Western Anti-Westernism: The Road to Self-Destruction

Anti Western sentiment among Western audiences is a worldwide phenomenon that has various historical roots and reasons, but is also a product of constant propaganda, long term ideological subversion, and political extremes that compete in self hatred.

Firstly, before even attempting to analyze the phenomenon of Anti Westernism in the West by actors living in the West, it is very important to define what the West actually means in this context, or at least in this analysis. In this article we define “the West” as the loose camp of countries that are liberal democracies, including some of the countries that joined this group after regaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, for instance Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, but also countries that had been ruled by an authoritarian regime and were part of the Socialist Bloc, like Poland. We also have to keep in mind that some countries are ruled by leaders who share a certain anti Western sentiment and express doubts about NATO and the European Union or liberal democracy in general. At the same time, the West is not a monolithic actor, but a pluralistic space of debate, disagreement, and internal conflict, which often makes it appear weaker than more centralized authoritarian systems.

Who are the people in Western countries who share or promote anti Western sentiments

At first glance, many would think about people who have origins in societies with a widespread anti Western sentiment. This is the case when people are highly influenced by the propaganda of the country they come from, their community, or historical experiences, and when their motive to live in a Western country is solely based on economic reasons, while they oppose the society they live in. In many cases, they are further motivated in their sentiment by local anti Western voices. This dynamic is often reinforced in social media environments, for instance on Instagram and especially TikTok, where anti Western narratives are rarely challenged and tend to radicalize over time. We also see more subtle approaches, where Western travel influencers promote authoritarian regimes and portray them as “safe destinations” to visit, despite “Western media lies”.

On the other hand, millions of people leave their countries precisely because they condemn the political system there and want to enjoy the free democratic society of a Western country. Or they come from countries where, because of historical reasons, anti Western sentiment is lower and they appreciate the freedoms of a Western democracy, and so they are often surprised and irritated by the anti Westernism of many people who had the privilege to grow up in a free democratic country. For many of them, democratic freedoms are not abstract concepts but lived experiences that can be lost again.

The concept of the West, as a political concept of allied countries with more or less similar political culture, is a product of the Cold War, a confrontation between democracy and communism. Today we are in a similar situation. While many claim it is not an ideological confrontation, we can simplify it at least to a confrontation between democracies and authoritarian regimes. Of course, the authoritarian regimes have several ideologies, but we should not forget that the Islamic Republic of Iran was an ally of the Soviet Union, just as it is today an ally of Russia, so it is not new that state ideology can vary. What remains constant, however, is the rejection of liberal democratic accountability and pluralism. The remaining communist or socialist authoritarian countries are quite clearly in the anti Western camp and still have warm relations with Moscow.

This shows how important the influence of the Western peace movement of the twentieth century, with its anti Western bias, still is today. When we look back at the Cold War, NATO as a boogeyman still exists, and some people share their old sentiment that they never reflected on or changed. Once NATO was seen as the main threat to peace and always as the warmonger. This also explains the lack of solidarity with Ukraine after the Russian attacks in 2014 and on a bigger scale in 2022. In this narrative, responsibility is systematically shifted away from the aggressor and toward democratic alliances. Ukraine is a country that seeks protection by NATO and wants to come closer to Europe, even to become part of the European Union. This is just not “sexy” for the so called “anti imperialist” mindset that can recognize imperialism only when it comes, allegedly, from a Western country. The agency of smaller states is often denied in these narratives, especially if they are viewed merely as “proxies” or “pawns” of “NATO”, “the US”, “the EU”, or “the West”.

The same phenomenon could be witnessed when it comes to the protests in Iran, which are accompanied by mass executions and widespread violence and suppression by the Islamic Republic’s regime. While a far left minority supports the mullah regime, there are many left wing activists who remain somehow indifferent to the situation in Iran compared to their activism for Palestine. Human rights abuses outside the Western sphere often receive less sustained attention. A similar pattern could be observed during the mass protests in Belarus, which were largely driven by female protagonists who opposed the authoritarian and ultra conservative long time president Lukashenko, a dictator would be a more accurate term. In a German language far left podcast, the violence by the regime against the protesters was compared, and more or less equated, to the situation of the Yellow Vests in France, and solidarity with the protesters in Belarus was denied. Such comparisons tend to trivialize state violence and repression. In the last decades we saw a rise of the far right and new “alt right” movements in many Western countries. Despite their claim to “protect the Occident”, these nationalist movements promote on the one hand isolationist policies, on the other hand they are quite fond of Moscow and in some cases even of China.

