The war in the Middle East has dramatically exposed many problems that exist not only in the region but also in most developed societies. Latent anti-Semitism has become quite open, and sympathy for terrorists is sometimes overflowing.

 The war in the Middle East has dramatically exposed many problems that exist not only in the region but also in most developed societies. Latent anti-Semitism has become quite open, and sympathy for terrorists is sometimes overflowing.

Of course, this may be due to long-hidden phobias, but the reason lies, in my opinion, in the radical change in Western societies that has taken place in recent decades under the influence of left-wing ideas: the replacement of honouring the successful with sympathy for the unsuccessful. This transformation was the result of two parallel processes: the formation of a welfare society in the West with its gigantic redistributive mechanism in the 1960s and 1970s, and the opening of borders to migrants in the 1970s and 1980s.

The creation of the welfare state came at a time of rapid economic growth and at a time of almost complete isolation of the US and Europe from the outside world. In the year of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programme, the share of those born outside the US in the total population fell below 5% for the first time in the country's history, while in Europe it did not rise above 1%, if intra-EEC migration is not taken into account.

It should also be borne in mind that the 1960s were the heyday of industrial society, in which inequality was largely functional and could be seriously reduced by opening up access to education, career advancement and tax manipulation. Left-wing forces at this time were more than correct in encouraging governments to reduce inequality and create more opportunities for all members of society. By 1972-1976, wealth inequality rates in the US and Europe had reached their lowest levels (the wealthiest 1% of Americans accounted for 22.4% of national wealth, compared to 52.3% in 1928 and 43.4% in the mid-2010s).

Dances with tambourines

Over the next half-century, however, things changed radically because of three trends.

Firstly, leftist ideas entered the academic community and became mainstream by the beginning of the new millennium.

Secondly, the structure of developed economies changed: with the transition to the information society, talents and skills became the main capital of a person, the share of self-made billionaires became a record, and redistribution did not so much eradicate poverty as preserve it. Unemployment in Europe rose from 1-3 per cent in the early 1970s to 8-13 per cent now, and the number of food stamp recipients in the US rose from 9 million to 43 million.

Third, Western societies in the late twentieth century opened up to immigrants, whose numbers began to grow rapidly and who quickly became the main recipients of welfare benefits. All of this created a rattling mixture in which leftist ideology was transformed from the ideology of the oppressed into the ideology of the spongers, and the idle class became not the rich people denounced by the Marxists, but the poor who did not want to become involved in socially useful activities.

As representatives of this new group, the left-wing forces advocated its maximum political participation (both electoral and protest) in the life of society, turning the modern lumpen into a powerful pressure group on the authorities. Multiculturalism became the most important aid in this struggle: it was necessary to justify people's desire to receive benefits from society and at the same time their unwillingness to integrate into it - even migrant intellectuals themselves warned of the disastrous consequences of such an approach twenty years ago (Benhabib, Seyla. The Claims of Culture. Equality and Diversity in the Global Era, translated from English under the editorship and with an introductory article by V.L. Inozemtsev. M.: Logos, 2003). The "tambourine dance" around the underprivileged has spread to their fellow human beings living from Gaza to Senegal, from Syria to Haiti.

The "cherry on the cake" has been the cultivation of a universal sense of guilt in the West towards losers of all stripes.

I agree, by the way, that compensation for colonial violence is necessary, but it is compensation, not the opening of doors to former subjects.

On the rights of spongers