Douglas Murray (author)

Douglas Murray
Murray in 2019
Born	Douglas Kear Murray (1979-07-16) 16 July 1979 London, England
Occupation	Author, political commentator
Education	St Benedict's School Eton College
Alma mater	Magdalen College, Oxford
Period	2000–present
Subject	Politics, culture, history
Notable works	Bosie: A Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas (2000) Neoconservatism: Why We Need It (2006) Bloody Sunday: Truths, Lies and the Saville Inquiry (2011) The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (2017) The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (2019)
Website
douglasmurray.net

Douglas Kear Murray (born 16 July 1979) is a British author and political commentator. He founded the Centre for Social Cohesion in 2007, which became part of the Henry Jackson Society, where he was associate director from 2011 to 2018. He is also an associate editor of the conservative-leaning British political and cultural magazine The Spectator.

Murray has written columns for publications such as Standpoint and The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of Neoconservatism: Why We Need It (2005), Bloody Sunday: Truths, Lies and the Saville Inquiry (2011) about the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (2017) and The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (2019).

Murray has been described as a conservative, a neoconservative and a critic of Islam. Murray's views and ideology have been described as being proximate to the far-right by a number of academic and journalistic sources and he has been accused of promoting far-right conspiracy theories and for being Islamophobic. The author has been linked to the so-called “Intellectual Dark Web”, a loosely affiliated group of intellectuals who are critical of social justice and identity politics.

Early life

Murray was born and raised in Hammersmith, London, by an English, civil servant mother, and a Scottish, Gaelic-speaking school teacher father. He has one elder brother. He would go to his father's ancestral home, the Isle of Lewis, every summer as a boy, where he enjoyed fishing.

Murray was educated at West Bridgford School and was awarded a music scholarship at St Benedict's School and later at Eton College, before going on to study English at Magdalen College, Oxford.

Publications

At age 19, while in his second year at the University of Oxford, Murray published Bosie: A Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas, which was described by Christopher Hitchens as "masterly". Bosie was awarded a Lambda Award for gay biography in 2000. After leaving Oxford, Murray wrote a play, Nightfall, about the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg.

In 2006, Murray published a defence of neoconservatism – Neoconservatism: Why We Need It – and went on a speaking tour promoting the book in the United States. The publication was subsequently reviewed in the Arab journal Asharq Al-Awsat by the Iranian author Amir Taheri: "Whether one agrees with him or not Murray has made a valuable contribution to the global battle of ideas." In 2007, he assisted in the writing of Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World: Renewing Transatlantic Partnership by Gen. Dr. Klaus Naumann, Gen. John Shalikashvili, Field Marshal The Lord Inge, Adm. Jacques Lanxade, and Gen. Henk van den Breemen. His book Bloody Sunday was (jointly) awarded the 2011–2012 Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize. In June 2013, Murray's e-book Islamophilia: a Very Metropolitan Malady was published.

In 2017, Murray published The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, which spent almost 20 weeks on The Sunday Times bestseller list and was a No. 1 bestseller in non-fiction. It has subsequently been published in more than 20 languages worldwide. In The Strange Death of Europe, Murray argued that Europe "is committing suicide" by allowing non-European immigration into its borders and losing its "faith in its beliefs". The book received a polarized response from critics. Juliet Samuel of The Telegraph praised Murray, saying that: "His overall thesis, that a guilt-driven and exhausted Europe is playing fast and loose with its precious modern values by embracing migration on such a scale, is hard to refute." An academic review in the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs acclaimed the book as "explosive" and "an elegantly written, copiously documented exposé of Europe’s suicidal hypocrisy". Rod Liddle of The Times called the book "a brilliant, important and profoundly depressing book". Conversely, other reviews of the book were highly negative. Pankaj Mishra's review in The New York Times described the book as "a handy digest of far-right clichés". Writing in The Intercept, Murtaza Hussain criticized what he called the "relentlessly paranoid tenor" and "apocalyptic picture of Europe" portrayed in the book, while challenging the links Murray makes between non-European immigration and large increases in crime. In Middle East Eye, Georgetown professor Ian Almond called the book "a staggeringly one-sided flow of statistics, interviews and examples, reflecting a clear decision to make the book a rhetorical claim that Europe is doomed to self-destruction". According to the New York Times review, Murray defends the German nationalist, anti-Islam, far-right group Pegida in The Strange Death of Europe; writes that the English nationalist, anti-Islam, far-right English Defence League "had a point" and described Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as a better sentinel of "European values" than George Soros.

