Douglas Murray

“Uncomfortable Conversations”, Norwood Town Hall, 21 March 2024

Douglas Murray, well-known pundit and author (The Madness of Crowds, The War on the West, The Strange Death of Europe), appeared in conversation with Josh Szeps in a wide-ranging exchange of sometimes provocative, and always entertaining, common sense ideas and propositions (Hallelujah! – Ed.). TVC ground staff (in our main image flanking Mr. Murray) attending the talk in Adelaide, were disappointed to confirm that Adelaide maintains its reputation for the polite allowance of discourse. No aggro here, alas – we’d been hoping for the kind of protest and cancelling tactics attempted in Sydney, where a group called the Tzedek Collective (https://www.tzedekcollective.com/) petitioned the Enmore Theatre to terminate the talk, its online comment thus (our emphasis in bold): “To be clear: while the Israeli government recently declared war in Gaza, its war on Palestinians started over 75 years ago. To this end, any ceasefire must be followed by an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land.” It recalls Murray referencing Nietzsche on the evening: when people clamour for “justice,” they often mean “revenge.”

Murray is a defender of Western Civilisation, the Enlightenment, and freedom of expression (words, after all, being merely the outer clothing of ideas, which must be worn in order to allow useful and decent engagement). He is a perfect warrior within our current malaise, which is of course why many modern forces want to stop him: Islam-o-nuts. Extinction Rebellion and its various doom-goblins and art vandals. Identity Politicians and Intersectionality Morons. Cultural Marxists. Critical Race Racists. Historical Revisionists. And so on.

Josh Szeps, who is an experienced broadcaster and podcaster, easily assumed the role of interviewer and mild gadfly, encouraging Murray to express his views on an array of modern problems. Szeps himself understands the risks of plain-speakin’, having recently said; “But something’s happening at the moment where there’s this kind of self-righteous, self-certainty that is accompanying people’s instinctive desire to be backing the right horse, to be on the right side of history, to be supportive of the poor, disenfranchised.”

In his book The Madness of Crowds (2019), Mr. Murray quotes G.K. Chesterton: “The special mark of the modern world is not that it is sceptical, but that it is dogmatic without knowing it.”