(Geo) Culture and the West’s war against Gaza

Abstract

“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion… but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” Samuel Huntington, (1996: 93). This paper is concerned with the ‘culture wars’ that have been a prominent feature of political conflict over the past decade, mainly but not exclusively in the core nation-states of the modern world-system. In spatial terms the core incorporates the Western allied nation-states that have dominated the construction and colonisation of the modern world-system: Western Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. The culture wars have been represented by sections of the West’s intelligentsia as being a conflict between the defenders of Western civilization and its universal liberal values, and those who would destroy them (Scruton, 2002; Lester, 2023; Bigger, 2023; Gilley, 2023; Steyn, 2006; Roberts, 2010; Ferguson, 2012a and b; Truss, 2024; Murray, 2022; Stokes, 2018). In part they have been triggered by attempts by social justice groups in the West to challenge racism and sexism through such things as cancelling public talks by figures deemed to be racist, sexist or fascist; but also by extending the meaning of oppression into multiple forms of identity which are viewed as being subject to institutional forms of discrimination (Stokes, 2023 and 2024; Taylor et al, 2023). [...]