Just two days ago I wrote about a viral piece written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali for The Free Press, arguing that three forces—Chinese Communism, radical Islamists, and American Marxists, with Putin helping out from the sidelines—were aiming at destroying Western values in a sequential process. This sequence was first suggested by Russian spy and defector Yuri Bezmenov, and involved these four steps: demoralization of the West (several decades), destabilization of society (5 months to two years), crisis (short, time not specified), and “normalization,” in which a new authoritarian society gains hegemony. According to Hirsi Ali, we appear to be at the end of the demoralization phase.
As I said, although Hirsi Ali’s article has its good points—notably that there are forces, like Islamists and their Western “progressive” running dogs, setting out to destroy Western values, though they purport to buttress them—I don’t see evidence that there’s any kind of concerted effort among the indicted groups to take over the West. Further, Hirsi Ali lumps together disparate phenomena as evidence for the demoralization (George Floyd riots, covid restrictions, pro-Palestinian protests, etc.), including some that don’t even seem to be real (she argues, for example, that pedophilia is becoming normalized, which I vigorously contest, and criticizes the spread of regulated assisted suicide, which I support). In the end, Hirsi Ali simply forces all the stuff going on now into the Procrustean bed of Bezmenov’s scheme, and since everything can be fit into that scheme, her thesis can’t be disproven.
Yes, Hirsi Ali’s piece is valuable in underlining the attack on Western values, but this point has been made many times before; see for instance Douglas Murray’s 2002 book The War on the West. As for fitting everything into Bezmenov’s scheme, Cathy Young, in a percipient analysis at The Bulwark Substack, says that this is simply a “conspiracy theory.”
Click below to read:
Hirsi Ali’s is indeed a conspiracy theory. That doesn’t make it wrong, but it is if the alleged conspirators are not conspiring. The long essay shows that they’re not: what looks like conspiracy is simply a concatenation of various social forces whose results are visible today. I’ll indent Young’s words below:
In fact, the essay is notable mainly for one thing: it represents a startling plunge, for Ali and evidently for the Free Press, into outright, unabashed conspiracy theory.
. . . Chinese propaganda, radical Islamism, and homegrown social justice radicalism absolutely deserve criticism and pushback (and they are already getting it: for instance, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statements, which Ali asserts are “now a requirement at universities across America,” have already been jettisoned by some major institutions including Harvard and MIT). But the Grand Unified Theory of Subversion should be just as resolutely rejected. Like all conspiratorial explanations of complex phenomena, it inhibits rather than promotes understanding.
And, like me, but in a far more sophisticated analysis, Young concedes that Some forces Hirsi Ali names are indeed eroding Western values, but are doing so independently. There is no conspiracy, and if that’s not true, and Bezmenov’s theory is fuzzy and untestable, which it is. then Hirsi Ali’s essay loses much of its force.
WHAT MAKES ALI’S CONSPIRATORIAL TURN so unfortunate is that her critique of toxic cultural trends in America and the West is often on point. Yes, shunting fourth-graders into “racial affinity” groups and having them map their “oppressor” and “oppressed” identities is bad. Yes, focusing on Thomas Jefferson’s slave ownership while giving short shrift to the liberatory politics of the American Revolution that eventually paved the way for the abolition of slavery can invite what Ali calls “civilizational self-loathing”—the idea that America and the West are no better than authoritarian societies around the world, or even uniquely evil. Yes, the embrace of Hamas by many social justice activists in the wake of the October 7 attacks on Israel exposed the movement’s moral bankruptcy, and the emergence of groups like “Queers for Palestine” which try to blend a Hamas-friendly worldview with an LGBT-friendly one is a spectacular case of intersectionalist idiocy. Yes, the movement for transgender equality raises some difficult questions—about women’s sports, single-sex spaces, puberty blockers, etc.—that often get labeled “transphobic” instead of being given a nuanced look. Yes, the push to destigmatize nontraditional sexuality can lead to almost certainly unhealthy trends like the romanticization of polyamory. And so on.
. . .Ali concedes that Bezmenov’s formulation of “subversion” may not explain or address “all the West’s problems.” However, she writes, “once I immersed myself in his formulation, many of the topsy-turvy developments in our institutions fell into place.”
