Protesting Against Israel ‘An Attempt to Wash Away White Privilege’: Sociologist

Sociologist and author Frank Furedi poses for a photo after an interview with NTD's "British Thought Leaders" programme. NTD

Protesting against Israel is one way for students indoctrinated with identity politics to wash away their perceived “white privilege,” according to Frank Furedi, executive director of the MCC Brussels think tank.

Appearing on NTD’s “British Thought Leaders“ programme, the sociologist and author said young people in the West have been made ”weak and disempowered“ and ”educated to hate their own society quite systematically.”

Mr. Furedi said as the victim narrative evolved during over past decades, being “oppressed” or “victimised” has become “an integral feature of contemporary identity politics,” and being a victim gives people “a certain kind of moral authority, which others don’t have.”

Meanwhile, “the flip side of being victimised is the notion that there is such a thing as white privilege,” he said.

“And when you have white privilege, and you’re ... given that kind of automatic oppressor role that is your identity, you can’t really get rid of that.”

Mr. Furedi argued that the Jewish identity has in recent years become what sociologists call a “spoiled identity,” which has “no redeeming features,” because the group has been perceived as being hyper-white, hyper-Western, and therefore having “the most white privilege.”

“The other side of that is that a lot of people who ‘have white privilege’—which is virtually every white person—often many of them feel that the way you get rid of that identity of having ‘white privilege,’ is becoming the allies of various kinds of oppressed groups.

“And I think that what you see in, for example, the universities in America, all these protests against Israel, and the wearing of the Palestinian scarf, and everything else, is almost like an attempt to wash away your white privilege,” he said.

Miseducated

According to Mr. Furedi, people who support LGBT ideologies and the Hamas terrorist group share a “common visceral hatred of Western civilisation.”

There’s a “very strong hubristic reaction against civilisation, particularly Western civilisation, where it seems to be argued that Western civilisation, historically, is a story of shame, that there is nothing really positive that has really occurred,” he said.

“And there seems to be this almost visceral hatred for all the achievements of civilisation.”

Mr. Furedi argued that for several decades, the educational system and cultural institutions “have been miseducating young people and indoctrinating them with values that are the very opposite of their ancestors.”

At the same time, young people are “also being disempowered” by the “continuous attempt to emphasise the emotional side of education,” he said.

Instead of encouraging the power of independence and self sufficiency in young people, they are made dependent and turned into patients, he said.

“For example, in the United States, 40 percent of teenagers have seen a therapist. That’s a very large number. In Britain, the patterns are very, very similar. And it’s almost like we give them a diagnosis for what are existential problems.”

Free Speech Devalued

MCC Brussels was one of the organisers of the recent National Conservatism conference, which local authorities in Brussels attempted to shut down in mid-April.

Speaking of the experience of having to find three different venues and fight in court to keep the conference going, Mr. Furedi said “something very, very bad has happened in Western Europe, which is that the freedom of speech, which is the foundation of freedom of democracy, is now called into question in many, many venues.”

“And people argue that free speech has been overrated, and free speech must be curbed if it offends anybody, free speech must be curbed in case it traumatises somebody, free speech cannot happen when you says hateful things. There’s all kinds of qualifications on the exercise of free speech, particularly the United States, but also here,” he said.

“And when that milieu has become so strong, and the moral authority of free speech has been so strongly devalued, then people feel that they’ve got every right in the world to prevent you and I or anybody else from opening their mouth,” he said, adding that there’s also “a very high level” of self censorship.

Pointing to contemporary policies such as uncontrolled immigration and the push to decarbonise economies, Mr. Furedi said they are a result of the intellectual, moral, and political outlook of certain cultural elites, who assume that “they know better than anybody else.”

Commenting on the prospect of reversing this trend, Mr. Furedi said it’s “possible” but not easy, adding, “We’ve just got to not censor ourselves and be a little bit more courageous than we’ve been until now.”

He also called on conservatives to initiate their own intellectual and moral outlook “rather than reacting to the latest letter in the LGBTQ alphabet.”