If we look at which groups promote anti Western policies, doubt democracy, and act as apologists for dictators around the world, we can identify that the “horseshoe phenomenon” is fulfilled at least in some points. A common anti Western, anti democratic stance can be found in parts of the far left and the far right, combined with more or less open support for Moscow, sometimes China, or other regimes. Conspiracy theorists, especially present in the so called “Truther movement” after 9 11 in 2001, are, in addition to the far left and far right, also part of the “Anti Western Front” within the West. Emotional narratives that confirm the anti Western bias often replace factual analysis in these milieus.

In the German speaking world, the term “Querfront”, a historical term meaning “cross front”, describing far left and far right forces acting united against democracy in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s, made a comeback after the Russian annexation of Crimea and the start of the Russian covert invasion of Ukraine in 2014. These groups of far left activists, far right activists, conspiracy theorists, and peace movement activists rallied quite openly in favor of Russia and against NATO, the United States, and the European Union. This is basically their compass. For almost any war in the world, the West is to blame. Other powers, like Russia, even if they are undeniably aggressive, are portrayed as merely “reacting” to something. Their narrative claims that “Russia reacted to NATO expansion”. The Hamas attack on 7 October is for them a “reaction” to Israeli policy, ignoring that violence in the region has a long history and has by far not come solely from Israel, if we think about attacks on Israel by neighboring countries, numerous terrorist attacks from several groups, and rocket fire from Hamas and other organizations.

The anti Western scene within the West does not seek legitimate criticism, for instance of the Netanyahu government, by acknowledging the complexity of the situation in the Middle East. Usually, for them, Israel is a “symbol of Western imperialism”, and some deny Israel the right to exist. It has to be clarified that not every criticism of Israel comes with these motives, but there are movements that deny Israel’s right to exist, and their ideology is part of a greater anti Western framework. At some point in history, also in large parts of the academic sphere, the discourse shifted from the acknowledgement of dark sides in the history of Western civilization to the idea that “the West is to blame for everything”. Anti Westernism from within the West is for sure amplified by external actors but is also a result of post colonial studies that acknowledge colonialism only by Western powers, and deny or at least ignore historical and present colonialism and imperialism by non Western actors and powers. For instance, the long history of Arab, Russian, and Chinese colonialism and imperialism is often either ignored, downplayed, or even defended by these movements. Most of them have never mentioned, or have not even heard of, the Kalmyks, the Buryats, the Crimean Tatars, and many other indigenous peoples living in the Russian Federation who have been suppressed by the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and now by modern-day Russia. They are also largely silent when it comes to the situation in Tibet or the Uyghurs in China. The reason can be assumed to be the same in all cases: the suppressor does not fit their worldview. If the oppressor is not from the West, the cause is deemed unworthy of support and is instead ignored, delegitimized, or discredited as much as possible.

In a post modern world where it is allowed like nowhere else on this planet to question everything, people tend to forget that only here they have the privilege to criticize and even despise the society that they themselves are part of.

Almost Nobody wants to defend Western civilization

When we analyze the political spectrum of most Western countries, the political parties, or the ideology of their citizens, we would roughly come to the conclusion that in most countries conspiracy theorists, far left and far right activists, and parts of the peace movement do not represent the majority of the population. This also means that promoters of anti Western sentiment should not represent the majority, even if we include immigrants from countries that promote anti Western ideologies and who did not come to the West because they oppose this ideology but purely for economic reasons. This raises the question whether most people support, or even defend, the Western world in this information war. The answer is no, they do not. One of the strengths of our democratic world is freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and our strong sense of self criticism from within. This self criticism has somehow gone out of control in the last decades, turning into a form of self delegitimization, demonization of the West, combined with apologism for authoritarian regimes and movements all around the world. Our self criticism has run out of proportion.

Anti Western narratives, or out of proportion criticism and comparisons, are now very often part of mainstream discourse. Even though there is a silent, implicit pro Western majority, it is not vocal about it. Democracy is often taken for granted. It is part of mainstream discourse to speak about “so called Western values”, highlighting actual or alleged hypocrisy, without clarifying what is meant by such statements. What is the alternative to Western values? Despite the fact that claims of promoting or defending certain values can be used as a justification for questionable actions, does this make the values themselves expendable?

Yuri Bezmenov, a Soviet defector and alleged KGB informant who worked for the Soviet propaganda press agency RIA Novosti (which still exists), spoke during the 1980s about the term ideological subversion, which he described as a long term strategy, a slow process, “to change the perceotion of reality of every American, despite the abundance of informationen, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions, in the interest of defending, themselves, their families, their community and their country”. What Bezmenov did not know back then was that far-right populism would not only rise, it would also join the process of ideological subversion. Additionally, we now face new technologies like social media that make this process of manipulation even faster. No matter if far right or far left influencers, they all tell us not to believe in our society, our centrist politicians, and the establishment.