Of course they did. That’s how conspiracy theory works: Everything falls into place once you accept it. And it’s unfalsifiable.
Here’s part of Young’s critique that Hirsi Ali is mixing disparate phenomena (or even nonexistent phenomena) into the theory:
For instance, Ali writes that for many people, the alarm bell signaling something wrong was the 2020 “omni-breakdown . . . with the crises [of] the Covid-19 pandemic and the draconian controls that governments imposed, and the George Floyd riots.” In her view, this was “the revolution” reaching boiling point after years of subversion. Is she suggesting that the “draconian controls”—which differed greatly from country to country—were somehow part of the same agenda as the riots that followed the murder of George Floyd? You could certainly argue that social tensions in the summer of 2020 were exacerbated by stresses caused by the pandemic and by the mitigation strategies. But sometimes, a perfect storm of crises happens. It doesn’t mean that someone is pulling the strings and levers, or even that someone set the machinery in motion at some point in the past.
. . . Ali’s grab-bag of “demoralization” also includes the “defund the police” movement as one of the assaults on traditional institutions. But that movement turned out to be extremely short-lived; now, even progressive jurisdictions (San Francisco!) are boosting police funding.
Even more mystifying, Ali asks us to “consider, for example, our culture’s attitude toward pedophiles, now rebranded as ‘minor-attracted persons.’” But rebranded by whom? (Ali’s link on “minor-attracted persons,” which I removed, goes to an obscure advocacy site.) There have been fringe efforts to rebrand pedophilia for decades—dating back to NAMBLA in the 1970s—and they have all been met with public scorn and revulsion. That remains true today. While a few articles have appeared in progressive publications over the years advocating tolerance toward non-offending pedophiles, they have invariably caused a strong backlash. Salon, which ran a couple of such articles in 2015, eventually took them down. In 2021, Allyn Walker, an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at Old Dominion University in Virginia, published a book that attempted to reframe adult-child sexual attraction as a sexual orientation rather than a disorder and “minor-attracted people” as a part of the “genderqueer community.” The outcry that ensued was such that Walker was placed on an administrative leave and then agreed to step down from the faculty.
Here are some of Young’s disparate causes for phenomena, some of which aren’t even intended to subvert Western values:
THE REASONS FOR THOSE UPHEAVALS—some of which are cycles in long-term trends going back to the 1960s and 1970s, or even earlier—are varied and complex, especially since Ali is trying to pull together such disparate phenomena. Changes in family structure, for instance, are the result of women’s evolving roles, the advent of reliable contraception, and the rise of the affluent consumer society. The right-to-die movement, which is now widely viewed as having gone too far, is partly a response to medical advances that can keep people alive—and in pain or at least severe discomfort—for much longer than was possible in earlier generations. Finally, many of the trends Ali discusses are extensions of the principle of individual autonomy, a part of the set of post-Enlightenment Western values that she (rightly) credits with enabling unprecedented human flourishing. Can such principles as personal freedom and tolerance be taken too far? Can some important humanistic values clash with other equally important ones? Yes, of course. But free societies constantly negotiate such questions.
Likewise, the social justice movements that Ali regards as subversive—and which are, in fact, often toxic in their attacks on modern liberal democracies—are largely an extension, or distortion, of liberal principles that seek to extend the benefits of liberty and equality to traditionally excluded groups (women, racial minorities, gays, etc.). The 1619 Project, which Ali mentions in passing, arguably distorted American history. But the impetus for it came in large part from the failure to grapple with the tragedies of black history in America (not just slavery, but the betrayal of black Americans after the Reconstruction for the sake of national unity). The feminist movement was born from the contradictions between the Western, and especially American, ideal of the autonomous individual and social and cultural norms that circumscribed female autonomy. Sexual liberation movements applied the principles of liberty to sexual choices.
I didn’t mean to quote so much of Young, but there’s a lot that I didn’t quote, and all of it goes to show that Hirsi Ali’s piece is hyperbolic and doesn’t hang together well. But it was not useless, for these days there are some people and social pressures that, knowingly or not, will seriously undermine America, or the West as a whole. (The Encampers come to my mind immediately.) Donald Trump, not mentioned in Hirsi Ali’s article at all, may be the greatest threat to Western values on the horizon.
