J.B. Shurk's article, "The West Eats Itself," published on American Thinker on May 7, 2025
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/05/the_west_eats_itself.html
argues that Western societies are self-destructing through the erosion of their foundational principles, democracy, religious freedom, property rights, free markets, and free speech. Shurk contends that Western governments, while claiming to uphold these values, are adopting totalitarian tactics reminiscent of communist regimes, effectively undermining the freedoms that once distinguished them. The metaphor of the West "eating itself" suggests a process of internal decay, where the very institutions and values that built Western civilisation are being dismantled by its own leaders, leading to a cannibalistic collapse.
To develop this argument, we can use Shurk's examples and extend the cannibalism metaphor to illustrate how the West consumes its own vitality. Additionally, we will incorporate Major Clifford Hugh Douglas's framework from "The Causes of War" (as used in another Alor.org blog article today) to contextualise this self-destruction within systemic economic dysfunctions, which Shurk indirectly references through his critique of fiat money and central banks. The metaphor will be fleshed out to show how the West's actions, rigging elections, suppressing faith, undermining property, and silencing speech, act as a form of self-consumption, depleting its moral, cultural, and economic reserves. In short: the cannibalisation of the West.
Shurk begins by highlighting the hypocrisy of Western leaders who champion "democracy" while undermining it. He cites examples such as Germany labelling Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) an "extremist group," the EU's role in invalidating Romania's presidential election, and legal (illegal) persecutions of figures like Marine Le Pen, Jair Bolsonaro, and Donald Trump. These actions, he argues, mirror the suppression of dissent in authoritarian regimes, betraying democratic principles. The 2014 overthrow of Ukraine's elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, is presented as evidence of Western powers orchestrating regime change to expand their influence, ironically fuelling the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war they now condemn.
Shurk then contrasts the Cold War era, when the West stood for individual freedoms against communist oppression, with the present, where Western governments exhibit totalitarian tendencies. He details the erosion of:
1.Religious Freedom: Governments treat faith, especially Christianity,as a threat, arresting silent prayers, ignoring vandalism of religious sites, and surveilling traditional worshippers (e.g., FBI monitoring Latin Mass attendees). This elevates the State's worldview above all others, akin to Soviet or Chinese Communist hostility toward religion.
2.Property and Free Markets: Fiat money and central bank manipulations distort markets, devalue savings, and trap citizens in debt. Most Westerners own little, rely on government welfare, and face rising taxes and regulations that crush small farms and favour corporate control. Shurk argues this creates a state-controlled economy, not a free market, enslaving citizens to financial systems.
3.Free Speech: The rise of the internet disrupted government control over information, prompting Western states to criminalise "hate speech" and "disinformation." Agencies now police online opinions, and citizens face arrests for unapproved views, undermining the West's commitment to open debate.
Shurk concludes that the West's "masks have come off," revealing a shift toward collectivism and control. The metaphor of "eating itself" encapsulates this self-inflicted destruction, as the West consumes its own freedoms and vitality, leaving a hollowed-out society vulnerable to collapse.
The metaphor of the West "eating itself" vividly captures the self-destructive processes Shurk describes. Self-cannibalism implies a desperate act of survival where an organism consumes its own body, depleting its strength to postpone inevitable collapse. Here, the West's institutions, government, financial systems, and cultural norms, are both the predator and the prey, devouring the principles and resources that sustain them. We will extend this metaphor across Shurk's key points, integrating Douglas's economic insights to deepen the analysis.
Shurk's examples of election rigging, party bans, and candidate prosecutions depict the West consuming its democratic vitality. Democracy is the political "flesh" of Western civilisation, meant to nourish society through representation and choice. By suppressing opposition (e.g., AfD, Le Pen, Bolsonaro), governments eat away at this flesh, leaving a skeletal system of controlled outcomes. The 2014 Ukraine coup, framed as a Western power grab, exemplifies this, as the West undermined a sovereign election to feed its geopolitical appetite, only to face the "indigestion" of the resulting war.
