Bruckner is afraid of a tribalized society arising in the throes of the struggle of "genders", "races" and "communities".
The hatred of the white man is first of all a hatred of oneself on the part of the rich white man.
Already in 1983, with the publication of the “Sanglot”, Bruckner broke with a certain left that, at the time, contrasted a radiant and idealized south with a rapacious and oppressive north. It drew the image of the Third World as a place of all the horrors linked to Western prosperity. Cause and effect are obvious: With our voracity and our consumerism, we Westerners starve the masses of India and the Sahel. The vegetable proteins that we destroy to fatten calves and pigs, used differently, would be enough to feed millions of human beings who instead die of starvation.
The television bombards us with gruesome images of those decimated by hunger and disease. But the faces and bodies of these concrete human beings become emblems, projections of our mind.
"The absolute novelty now is that it is the 'whites' in Europe and the United States, belonging to the wealthy classes, who curse each other, denounce the 'unbearable whiteness of our culture' and use the color of their skin to demonstrate their infamy. The hatred of the white man is first of all a hatred of oneself on the part of the rich white man" who has internalized the accusations.
The "new scapegoat" implies the deviation off-course of three Western causes: feminism, anti-racism and anti-colonialism. "A vast re-education enterprise is underway, at the university, in the media, asking those who are defined as 'white' to deny themselves".
If traditional feminism was universalist and intended to establish both economic and symbolic equality, "neo-feminism is openly separatist, even supremacist and pits the sexes against each other". The #MeToo? “Iconoclastic enjoyment in demolishing certain known male figures”, Bruckner writes, even if justice would have acquitted them (Philippe Caubère, Luc Besson, Woody Allen). "The feminism of progress has become the feminism of processes".
The anti-racism of the past defended the idea of a common humanity. “The new anti-racism exacerbates identities, focuses on the color of the skin and even resurrects the concept of race that was believed to have been abolished”, by true nostalgics of the Count de Gobineau.
We denigrate the “chalk faces”, the whites, to celebrate other skin colors by attributing every virtue to them.
Anti-racism is paired with anti-colonialism which is all the more delusional and virulent since colonialism no longer exists. We must decolonize Western countries from within, free them from historical and cultural prejudices. "The last time we experienced racial propaganda was with fascism in the 1930s: the a priori disqualification of part of the population. We've been vaccinated, thank you. But it comes back from the Atlantic disguised as anti-racism".
White people can do nothing right. Look at Amy Cony Barrett, accused of "white colonialism" for adopting two Haitian chldren.
For us to exist is first of all to atone. At the bottom of the hierarchy is the western white heterosexual male. "At the top, black or Arab or Indian, lesbian or queer, the new queens of the universe. Thus all women are in danger, in Raqqa as in Beverly Hills, in Goma as in the seventh arrondissement of Paris”.
According to the new prejudices, "it would be better to be dark than pale, homosexual or transgender than heterosexual, women rather than men, Muslims rather than Jews or Christians, Africans, Asians and natives rather than Westerners".
And the media lend themselves very generously to this ideological make-up. "The media guillotine is spinning at full speed and, like the other, is thirsty for new heads to cut off".
There are no more masterpieces, "only the works of the leaders of Western propaganda, from Cervantes to Faulkner".
Will we have to rewrite all the classic tragedies, those of the Greeks, Shakespeare or Racine, because they incite femicide or assign a negative role to a non-white person, like Othello? "Censor friends, to work, the task is gigantic!".
Giulio Meotti is, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author, in English, of the book "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, published by Encounter and of "J'Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel" published by Mantua Books, in addition to books in Italian. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Gatestone, Frontpage and Commentary.