One reason Hirsi Ali’s article, flawed as it is, got such purchase is simply because of her own fame and life history. Many of us, including me, see her as a hero who went up against her upbringing as a strict Muslim, shed religion entirely to become an atheist (and a member of the Dutch parliament), and then fled after she and Theo van Gogh made the feminist and anti-Islamic film “Submission“, (the short movie is here) for which van Gogh was subsequently murdered. (There was a note pinned to the knife in his chest warning that Hirsi Ali was next.) I’d urge you to watch the ten-minute movie, which to us seems both moral and reasonable, but for which van Gogh, deemed an infidel, gave his life.
Hirsi Ali is eloquent and persuasive, as you can see in her books with their one-word titles (Infidel, Prey, Nomad, and Heretic), though with the last book I began to be disillusioned. While it properly calls out Islam, its program to defang the religion (the subtitle is Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now) is simply impractical. And now Hirsi Ali has shed her atheism, touting Christianity as the one bulwark against the same forces she names above (see critiques here; the links are working though some look wonky). No, I don’t think the return to Christian values, the good ones which are simply humanistic values that don’t come from Christianity at all, is what we need right now.
I’m a bit concerned that the Free Press gave Hirsi Ali’s piece so much air time (with a big boost by Bari Weiss), but Young’s critique is a good palliative.
h/t: Steve
Young’s palliative is refreshing. It’s too easy to fall into catastrophism and I appreciate Young’s encouragement to look at each issue or problem on its own. As for Bari Weiss and the Free Press, I admire so much of her personal story and achievements too but I wonder if she believes in belief so much that it colours her views of some products of belief (like Hirsi Ali’s essay).
Well said, Mike. I do love having Bari’s points to read and consider. Mostly I am in agreement; sometimes not. But, like with WEIT, knowing the thought that went into it by a really bright person, I always feel that I must consider it in my thinking and I very much appreciate having these viewpoints available.
I largely agree with the criticisms of Ayaan’s piece, but I don’t see any problem with The Free Press having published and promoted it.
We should be openly discussing ideas such as this, and then disagreeing and critiquing them. I fully support The Free Press publishing lots of articles that I agree with and also lots of articles that I disagree with! This is healthy.
Sure I agree FP should publish things like this. I guess I’m implicitly criticizing their tendency to put out a *lot* of this specific content that valorizes belief (cf. Kevin @2) as a kind cultural life raft for a secular society that they argue is adrift and needs rescuing. But maybe I’m overinterpreting the FP content that I see.
There is something about the Free Press that rubs me the wrong way. Recently they had an article about the high school football coach who won his right to pray at the 50 yard, praising his hard won fight for free speech, ignoring the fact he was using his position to intimidate and coerce public school students into practicing his form of Christianity. Anyway, they are a little like certain strains of Libertarians: Free speech? Yes!! Bodily autonomy? Yes!! Drivers’ licenses? Noooooooo!! Yes, freedom is good, but be pragmatic.
Back to Ali, on the original article I commented that we are pattern seeking monkeys, looking for gods or aliens or conspiracy theories to explain the unexplainable. Sure there are organizations trying to undermine classic liberal values, but they seem more of a collection of self interested entities rather than an organized conspiracy.
Agreed on the Free Press. It betrays a bit of adolescent immaturity.
I’ve liked a lot of the FP’s often very powerful anti-woke content (to use a convenient shorthand), though I’ve noticed an unusual proportion of the readers’ comments underneath agree with the author’s arguments but from an extreme right-wing viewpoint at odds with the writer’s more often classical liberal reasoning. There is a sense of a rather uncomfortable alliance.
It seems like quite a few former ‘centrist’ – those critical of woke dogma and progressive overreach – are explicitly or more on the sly taking up a form of Christianity or some form of return to conservatism. We see it with Hirsi Ali, with fro example Konstantin Kisin, and the never subsiding popularity of Jordan Peterson and with many local pundits. And in Europe we see former atheist politicians standing for the EU parliament for Christian parties, adopting if not their religious teachings then at least their conservative ‘return to traditional values’ stance.
