A year and a half ago, Russian troops invaded Ukraine. And almost a month ago, swarms of irregulars from Gaza suddenly crossed the border into Israel, spreading death and destruction.

A “barbarian conspiracy” is once again testing the resilience of civilization. It is as if the basic view of human dignity that shaped Western refugee policy in the post-war period has suffered a defeat. Apparently, large segments of world opinion (originating in societies without traditions of personal freedom and hostile to Western liberalism) are prepared to tolerate Nazi-style massacres of civilians. Sadistic orgies are readily justified by reference to historical “injustices,” especially those concerning territorial remapping and entrapment of ethnic minorities (i.e. with the Treaty of Versailles as a prototype).

Since the execution of the Final Solution, solidly documented by the Allied troops who liberated the death camps, and to most westerners the epitome of human depravity, there have been numerous outbreaks of ethnic and ideological conflict across the globe, claiming millions of lives. Atrocities amounting to genocide involving the hallmark triad of murder, rape, and looting -- have been committed within and beyond Europe’s borders, including Cambodia (the Khmer Rouge Year Zero, 1975-1979), Rwanda (massacres of Tutsis, 1994), and Yugoslavia (massacres of Bosnian Muslims, 1995).

As in most other cases where world peace is broken by the enemies of freedom, the open society of the West is divided. Misgivings and lack of resolve pervade the political processes on one side of the Atlantic. Europe as the center of the civilized world is a thing of the past. This acknowledgment may be hard to articulate by members of the ruling elite in Brussels -- the seat of the European Union. Nevertheless, armed conflicts of the past century, whether in the heartland itself or elsewhere, have demonstrated the growing dependence of Europeans on the United States for moral stamina and military capability. Thus, in 2023, 448.4 million citizens of the European Union prefer to hand over ultimate responsibility for their own security to 334.2 million American citizens. How did it get this far?

If we are not to face the future blindfolded, our perspectives on the direction of world affairs should extend beyond day-to-day speculation in malgovernance, party intrigues, and other (high-profile) scandals from the corridors of power. In short, we need to reflect on the historical causes and consequences of our identity-disturbed, self-flagellating, and fatalistic worldview as Westerners. Do we have the will and the ability to defend civilization in the long run?

It goes a long way back. World War I itself has been likened to a suicide attempt. At any rate, the frustrations of an irreparable trauma became like a disease of the soul that damaged our instinct of self-preservation as Europeans.

Shortly after the 1918 armistice, signs of an apocalyptic event shaking familiar notions appeared everywhere. The change showed itself in literature, visual arts, and architecture. There was like a common urge to break up and escape from the past. It was the origin of the new zeitgeist celebrated in avant-garde circles -- the birth of both modernism and totalitarianism; the evil twins of our time.

In academia, political circles, and the art world, progressive zealots were anxious to destroy all traces of a past whose legacy they collectively despised. The picture of impertinence, they pretended that we could rise like a Phoenix from the ashes, reborn as a new (and infinitely purer) humanity. As they were dancing on the grave of fallen Europe, they undertook to design the modern man -- an immaculate, well-disciplined android who submitted to the whims of the modern world without protest.

However, we never recovered from the wounds on our self-understanding. The grief over our fallen sons deteriorated into melancholy -- a self-denying and morbid doubt about everything that we had previously believed in. We lost faith in ourselves. Something had been broken in the European soul. The “Great Melancholy,” as we may aptly term the reaction, paralyzed our judgment and willpower. The tragedy on the battlefield became the first ominous sign of an impending decline.

As Europeans, we remain invalids of sorts. The damage to our moral foundation is like an inherited disease. Giving in to both guilt-ridden self-scrutiny and hostile accusations from the outside world, we decided to give up, not only the claim to supremacy in the world, but also the right to survival. In this sense, the political-moral collapse of the old order was total. The self-denying resolution was radical and irreversible. We decided to commit suicide as a millennial civilization.

Like our distant ancestors who lapsed into idolatry and other hellish excesses under the influence of ravaging doomsday pandemics, we avenged God’s unforgivable betrayal by rebelling against everything that used to be sacred. Thus, an entire civilization trying to flee the fatalism of melancholy took temporary (!) refuge in denial, turning its back on true self-reflection to embrace the idiotic slogans of modernism and totalitarianism. The executors of the western suicide rarely expressed personal displeasure, but were either preoccupied with technicalities (e.g. the modernist architects) or insisted that we were on the threshold of a glorious millennium (i.e. the revolutionary agitators).

The political movements that immediately sprung up in the moral void left by World War I had no scruples whatsoever. In the absence of Christian ethics, which had already let us down in the trenches, the political arena had been left to those with no ethics at all.

Truth be told, postwar totalitarianism in Europe became the refuge of the unreflective. Although pseudoscientifically concerned with the “laws of history,” it was itself an anthropological phenomenon inextricably linked to the denial and falsification of history. Absorbed by fantastic, simplistic dogma, it disclaimed any responsibility for the trials of humanity and undid the past as a source of wisdom. Its utopia was like the creation of a parallel universe. In the context of the European melancholy, totalitarianism was a brain-dead “detour.” In retrospect, a futile postponement of the inevitable.

The fall of the Berlin Wall bewitched us. As if good must always win over evil in the end, we truly thought that our humanistic ideals had won. Unfortunately, that was not quite so. That evil in the shape of political (or religious) activism should suddenly have vanished from the face of the earth was, after all, too good to be true.

Intellectual dishonesty and moral cowardice in aesthetic and diplomatic dealings, respectively, are intrinsic to the European decline. Straining ourselves to the breaking point to appear tolerant, we do not dare imagine that we have the right to stand up for ourselves and judge others, giving in to self-repudiating relativism. Like a person consumed by unhealthy rumination, lethargic and powerless, Europe stands idly by as the world changes before its eyes, peculiarly unconcerned about its own (military) defenses, thus heavily relying on its transatlantic relationship, and with an immigration policy in disarray. Sadly, that is our self-tormenting, post-Christian understanding of the matter. What is left of our own culture is deeply masochistic.

The European suicide did not take place during the sustained artillery barrage at the Somme or Verdun. The fatal decision was made in the aftermath. And it has taken us a while to execute it.

Posterity must decide whether the Americans, presently engulfed in a veritable culture war, retain sufficient vitality to defend the West and carry on civilization.

Image: Unreal