The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity
Douglas Murray
Douglas Murray examines the twenty-first century's most divisive issues: sexuality, gender, technology and race. He reveals the astonishing new culture wars playing out in our workplaces, universities, schools and homes in the names of social justice, identity politics and intersectionality. We are living through a postmodern era in which the grand narratives of religion and political ideology have collapsed. more
288 pages, Hardcover
First published Bloomsbury Continuum
4.21
Rating
14913
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1764
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Douglas Murray
31 books 2170 followers
Douglas Kear Murray is a British neoconservative writer and commentator. He was the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion from 2007 until 2011, and is currently an associate director of the Henry Jackson Society.Murray appears regularly in the British broadcast media, commentating on issues from a conservative standpoint, and he is often critical of Islamic fundamentalism. He writes for a number of publications, including Standpoint, the Wall Street Journal and The Spectator.
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Please use Google to look up White Couples. Look up White Inventors. Check out the pictures. If the results doesn’t blow your mind, I don’t know what will. I mean, this is real. more
I've read Douglas Murray's work before and while I disagree with about 75% of his views on political and social issues, I decided to read his new book to get a different perspective, which I believe to be a valuable exercise we should all engage in from time to time. From the point of view of the left, we are living in hateful times where people of color and women face more threats to their existence than ever before. The outlook is bleak, especially in the aftermath of the election in 2016 and white people have a lot of work to do to fix the wrongs of the past and work towards a better society. Douglas Murray's point of view is quite different. He puts forward the opinion that the world has, in fact, never been fairer. more
This is the smartest book I’ve read in a long time. I was drawn to this author because his vantage point seemed divergent from my own. I’m prone to overconfidence in my own beliefs so I’m always on the lookout for books that challenge my own cocksure worldview. After reading just a few pages of this book it quickly became evident that Murray is one crazy smart man. I would characterize him as a smarter, less annoying version of Jordan Peterson. more
It is beyond me how someone who has attended Eton College and Oxford University can create such an unimportant rant about a minority population campaigning for social change. But the biggest issue is how unfounded this his claims are. He will argue that blacks, members of the LGBTQ community, women etc have more rights than they ever have, and therefore should stop campaigning for equality, because the actual disadvantaged are now white men who cannot navigate the subtleties of this new society. Fine. Argue this. more
As someone else commented: this is a brilliant antidote to our hysterical times. Douglas Murray brings a much-needed rational level-headedness to the current obsessions of our times, and how these came to be embraced by the many. Written by a neo-conservative gay man, this book dissects the more irrational sides of some of our most talked about political movements, as spearheaded by extremists. While I do not espouse the author's conservative agenda, I found he made his arguments convincingly, often using the actual "leftist" literature and motivations to demonstrate inherent irrationalities. He did this with humour and a very healthy dose of detachment. more
Douglas Murray is a British conservative author, journalist and political commentator and is an associate editor of the British political and cultural magazine, The Spectator. In "The Madness of Crowds", published in 2019, he explores the world’s most divisive issues: sexuality, gender, technology and race, revealing astonishing culture wars playing out in the work place, universities, schools and homes in the name of social justice, identity politics and “intersectionality”. The book became a (London) Times and Sunday Times Book of the Year. If I had to select one section of "The Madness of Crowds" that intrigued me more than any other, it is the one entitled Interlude – The Marxist Foundations in which Murray gives us a snapshot of what is happening in our universities today. At one time seats of learning and debate, some faculties now are anything but with academic standards dropping and the shouting down of anyone who has a view that differs from the madding crowd. more
