Has the West failed globally?

This question was explored at the 22nd Ettersburg Talk this season with the well-known ethnologist and political scientist Susanne Schröter in the packed rifle hall of Ettersburg Castle. In addition to the inflation, energy and migration crises, there is also the left-ideologized attitude morality. Islam can play its cards better in the haze of identity politics than the supposedly privileged „white“ Europeans. Democracy, freedom, prosperity and security fall by the wayside. (JR)

text from Vera Lengsfeld

Schröter’s initial thesis that the West is the freest, wealthiest and most social region in the world, nowhere are the civil liberties of the individual more protected, women have achieved more in the fight for equality, can sexual, ethnic and religious minorities can better assert their concerns, nowhere does the population benefit more from tax-based social institutions, a highly developed health care system and free education, Sounds almost subversive today. For the successful model of the West is in the process of breaking apart due to internal contradictions and being deconstructed by external forces.

The West, according to Schröter, seems to be failing. Responsible for this „is a crude mixture of hubris and self-hatred, which leads equally to the rise of dictators and the elimination of fundamental democratic achievements.“

Schröter’s strength is that she presents her analyses devoid of any polemics, but fact-based, of downright scrupulous scientificness. It has gained particular credibility by confidently parrying extreme attacks and thus rendering them ineffective.

As an example of Western failure in foreign policy, she cites the disastrous mission in Afghanistan this evening. Here, despite the disastrous Soviet attempt to implant a socialist society, the West tried to impose a Western-style democracy militarily on a region dominated by tribal traditions. In his hubris, he overlooked the fact that he had no support among the vast majority of the population.

He trained soldiers and policemen, who immediately defected to the Taliban after the withdrawal of the Western Allies, he founded girls‘ schools, which were closed immediately after the Taliban invaded. From Germany there was even a gender program for a society whose main problem is illiteracy.

According to Schröter, Western society vacillates between self-hatred and overconfidence, which cloud its ability to judge.

Double standards and hypocrisy

„The attack by the Russian army on Ukraine was only possible because the rearmament that Putin always openly displayed was not classified as a threat scenario. This is especially true for Germany. Even Russia’s attacks on its neighbours did not prevent German politicians from continuing to adhere to the myth of change through trade and promoting dependency in particularly vulnerable sectors.“

Now Europe, and Germany in particular, is caught in the Putin gas trap. But instead of learning from this mistake, the traffic light government is replacing Russian gas with supplies from the Gulf states, „invariably Islamist dictatorships conspicuous by endemic human rights violations and an extremely patriarchal normative order.“

According to Schröter, this double standard destroys the credibility of the West. Another example of this double standard is „feminist foreign policy,“ which does not prevent military equipment from being delivered to Saudi Arabia.

And what are we to make of verbal support for the struggle of Iranian women when at the same time the headscarf is described in our country as a sign of self-determination and emancipation?

Such contradictions discredit „the great project of the West, namely the worldwide promotion of democracy and the rule of law…“. This project is increasingly rejected by the Global South. The West reacts to this rejection with arrogance and submissive contrition.

New enemy images

„Being white becomes a stigma in the white world, a new original sin in the post-Christian sense, and members of the privileged white middle class in particular cultivate a bizarre cult in which they publicly confess their guilt for being racist. They are supported by people who present themselves as victims of Western racism or other supposedly discriminatory practices. Since the recognition of victim status is usually rewarded with financial contributions and represents a lucrative business model, a multiplication of self-proclaimed victim groups can currently be observed.

On the other hand, the heterosexual old white man became the ultimate hate figure. The consequences are anything but trivial. The idea of the equality of all citizens gives way to an identity-political furor that divides people according to external characteristics, sexual habits and, as far as Muslims are concerned, also according to religious affiliation. In Anglo-Saxon countries, employment contracts have been terminated because the color of employees was considered inappropriate for a diverse age, and some rant about whites no longer publishing or holding leadership positions.“

The world in which I grew up, in which skin color no longer mattered, is passé. The new standards are enforced with rigid language regulations. This includes gendering, the invention of ever new acronyms that mutate into a kind of secret language. The population no longer understands the abbreviations that arise on a weekly basis and is thus excluded from the discourse.

Ideological coercion

„With prescribed language regulations, one wants to force the population to recognize the newly created realities and thus implicitly starts with the old communist ideal of creating a new man, which was to be forged in the dictatorship of the proletariat. Freedom of expression, freedom of the press, of art and of science are also coming under pressure. Anything that lobby group representatives might find hurtful is to be banned, and this applies even to simple findings in the natural sciences. A large part of the populations of Western countries is intimidated by the aggressiveness with which the new world is being built and withdraws into their own parallel structures. Some join extreme organizations.“

What can be done about it, Schröter was asked in the ensuing discussion.

Disagree, was their reply. Anyone can do that, but no one should be left alone. Therefore, it is important to form structures of like-minded people, twenty or fifty contradictions are always more effective than one. We do not live in a dictatorship, so everyone should overcome their fear.

Are the internal enemies of the West in the majority? No, because the majority of the population does not support their efforts. The silent majority only has to realize that silence is considered consent. Therefore, it is high time to raise your voice!

DAVID GANNON / AFP

The quotes come from Schröter’s book „Global gescheitert?“, Herder 2022, but were used in the lecture in a similar way.