It is clear that for many just being reasonable, rational, centrist is not enough: the belief that atheism and lack of concrete belief system was replaced by wokeism which in turn needs to be replaced with something else, ie religion, seems increasingly popular. This as if (atheism and) rationality at large, and a rationality derived morality, has somehow failed, which of course it hasn’t, but for many it is clearly not enough. They want/need a system and a context with meaning and clear guidelines.
Could you expand a bit on your comment about “former atheist politicians standing for the EU parliament for Christian parties”? I haven’t been following all the ins and outs of the European parliamentary elections, so I’d appreciate some examples. And of course a party with “Christian” in its name might not be particularly religious in its doctrines or activities at all.
I haven’t been following all the ins and outs either, but I seem to discern a trend not just in Europe but within the liberal/conservative/atheist hodgepodge of politicians and pundits.
One example is in Sweden where the liberal commentator Alice Teodorescu joined the Christian Democrats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Teodorescu_M%C3%A5we
The Swedish Christian Democrats is explicitly driven by Christian morals but of course not everyone may be religious but more driven by their form of (liberal) conservatism (yes, liberal conservatism may be an oxymoron but they are quite liberal in many aspects yet reliant on Christian values).
In the European debate it does seem to me that there exists a grasping at what is perceived as traditional, upstanding value laden historical ideas to counter what is going on regarding wokeness, immigration issues and these days by the reaction to October 7 and the war. So by turning to a framework of values which is more aligned with Christian values and thus also traditional Scandinavian/northern European values of work ethics, doing right by one’s family and community etc (ie Protestant values) they can react to issues such as Muslim immigration from a perspective which will hopefully not come across as xenophobic or closed minded. It provides something to actively promote rather than ‘just’ being against something, ie immigration, and fear of radical Islam.
Overall my impression is that a stealth Christianity is influencing a great deal of the debate. In the US we have Hirsi Ali (who is of course also European in her perspective) and her newfound Christianity. To me it seems that she is equally driven by what she perceives as an attack on the West as by religion. I do not think she or any one comes to these ideas in a vacuum.
https://youtu.be/DBsHdHMvucs?si=UgI4bLAxFcnSUdL1
Maybe I am reading too much into things but the debate really seems to be shifting – there is much more talk of ‘our’ values and ‘their’ values and it is not fringe right/left wing people coming from a place of dogma and intolerance, it is ordinary people coming off as genuinely fearful. Books like Submission by Houllebecque are discussed at dinner parties as are the student protests and the
growing antisemitism.
Personally, I do not think that a return to Christianity (or any religion) is the answer, but alas, people do tend to gravitate towards religion in crisis, no?
There may be an excessive number of groups willing to take advantage of an unrelated crisis (“never let a crisis go to waste” etc.) which is destabilizing but not an innately coordinated conspiracy.
This is my perspective on much that is going on.
The need to analyze political influences rigorously and dispassionately has never been greater. On the one hand, the social media contribute to polarization by obligingly creating a silo where the hapless consumer is spared being confronted by any views that don’t fit the profile of that person’s “likes.” On the other hand, any organization or agency that can use this to their advantage, of course will. So while there is no conspiracy, we have a risky situation where one part of a country is unable to see the point(s) made by the other. This is a recipe for an increase in violence, because there are people who think they’ve seen enough and proceed to make trouble. We really need the return of moderates.
I agree. These things are real and concerning (although there’s no conspiracy).
Or it’s later than you think, and Young is wrong. Don’t forget that the Soviet Union was engaged in a 75 year conspiracy against the West, and the US in particular. Their intellectual heirs are out there shouting for peace and for the killing of Jews.
I’m no fan of Putin and Russia definitely produces disinformation on sites like RT, but I see his primary motive as trying to get supporters for his invasion of Ukraine.
Hirsi Ali: We have powerful enemies who have already made a lot of progress toward undermining our society.
Young: Nothing to see here. Go back to sleep.
Of course it’s conspiracy.
Nuts.
A quasi-religious mindset.
“Approaching it with a similar screwball mindset to her deemed adversaries.”
