It has become fashionable to recommend things to do in self-isolation. Movies to watch. Wines to drink. Music to listen to. Books to read. Some of the suggestions seem perfunctory (God knows you will forget that TV show by the end of the week, and most of those YouTube channels are fucking twaddle anyway), but I would seriously consider books. Thick books, slim books. Books. After all, there might never come a better time to read Anna Karenina.
As I began thinking about it, my first thought was John Niven's Fuck-It List. But then it would beat the purpose, wouldn't it? Niven's latest is the sort of novel one reads over 24 hours, and perhaps even faster than that. No, sure, it does have to be captivating - but it also has to fill up your thinking time entirely, it has to suck all the air from your room. It has to leave you breathless for days, and in complete mental agony. Such book is The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray.
My first encounter with Mr. Murray was a rather odd one. It was a high-profile public debate, and the odd part was that Douglas was not an opponent but rather a moderator of a religious discussion between Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson. The discussion was fascinating (I love Harris, and my feelings towards Peterson are somewhat too complex to be put in one sentence), but something drew me to the moderator. Not least because the moderator sounded bigger than the modest role he was given. And indeed he was. The next video I saw of him was shot in the city of Florence, and it was a much more becoming setting. It was Douglas Murray talking about his brilliant book titled The Strange Death of Europe. I guess following the death of Christopher Hitchens I will always be looking for someone who could at least partially give me that sense of charisma and boundless, fearless wit that I saw in the great man. Douglas Murray's two latest books certainly qualify, and try as I might - I cannot think of a recommendation stronger than that.
The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (2017) was a brave and dangerous book, dealing as it did with all those uncomfortable questions and ugly truths of mass migration to Europe, but then so is The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (2019). Perhaps even more so. After all, your life may be spared if you go against the policy line on the former issue (unless you are an EU politician), but if you find yourself on the wrong side of the latter, then God help your soul. Twitter will crush you, and Google will shame you for life. If you think you might survive, then the numerous examples that Douglas Murray is providing in the book will beat your arguments into pulp.
Because there are crowds, and they are mad. They will simplify and accuse to avoid difficult discussions. They will get offended and they will never forgive. They will tell you that race is a social construct. They will give you words like 'intersectionality' and 'gender fluidity', and they will keep making it all up as they go along. They are women who want to be sexy but not sexualised. They are huge tech companies who will treat you like sheep (type 'European art' into Google, and see the first choice it will give you). They are straight white men who will tell you they are sorry for being straight white men. This is pure undiluted madness, and The Guardian review of this book is one good example of that.
Murray is doggedly trying to explain it all, and if in The Strange Death of Europe one of the conclusions he makes is that Europe has some sort of fucked-up death wish, then surely in The Madness of Crowds it has to be this insane drive for authoritarianism. It is like we really want this Orwellian thought police that would tell us what to think of race, gender and identity. Apparently, freedom is just not good enough for us.
There are many important questions which Douglas Murray is asking here, but the main one is the very same question he asked in his previous book. The question is very simple, and yet most people fail to ask it: okay, but what next? So you have taken in all those immigrants, but what next? Where is the final point? What is the plan? Okay, so you call yourself 'they' and you hold your professor hostage (the Evergreen College story is frankly hair-raising) and you have fired people beyond forgiveness for a drunken tweet written ages ago and you have made Scarlett Johansson apologise for being white - but what next? Where is this ship going? Where is the point at which you stop?
It is questions like these, as well as hundreds of others, that you will be asking yourself while reading this book. You will be exhausted and exasperated when you reach the end, but you will find the journey ultimately satisfying - because there is nothing quite like a face of sanity amid the multitude of woke people.
