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Never forget that the people who bleat the loudest about "saving Western civilisation" are the Vandals setting it alight, piece by piece.
"Western civilisation" was always an oppositional construct, defined as much by what it wasn't as anything else: "the exotic Orient," Islam, the Warsaw Pact states. But the actual cultural patrimony of "Western" countries, broadly defined, is under constant threat from the right.
Conservatives like to use the signature works of European history to cosplay erudition and virtue. Same with the extreme right: It's why so many neo-Nazis have oil paintings or Greco-Roman statuary as their avatars. But they know nothing meaningful about any of it.
Jordan Peterson cramming for his shambolic debate by reading The Communist Manifesto for the first time is typical of that same tendency. Appointing one self the defender of all this knowledge and culture while knowing nothing of it, and persecuting those who actually *do.*
Culture is, at best, a toy to these people. A gimmick that lends them unearned credibility.
On a final note, consider the celebration of the late art historian Andrew Tallon's intricate 3D scan of Notre Dame. It may allow the cathedral to be properly rebuilt. Then consider how the right wants to eliminate art history programmes. cnn.com/style/article/…
Didn't stop those same people, who might otherwise go to a Tory cocktail party and huff "lol art history" from trying to cloak themselves in the cultural value of Notre Dame. Or to use it to bludgeon others who tried to point out other acts of vandalism. gofundme.com/f/church-fires…
