The foundations of Western civilization are under siege, as American social critic, Victor Davis Hanson has argued in well-cited piece at American Greatness:
https://amgreatness.com/2025/05/12/332875/
Hanson argues that civilisation, as defined by classical historians, rests on secure borders, urban sanitation, codified laws, rational inquiry, meritocracy, and enduring infrastructure. These pillars, hard-won over centuries, enabled the West to achieve prosperity, stability, and cultural dominance. However, a deliberate dismantling of these foundations is underway, not only in America but across Western nations, driven by ideological shifts, nihilism, and a rejection of the "hard work of civilisation." This decivilising process, coupled with a "new barbarism" marked by tribalism, lawlessness, and anti-rational ideologies, threatens to unravel the West, potentially ushering in a modern Dark Age reminiscent of the post-Roman collapse (5th–9th centuries CE).
Hanson highlights the intentional destruction of America's borders from 2021 to 2025, with 10 million illegal crossings under the Biden administration, valuing non-citizens over citizens (e.g., allowing undocumented migrants to board flights without IDs while citizens faced stricter "real ID" requirements). This mirrors trends in Europe, where the 2015–2025 migration waves, totalling over 6 million arrivals (per Frontex data), have strained social cohesion. Social media posts lament Europe's "open borders," claiming they enable "cultural erosion" and crime spikes, with Sweden's 2024 homicide rate (2.5 per 100,000) doubling since 2015 due to gang violence linked to migrant enclaves.
This borderless ethos rejects the classical notion of defined territories as prerequisites for statehood. In the UK, illegal Channel crossings reached 36,000 in 2024, overwhelming asylum systems and fuelling populist backlash, as seen in Reform UK's rising support. The result is a fragmented national identity, where loyalty to the state is supplanted by tribal or globalist allegiances, echoing the nomadic fluidity of premodern eras. A Dark Age 2.0 could see Western nations lose sovereignty, with ungoverned regions resembling the lawless frontiers of the early Middle Ages.
Hanson describes America's cities, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, as descending into medieval squalor, with homeless encampments, public defecation, and unchecked drug use transforming urban centers into health hazards. This decivilising trend extends to Europe, where Paris's 2024 "rat plague" and London's rising knife crime (14,000 incidents in 2024) reflect failing urban governance. The Telegraph's May 10, 2025, report on Britain's Net Zero-driven blackout risks, underscores how energy instability could increase urban dysfunction, with months-long outages paralysing cities reliant on electricity for water, sanitation, and transport. This issue is covered in a blog piece at the Alor.org site today.
The abandonment of sanitation protocols, a hallmark of Roman and Western urban planning, signals a rejection of collective health. In Germany, Berlin's 2025 budget cuts reduced street cleaning, leaving districts littered with waste, creating Third World conditions in once-pristine capitals. A Dark Age scenario would see cities become uninhabitable, with epidemics resurging due to collapsed infrastructure, akin to the plague-ridden urban centres of the 6th century.
Hanson argues that America's judiciary has become a "commissariat," with prosecutors like Alvin Bragg and Fani Willis weaponising law to target MAGA political opponents, like Trump, while 2020 rioters faced leniency. This politicisation is global: in Canada, 2024 saw trucker protest leaders jailed for peaceful dissent, while violent pro-Hamas protests in London often went unpunished. The European Court of Human Rights' 2025 rulings favouring migrant rights over national laws, further erode state authority, fostering perceptions of selective justice.
In a Dark Age 2.0, the rule of law would collapse, replaced by tribal justice or mob rule. The UK's 2024 riots, saw protest groups clashing with police, a sign of severe social discontent, when trust in institutions fails. Without impartial laws, societies fragment into feuding factions, as seen in the warring Germanic kingdoms post-Rome.
Hanson critiques universities for abandoning Enlightenment reason in favour of destructive ideologies like DEI and critical race theory, warping evidence to fit dogmas. This trend is pan-Western: in the UK, Oxford's 2025 curriculum overhaul adopted "decolonised" texts, sidelining classical works, while France's Sorbonne faced protests for "Islamophobic" research bans. Social media posts rail against "woke academia," citing Harvard's 2024 plagiarism scandals as evidence of intellectual decay.
Universities, once catalysts for science and law, now risk becoming propaganda mills, undermining the rational inquiry that drove the Enlightenment. A Dark Age would see knowledge stagnate, with dogma suppressing innovation, much like the early medieval Church's dominance over scholarship. The loss of technological advancement, already threatened by Net Zero's energy constraints, could mirror the post-Roman decline in engineering.
Hanson's critique of tribalism, where race and identity trump merit, rings true across the West. In Canada, 2025 hiring quotas mandated 50% "equity-deserving" candidates in public sectors, sidelining qualified applicants. South Africa's B-BBEE policies, as discussed in another Alor.org blog article today, exclude white youth from opportunities, driving emigration. Europe's DEI mandates, like Germany's 2024 corporate diversity laws, value identity over expertise, risking economic inefficiency.
Tribalism fractures the social contract, reviving premodern loyalties to kin over state. In a Dark Age, meritocracy's collapse would hobble governance and innovation, with incompetent leaders, chosen for identity, not ability, mismanaging crises, akin to the inept warlords of the 5th century.
Hanson's examples of California's failed high-speed rail and dam demolitions reflect a broader Western trend of neglecting infrastructure. In Germany, 2025 saw 30% of bridges deemed "at risk" due to underfunding, while Italy's 2024 Genoa bridge collapse sequel underscored chronic maintenance failures. The Telegraph's blackout warnings highlight how Net Zero's premature fossil fuel phase-out threatens energy grids, with Britain's 2035 gas ban risking months-long outages.