Murray wrote about social justice and identity politics in his 2019 book The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity which became a Sunday Times bestseller. It was also nominated as an audio book of the year for the British Book Awards. In the book, Murray points to what he sees as a cultural shift, away from established modes of religion and political ideology, in which various forms of victimhood can provide markers of social status. He divides his book into sections dealing with different forms of victimhood, including types of LGBT identity, feminism and racial politics. Murray criticises the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault for what he sees as a reduction of society to a system of power relations. Murray's book drew polarized responses from critics. Tim Stanley in The Daily Telegraph praised the book, calling Murray "a superbly perceptive guide through the age of the social justice warrior". Katie Law in the Evening Standard said that Murray "tackled another necessary and provocative subject with wit and bravery". Conversely, William Davies gave a highly critical review of Murray's work in The Guardian, describing the book as "the bizarre fantasies of a rightwing provocateur, blind to oppression".

Journalistic career

Douglas Murray being interviewed on the Mark Steyn Show in 2019

Murray has appeared on a number of British current affairs programmes, including the BBC's Question Time, This Week, HardTalk, the Today programme, The Big Questions, Daily Politics, and Sunday Morning Live. He has written for The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian Standpoint, and UnHerd. In 2012 he was hired as a contributing editor of The Spectator. He has debated at the Cambridge Union, the Oxford Union, and participated in several Intelligence Squared and Intelligence Squared US debates. He has also appeared on other TV channels such as Sky News and Al Jazeera.

In 2016, Murray organised a competition through The Spectator in which entrants were invited to submit offensive poems about Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, with a top prize of £1,000 donated by a reader. This was in reaction to the Böhmermann affair, in which German satirist Jan Böhmermann was prosecuted under the German penal code for such a poem. One of Murray's articles on the affair contributed to his being longlisted for the 2017 Orwell Prize for Journalism, five years after his book Bloody Sunday: Truths, Lies and The Saville Inquiry, had been longlisted for the 2012 Orwell Book Prize. He announced the winner of the poetry competition as Conservative MP Boris Johnson (former editor of the magazine, current British prime minister and former Mayor of London).

Views

Murray is a frequent critic of Islam, saying that there is "a creed of Islamic fascism—a malignant fundamentalism, woken from the Dark Ages to assault us here and now". In the wake of the 2017 London Bridge attack, Murray stated in a radio interview:

We’ve fallen into the idea that answer [to terrorism] is more Islam. This is the argument of the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups. ‘You don’t like this Islam? Well we’ve got some other Islam, or different Islam.’ And I just say, look, we need a bit less Islam.

Murray's criticisms of Islam have been described as a form of far-right entryism, and he has drawn scrutiny for praising the anti-Muslim author Robert B. Spencer, who is banned from entering the U.K., and appearing on the podcast The Milo Yiannopoulos Show in 2016, hosted by the eponymous far-right figure.

In 2008, Murray listed the cases of 27 writers, activists, politicians and artists – including Sir Salman Rushdie, Maryam Namazie and Anwar Shaikh, all three of whom had received death threats due to their criticism of Islam. Murray said that "Unless Muslims are allowed to discuss their religion without fear of attack there can be no chance of reform or genuine freedom of conscience within Islam."

In February 2006, speaking at the "Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference on Europe and Islam", Murray said:

Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board: Europe must look like a less attractive proposition… From long before we were first attacked it should have been made plain that people who come into Europe are here under our rules and not theirs… Where a mosque has become a centre of hate it should be closed and pulled down. If that means that some Muslims don't have a mosque to go to, then they'll just have to realise that they aren't owed one.

