was not good.’ Top marks for understatement.Mr Murray continues on the loss of faith in Europe: ‘Rarely if ever is it recognised that the process described above meant one thing above all: Europe had lost its foundational story.’What could replace this? As Mr Murray points out: ‘Even someone who regrets their inability to connect with the faith that used to propel them cannot believe again simply in order to regain the propulsion.’It seems Europe’s future is bleak no matter, and especially bleak if European’s - or humans generally - have some psychological need for a grand narrative which allows the survival of death. Perhaps he should have italicised ‘stirred them to defence’ for emphasis?It's on that point even an atheist should find some appreciation for his Christian heritage.The question of the loss of faith – and the grand foundational narrative which comes with it – is mentioned in ‘The Madness of Crowds’. Mr Murray says in his interlude on forgiveness:‘As one of the consequences of the death of God, Fredrich Nietzche foresaw that people could find themselves stuck in cycles of Christian theology with no way out. Specifically that people would inherit the concepts of guilt, sin and shame but would be without the means of redemption which the Christian religion also offered.’Do the ‘virtue signallers’ attempt self-redemption through social media? Perhaps they do. Are Twitter, Facebook and Instagram the new virtual churches?Other reviewers will talk of the blue-sky sanity with which Mr Murray makes his case across the gay, women, race and trans chapters. I was fascinated by the insights at the end of the first chapter on gay, but it’s the chapter on trans where Mr Murray uses an odd form of words several times.Mr Murray says on page 187: ‘[..] a considerable range of cultures has adapted to the idea that some people may be born in one body but desire to live in another.’On page 192: ‘[..] certain minority of people felt that they were born in the body of the wrong sex.’On page 195: ‘[..] those who have been born with the conventional XX or XY chromosomes, the resulting genitalia and everything else that comes along with it, but who believe – for reasons that we are still almost nowhere near understanding – that they inhabit the wrong body.’On page 203: ‘[..] the growing evidence of a ‘cluster effect’ when such claims begin to be made (that is, that once a number of children in a school claim to be in the wrong body similar claims expand exponentially) [..]’This is interesting language. What is going on when a person says they were ‘born into’ the ‘wrong body’? What is going on when a man uses such a form of words? Are people ever ‘born into’ their bodies?I can understand an Action-Man being placed in a Barbie box, or a Barbie being placed in an Action-Man box – just a little mishap at the factory – but those dolls really do exist independently of their boxes.Does the conscious mind exist independently of the body? I cannot say that Mr Murray does not think so. He uses the language without challenging it. Perhaps he does this for conversational convenience. Perhaps he believes it himself. I don’t know. But I do wonder.Precisely how is a person ‘born into’ a body? How does this happen? Has anyone seen it? I’ve seen two children of mine ‘born into’ the delivery room; I’ve seen others on television ‘born into’ birthing pools and the like. I’ve never seen a person ‘born into’ their body.The ‘born into’ form of words presupposes dualism: the idea that the conscious mind can exist independently of the body, rather than consciousness being something which rises from the brain and cannot be separated from it.Ultimately, I’d argue, the ‘born into a body’ form of words – whether one argues for the right or wrong body’ - is an expression of a fear of death. What is Mr Murray’s view on this – on what the language presupposes?Along with the importance of the Christian narrative he also states in ‘The Strange Death of Europe’ that culture and art cannot have the effect of making people good - citing Wagner on this.This is where the pessimism strikes the reader. Is the madness of the crowds we all have to witness the dying spasms of a culture which is eating itself because there is nothing above or beyond itself on which to feed? Is the selfishness and self-importance and the ‘look at me!’ culture we are suffering from the result of having no hope for or in an afterlife?Eat, drink, be merry, take selfies, enjoy running with the mob on Twitter for tomorrow you die.There could be a grim irony or paradox at the root of evolution: Evolution is the reason that nobody needs to believe in God, yet it’s evolution which fashions brains and minds over time to a pitch where the need to believe in the survival of death runs through all our psychological programing, to the extent that the desire to survive death leaks-out through language such as the ‘born into the wrong body’ form of words.Douglas Murray’s book – and his previous work on migration – has worried me more than anything else I’ve read. Us materialist fanatics, confident that we don’t have bodies, but are bodies, cannot escape the fear that although Evolution is true, we humans have minds and brains which don’t value what’s true, at least not all the time. If the human mind really does need fantasy to give meaning to life then the truth will never win.If the truth never wins then some other grand narrative will replace the Christian one. It will almost certainly be a narrative which, at its root, offers the survival of death. This is something I suspect will be welcome to those who have the narrative aggressively imposed on them by persons whose beliefs come from outside Europe, and are armed with scalpel-sharp weapons-grade confidence in the rightness of their views.