The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray

The first line in the synopsis says “In the Madness of Crowds" Douglas Murray investigates the great derangement of ‘woke’ culture and rise of identity politics. And yes that is what the book attempts to do. First by providing brief historical overviews, then by providing contemporary, current examples of “madness” and finally by drawing out conclusions. 

The book is divided in 4 chapters or Themes. Each Theme is at the same time a category (segment, kind…) of people, a political statement (an ideology, ) and according to Murray a source of division and fights. The chapters are: 

1. Gay 

2. Women 

3. Race 

4. Trans 

All these themes touch on historical discriminations and battles fought and won. Rights conceded, respected and awareness established. Murray says there is so much work to do and the situation is not yet perfect but it is better than before. However, according to him, instead of finding peace these groups turn to use the tactics of oppression previously used by their oppressors. I could summarise the main message this book tries to convey in: 

The “Woke” movement is a dogmatic movement. A religion supporting a metaphysical understanding of our societies. Concepts such as Social Justice, Identity Politics and Intersectionality are not based on facts and have brought division rather than solved problems. 

Sexuality is an unstable thing to base "identity" on. 

The LGBT Community is divided. It is not a cohesive group. There are historical rivalries inside. The LGTB label is not a good foundation for a Liberal society. 

1. In Gay, Murray highlights how western societies have changed their understanding of certain phenomena. For example, now, when a straight person turns out to be gay, people say they have found their truth. However, when a gay person turns straight the interpretation is that there is something wrong with that person. This way of thinking is new and completely opposite to the one existing only a few decades ago. Murray also highlights the way Gay activists have worked for years to prove (convince?) that gay is a “hardware” issue (they are born this way) and not a software issue (a result of cultural influence). The last bit in chapter 1 discusses Marxism and other (postmodernist?) theories (e.g. Foucault’s Power) which are used as foundations to develop interpretations of reality by some social scientists. Murray mentions Judith Buttler, Peggy McIntosh and particularly Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe whose work, widely cited, is one of the main foundations of today’s identity politics. They call for a reinterpretation of “class struggle” by identifying a new class(es) of “exploited” people such as: women, racial and sexual minorities, anti-nuclear and anti-institutional movements. Murray draws a consistent argument criticising the those theories as lacking solid foundations, which do not answer any questions nor make any predictions and which cannot be falsified. In an effort to prove how the social sciences (I didn’t like the generalisation) are lacking rigour he exposes a couple of cases of academics led by Peter Boghossian who submitted (bogus) articles to peer-reviewed social sciences journals, articles which where accepted, published and then removed when the editors realised they had been victims of a “joke”. One of the articles was titled “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct”… draw your own conclusions. 

2. In Women, Murray starts by showing how, perceptions of sexual behaviour towards women have changed in recent years. He presents some examples from Hollywood personalities doing things in public which were found funny less than 10 years ago, but which if done now, would be subject of criticism. Other cases are presented in which feminist women fighting against male privilege, and other social barriers actually owning a series of privileges which they themselves do not acknowledge. In his discussion of feminism Murray states that the latest feminist waves lack the focus and clarity of the first 2 waves. Women then fought for tangible rights and triumphed. Murray particularly criticises the sector within the feminist movement which take on intersectionality and presents some examples which showcase their contradictions. 

3. The Race chapter made me think a lot. Murray talks about Martin Luther King and his ideals focusing on colour blindness: “people should not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of the character”. The author contrasts King’s ideals with today’s race campaigns. There are a lot of examples of incidents given in this chapter some of them in universities, places where everyone should be free to speak their ideas. Hard stories but also sad showing bullies, racists, violent, intransigent people unwilling to debate. What all these stories had in common, from my POV, is how colossal the rage of black people is. I felt more rage in this chapter than in the others. And I am not sure if this is a consequence of social justice activism only but I think that the non-black side of society can do much more to help than what it is doing at the moment. 

4. Trans was the most difficult chapter to read for me. Not because it was too technical, because it wasn’t, but because of the examples shown truly justified Murray’s choice of “the Madness of Crowds” as a title for his book. The pronoun issue was the least problematic issue he discussed. However, the issue of trans surgery on children hit me hard. Among all letters in LGBT, T is the “least certain and destabilising of all”. There has been little if any study of transgenderism. Murray criticises trans activists who instead on focusing on paving the road by clarifying this issue: by focusing on intersex people, a matter know for decades if not centuries and which is a physical, tangible fact, a hardware issue, instead of focusing on intersex, trans activists practically ignore them and focus on the software issue, on people who “say” they are in the wrong body, something that is hard to prove, and difficult to study. Certainly there could be more than one answer to this phenomenon, but activists insist on only one solution, drugs and surgery which are irreversible. On top of that there is the metaphysical layer of constructs which is intended to support why identity can contradict physical reality. For example man who can become a woman by only saying “I’m a woman”.

While Murray does a good job portraying the Madness of social justice, identity politics and intersectional activism, I think this was, perhaps, no more than one side of the picture. If this is a war (a cultural war) and we are presented in detail the contradictions of one of the sides, where is the other side and what (good or bad) are they doing? 

This is a good book and a recommend everyone to read it. However I'd like to read more about other perspectives ... 

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I enjoyed reading the first half of the book. It got difficult when Dawkins inserted probabilities into his explanations on how genes interact. I got lost tbh. But then I read the chapter on Memes which I thoroughly enjoyed. A Meme is a "unit of cultural transmission " and Dawkins explains how it works using Genes as an analogy. It was Brilliant!

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The treatment of abuse, mental illness and crime seemed realistic enough to be credible but on reflection I think it might have portrayed a narrow view of reality suggesting a causal relationship between them: abuse ends up in mental illness and crime.... I'm not a psychologist though. 

Anyway, the trilogy isn't perfect but I liked it enough to recommend it (provided you like dark thrillers). This is the kind of read I could enjoy because I was able to ignore its issues.