Targeting Norway’s Labour Party and killing for “invented purity”, Anders Breivik’s acts of insanity shook the world and have become a topic of focus and much debate. In The biggest threat to Western values, Tarak Barkawi makes the case for a culprit closer to home. Neoliberalism – a threat from within.

“Multiculturalism does not pose a significant danger to Western values – but neoliberalism does.”

Note for example the ways in which the great professional vocations of the West – lawyers, journalists, academics, doctors – have been co-opted and corrupted by bottom line thinking. Money and “efficiency” are the values by which we stand, not law, truth or health. Students are imagined as “customers”, citizens as “stakeholders”. Professional associations worry about the risk to their bottom line rather than furthering the values they exist to represent. Graduates of elite Western universities, imbued with the learning of our great thinkers, are sent off to corporations like News International. There they learn to shut up, obey, and collaborate in the dark work of exploitation for profit, for which they will be well rewarded, at least financially speaking.

Banksy # 344

DCKennedy