Murray’s central premise seems to be that the gains of the twentieth century social equality campaigners have become a new form of orthodoxy which has over reached and has become something with which to attack and assault traditional values. There’s a significant refusal to accept that social structural inequalities continue to exist and that this is a casus belli, as if all the groups who needed to achieve equality have reached their endgame and can now go away and stop bothering everyone else. His chapters carry on in this ilk. There are some strange assumptions made throughout the book. Murray makes the assumption in chapter 1 that people appearing in a film about same sex attraction with their faces blacked out are presented this way because they were ashamed of being converted from their homosexual desires into becoming straight, rather than considering they haven’t signed the obligatory consent form to appear in the film. more
LE 23. 04. 2022 - great podcast with Joe Rogan: https://open. spotify. com/episode/38ir. more
A deliberate exercise in obfuscation. Douglas Murry is clearly a well-read, intelligent and thoughtful person. I admire his original thinking and critical analysis of which all of us could use a good dose. I certainly would never want to find myself on the other end of a live debate with this clever man. However, I have significant objections with the greater bulk of The Madness of Crowds and I’m going to argue that this book ultimately serves to obscure important social issues with the purpose of rendering the need for solutions in doubt to thus maintain the status quo. more
9. 5/10Sad I took so long to getting around to reading this because I thought it was kosher conservative. The book, while not Rightist but more classical liberal or 'common sense', is the best introduction and accessible analysis of the topics named n the subtitle yet written. The highest praise I can give the author is that he several times gave expressions to concepts swishing around inchoate in my own mind, and put things together in a way that I've tried, but failed, to do, either due to defect of intellect or deficiency of time. Murray's work is a good companion to Manning and Campbell's The Rise of Victimhood Culture. more
Douglas Murray’s 2019 book The Madness of Crowds addresses some of the most stridently and aggressively fought issues of our day. In an age of “cancel culture” and of social justice advocacy, this is a surprisingly refreshing call for humility, forgiveness and open mindedness. Separating his arguments into sections for race, gender, sexuality and finally the Trans movement, Murray takes time to analyze the social justice movements in each area and also highlights the similarities with each in terms of media and activism. Murray criticizes the scholarship and promotion of the social justice issues and emphasizes the zero-tolerance allowed for dissent and also shines a light on the virulent attacks for those who disagree with the movements. The author also discusses the dangers implicit in identity politics. more
Murray has succeeded in identifying some of the key components of the current midlife crisis that sections of the left are undergoing relating to sexuality, gender, race and what he calls "Trans" . He perfectly elucidates he creeping feeling that there is something very strange about hypersensitivity on these issues beginning at just the moment when they were beginning to fade in importance. He also identifies some of the sources for the strange realities that coexist in western culture at the moment : a time when we have never been more sexually liberated and yet are reconstructing a new Puritanism with the same goals as the one we rebelled against 50 years ago. We have never been less racist and yet left wing people are hyperfocused on reessentialising racial characteristics. Occasionally following these strands can lead Murray into some of the same thickets as Jonathan Haidts Coddling of the American Mind, taking us on a tour of all the overfamiliar PC wigouts we know and love: Evergreen, the christakeses, Rachel Dolezal etc. more
Challenging and brilliantly argued, eh. The story goes something like this, and feel free to stop me if you’ve heard of this one before: sometime in the 20th century, everyone apparently stopped believing in anything, when hitherto they had believed in something. The Marxists had been having an identity crisis of their own thanks to the collapse of the socialist dream, and had been busy for the last decade or so inventing a new theory and practice of capitalism and how it might be overthrown, stumbling upon a new grand narrative in the process. The now post-Marxists have discovered a new entity known as oppression, and hoodwinked everyone into believing that it’s real. How have they done this. more
