The Great Inversion

How we learned to despise what protects us and defend what threatens us.

So many Western leaders have decided to bury their heads in the sand instead of seeing—and acknowledging—the dangers staring us directly in the face.

Islamist terror. Mass migration visibly reshaping our societies. Growing communities whose values can be fundamentally at odds with those of the societies absorbing them. I cannot help but stand dumbfounded as all of this unfolds before my eyes.

What possible explanation is there for this madness?

The problem is not just the leaders.

So many people in our societies have found themselves supporting ideologies and groups that would happily slaughter them, just as Hamas slaughtered innocent young people partying at the Nova music festival.

Islam is hardly known for its liberal treatment of women, gay people or religious minorities in the places where it dominates. Even here in the West, polling among some Muslim communities has shown substantial support for elements of Sharia law.

You would think this would set off alarm bells among people who claim to be champions of human rights.

But it doesn’t.

They don’t seem to see the contradiction. They believe they are on the “right side of history”, as they so often like to remind everyone else.

A West at War With Itself

Underneath all of this sits a much deeper hostility towards the West itself.

Capitalism, strong borders, the nation-state and many of the institutions that gave us the privilege of living in some of the most prosperous and free societies in human history are increasingly portrayed as forces of oppression.

Strong borders become an extension of “white supremacy”. The nation-state becomes something backwards that should eventually be replaced by some kind of universal, borderless system, regardless of how disastrous that might actually be in practice. There is, among parts of the Western Left, something approaching contempt for their own countries.

You see it in the way the police are discussed.

Police officers are vilified for attempting to maintain law and order. This is not to say that police never make mistakes or that they should be above criticism. They shouldn’t. But these are also men and women who risk their lives every day to keep our streets safe.

That did not stop “defund the police” from becoming a serious political slogan.

What makes these views particularly striking is that so many of the people pushing them are college-educated, relatively well-off and living comfortable, protected lives. They can afford to entertain ideas whose consequences will often be felt first by people living nowhere near their university campuses and affluent neighbourhoods.

This divergence in worldview becomes even clearer when you look at geopolitics.

The Great Inversion

Nowhere is it clearer than Israel, Palestine and Iran.

Israel is fighting some of the most barbaric terrorist organisations of our time. Organisations that operate from civilian areas, fight without uniforms and have recruited children into their “struggle”.

Hamas itself showed the world what its idea of “resistance” looked like on October 7. The terrorists filmed themselves doing it.

Yet when the blue-haired “Free Palestine” activists pour into Western streets screaming about “genocide”, many have no idea that they are helping to advance the propaganda of an Islamist terrorist organisation. Perhaps some of them do know. I’m not sure which is more frightening.

Hamas could never defeat Israel on the battlefield. But it has achieved something extraordinary in the information war: people who would be persecuted, imprisoned or even killed under the Islamist ideology Hamas represents have become some of its loudest defenders in the West.

You have “Queers for Palestine” marching through Western cities—sometimes half dressed—against the only country in the Middle East where gay people enjoy the kind of legal protections and freedom they take for granted at home.

The contradiction is almost absurd. Across the surrounding region, including in some of the wealthiest Arab states on earth, gay people face criminal laws and severe restrictions that would be unthinkable in Israel. Yet these activists have chosen Israel as their enemy.

You have women marching against the one country in the region where women enjoy the same fundamental legal and political rights as men, while championing a Palestinian movement dominated by an Islamist organisation. These are not obscure differences; they are enormous. Yet somehow the freest society in the region is the one they have convinced themselves represents oppression.

Then you have black activists marching against an “apartheid state”, despite Israeli citizens of different races, religions and ethnicities living under the same body of civil law.

Meanwhile, black Palestinians have spoken about being called abeed—“slaves”—because of the colour of their skin. Think about how grotesque that is: black people being called slaves.

If black communities anywhere in Europe, or America, were routinely spoken about this way, it would rightly be regarded as horrifying racism. Yet somehow this barely penetrates the worldview of activists who obsessively describe Israel as a racist state.

The inversion is extraordinary. This is, without a doubt, one of the most impressive propaganda achievements of my lifetime.

