{"id":37969,"date":"2018-09-19T07:19:33","date_gmt":"2018-09-19T12:19:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=37969"},"modified":"2018-09-19T07:19:33","modified_gmt":"2018-09-19T12:19:33","slug":"the-west-against-the-rest-or-the-west-against-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=37969","title":{"rendered":"The West Against the Rest or The West Against Itself?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The West Against the Rest or The West Against Itself?<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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The West\u2019s illiberal-bashing frenzy has reduced what should be a crucial debate about a fearful West Against the Rest, to the more pressing issue of The West Against Itself, writes Pepe Escobar.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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What is the bigger story? The West Against the Rest or The West Against Itself?<\/p>\n

The Illiberal Quartet of Xi, Putin, Rouhani and Erdogan is in the line of fire of haughty homilies about Western \u201cvalues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Illiberalism is arrogantly and provocatively depicted in the West repeatedly as a Tartar Invasion 2.0. But closer to home Illiberalism is responsible for the social, civil war in the U.S. as Trump\u2019s America has long ago forgotten what the European Enlightenment was all about.<\/p>\n

The Western view is a maelstrom of a Judaeo-Greco-Roman, pseudo-philosophy steeped in Hegel, Toynbee, Spengler and obscure biblical references decrying an Asian attack on the \u201cenlightened\u201d West\u2019s mission civilisatrice<\/i>.<\/p>\n

The maelstrom stunts critical thinking to evaluate Xi\u2019s Confucianism, Putin\u2019s Eurasianism, Rouhani\u2019s realpolitik and \u201cnon-Westoxified<\/a>\u201d Shi\u2019ite Islam, as well as Erdogan\u2019s quest to guide the global Muslim Brotherhood.<\/p>\n

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Targets of the West.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Instead the West give us phony \u201canalyses\u201d of how NATO should be praised for not allowing Libya to become a Syria, which it indeed has.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile a golden rule prevails about one Asian power: never criticize the House of Saud, which happens to be the ultimate manifestation of Illiberalism. They get a free pass because after all they are \u201cour bastards.\u201d<\/p>\n

What the illiberal-bashing frenzy does accomplish is to reduce what should be a crucial debate about a fearful West Against the Rest, to the more pressing issue of The West Against Itself. This intra-West battle is being in manifested in several ways: Viktor Orban in Hungary, eurosceptic coalitions in Austria and Italy, the advance of the ultra right-wing Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland (AfD) and the Sweden Democrats. In short it\u2019s The Revenge of the European Deplorables.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The West Against the Rest or The West Against Itself? The West\u2019s illiberal-bashing frenzy has reduced what should be a crucial debate about a fearful West Against the Rest, to the more pressing issue of The West Against Itself, writes Pepe Escobar. What is the bigger story? The West Against the Rest or The West […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[130,6963,7844,4076,827,965],"class_list":["post-37969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-china","tag-consortium-news","tag-donald-trump","tag-pepe-escobar","tag-united-states","tag-west"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37969"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37970,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37969\/revisions\/37970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}