The west seems always to be in turmoil and in upheaval even when it’s not. There is so many sources of confusion bolstered by ubiquitous media outlets a relentless hunger for bad stuff to be happening. It makes us feel…. alive and engaged, or is that shamed and enraged.
Who the hell knows. Steven Pinker might have a few comments worth considering.
“Have an open mind without your brains dropping out…” that lovely little quote.
Get in line with every other conspiracy which may have some truths as pointed out but really will never be enough to depart from being an “opinion” on sometimes what seems like a fragile bunch of western values, culture, way of life.
Perhaps our national, historical perspective should look further back. When, at the end of 15th century, the northern and central European monarchies ”discovered’ the ‘New World,’ they were nothing but invaders. Their justification came via a ‘bull’ from Pope Alexander VI, which held that even populated lands were fair game–and could be treated as hunters’ game–IF THE HUMANS WERE NOT REALLY ‘HUMANS’ AND NOT CHRISTIANS. This was the ‘Doctrine of Discovery, promulgated not by an international court nor any sort of plebiscite but by the head of the Roman Catholic Church (Catholic = universal indeed!). And so the aboriginals on the huge interconnected continent from the North Pole to (almost) Antarctica were so treated, several of their tribes or nations driven to extinction. [By the way, Thomas Jefferson, at least in 1792, declared that the ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ was legitimate international law. This, three years after the new U.S. Constitution, with its Enlightenment Bill of Rights and explicit language (Article 1, Section 2, Clause ; Article 1, Section 8), became effective
Louisiana Purchase, anybody?
That’s ONE original, mortal sin, the other being of course chattel slavery. NEITHER of these has been addressed as needing a deep and sincere repentance ON THE PART OF THE NATION AS A DEMOCRATIC NATION.
Shouting in all caps is not the same as persuasion.
Why should the eurocolonizers in the 1400s-1700s be expected to behave (or repent) any differently from the original Asian immigrants and their descendants (and replacements) who also invaded, conquered, and slaughtered their way from Vladivostok to Montevideo?
Arguably (not saying that I endorse this argument) cultures that by 1493 had not invented written languages, astronomy, metallurgy, or wheeled vehicles sort of deserved to be conquered by our eurotrash ancestors.
[edited to add] Robert’s argument does have some traction, but only because our society has developed (not to say evolved) past the tendency to invade and slaughter and then get a good night’s sleep knowing we have a papal bull that justifies it all. We don’t do that ourselves and our children won’t either, so we’re susceptible to Robert’s claim that we should feel bad that (some of) our ancestors did that in the past. We should resist that claim imho.
Giving your house and land back to the Indians and moving back to where your ancestors came from, are you Robert? Taking all your technology with you? But how will you afford the plane ticket if you’ve given all your ill-gotten colonial wealth away?
Sure this is a tired riposte—“Go back where you came from if you feel guilty here” — but what is never confronted is that once pauperized you can’t leave except by swimming and if you are not still a citizen of The Old Country, you can’t actually go back anywhere just because your ancestors came from England or Lithuania or wherever. So decolonization means you either drown or take up arms. Since neither of those options is tenable for most of us, it’s not surprising that decolonization or even reconciling our history with enormously larger cash payments has little purchase except with those for whom it is a luxury belief.
Actually the Roman Catholic Doctrine of Discovery is not relevant to U.S. (and Canadian) sovereignty. King George III acquired all of what was hitherto New France by Right of Conquest in 1763. After Henry VIII’s split with Rome, The Pope was no longer operational in England during the entire period of English colonization of the Americas and so the D of D, as well as objections to it phrased as Mortal Sins, can be ignored.
Don’t apologize for your history unless the apologees give you something in return.
The Doctrine of Discovery, like Manifest Destiny, was a convenient cover for doing what you need to do anyway: expanding your population into lands where there is more food and room for living. But no French or Spaniard was going home, and no Amerindian tribe was ever getting its territory back, just because the Catholic Church eventually renounced it, which it did. You have to overcome local resistance no matter what your rationale. If the resistance is ineffectual and chaotic, armies usually thank their good fortune rather than feeling guilty that the opposition inflicted so few casualties before it capitulated.