I doubt many people reading this book would give it fewer than 5 stars. If you are interested in identity politics and its effects on society, then I would assume you'd find this the perfect dissection of that phenomenon. If you are the kind of person who reads, as I did this morning, that Portland has banned urinals in public toilets (presumably so as not to offend men-identifying women who have their self-identification rather challenged by not being able to pee standing up) and rant and rave for a few minutes to relieve the angst, then read this book. Every single case of the crazy in this clown world is nicely covered by Murray. He limits the clown world discussion to chapters on gay, women, race and trans, but every instance of the madness is wittily brought forth. more
The Madness of Crowds is perhaps a little too reliant on lengthy anecdotes from current events, scene-by-scene (or blow-by-blow) transcriptions of televised traumas and social media skirmishes, such that those familiar with some of the incidents related my be tempted to skip over some pages. Nevertheless, I believe this stands is one of the best analyses of the functional incoherence of the phenomenon of intersectionality, with its competing oppressions [and/or] victimhood of race, sex and gender which to Murray "grinds hideously and noisily both against each other and within ourselves. " Murray mines the world of television talk shows, Facebook frenzies, Twitter-storms, and other locuses of current events to depict our times -- where a misconstrued word or phrase or action can become tinder for blame and resentment; where what might be an ordinary differing of opinions all-to-quickly escalates into the deaf shouts of a vengeance-thirsty mob; where daily life and social interaction is rife with "impossibility problems" (i. e. , in the observation of Mark Lilla, one simultaneously demands "you must understand me" AND "you cannot understand me"); where life has been reduced to a "endless zero-sum game between different groups vying for oppressed status, [robbing] us of time and energy for the conversations and thinking that we do need to do. more
This is the second book of Murray's I've read, following The Strange Death of Europe. Like that book, many people will condemn or praise this one based on their politics, quite often without reading it. Murray is known as a conservative provocateur, particuarly for his live speaking, partly because he is so articulate and capable of delivering withering put downs in a cut glass accent. I think this overshadows the fact that's he's a very clear thinker and raises reasonable arguments. He may be a conservative, but he's gay, an atheist and rarely comments on party politics, so he should not be dismissed as simply a partisan blow hard. more
“The special mark of the modern world is not that it is skeptical, but that it is dogmatic without knowing it. ”-G. K. ChestertonThis is highly recommended reading for anyone who is sick of the current climate of bullying and fear that is cancel culture, which of course does not tend to lead to genuine change in individual hearts, but rather merely serves to make people afraid to voice any rational criticisms and concerns regarding certain aspects of the current dogma; people losing their jobs over wearing the wrong t-shirt on social media, for instance, has become an all-too-common occurrence, and one that doesn't tend to foster an environment of open discussion, to say the least. Murray points this out: “Social media turns out to be a superlative way to embed new dogmas and crush contrary opinions just when you needed to listen to them most. more
یه فصل این کتاب در مورد دوگانگی و تناقضهای موجود در مورد وضع خانمها، و نوع ارتباط زن و مرده. این روزها که تنور بحث حقوق خانمها داغه، گفتم اینو بنویسم شاید کمکی به پیشبردن بحث بکنهسکسی فحشه یا تمجید؟بدن زن کالا هست یا نیست؟داستان از این قراره که منِ مرد در برخوردم با خانمها الان گیجم که چی درسته چی غلطه. یه دوگانگی ارزشی و رفتاری میبینم. یه چیزی یه وقتی خوبه، بعد یهو همون چیز بد میشه. چندتا نمونه رو اینجا میگمیکیه عکسی دیدم تو اینستا که خانمی داره رد میشه و مردها خیره شدن به هیکلش. more
I'm going to have a lot of notes, so I'm just going to leave them all here. In summary, this is not a great book. This is also really long, so I'm going to mark it all spoilers, even though they're not really. The frequency with which he engages in a smug apples-to-oranges comparison of women's socialisation to men's entitlement is fucking SHOCKING. Women aren't CHOOSING to have the idea that the pinnacle of our existence is men's attraction marketed to us almost exclusively. more
