What Do I Owe The West?

I wrote a play. This isn’t really about the play, but it starts with a play. A good play, I think. It’d about a father who falls into the world of alt-right podcasts and ruins his life. Laugh a minute kind of stuff. And like any good (starving) writer I submitted it to everyone I could. Hell, I technically still am. And 99% of the time, when I submit a script, I don’t hear anything back. But June last year, I was, I thought, lucky enough to have gotten a break; a producer wanted to speak to me about my script. I assumed they felt the topic of online-induced radicalisation was one worth exploring; this was only three months after the Netflix series Adolescence took the world by storm with its frank depiction of manosphere influence on a child. Unfortunately, my hopes of a producer making me an offer for the script didn’t materialise. Why? I think it might have to do with the West.

I think creative industries attract weirdos, like me. You’ll find just as many artsy-fartsy types in the arts as you will find down-to-earth common folk. Both Oscar Wilde and Earnest Hemingway wrote novels, after all. The stereotype of the esteemed, educated middle-class liberal is a relative new introduction to the Arts, and one more to do with the class difference between artists and editors, curators, and patrons, often ringing hollow. Just look at how many creatives deemed bastions of liberalism and rebellion have shown themselves just as comfortable with conservativism later in life (e.g. J.K. Rowling, Rusell Brand, Kanye “Ye” West.) So, it wasn’t exactly too shocking when said producer seemed a little more interested reworking the script to be less “political”. He felt it didn’t reflect “the West”, and our values. I always find it strange when only one side of the political spectrum is considered political; it’s like saying fruit doesn’t belong on pizza but giving a pass to tomatoes and peppers. I got a sense that this meeting wouldn’t be fruitful when he began to launch into tirade about “the West”, ironically in the middle of a discussion about a man who goes mad talking about fringe politics. He went on about how “we’re” in trouble, how “we’re” in decline, and how “we” need to do something.

The West, the West, the West. I think the vaguer the word, the more popular it can become; devoid of a universally accepted meaning, terms like “woke”, “CRT”, “Liberal Mind Virus”, and “the West” can spread without friction. Everyone, even those who profess to be in opposition with one another, seem to love the West, and constantly fear for its survival. The Trump Administration talk about it. Fascist sympathisers like British agitator Tommy Robbinson or South African deadbeat father Elon Musk quiver for it. Pop-psychologists like Jordan Peterson literally cry about it. Tech barons like Peter Thiel believes it’s in decline and that this is cause for alarm. And former comedians turned podcast hosts like Joe Rogan waffle on about it for three-hours straight, in desperate search for a point. And yet no one seems to agree on what the Hell it is.

Try it. Think about what you think the West is. Where is it, exactly? West of where, exactly? Well, most would assume it’s Europe and North America; it’s the European descendants that are quite literally west of the Middle-East. That seems to be the broad overlap of the term. But then what about Australia? New Zealand? Or South America? Weren’t these places that were colonised and folded in by Europeans? And what about Japan, or India, or Israel, or South Africa? They are largely in lock-step with the ideals, capitalism, and politics of the West

Is it a cultural attitude? A largely liberally expressive world view, unlike the most repressive states to the East? That seems a little counter-intuitive, when, apparently, liberalism and free expression are the reasons the West are in decline, not to mention the West’s track record for freedom has been just as spotty. Censorship boards were relatively common across Europe and America until the last century; and even then, it’s hard to say rejections, shadow-bans, blacklists, and gatekeeping doesn’t still censor media. You can’t say you support Palestine in the UK without being accused of terrorism. You can’t say share memes in the US without being accused of being an anti-fascists (which is a bad thing, apparently?) Even now, in my country, Ireland, a protest that has been going on for a few days now has Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Micheál Martin threatening to bring in the defence forces to break it up. All of this decline in freedom of expression is without the scary liberals taking over any of these governments.

Perhaps it’s more a monocultural? A throughline that bleeds into each country; the Greeks gave the Italians Athenians, the Italians gave the French the Romans, the French gave the English the Normans, the English gave America the Pilgrims, and America gave the world a headache. But this rings hollow once again. I have to laugh whenever I hear a (typically American) White Supremacy take about White Unity and the White Race; they clearly have never picked a history book. To say European history was a bloody, squabbling, and pointless endeavour would be putting it politely. Italy was a shattered landscape of rival kingdoms, republics, and a single Vatican with many bastards (literally). Spain went back and forth between the Celts, the Romans, the French, the Arabs. Ireland has three different dialects of Irish (Connemara, Ulster, Munster), and no one can understand one another; half the time no one understands me, and I’m speaking English! Hell, go far enough into Europe and you’ll find Europeans who don’t even consider themselves European; the Baltics, the Scandinavians, the Eastern Europeans, the Icelandic, the Greenlanders. And that’s just one continent! Look how divided they are in America. Canada. Australian.

OH! What about religious? Overwhelming Christian, right? Well, yes, but what kind of Christian? Catholic? Lutheran? Calvinist? Huguenot? Orthodox? Coptic? Anglican? Reformed? Evangelical? Mormon? Baptist? Assyrian? Jehovah Witness? Not exactly united, is it? And if you do go with religion, does that not dilute the West to essentially include everywhere, once you consider Christians in Africa, the Middle-East, Asia, and Russia? And what does that say about Jews, or Muslims, or Atheists?

No. What the West is really, when you break it down, is an ego boost. It’s a way of vaguely, tangentially, relating yourself and your agendas to others who only have a whisper of commonality with you. It why countries around the world, with no direct ties to the ancient civilisations of the Romans, the Greeks, nor the Persians direct architecture and art nostalgic for these times. It’s the reason why modern governments, especially the corrupt ones, will liken themselves to Greek statesmen, vowing to uphold democracy (while also deciding what that means exactly.) It’s flattery. It’s a way of making yourself seem bigger, more important, and more spiritual than you really are. In other words, it’s a way of taking credit for other countries work.

I do not doubt that “The East” do something similar. China, even with the CCP, are deeply proud of inheriting one of the world’s longest surviving nations from centuries of different rulers. Japan, despite its fraught history with the rest of Asia, especially against China and Korea, seem, to me, have some recognition that they came from mainland, and that they owe their culture to it as well (e.g. Kanji came from Chinese character script.) The Middle-East, another vague and amorphous term, stretching as far west from North Africa and as far east as Pakistan, speak badly of one another and yet try to tie everything other the umbrella of Islam. Everyone does it, but I can only speak on my experience of the West, and my experience has always been one of demanding guilt.

I’m expected to support military action across the world because, what, I’m the same colour as the warmongerings? Because we used to go to the same church? Because their great-great-great-grandmother emigrated from the same island I live on now? Because there’s enough cultural overlap to not feel uncomfortable around each other? I’m expected to support bigots because they’ve (for the time being) included me in their imaginary fantasy of a world that never truly existed? I’m an Irish leftie queer creative; I wasn’t always included in this fantasy. It was this fantasy that led to my country being colonised, subjugated, starved, and threatened with annihilation by Winston Churchill himself; why would I want to be apart of it, just so the same can happen to someone else?

If you want to know what the West is, look at who supports it. Christian Nationalists who believe if they bomb the Middle-East enough times Jesus will magically appear and give them a high-five. Child rapists who think nothing about killing children, either thousands of miles away or else in a school down the round. Idiots who stumble into controversies like drunks fall into a flower bed. If that is the West, then I don’t want to owe the West anything.

#HI