John Gray: the nationalist philosopher stoking ‘culture wars’ fires. By Jon Bloomfield

By Dilip -
There’s a battle under way at the heart of British politics and reactionaries are in the ascendancy. With the Brexit wind in their sails, when an issue of history or culture comes into prominence, they set the terms of the debate. Whether it is the singing of Land of Hope and Glory and Rule Britannia on the closing night of the Proms; history teaching in schools; statues in public spaces: the Right has a consistent story to tell and they find plenty of places to say it. Whether it is tub-thumpers like Richard Littlejohn, Rod Liddle and Toby Young; opportunist academics like Matthew Goodwin and Eric Kaufman; or Etonian intellectuals like Douglas Murray and David Goodhart, they tell a common story about Britain’s proud past that is now being trashed by ‘metropolitan liberal elitists’ and the ‘woke’ mob who are threatening our ancient liberties.

In response, progressives are allowing themselves to be distracted and pigeon-holed, ignoring the economic and social content of many women’s, race and environmental issues or paying excessive attention to relatively fringe topics. In the process, the traditional alliance between manual workers, the public sector and middle class intellectuals is being torn asunder to the delight of the cultural conservatives. A pivotal but rarely discussed figure in this assault has been John Gray...

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/john-gray-the-nationalist-philosophe-stoking-culture-wars-fires/


Articles by John Gray


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