“Der Asket macht aus der Tugend eine Not. “or“Though this be madness, yet there’s method in’t. ”Whether you stick to Nietzsche’s dictum and think that recent developments are a good example of how especially virtuous people – those who are put, by themselves, by the way, above the common lot by the knowledge that Western culture is all evil – make virtue a matter of pain and self-hate, or whether you go with Shakespeare and think that even madness has its own laws – and that by fostering this special kind of madness, those at the forefront do follow a hidden agenda, may be of little moment because in both cases you will probably be right. One thing can be said for sure, and that is that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark. Whether you feel it in the water, or feel it in the earth, or smell it in the air, or whether you just pay attention to what is happening on the internet and in real life, the world has changed … and in his new book The Madness of Crowds, Douglas Murray sets out to describe this change and analyze the mechanisms and motives behind it. more
SJW InfernoDouglas Murray's supercilious, ultra posh voice enunciates every syllable of his latest polemic (on Audible) in which he pontificates on the destructive nature of modern debate on the issues of gender and race. The social warriors are demented, maintains the controlled Murray, whose polemic oozes sarcasm and contempt. The central thesis is this - just as we are winning the battle for gay rights, women's rights, and black rights, the post Marxist analysis that has escaped academia thru the current and former students has created a toxic environment in which there is a hysteric condemnation of society in the form of white, male, privileged oppression. Instead of viewing people as individuals, the idea is that there is an interlocking matrix of oppression that needs to be smashed. Don't expect cogent reasoning or even to be allowed to speak - these SJWs are social fascists who hate facts and free speech. more
Do not begin to believe you are going to read this book with any tiny measure of joyful or entertainment factor involved. Because you won't. That aspect will be 1 star for many readers who get all the way through. Unless you enjoy suffering. But the intellectual aspects and prose skills are 4 or 5 star throughout. more
This is incredibly fascinating book. At first, every part of me was screaming against it. I thought how dare this man say these things. He knows nothing so how dare he write such brainwash. I think being so outraged pulled me in and it started to make sense. more
I admire Murray's courage and willingness to take on such a host of hot-button issues in this brilliant volume. A refreshingly candid analysis and devastating take-down of the absolute insanity on the left. By far the best book I've read this year. more
If you're looking for controversy, have I got a polarizing book for you. Douglas Murray is a neoconservative commentator, and The Madness of Crowds: Gender Race and Identity is his frontal assault on woke culture run amock. My book club chose to read this, and I'm glad we did: it's good exercise to engage with ideas you aren't inclined to agree with; especially when stated as articulately as they are here. There are good points and bad ones, logic both solid and selective, and it's an opportunity to monitor and reflect upon one's own reactions. Any movement has its excesses, and Murray has culled extreme examples of identity politics at its most divisive: the expulsion of Bret Weinstein from Evergreen State College, death threats real and implied, the trending hashtag #killallmen, and other examples most of us can agree are in bad taste. more
288 pages of pure and accurate facts. A perfect articulation of the mass hysteria exhibited by the upper 0. 1% of our society. . more
Another Fantastic Book by Douglas MurrayDouglas Murray does it again. If you’ve been wondering what’s behind all of the recent hysteria about trans rights, ‘dead naming’ and ‘intersectionality’; or like James O Brian, you don’t know what identity politics is, this is the book for you. After watching Douglas Murray’s many, many debates on YouTube I’ve always admired his ability to calmly and cogently dismantle the left’s arguments and after addressing the immigration, identity and Islam issue in, ‘The Strange Death if Europe’, he doesn’t disappoint by addressing society’s Marxism and identity politics issues in, ‘The Madness if Crowds’. It’s no surprise that someone writing for the Guardian described this book as a “right wing diatribe” since it comprehensively dissected everything that the left hold dear, slither by slither. What else would a publication who argues that homosexuals are oppressed in the U. more
I've always been interested in the way crowds behave. when large numbers of individuals forfeit that individuality to a potent force of unity & blind prejudice. I try to avoid crowds. I have never joined a protest march for example as I have never felt happy not retaining my own point-of-view. & my socio-political opinons will remain just that. more
The is so much hated in the world. Why can't we just get along with each other. None issues have become issues. I think it's because thing work in the west and they are used to an easy life, they have to complicate things for themselves. more