How did such an inversion of reality become mainstream?

Toe the Line

Part of the answer can be seen in what happens when someone refuses to toe the line.

Celebrities are usually among the quickest to reflect whatever opinion has become fashionable. But the backlash against Ed Sheeran showed what happens when someone doesn’t sufficiently conform.

Sheeran hardly presents himself as some great defender of Israel. That didn’t matter. His reluctance to turn his concerts into political rallies still brought enormous pressure and, eventually, enormous public backlash that seemed to threaten his entire career.

That tells you something about the political culture surrounding this movement. Silence isn’t enough. Sympathy isn’t enough. You are expected to publicly declare yourself—to bend the knee and repeat the almost cult-like phrase:

“Free Palestine.”

Increasingly, anything short of that is treated as betrayal.

Leaders Who Know Better

Then there are our leaders.

They are not ignorant people. They have intelligence services, diplomats and access to military assessments and information ordinary citizens do not.

The British government understands the kind of threat Israel faced on October 7. Western leaders know Hamas started this war with an attack of extraordinary savagery, with the purpose of creating a cascading effect that would destroy the entire country.

They know Hamas has repeatedly made clear that its struggle is not merely about negotiating slightly different borders. No Western country would suffer what happened on October 7 and simply accept that it might happen again.

But these leaders can also read polls.

They can see that the anti-Israel position has become deeply entrenched among parts of the Left. They can also see its support among parts of the growing Muslim populations in their countries.

And instead of moral clarity, too many choose political convenience. They pander to narratives they should know are false or grossly distorted, even as their own countries confront some of the same ideological questions Israel has been confronting for decades.

And Then There Is Iran

If Israel exposes the contradiction, Iran makes it impossible to ignore.

Here you have a people who have been begging for freedom. They took to the streets knowing what could happen to them, and they went anyway.

They were butchered on an enormous scale.

Doctors inside Iran have described hospitals overwhelmed by casualties, bodies piling up and medical systems unable to cope with the number of people being shot. Medical workers trying to establish the scale of the crackdown have done so while the regime restricted communications and information leaving the country.

The true death toll remains fiercely disputed. What is not seriously in doubt is the scale and brutality of the crackdown. This was an apocalyptic level of death, and it is hard to even comprehend the scale of what happened.

These are people fighting against an Islamist regime—for freedom from a government that represses women, executes dissidents and has sponsored armed groups across the Middle East.

If the rhetoric of Western progressives actually meant what it claims to mean, these people should be heroes.

Yet where are the marches? Where are the celebrities? Where are the Western activists filling the streets demanding a free Iran? Where are the people who spent years telling us that silence is violence?

Instead, when America and Israel confront the Islamic Republic, much of the outrage in the West somehow turns towards America and Israel. Then, at the first opportunity, European leaders return to dealing with representatives of the same regime.

That contrast is difficult to ignore.

Diplomacy has a place in international affairs. Governments sometimes have to speak to terrible regimes. But symbolism matters too.

What message does it send to Iranians who watched friends and family members die in the streets when Western officials return to treating representatives of that regime as ordinary diplomatic partners?

This is the contradiction at the heart of all of this.

A liberal democracy fighting Islamist terrorists becomes the villain, while people fighting an Islamist dictatorship become an afterthought. The people who claim to care most loudly about oppression somehow cannot see the contradiction.

Before It Is Too Late

That is why I think we are living through an incredibly dangerous moment.

Too many people in the West have been taught to despise the civilisation that gave them the freedom to despise it. Too many of our leaders are terrified of standing on principle. They would rather appease whichever voices are loudest and most willing to punish them politically, while the problems continue to grow.

We desperately need leaders willing to look at the world as it actually is: leaders capable of recognising the dangers facing their own societies, and willing to defend the institutions, freedoms and countries they have been entrusted to lead instead of apologising for them.

Most of all, we need leaders with enough courage to say what they can plainly see.

I believe that, in the end, truth wins. The question is how much damage we will allow ourselves to suffer before we finally admit what is standing directly in front of us.

Let’s hope that when the West finally pulls its head out of the sand, it isn’t already too late.