Books
This columnist is derided and even hated, but she is usually right
In her latest polemic Melanie Phillips takes on the ruin of Western civilisation
January 31, 2025 08:59
In her latest polemic Melanie Phillips takes on the ruin of Western civilisation
January 31, 2025 08:59Melanie Phillips’ first book, All Must Have Prizes, was a searing indictment of the rot that had taken hold of education at the time it was published in 1996. It was a brilliant book; not only did it detail precisely what had gone wrong, what that had led to, and what could be done about it, it also had a huge impact in (at least partially) correcting the issues that it had highlighted.
It is little wonder that she is hated by a certain type. She has an unerring instinct for honing on an issue that is, on one level, staring us all in the face but which is deemed by the establishment to be off limits or unsayable. In 2006, for example, she published Londonistan, which lacerated our capitulation to Islamism. Unsurprisingly, the people who had capitulated to Islamism reacted with outrage. But who would now seriously dispute her analysis?
Her latest book, The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West – and why only they can save it, is a depressing but necessary jeremiad, cataloguing in detail her thesis that will be familiar to her JC readers, that the real divide today is “between those who want Western civilisation to continue and those who don’t…united by their resentment of Western civilisation and their aim of replacing its core traditions and principles with a brave new world of deracinated individuals, dedicated to breaking the bonds of attachment between successive generations and their nation’s inherited culture.”
As she rightly observes, “a society only exists where its inhabitants regard themselves as bound to each other by a shared culture composed of language, religion, law, literature, traditions, customs, and so on expressed through civic and political ideals embedded in the historic development of that culture. Different ethnicities can sign up to the norms established by that culture, even if they are newcomers who didn’t share in its development. But there has to be an identifiable overarching culture to which they can sign up.” But multiculturalism has instead given us “a babel of cultures and ethnicities with nothing to hold them together.” To compound this, “the indigenous culture cannot declare its values superior to any other. So it cannot lay down cultural norms”.
This move to destroy core values of national identity and cultural self-belief is being exploited and manipulated by Islamists, “who recognise in the weakness of the West their chance to conquer it and subjugate it to Islamic rule. And all this is coalescing around antisemitism and the demonisation of Israel, both the symptoms and the cause of civilisational collapse.”
For Phillips, too much attention is paid to practical attempts to deal with what has gone wrong, such as tackling universities that have destroyed the meaning of education, or halting the “mutilation” of supposedly transgender children. What is ignored is the spiritual crisis that allows these things to happen: “a crisis over meaning and purpose. That takes us headfirst into the issue of religious belief. And many people get very frightened by talk of religion…But it’s a key issue behind the West’s civilizational travails. A spiritual vacuum underpins the denigration of the nation, the abandonment of the family, the destruction of education; it has shaped contempt for the past and despair about the future; it has replaced emotional health by a profound loneliness. All these things are connected.”
Phillips offers a magisterial account of how Judaism and Jewish thinking is the bedrock of Western civilisation, and suggests that in this moment of peril – the “inflection point” as she calls it – the West should learn from Jews’ unique selling point throughout history as a culture of survival—as the State of Israel has again shown after October 7.
The fundamental problem is that “the West no longer understands what civilization actually is. Specifically, it no longer understands that civilization is Western, that the West gave birth to it. Instead, our best and brightest have told us for decades that the West was born in the original sins of imperialism and colonialism, racism and white privilege. It’s not worth fighting or dying for…So the idea of a just war to achieve victory over evil is anathema.”
Our best and brightest have told us for decades that the West was born in the original sins of imperialism and colonialism, racism and white privilege. It’s not worth fighting or dying for. So the idea of a just war to achieve victory over evil is anathema
Phillips’ latest book is perhaps her most important, given the depth of its subject matters. You do not have to agree with everything she writes to appreciate that Phillips is one of the towering writers of our time, a vital voice offering clarity and serious analysis in a world where both are in short supply.
The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West – and Why Only They Can Save It by Melanie Phillips
Wicked Son, £26.63