Douglas's framework complements this by suggesting that such political manipulations stem from economic dysfunctions. In "The Causes of War," he argues that a defective financial system, reliant on debt, creates scarcity that pressures governments to control markets and resources, often through authoritarian means. The West's democratic erosion could be seen as a symptom of this, as elites rig systems to maintain financial stability, consuming political legitimacy to feed a failing economic model. Like a body eating its muscles for energy, the West sacrifices democracy for short-term control, weakening its political structure.
Shurk's depiction of religious persecution, arresting Christians and vilifying believers, portrays the West consuming its spiritual "heart." Faith has historically anchored Western morality and community, providing resilience against tyranny. By quarantining religion and elevating the State's ideology, governments gnaw at this core, replacing transcendent values with secular control. The FBI's surveillance of Latin Mass attendees and Canada's leniency toward church arsons illustrate this, as the State feeds on sacred spaces to assert dominance.
The cannibalism metaphor here is particularly poignant: just as a body might consume vital organs in starvation, the West devours its spiritual vitality, leaving a hollowed-out culture. Douglas's lens adds depth, as he saw centralised financial power concentrating control in elites who suppress alternative worldviews. By marginalising religion, the West ensures dependence on state-controlled systems (e.g., fiat money, welfare), consuming spiritual autonomy to feed economic centralisation. This leaves a society malnourished of meaning, prone to collapse under existential strain.
Shurk's critique of fiat money, central banks, and land consolidation paints the West as consuming its economic "sinews," the property and markets that enable independence. Most Westerners, trapped in debt and reliant on welfare, lack true ownership, while farmers face extinction from taxes, regulations, and corporate takeovers. Central banks' money printing inflates assets artificially, enslaving citizens to manipulated markets. This is cannibalistic: the West eats its productive capacity (farms, savings) to sustain a bloated financial system, leaving economic bones picked clean.
Douglas's framework is central here, as he argued that the debt-based financial system creates artificial scarcity, forcing nations to seek external resources or control domestic ones. Shurk's mention of fiat money devaluing savings and central banks distorting markets aligns with Douglas's view that such systems impoverish citizens, concentrating wealth in elite hands. The West's consumption of family farms and private property (e.g., EU's "net-zero" policies bankrupting farmers) mirrors a body eating its muscle tissue, sacrificing long-term strength for short-term survival. This economic cannibalism risks starvation when productive capacity is fully consumed.
Shurk's account of "hate speech" laws, disinformation agencies, and arrests for online opinions shows the West consuming its "voice," free speech. Once a hallmark of Western freedom, open discourse is now policed, with governments targeting narratives that challenge their control. The internet's democratisation of information prompted this backlash, as states criminalise dissent to maintain narrative dominance. This is akin to a body consuming its vocal cords, silencing its ability to cry for help or express identity.
Douglas's idea of centralised control explains this, as financial elites manipulate crises to justify power grabs. By framing dissent as "disinformation," governments consume free speech to protect the financial and political systems Douglas critiqued. This self-mutilation weakens the West's ability to self-correct through debate, leaving it mute and vulnerable to internal rot.
The cannibalism metaphor unifies these points into a cycle of self-destruction. The West, like a starving organism, consumes its democratic flesh, spiritual heart, economic sinews, and vocal cords to delay collapse. Each act of consumption, rigging elections, suppressing faith, seizing property, silencing speech, provides temporary sustenance (control, stability) but depletes vital reserves. Douglas's economic lens reveals the root: a debt-based financial system that creates scarcity, forcing the West to eat itself to maintain an unsustainable status quo. Shurk's examples, from Ukraine's coup to EU farm bankruptcies, illustrate this cycle, as the West sacrifices its principles for short-term gains, risking total collapse when nothing remains to consume.
To further develop the metaphor, consider the West as hosting a grotesque feast where it devours itself. The banquet table is laden with the spoils of its own body, democratic institutions, sacred beliefs, fertile lands, and free voices, but the diners (globalist elites, governments) gorge without regard for the cost. The feast temporarily masks the famine beneath: a society stripped of legitimacy, meaning, independence, and expression. As the table empties, the diners turn on each other, with policies like election rigging and speech bans pitting factions against one another, accelerating the collapse.
