I’m pleased to report that William Collins’s remarkable new book The Destructivists has just been released in an ebook edition. It should be available to read on all e-readers but you don’t need an e-reader to read it. The ebook sellers (including Amazon) offer free software to read ebooks on computers, tablets and smartphones. It’s currently selling for £3.19 on Amazon, an absolute steal. You can check out much of the early content of the book by clicking on Amazon’s “Look inside” functionality.

Amazon has the following description:

All “Western” societies have become deeply divided, and the divisions have become ever more acrimonious. The reason is that the differences of opinion stem from differences of moral perspective. Where existing works fall short is in explaining why and how this dichotomous morality has arisen, a question which is related to who benefits from it.

One of the purposes of this book is to address that question: why has a radically different view of moral rectitude arisen and become so widespread? The answer cannot be morally neutral. Indeed, that moral neutrality is itself a moral error is central to the thesis presented, which is based upon the existence of a true, absolute or natural morality. The central thesis of the book focusses on “moral usurpation”, a process of nudging popular opinion over many decades and targeting moral perceptions. The mechanisms deployed are familiar from PR campaigns or outright propaganda, but it is the targeting of the moral sensibilities which produces adherents who are so implacably hostile to contrary views.

The cluster of social and political phenomena, the origin of whose peculiar rise to prominence the theory seeks to explain, is known by many names: Progressivism, Cultural Marxism, Collectivism, Identity Politics, Intersectional Feminism, Poststructuralism, Postmodernism, Critical Theory, Victimhood Culture, Social Justice (complete with Warriors), or simply “Woke”, or perhaps just “the hard Left”. With no pretence of neutrality, all these terms are replaced with one umbrella term: Destructivism, because their common feature is the undermining and destruction of Western culture – hence the book’s title.

It is not original to observe that annexing the moral high ground can provide a smokescreen for other purposes. But a further aspect of the thesis presented is that capturing ostensible moral peaks (even if fraudulently) functions as a source of social and political power. This has been too little appreciated, but is not new. It is pointed out that ruling elites have always needed to present themselves as upholders of moral principle, and one could always question the extent to which they truly lived up to such pretensions. However, a more virulent problem arises when the moral principles which the public endorse have been nudged away from their valid origins in the true morality. If public morals can be distorted into precepts which happen to favour the elites, then the elites can be relied upon to uphold them.

Understanding our predicament requires appreciation that we are not dealing with a single phenomenon or a single group of people, but with an ecosystem of mutually supporting groups who trade between themselves in different forms of power. These forms of power are: money, civic and legislative power, the control of information, and moral standing. Unless the implicit power value of moral standing is appreciated, the overall ecosystem cannot be understood. But the ecosystem forms the Woke Industrial Complex (a term coined by Vivek Ramaswamy).

However, the confected morality manufactured by the Destructivists is false, which is why this mutually self-supporting ecosystem of traded power is wreaking cultural destruction as it pumps ever more power to the triumvirate of power groups which are its higher socio-political animals. Identity Politics and allied moral corruptions are providing the perfect moral smokescreens behind which authoritarianism is advancing, which is why these issues are so very pressing.

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