The war on the past, with Frank Furedi - Part 1

Frank Furedi with Will Kingston | 16 October 2024 I Spectator Australia

Many things are depressing about?modern culture wars, but none more so than the war on the past. There is a concerted, fierce and increasingly successful effort not just to make us ashamed of our history, but to disconnect us from it entirely.

How did this war start, and more importantly, how can it be won by defenders of Western civilisation? To answer these questions, Will is joined by sociologist, author, and commentator Frank Furedi. Frank’s new book is titled, “The War on the Past: Why the West Must Fight for its History.”

TRANSCRIPT - Part 1

Welcome to ‘Fire At Will’.? A Spectator Australia Podcast.

A safe space for dangerous conversations. I’m Will Kingston.

– Will Kingston –

Many things depress me about the modern culture wars. The shift from 'The' truth to 'My' truth; the obsession with identity over merit and character; the self-flagellation for sins we have nothing to do with. But if there’s one thing that makes me sadder and angrier than any other - it is the war against the past. There is a concerted fierce and increasingly successful effort, not just to?make us as ashamed of our history but to disconnect us from it entirely.

And it goes much deeper than a few Moonies tearing down statues. It’s an impulse that is embedded across almost every Western institution. Out of this will start, and more importantly, how can be one by defenders of Western civilisation. To help me with those questions I’m joined by sociologist, author and commentator Frankie Furedi. His new book is titled “The War on the Past: Why the West Must Fight for its History.”

Frank, welcome to Fire At Will. Let’s start with the way that I just framed the war on the past. You don’t frame it as being part of the Culture Wars as perhaps I just did. You frame it as being the primary driver of the Culture Wars.

Take me through how that works.

– Frank Furedi –

A lot of the Culture Wars is about identity politics - about gender, about race, about decolonisation. About who we are, where we come from, and?what we are about. And in many respects the Culture War - since it’s inception in the late 1970s - always tried to challenge and delegitimise the past and the language of the past, the accomplishments of Western Society. From the outset, in a semiconscious way, it’s always targeted these features of the past and has become much more systematic in the last 10 years.

Virtually every episode that one ought to be proud of, in terms of Western civilisation, has been flipped over and systematically demonised and represented in a negative way. And that underpinning is important to understand because if you only deal with the symptoms of the Culture War, you will never be able to deal with the issue very effectively.

– Will Kingston –

You mentioned that we can point to the early 1970s as an origin point for the modern Culture Wars, but I’m curious as to whether this is a unique phenomenon over the last 50 odd years, or whether there is something innate in us that looks to the past and looks to tear it down. Were the ancient Egyptians looking to the past to try to tear down their ancestors? Were the ancient Romans doing this? Or is this something that is very much unique to our times?

– Frank Furedi –

There are always instances of people being critical of their past and targeting certain dimensions of the past. That is not particularly new. But what is different about today, is that we’re not simply attacking this or that episode in the past but literally some people are trying to annihilate the past altogether… to destroy it! Suggesting that there’s nothing remotely positive worth redeeming about what the Western world has achieved - and that’s very new.

Even if you look at regimes under Lenin or look at Marxist philosophers who didn’t like many aspects of what happened before their generation, they could nevertheless say that some positive things happened. They would talk about the importance of classical education, the Greeks and the Romans. Those things were seen as very important for their generation, to understand and learn.

Today, the Greeks and the Romans are cast into the role of white supremacist racists, and all kinds of negative features are attributed to them. That is what is new. Viewing the past as contaminating us and having to insulate ourselves against it - completely cutting off the past from the present.

– Will Kingston –

?OK. Before we go into that in more detail, I want to understand the potted history from that moment in the 1970s, and how we got here. What’s been the series of steps that has brought us to this current moment?

– Frank Furedi –

There are several important developments. Firstly, in the 1970s we have the end of former ideologies. As communism disintegrates liberalism and it unravels, even conservatism becomes paralysed and as the old ideologies crumble, so you have new ideals emerging. Identity politics gain tremendous strength, environmentalism also becomes very powerful and in ascendance. And as that occurs, so increasingly the political and cultural elite that ran Western society to that point, begin to lose faith and begin to believe in the new values into which they now socialise.

So, you have a situation where increasingly they no longer believe in the outlook of their parents, grandparents, and their ancestors. They begin to convert to these anti-civilisational sentiments - and this is the most important development - in the mid-80s the door began to open to virtually any kind of attack and any kind of criticism of their past. They don’t fight back. Even the Conservatives at that point are unaware of what’s happening.

They’re not in a position to challenge the attack on conserving values as suddenly they have this one-sided culture emerging, where nobody is fighting back and they’re allowing these new ideas to sweep the cultural institutions. The people who run our institutions are the people who run our world, and they themselves become quite sympathetic to this anti-civilisational sentiment.

– Will Kingston –

Do you see the universities as being the origin point from which this new ideology then spreads to other institutions?

– Frank Furedi –

Yes. The universities are where the theories and the more systematic formulations are invented - but very swiftly, they begin to move outwards. This is what a lot of people didn’t really understand. People said, “This is just academics being troublemakers." They didn’t realise, however, that universities were quite influential, they were educating the elites of those societies.

The schools and all the institutions to do with culture began to get influenced, to the point by the time we get to the 21st century even the business schools where people go to get their MBAs, have a curriculum that is entirely wedded to these new notions. So I can think of no institutions – not even the military anymore - that has somehow managed to keep this out.

Of course, some societies are more susceptible than others. For example, the Anglo-American societies are most overwhelmed by this, whereas in southern and central Europe you haven’t got the same kind of impact. These anti-civilisational values then spread throughout the world and gradually begin to have a dominant hegemonic position in society.

– Will Kingston –

Why is it that the Anglosphere is uniquely susceptible to this particular new ideology?

– Frank Furedi –

There are two reasons. Firstly, places like Australia and Canada were always ambivalent about what it meant to be Australian, what it meant to be Canadian. So, their identity was always insecure. Therefore, they were more hospitable to ideas that called into question the legitimacy of their past. More importantly, there are certain places where this really takes off. California. I always called these Californian values because it’s there that you have the media, the film industry and all these cultural institutions that begin to formulate them.

And gradually from California, it’s much easier to spread these anti-civilisational sentiments in English-speaking countries. Of course, what happens is that as it spreads from California to the eastern seaboard of United States then to Britain, it’s only a matter of time before it goes to northern Europe, to Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and?Holland. There is a kind of dynamic created and it is unfortunate that some societies are more captured by this than others.

END Part 1