Leslie,
Thank you for your reply. I have tried to emphasize that this continues as a moral obligation for the United States of America, which alone among the early-emerging states in the ‘New World’ was explicitly founded on Lockean Enlightenment principles. To act otherwise is to act hypocritically. Jefferson did so act, repeatedly as a planter and a few (crucial) times as a political leader.
Demoralization is real, then as now. We need to talk seriously as a nation about our European origins. Even a poetic seer like Robert Frost misunderstood what had transpired: in ‘The Gift Outright,’ which he recited from memory when the sun and cold and wind obscured the ms. of JFK’s intended inaugural poem, he wrote–
The land was ours before we were the land’s. . .
In 1963 this was an accumulation of three centuries of hubris, and still piles up today, like the prow of a glacier pushing its detritus before its advance.
By the way (for my other iterlocutors) the ALL CAPS wasn’t shouting; rather my inability to add emphasis any other way.
Robert, there are 40.5 million Canadians; more than one-quarter are first-generation immigrants not born here; last year ~96% of population growth was new immigration; total immigration that year was ~1.5 million. IDK whether US immigration in 2023 was comparable per capita (on the order of 3-4% or 10 million). For those folks, the injustices inflicted on indigenous people by those not currently living have nothing to do with new immigrants and (to my mind) nothing to do with the living descendants of the genocidaires of previous generations. As more time passes and my country (and presumably your country) becomes less european and less white (and much more interesting imho) this dogged insistence on original sins visited on the perfectly honourable sons and daughters of eurotrash colonizers seems increasingly like straight up persecution.
I don’t have anything to say about the American focus on chattel slavery because it was abolished in the Empire before Canada became a country.
https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/dp-pd/prof
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/231219/dq231219c-eng
Robert, “Chattel slavery” was not an American, or European, invention. It is of ageless antiquity, and has been universal in all societies. It was practised within Africa long before Europeans started taking Africans (already enslaved by other Africans) across the Atlantic, and it was practised within Africa long after being abolished in the territories controlled by Europeans and their descendants (the British and French only managed to force an end to it in the independent West African kingdoms in the 1890s). So if it’s a “mortal sin”, it’s one equally borne by every culture. The only thing that *was* unique about the Euro-American practice of slavery was that, in the 18th century, movements began in those countries that, in the following century, were successful in ending it, and did so at a period in which those countries had the power to eventually force its abolition on the rest of the world as well. Its abolition is, historically speaking, the only wholly unprecedented aspect of the Euro-American practice of slavery.
Interesting comments all around, though I think that we should resist the idea of “original sin” — with regard to conquest & slavery — as being unique to one group or race. Both conquest & slavery were common in history. Now is a different matter, though, and much progress has happened with regard to the rights of people who would otherwise have been subject to conquest & slavery in the past. Will that progress continue? I don’t know.
Just because she became enlightened enough to renounce the repressive aspects of Islam doesn’t mean she has deep insights about Western civilization. Claiming that Christianity is a civilizing force shows ignorance of the religion’s history, in spite of its adherents always trying to claim credit for all of mankind’s greatest achievements.
Of course it’s conspiracy.
Nuts.
A quasi-religious mindset.
+1 succinct
Hirsi Ali lists several groups that are trying to undermine the West, but nowhere does she suggest that they are working together. At most she says that they approve of each other’s goals and take advantage of work the others have done.
Yes, many people see through the efforts and are pushing back. That doesn’t mean they are not being attempted.
One weakness of the essay is that Hirsi Ali does not show how each group is following the Bezmenov blueprint. My impression is that the Islamists in particular are not; they are taking a different approach. But the overall results are the same.
A frog suddenly put into a pot of boiling water, will jump out to save itself.. But if the frog is put in lukewarm water with the temperature slowly rising over time, it will not perceive any danger and will be cooked to death.
The temp is about 65 degrees Celsius, stage 1 is not complete yet otherwise Hirsi article would be labelled misinformation by many more entities and self censored at a much faster rate. The West will collapse! And how we respond to these decentralised Machiavellian threats will determine how long the new dark ages will last…
“Donald Trump, not mentioned in Hirsi Ali’s article at all, may be the greatest threat to Western values on the horizon.”
Watch this space — it may be no accident that she omits him from scrutiny.