Douglas Murray has always left me feeling rather perplexed. The man, undoubtedly a bigot and more specifically an Islamophobe, gets away with such intellectual incoherence time and again. I first came across Murray in an interview on his book The Madness of Crowds. Despite thoroughly disagreeing with the book’s thesis, I came away with a glowing impression of Murray. The discussion was thoughtful and well-balanced, something which I yearn for in an everyday social discourse marred by culture wars. This ill-judged supposition only lasted for a couple of hours, after which I moved from cautious respect to an avalanche of disgust.
Murray is a bit like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. One minute, he's the voice of reason, calling for cohesion and reconciliation, the next, he's spewing venom about Muslims, transgender people, and immigrants. Murray founded the Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC), an act which prime facie seemed a lot more Jekyll than Hyde. A neo-conservative think tank, the CSC was purportedly “the first” in “Britain to study extremism and terrorism”, with Murray chairing it from 2007 to 2011. The CSC had tasked itself with two principal goals: social cohesion between communities and taking down extremism, with groups like the far-right British National Party (BNP) and the Islamist group al Muhajiroon being in its crosshairs.
The BNP had reared its ugly head in the 2000s under Nick Griffin. In 2009 Murray offered to challenge Griffin on the BBC's flagship program Question Time. Murray was generally palatable to the public and had gone through the typical journey of many a columnist before him, starting at Eton just like his Spectator counterpart Boris Johnson. The BBC reasoned that having a voice from the right would help balance the conversation. This was not the case. Concerns began to mount regarding Mr Murray’s controversial views, particularly on immigration, which could well have been viewed as bolstering Griffin.
Controversies
Despite his broader respectability, Murray has had his fair share of clashes with all things ‘Muslim’. In a speech to the Dutch Parliament in February 2006, before his time as chair of the CSC, Murray declared that "conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board" and "all immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop". This proved too much even for the Tories, prompting the conservative front bench to sever ties with Murray's CSC. James Brandon, a former colleague of Murray at the CSC, wrote of his attempts to “de-radicalise” Murray in 2009:
“My time there was a constant struggle to "de-radicalise" Murray and to ensure that the centre's output targeted only Islamists – and not Muslims as a whole. This October, however, I had finally had enough of this constant battle and resigned.”
Murray would later defend his comments, attempting to justify said remarks as being grounded within the context of an “angry time”. Ah yes, because who hasn't pushed for the misery of millions of people when they’re a bit cross?
This sort of behaviour usually comprises career suicide, or at least being knocked down a peg or three within circles of respectable discourse. However, as I and many others have observed, such incidents not only failed to garner enough backlash but in actuality helped further his career. Murray would go on to publish “Neoconservatism and Why We Need It” later in 2006, launch the CSC in 2007, and join the Spectator in 2012 as an associate editor. Time after time Murray proves that if you speak with an Etonian accent and master flowery language, you too could be a mainstream bigot!
From 2010 onwards his credentials would solidify. Amongst the far right, Murray was a sort of gateway into their milieu. Remarking on their website the English Defence League (EDL), a violently Islamophobic organisation, wrote:
"Luckily there are a few members of the middle and establishment classes who believe that the EDL at least deserve a fair hearing. One of these is the British writer and former director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, Douglas Murray. It's a pity there aren't more public figures like Douglas Murray. Thank you for being right Mr Murray."
This praise was in response to an earlier comment Murray had made in which he stated that the EDL represented the kind of “grassroots” response to Islamism that he would like to see. How touching!
Within mainstream political discourse, Murray worked diligently to shift the Overton window of acceptability towards the hard right. In his book The Strange Death of Europe, Murray laments what he perceives to be Europe's “Suicide” through the immigration of people from Asia and Africa, especially those from Muslim countries. He cites the loss of Europe’s Christian heritage (despite being himself an atheist), the “demographic time bomb” of Europe's Muslim population, and as a cherry on top “the prophetic foreboding” of Enoch Powell.
Of course, Murray does try to water down his rhetoric for his middle-class audience, conceding that Europe is “probably doing the only thing that a civilised people can do in rescuing such people, welcoming them and trying to give them safety”. But before anyone gets too comfortable with his language, he quickly undercuts it all by defending Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally. He just can't help himself, can he?
Douglas Murray in the present
In light of the riots that swept across Britain earlier this month, I think it is particularly important to reflect on people like Douglas Murray. Murray has once again stirred up controversy following his response to both the riots and a chilling comment made last year. In an interview with John Anderson, Murray said:
"If the army is not sent in” [against asylum seekers crossing the channel] ”then the public will have to go in, & the public will have to sort this out themselves, and it'll be very, very brutal".
Images of asylum hotels set alight are unambiguously awful. However, it is hard to admit that supposedly “respectable” people may have fanned the flames of hate that sent arsonist mobs against migrants. Murray is a seven-time number-one bestselling author, whose books have been digested by hundreds of thousands, most of whom would like nothing to do with the violence we saw this month. We must nevertheless recognise that every book sale, every subscription to a paper, and every view, like, or retweet has played a role in creating the Douglas Murray we see today. I have been part of that too.
We also have to ask people like Murray important questions. We need to ask him and others like him what they hope to achieve with their rhetoric, whether and why they think they deserve their platforms, and in the end, and most important of all, will the real Douglas Murray please stand up?
Image: Wikimedia Commons/AndyCNgo
No image changes made.
Comments