This imagery draws from Shurk's Cold War contrast, where the West once feasted on freedoms while communist states starved. Now, the West mimics its former foes, consuming its own substance in a desperate bid to survive. Douglas's warning of war as an outcome of economic dysfunction adds a chilling layer: if the West exhausts its internal resources, it may turn outward, as Shurk's Ukraine example suggests, seeking foreign "meat" (e.g., resources, territories) to prolong the feast. This risks global conflict, completing the cannibalistic cycle from self-destruction to external aggression.
Shurk's argument is compelling in highlighting the West's retreat from its principles, and the cannibalism metaphor vividly captures this self-inflicted decay. His examples, election manipulations, religious persecution, economic control, and speech suppression, support the claim that Western governments are adopting authoritarian tactics. Douglas's framework strengthens the analysis by rooting these trends in economic dysfunctions, particularly the debt-based financial system that creates scarcity and centralises power.
Shurk's "The West Eats Itself" argues that Western societies are dismantling their own foundations, democracy, faith, property, and speech, through authoritarian policies that mirror communist oppression. The cannibalism metaphor illustrates this as a self-destructive feast, where the West consumes its vital organs to delay collapse, leaving a famished society. Douglas's "Causes of War" framework contextualises this within a defective financial system, where debt and scarcity drive elites to consume freedoms for control. The metaphor, extended through the imagery of a feast-turned-famine, underscores the West's perilous trajectory, warning that without course correction, it may devour itself entirely, or turn outward in a desperate, warlike hunger.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/05/the_west_eats_itself.html
The West Eats Itself
By J.B. Shurk
The same Western leaders who speak endlessly about "protecting Democracy" continue to rig elections, outlaw political parties, and prosecute candidates. Germany has declared Alternative for Germany — now the country's most popular party — an "extremist group" on par with domestic terror organizations. The European Union helped Marxist globalists in Romania invalidate a presidential election and ban the winner from office. France and Brazil have followed the U.S. example of bringing ludicrous criminal charges against popular anti-Establishment politicians, and while President Trump overcame the sham prosecutions targeting him, Marine Le Pen and Jair Bolsonaro are fighting just to survive.
Let's not forget either that the Ukraine-Russia War drags on today only because U.S. and European forces helped overthrow the legitimately elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, back in 2014. His transgression? Yanukovych's government was pushing back against the EU's efforts to absorb Ukraine into its continental empire. The same NATO and EU talking-heads who denounce Russia's conquest of its neighbor are mostly mad because they hoped to conquer Ukraine first.
It's a disorienting time for Westerners who once respected their civic institutions. The Cold War mentality of the twentieth century created clear distinctions between closed, communist systems and rights-based, free societies. In the West, people could freely practice the religious tenets of their respective faiths; in communist societies, people were expected to obey the quasi-divine strictures of the State. In the West, people could own property and freely exchange goods and services; in communist societies, people owned nothing and received only what the State gave them. In the West, people could speak their minds and publicly debate new ideas; in communist societies, people adhered to politically correct ideology under the constant threat of arrest, torture, and even death. The West was supposed to err on the side of individual freedoms, even when those freedoms permitted awful people to say awful things.
Western societies did not always live up to the principles that distinguished them from totalitarian regimes, but respect for personal freedom did serve as an effective guardrail that kept Western governments from careening toward totalitarianism, too.
What's going on today is entirely different.
Western governments treat religious faith as a disease that must be cured. The faithful (particularly Christians and Jews) are quarantined from the rest of society and expected to hide their beliefs in public spaces. Law enforcement agencies in the U.S., U.K., and continental Europe arrest Christians praying silently outside of abortion facilities. When churches and synagogues are vandalized or burned down, those crimes are often excused and rarely solved. In Canada, arsonists have largely been given a free pass due to the government's borderline hatred for the Catholic Church. During purported Catholic Joe Biden's presidency, the FBI spied on Americans who celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass. Politicians casually blame Jews for genocide (a slander that is sickeningly ironic) and speak of Christians as "nationalists," "fundamentalists," "far-right extremists," "fascists," and "Nazis."