After Murray refused Paul Goodman's offer to disown these comments, the Conservative Party frontbench severed formal relations with Murray and his Centre for Social Cohesion.

In 2010, Murray argued against the motion in an Intelligence Squared US debate titled "Is Islam a Religion of Peace?" In 2014, he argued for the motion in an Oxford Union debate titled "This House Believes postwar Britain has seen too much immigration".

In 2009, Murray was prevented from chairing a debate at the London School of Economics between Alan Sked and Hamza Tzortzis, with the university citing security concerns following a week-long student protest against Israel's attacks on Gaza. The move was criticised by the conservative press such as The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator.

In June that year, Murray accepted an invitation from the Global Issues Society (GIS) to a debate with Al-Muhajiroun leader Anjem Choudary on Sharia law and British law at Conway Hall. Members of Al-Muhajiroun tried to segregate men and women at the entrance of the event, despite GIS's assurance that the event's security was provided by a third party. Violence broke out even before Murray arrived. Conway Hall management cancelled the debate in protest at the forced separation of men and women. Outside the building, a confrontation between Choudary and Murray over the cancellation of the event occurred. Murray alleged that the event was not neutral and that it was being policed by Al-Muhajiroun guards. Murray's Centre for Social Cohesion had published a study showing that one in seven Islam-related terrorist cases in the UK could be linked to Al-Muhajiroun, and the organisation was banned shortly afterwards, due to its links with extremism.

Murray supported the 'Leave' side in the UK's 2016 EU referendum, citing concerns with the Eurozone, immigration and the prospect of ever-closer union. In the wake of the Brexit vote, Murray expressed concern that the result "has just not been accepted by an elite" and said that the result "should be celebrated by anybody who actually believes in democracy".

In 2018, Murray filmed a video for PragerU entitled "The Suicide of Europe" which drew considerable criticism for purportedly "evok[ing] the common white nationalist trope of white genocide with its rhetoric of 'suicide' and 'annihilation'. As part of an article for Sludge journalist Alex Kotch interviewed a senior editor at the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism Mark Pitcavage, who stated that there was "almost certainly prejudice in the video" and that it was "filled with anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric". Similarly, the Southern Poverty Law Center described the video as a "dog whistle to the extreme right", while Evan Halper in the Los Angeles Times argued that the video "echoed some of the talking points of the alt-right".

In 2019, Murray spent weeks urging New Statesman journalist George Eaton and editor Jason Cowley to share the original recording of an interview between Eaton and Sir Roger Scruton, with Murray branding the published interview - which attributed a number of controversial statements to Scruton - as "journalistic dishonesty". Murray eventually managed to acquire the recording, which formed the basis of an article defending Scruton, arguing that his remarks had been misinterpreted. The New Statesman subsequently apologised for Eaton's misrepresentation.

Murray is known for his association with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The Guardian has described Murray as Orbán's favorite author and in March 2018, Orbán posted a photo on his official Facebook account of himself reading the Hungarian-language edition of The Strange Death of Europe. Murray has disputed the claim that Hungary is experiencing significant democratic backsliding under Orbán, and has called Freedom House's comparisons of Orbán's government to a dictatorship as "increasingly off-kilter". In May 2018, Murray was personally received by Orbán in Budapest as part of the "Future of Europe" conference along with other conservative figures like Steve Bannon, and according to Hungarian state media had an individual discussion and photograph with Orbán.

Murray expressed strong support for Israel during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict. During a visit to Israel in 2019 Murray praised Israeli society, saying that Israel "has a healthier attitude towards nationalism than Europe" and lauded Israel's restrictive approach to immigration.

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Murray came out against a second national lockdown in the UK, claiming it was "absolute madness" and "simply unsustainable".

Murray is the recipient of frequent death threats as a result of his views. Following the Charlie Hebdo shooting in January 2015, he was advised by the police not to appear in public.

