The Anti-civilization of the West

T u e s d a y , 2 6 A u g u s t 2 0 1 4

THE ANTI-CIVILIZATION OF THE WESTOriginally published in the first issue of Radix. You can buy the secondissue here.

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Alternative Right: THE ANTI-CIVILIZATION OF THE WEST http://alternative-right.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-anti-civilization-of-west...

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by Colin Liddell

In his book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the New WorldOrder (1996) Samuel P. Huntington put forward the thesis, popular withlarge sections of the 'Right,' that the post-Cold-War world would be shapedby its major civilizations and their interactions.

For some it was the gently coded recognition of race that appealed, for othersit was the stigmatization of Islam as a rather unpleasant civilization that rangtrue, so that the book became, for better or worse, a landmark of politicalscience. This makes it an ideal starting point for considering the topic ofcivilizations in general and the problematic nature of the West in particular.

The book is well written in that it deploys supportive data for its theories inthe correct amounts and at reassuring intervals, but there is also anextremely misshapen feel to Huntingdon's thesis that stems from thefollowing factors:

Overemphasis on religion1.

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Questionable demarcation of civilizational boundaries2.Superficial definition of civilization3.Cowardice regarding race4.Confusion about the true nature of THE WEST5.

The map showing the "World of Civilizations" in Huntingdon's book presentsnine civilizations, namely WESTERN, LATIN AMERICAN, AFRICAN,ISLAMIC, SINIC (Chinese), HINDU (Indian), ORTHODOX (largelyRussian), BUDDHIST, and JAPANESE.

Huntingdon's scheme relies heavily on religion as a defining factor. This isespecially noticeable in his BUDDHIST 'civilization,' which includes suchdisparate countries and climate zones as Thailand, Tibet, and Mongolia,three countries that have little in common except for the fact that they areBuddhist. Given their relative unimportance, it would perhaps have beenmore elegant to have simply included them as peripheral regions of SINICcivilization.

Religion is also the unacknowledged basis for his WESTERN civilization,which throws together Catholic and Protestant countries, while strangelyexcluding heavily Europeanized parts of South America and Africa. Given thewidespread lack of faith in most of THE WEST, this seems odd. Religion alsoallows him to divide Russia and its satellites from THE WEST with Greecethrown in as a kind of going away present! Another major problem is INDIA.Just as American maps of the world have two Indias, one on each side, soHuntingdon seems to think there are two, allocating the whole country toboth the ISLAMIC and HINDU civilizations.

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Huntingdon makes a strong case for the inherent aggressiveness of ISLAMICcivilization, based on the number of intra-civilizational and inter-civilizational conflicts [p.256-258]. This is something that has given the bookNeo-Con appeal, but there are other obvious explanations for thisaggression, like Islam's comparative lack of political unity and the fact that itborders more civilisations than other civilizations.

One of the weaknesses of Huntingdon's book is that he is never clear aboutwhat a civilization actually is. His best definition comes on page 43, but issketchy and subjective:

"A civilization is the broadest cultural entity. Villages, regions,ethnic groups, nationalities, religious groups, all have distinctcultures at different levels of cultural heterogeneity... Acivilization is thus the highest cultural grouping of people andthe broadest level of cultural identity people have short of thatwhich distinguishes humans from other species Civilizations arethe biggest 'we' within which we feel culturally at home asdistinguished from all the other 'thems' out there."

The key point in this definition is that a civilization is something that people"feel" comfortable belonging to. Rather than just being a member of thesame civilization that your parents were part of, it is now far more importanthow you feel about it.

This effectively turns 'civilization' into an expression of late 20th-centuryconsumerism. Your civilization could almost be something you pick off theshelf, like a pack of soap powder. Needless to say, following this principle in

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practice would cause havoc with Huntingdon's civilizational map.

The reason Huntingdon favours religion as the civilizational 'sorting hat' isthat it loosely reflects race and therefore gives his thesis a quality readers canempathize with, but also allows him to avoid mentioning the dreadedR-word itself quite literally, as the book's index has no mention of "race" orits equivalents!

The idea of distinct zonal civilizations, however, is implicitly racial becausesuch civilizations can only emerge through a degree of sustaineddemographic stability. Left-wing critics of Huntingdon realize this and haveconcentrated their attacks on this point.

To talk about WESTERN CIVILIZATION as Huntingdon does, is to slylyevoke the idea of Western European man. WESTERN CIVILIZATION is howthe phrase THE WHITE RACE is whispered in the modern, politicallycorrect era. Huntingdon knew this and this is why this book has been sosuccessful, but he also knew that he could not make this explicit. As asuccessful academic and part of the establishment he had to maintaindeniability. His slyness was his cowardice.

But enough about quibbles! The book's main weakness lies at its very heart,in the idea that the WEST is just another civilization, and an old one at that,dating from around the time of Charlemagne, according to Huntingdon.

Huntingdon often admits that the WEST is unique among civilizations, buthe fails to proceed to the next logical step, i.e. considering whether the WESTis in fact something entirely different:

"The West obviously differs from all other civilizations that haveever existed in that it has had an overwhelming impact on allother civilizations that have existed since 1500. It alsoinaugurated the process of modernization and industrializationthat have become worldwide, and as a result societies in allother civilizations have been attempting to catch up with theWest in wealth and modernity. Do these characteristics of the

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The Anti-civilization of the West