The combined effect of these government-sanctioned attacks against people of faith is threefold: (1) religious freedom is undermined; (2) the State's worldview is elevated over all others; and (3) religions not explicitly partnering with the State are deemed national security threats. These characteristics aptly describe the former Soviet Union's hostility toward religion. They aptly describe the Chinese Communist Party's hostility toward religion. And they aptly describe the West's hostility toward religion today.
What about property and free markets? Most Westerners are in debt. They rent apartments or live in bank-owned homes. They make just enough to pay for their expenses each month and have no real savings. A substantial portion of their income is confiscated indirectly through government regulations or directly through a panoply of government taxes. Most Westerners receive some kind of government welfare in the form of subsidies, entitlements, healthcare, or retirement income. An ever-increasing share of the Western population depends almost entirely upon the State.
Even those with assets are kept under the government's thumb. Fiat money (government-issued currency not backed by a physical commodity such as gold) and central banks are antithetical to truly free markets. By threat of violence, governments force citizens to buy and sell goods and services using innately worthless paper bills (or digital ones and zeroes) as a medium of exchange. Those currencies retain value only so long as a government's threat of force maintains the State's monopoly over legal tender. Gold doesn't require a government agent with a gun to establish its value. When central banks manipulate the money supply, they effectively distort all markets. They create economic "winners" and "losers" by decree. That's a hallmark of a State-controlled economy, not a free market. By increasing the money supply over time, central banks decrease the value of State-enforced currencies. Conversely, they artificially raise the currency-denominated valuation of homes, stocks, and other real assets.
What is the end result? Personal savings rates decrease because fiat currencies kept under a mattress depreciate over time. Instead, consumers spend their money or invest it in assets that are artificially juiced. People with retirement investments become dependent upon the government's money-printing because without such blatant market manipulation, the artificially-created value of their homes and investment portfolios would disappear. Western governments have effectively enslaved citizens to central banks and set in motion a financial doom loop that requires new government spending, cyclical bank and industry bailouts, and regular intervention in consumer markets. There's nothing "free" about that.
Whereas the majority of Americans in 1900 lived in rural areas and small towns, the twentieth-century push toward urbanization has forced most people into ever-smaller spaces. Rising property and inheritance taxes and costly government regulations have crushed most small farms. Those family farms still struggling to survive must constantly fend off attacks from agricultural conglomerates, domestic and foreign saboteurs, Chinese shell companies, and land baron billionaires such as Bill Gates. Similarly, the European Union's ridiculous "net-zero" carbon regulations and destructive obsession with "climate change" socialism are bankrupting private farmers on the other side of the Atlantic. Western governments don't want private citizens to own land. They don't want private citizens to grow food or to be self-sufficient. They have been actively cultivating a future in which government bureaucrats and a small number of multinational corporations will control every acre. That kind of world embraces collectivism. Nothing about it encourages citizens to be free.
What about free speech? It turns out that Western governments' commitments to free speech were only as strong as their relative control over the principal sources of the public's information. When a small number of national publications, radio stations, and television news studios maintained undue influence over public opinion, governments could indirectly shape society by discreetly controlling the content of mass communication. They did this by regulating broadcasts over the "public's airwaves," pressuring news publications to self-censor, intervening in matters involving "national security," and outright funding the very news institutions that falsely portray themselves as independent guardians of the free press.
As this institutional monopoly has come crashing down with the advent of the Internet and the rise of social media, Western governments have become openly hostile to forms of mass communication that empower the broader public. Since the '90s, we have seen the steady criminalisation of speech. "Hate speech" laws have proliferated. Government agencies dedicated to fighting so-called "disinformation" have taken form. Police forces in the U.K., Germany, and elsewhere arrest citizens for expressing unapproved opinions online. Effectively, Western governments are targeting any information that threatens their monopoly over official "narratives." The most effective way to do so is to intimidate and silence prospective speakers. No country that criminalises thoughts and words is a friend to free speech.
In the West, the masks have come off."