He is on the international advisory board of NGO Monitor. As of 2020, he is one of the directors of the Free Speech Union.

Ideological links to the far right

A number of academic and journalistic sources have linked Murray's ideology and political views to the far right (including the Eurabia conspiracy theory), the alt-right, the white nationalist right, the Islamophobic right or some combination thereof. Several commentators observed these themes in Murray's book The Strange Death of Europe, with reviewer Nafeez Ahmed arguing in Middle East Eye that Murray expressed a form of "far-right entryism" in the book. In a similar vein, a review of The Strange Death of Europe in The Guardian described Murray's book as "gentrified xenophobia".

Murray's work has been perceived as putting a socially acceptable face on what would otherwise be considered fringe ideologies. Arun Kundnani, who has written on radicalization, said in an article for Security and Human Rights that the "‘counterjihadist’" ideology embodied by Murray and other conservative intellectuals is, "through reworking far-right ideology and appropriating official discourse... able to evade categorisation as a source of far-right violence". Similarly, Murray's views have been described as a kind of "mainstreamist" ideology that defies easy categorization as extremist while remaining "entangled with the far right".

Murray has been accused of promoting several far-right conspiracy theories. In Ethnic and Racial Studies Ed Pertwee argued that Murray's work is an "extemporization of the basic theme" of the Eurabia conspiracy theory as developed by Bat Ye'Or in the 2005 book Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis. Ilgın Yörükoğlu of the City University of New York remarked that by promoting the Eurabia theory while being a best-selling author, Murray had provided the "emotional energy" for the conspiracy theory. Murray has also been accused of promoting the related far-right Great Replacement conspiracy, which contends that the developed world is being deliberately overwhelmed with non-white immigration as part of an elite conspiracy. Murray's book The Madness of Crowds has also drawn scrutiny for "remodelling" the far-right Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory, though Murray has indicated that he personally dislikes the term "Cultural Marxism".

Murray has contended that he is frequently mislabelled politically, and that the mainstream right are unfairly conflated with the far-right in modern political discourse - he wrote in 2020 that in modern politics "up is down, [and] right is far-right". Murray has argued in The Spectator that the term far right is used far too often by the political left. He also has said that political parties previously identified as far-right should be recognized as being able to moderate their politics over time but has criticised some European parties that espouse, what he considers to be, genuinely extremist or hard-line policies. In another Spectator article in August 2019, Murray criticized what he perceived as the overuse of terms like "far-right" by commentators, saying that since the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit vote "there has been an acceleration in claimed sightings [of the far right] and a blurring of the definitions", which he contended was "wrong not just because it means that perfectly decent people are maligned, but also because distinctly dangerous groups are confused with harmless ones".

Personal life

Murray is an atheist, having been an Anglican until his twenties, but has described himself variously as a cultural Christian and a Christian atheist, and believes that Christianity is an important influence on British and European culture. Murray is gay.

Works

• Brandon, James; Murray, Douglas (2007), Hate on the State: How British libraries encourage Islamic extremism (PDF), Westminster, UK: Centre for Social Cohesion.
• Murray, Douglas (2000), Bosie: A Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas, ISBN 0-340-76771-5.
• ——— (2005), Neoconservatism: Why We Need It, ISBN 1-904863-05-1.
• ——— (2007), Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World: Renewing Transatlantic Partnership (PDF)
• ———; Verwey, Johan Pieter (2008), Victims of Intimidation: Freedom of Speech Within Europe's Muslim Communities (PDF), London, UK: Centre for Social Cohesion.
• ——— (2011), Bloody Sunday: Truths, Lies and the Saville Inquiry, London: Dialogue, ISBN 978-1-84954-149-7.
• ——— (2013), Islamophilia: A Very Metropolitan Malady, emBooks, ISBN 978-1-62777050-7.
• ——— (2017), The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, Bloomsbury, ISBN 978-1-47294224-1.
• ——— (2019), The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity, Bloomsbury, ISBN 978-1-47295995-9.

External links

• Murray's writings at the Gatestone Institute