This book is not an easy read because it tackles many uncomfortable truths and many people are likely to dislike him for that. At one point, following a discussion of the absurdities of “anti-racist” school curricula, he cites a Twitter thread seeking to prove that “the idea of 2+2 equalling 4 is cultural and because of western imperialism/colonization. At the same time, Murray’s objections feel a little pedantic, relying on a lot of data and dates (delineation of the abolition of slavery versus Jim Crow and reparational differences), without acknowledging that the abolition of laws doesn’t necessarily mean the abolition of attitudes—sundown towns allegedly still exist in some areas of the USA.

They’re convinced that you’re not allowed to say you’re English or that They’re trying to ban the word ‘Easter’. And at the end of it all, could anyone at such a remove from the crimes themselves convincingly offer forgiveness or reparations, and could those forgivenesses or reparations be convincingly accepted either? Bell’s central idea was that the law was incapable of delivering justice due to its structural racial unfairness. Murray has no regard for the wider context by which a phenomenon such as what he terms “anti-westernism” could be more insightfully interpreted. People do discuss these issues, but at the same time, what can a western state do about the Indian caste system?It makes some okay points about the achievements of western society, but some of it gets just plain old pig-headed.

But again, if such subversive people do exist within western society itself, then they have failed completely. Murray can come out with a glut of instances in schooling of antiracist overreach, but that’s because there are thousands of schools—finding a dozen that have gone too far won’t be hard. Take, for example, his remark that: “Demonisation of the west and of western people is now the only acceptable form of bigotry at international forums such as the United Nations. I don’t remember everything I studied in history at school, but from GCSE age onwards I know that subjects we covered included bog bodies, the 1960s, the American West, the history of medicine, the Russian revolution, the Crimean War, the French Revolution, and Nazi Germany.Murray also claims that issues in other cultures, such as racism between Africans, the Indian caste system, and Chinese domestic crimes against its own people, aren’t discussed. See also: “To delegitimise the west, it appears to be necessary first to demonise the people who still make up the racial majority in the west. It is of course possible Guy Sorman is correct and the victims have been lost to time or do not wish to come forward, we should not discount that but using his own standards Murray has acted like those he criticises. In that moment, and for the only time in this book, Murray accurately describes his war on the west. At the same time, Murray is a neo-con and rather too cosy with Viktor Orban, so one must take what he says with a grain of salt.