The Madness of Crowds
By Douglas Murray
Bloomsbury Continuum, 288pp, £20/$28
Søren Kierkegaard once wrote that “where there is a crowd, there is untruth”. Douglas Murray’s satirical but serious dissection of modern media which demonstrates how, like the Gadarene swine in the parable, it is forcing all of us headlong over a cliff, interprets Kierkegaard’s axiom for our own times..
The book’s four chapters – entitled “Gay”, “Women”, “Race” and “Trans” – examine each of these fraught themes to show that what began as a genuine pursuit of justice (at least in the first three subjects) has morphed into an endless witch-hunt directed against hapless individuals, denounced as homophobic, racist or transphobic who resist becoming “woke” (ie instantly alert to new forms of social injustice, whatever their manifestation may be). Perhaps his next book should be about climate change zealotry, the latest arena where no dissenting voices are allowed.