Of course, despite these new challenges, the old “usual suspects” did not disappear, which Bezmenov describes as “useful idiots”: Western intellectuals, sometimes even professors and artists, who condemn the Western world while downplaying or even praising dictatorships and radicals around the world, as long as they are against the West.

There are also the “smarter” ones, who act as “agents of influence” and have made a business out of their propaganda. They could be “scientists”, “experts”, “journalists”, “authors”, but also “social media figures”, like “travel influencers” who tell us that our society is “rotten” and how great some dictatorship actually is, contrary to “Western media lies”. These actors are a widespread phenomenon in mainstream discourse, because in most cases they act just subtly enough to avoid being exposed by a society that is already, in a sense, manipulated to have almost zero awareness of these hostile narratives. The far right sees the “decadent liberal West” as being in decay and hates society and the establishment so deeply that even foreign enemies, no matter how autocratic they are, can seem like an attractive alternative. At the very least, they do not consider our current Western civilisation worthy of defending. This is something they share with the far left, even if the motives behind this lack of willingness to defend it are not identical.

Far-right movements claim to defend “our values,” while building alliances with enemies of the West and, for instance, verbally attacking Iranians who rally against the mullah regime with comments such as “We don’t want you here; you can demonstrate at home.” The deeply isolationist worldview they hold shows little concern for the global role of the West or for the creation of partnerships with like-minded people, movements, and countries. Their extreme anti-establishment stance, sometimes also anti-science, is deeply subversive and makes these movements an additional enemy of Western principles such as the rule of law, human rights, rationality, and the Enlightenment.

Western Anti Western actors love to „West splain“ non Westerners

The paradox of our discourse these days is that the exact same people who promote the idea to abolish „Western hegemony“ often have big problems respecting the opinions and perspectives of people who are from outside or new in the Western world. For example, we see Westerners who „explain“ Iranians that the Iranian regime is only defending itself against a Western imperialist attack and that they are wrong supporting the protests, which are of course „staged“. Then we have people that lecture Venezuelans that they should support Maduro, or exiled Cubans to believe in „viva la revolution“. This practice can be described as Westsplaining, a term used to describe situations in which Western actors impose their ideological interpretations on non Western societies while dismissing lived experiences and local realities. Westsplaining assumes that those at a safe distance understand political realities better than those directly affected by repression, violence, or exile. In this way, it reproduces a paternalistic logic that closely resembles the attitudes it claims to oppose.

Westsplaining was also very popular after the full scale invasion of Ukraine, when certain Westerners practiced victim blaming, with narratives like that „Russia reacted on NATO invasion“ or even excusing the Russian invasion with the old fake that Ukraine „banned“ Russian language. In this logic, Ukrainians are denied political agency and reduced to passive objects of geopolitical forces. The voices of those actually living under attack are ignored in favor of ideological consistency.

What direction are we moving in as a society?

Will we be able to keep our sense of self criticism and deal with our mistakes from the past and the present without engaging in suicidal self destruction? How can we keep universities as a place of free thought, controversy and a rebellious youth without ignoring the fact that classrooms have become a stadium for an unannounced competition over “who demonizes the West the most”, a sport in which, by the way, not only students but also many professors participate? What can we expect from a civilization that is increasingly polarized by the political extremes, while the moderate center remains apathetic and unaware of what is going on and how much is at stake?

Further Reading

1. Berman, Russell A. (2017).
   The West and the Battle of Ideas.
   Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
   Available at: https://www.hoover.org/research/west-and-battle-ideas
2. Belew, Kathleen (2022).
   The Crunchy-to-Alt-Right Pipeline: Those Living on the Fringe of the Left and the Right Share More in Common Than You Might Think.
   The Atlantic, December 2022.
   Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/fringe-left-alt-right-share-beliefs-white-power-movement/672454/
3. Gressel, Gustav (2017).
   Fellow Travellers: Russia, Anti-Westernism, and Europe’s Political Parties.
   European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), July 2017.
   Available at: https://ecfr.eu/publication/fellow_travellers_russia_anti_westernism_and_europes_political_parties_7213/
4. Whyte, Jeffrey (2024).
   Soviet Active Measures and the Second Cold War: Security, Truth, and the Politics of Self.
   International Political Sociology, Volume 18, Issue 3, September 2024.
   https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olae024
   Available at: https://academic.oup.com/ips/article/18/3/olae024/7708152