The Long Decay
There are moments in history when the mask slips. The illusions we have comfortably lived with are at this moment being incinerated by fire and blood. With unforgiving clarity, the Gaza war has exposed that the very foundations of Western society have been hollowed out, infiltrated, and compromised over many decades.
This did not start on October 7th, nor even with the response to it. The signs were always present, but we were distracted, deluded, and, above all, complacent.
For decades, radical ideologies have seeped into our schools, universities, workplaces, and media. Under the guise of progress and tolerance, we have allowed the gradual erosion of our civilisational confidence. We tolerated and even encouraged ideas portraying the West as inherently evil, colonial, racist, and oppressive. We have fostered a generation not taught to think critically, but to recite mantras. From primary school classrooms to HR departments, the narrative was established: the West is guilty; the rest of the world, victims.
This ideological subversion has hollowed out our ability to defend ourselves morally or intellectually. The results are now on full display: students marching for Hamas; professors justifying terror; celebrities and influencers parroting genocidal slogans with smug self-righteousness. When confronted, our political leaders fold on the spot.
Captured Elites
Our political class no longer lives in the real world. They are career politicians: professionals or nepo babies trained in a particular way of thinking, from Oxbridge to Whitehall, from think tanks to party headquarters. Many have never worked a proper job outside politics. They are intellectually fragile and morally unsure. They speak in cautious soundbites, are ruled by ideology over practicality, and prefer managing decline rather than tackling it. They cannot understand what has happened because they helped create it. (Or worse, they are too cowardly to face the truth.)
Post-2001, while our focus was on Afghanistan and Iraq, genuine strategic threats grew unchecked. Wealthy from gas profits, Qatar quietly infiltrated our institutions. It funded universities, acquired media outlets, and influenced public opinion with surgical precision. Al Jazeera became a key channel for ideological warfare. We allowed it to happen because we did not notice.
Qatar is not the only culprit, but it is emblematic. A nation with one foot in the West and the other firmly in the Islamist camp. Meanwhile, Western nations, exhausted by foreign wars and mired in moral confusion, keep taking the cheques and renting military bases.
The refugee crises and mass migration waves of the past twenty years were no accidents. They directly resulted from our foreign policy mistakes in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan. We caused chaos abroad, opened our borders, and praised ourselves for our humanitarian efforts. What we actually did was import sectarianism, anti-Western ideologies, and demographic pressures that we were culturally and politically unprepared to handle.
Again, the infiltration was gradual. Communities that did not integrate, political parties that pandered for votes, and institutions that were too afraid to address the consequences.
Collapse of the Social Contract
The 2008 financial crash gutted the middle class. COVID lockdowns finished the job. Trust in institutions collapsed. Inflation rose. Public services buckled. Amidst it all, we doubled down on the very ideologies that caused the rot: equity over excellence, identity over unity, slogans over solutions.
We have forsaken the fundamental contract of citizenship—the notion that governments are responsible for protecting borders, maintaining order, and upholding shared values. Instead, we have offered rainbow flags, decolonisation seminars, and activist judges.
Then came social media, which has been the accelerant on the bonfire. The enemy no longer needed to smuggle in agents or spread propaganda by leaflet: now all they need is a smartphone and a network. They weaponised our freedoms against us, knowing we would defend their right to do so even as they used those rights to destroy us.
TikTok has become the frontline of information warfare. Instagram reels have replaced sermons. Hamas and its proxies now trend more easily than democratic leaders. Western teenagers, raised on cultural self-loathing and algorithmic radicalization, march in lockstep with genocidal theocrats and believe they are fighting for justice.
The Mask Falls
Then came Gaza. The mask was torn away. Civilizational rift revealed. Overnight, Western streets flooded with hatred. Synagogues attacked. Jewish citizens were threatened and assaulted. Political leaders hesitated. Media outlets repeated propaganda. Universities turned into centres of open antisemitism. Much of the public just shrugged, numb from decades of ideological confusion.
The Gaza war did not cause this. It exposed it. It was the decisive blow that drove the spike into the Western heart.
We are not merely witnessing protest. We are watching the product of years of infiltration and decay: in demography, in economics, in politics, in media, in education, in culture. This is what a society looks like when it can no longer distinguish friend from foe, right from wrong, civilisation from barbarism. Is it too late? Possibly.
The boiling point has been reached. The water is scalding. The frog is done for. Reversing this will take more than a change of government. It will require cultural rebirth. Moral courage. Strategic clarity. A willingness to endure pain to rebuild what we have lost.
The question is: do we still have the will, or has the long sabotage already done its work?
Andrew Fox
Research Fellow at Henry Jackson Society | Ex British Army