This decay stems from a nihilistic rejection of industrial progress, romanticising the "wild" over civilisation's achievements. Posts on social media mock "green dogma" for favouring windmills over nuclear plants, citing France's 2024 energy surplus from nuclear as a counterpoint. A Dark Age 2.0 would see infrastructure crumble, with roads, bridges, and grids failing, isolating communities and reviving feudal-like localism.
The "new barbarism" emerges from this decivilising process, characterised by:
Lawlessness: Rising crime (UK's 7% violent crime spike in 2024) and unchecked protests (e.g., pro-Hamas campus riots) normalise disorder, echoing the banditry of post-Roman Europe.
Anti-Rational Ideologies: DEI and Net Zero dogmas suppress dissent, resembling the religious zeal that stifled medieval science.
Tribal Fragmentation: Identity politics pits groups against each other, as seen in South Africa's racial tensions or Europe's migrant-native divides, fostering civil strife.
Cultural Nihilism: The West's self-loathing, evident in "decolonisation" movements, undermines confidence in its values, inviting external challenges from authoritarian regimes like China.
This barbarism, unlike the external invasions of the 5th century, is internal, as well as external (i.e., mass Third World immigration) driven by elites who dismantle civilisation's guardrails. This is ethno-racial/cultural suicide, woke elites glorifying chaos over order, in a trendy lust for masochistic Leftist self-annihilation.
A Dark Age 2.0 would unfold as follows:
Societal Fragmentation: Nations splinter into tribal enclaves, with urban centres abandoned due to crime and blackouts. Rural strongholds, like medieval manors, emerge as self-sufficient but isolated.
Knowledge Loss: Universities, corrupted by ideology, fail to train engineers or scientists, stalling innovation. Technologies like AI or renewable grids falter without reliable energy or expertise.
Economic Collapse: Infrastructure decay and energy crises cripple trade, with hyperinflation (e.g., UK's 2025 energy price hikes) impoverishing millions. Barter economies replace currency, as in 6th-century Europe.
Cultural Erasure: The West's heritage, art, literature, law, is neglected or destroyed, replaced by transient woke ideologies. Iconic structures like Notre-Dame, damaged in 2024 riots, become ruins.
External Threats: Authoritarian powers exploit the West's weakness, as China's 2025 Belt and Road expansion in Europe suggests, mirroring the Visigoths' opportunism.
This mirrors the post-Roman Dark Ages, where trade routes collapsed, literacy plummeted, and local warlords filled power vacuums. The Telegraph's blackout scenario from zero net climate change madness, months without power, would accelerate this, with hospitals failing, food spoiling, and mobs looting, evoking Mad Max-style anarchy.
Hanson attributes decivilisation to:
Educational Failure: Schools produce "stewards" unable to maintain infrastructure or ethos, with U.S. math proficiency at 38% (2024 PISA) and UK and Australian literacy rates stagnating.
Wealth-Induced Complacency: The West's prosperity breeds entitlement, with generations consuming rather than reinvesting, as seen in California's $68 billion deficit despite high taxes.
Ideological Nihilism: Elites romanticise the "wild," rejecting civilisation's discipline. Net Zero's energy cuts and DEI's meritocracy erosion reflect this, valuing dogma over pragmatism.
Globally, this is compounded by:
Globalist Pressures: Migration and trade policies weaken national sovereignty, as seen in the EU's 2025 migrant quotas overriding member states.
Cultural Self-Doubt: Postcolonial guilt fuels policies that undermine Western values, like Canada's 2025 "reparations" debates, which alienate majorities.
To avert collapse into Dark Age 2.0, the West must:
Restore Borders: Enforce immigration laws to preserve cultural cohesion, as Trump's 2025 policies aim.
Rebuild Cities: Revalue sanitation and policing, learning from Singapore's urban model.
Reform Justice: Depoliticise courts, ensuring equal application of law, as Hanson advocates.
Revive Education: Emphasise reason and merit in universities, countering ideological bias.
Invest in Infrastructure: abandon zero net and reject climate change fanaticism.
Reject Tribalism: Promote civic unity over identity politics, fostering a shared Western identity. Promote traditional binary sex categories, of men and women.
The West's decivilising trajectory, eroding borders, cities, laws, education, merit, and infrastructure, paves the way for a new barbarism, where lawlessness, tribalism, and anti-rationalism dominate. This could culminate in a Dark Age 2.0, with fragmented societies, lost knowledge, and collapsed economies mirroring the post-Roman era. Hanson's warnings, amplified by global trends like Britain's blackout risks and South Africa's racial strife, underscore the urgency of reversing this decline. By recommitting to civilisation's pillars, the West can avoid a dystopian future, but time is short as internal decay accelerates, day-by-day.
https://amgreatness.com/2025/05/12/332875/
"Secure borders and stationary populations were considered the mark of emerging civilization by classical historians. In contrast to nomadism and constant strife over disputed territory, peoples who had clearly defined and protected borders ascended to statehood, maintained a distinct culture, and achieved greater prosperity and security.
In contrast, what we suffered from 2021 to 2025 was unprecedented. It was an intentional administration effort to de-civilize the nation by destroying its borders—as if to return to the premodern era, when there were no clearly defined or secure borders, and nomadic peoples migrated as they pleased.
Stranger still, illegal aliens were at times given precedence over citizens—as immigration law was simply discarded.
Without IDs, illegal aliens boarded U.S. flights, while the government ordered citizens to obtain more secure "real" IDs.
Some 8,500 veteran soldiers were drummed out of the military for refusing the experimental mRNA vaccinations. Yet 10 million simply walked across the southern border into America, without a care from the Biden administration whether they were vaccinated, ill, or had criminal records.
Any American citizen pulled over for speeding with an invalid driver's license, while trafficking eight illegal aliens without identification, would be jailed and charged with felony counts. Not Abrego Garcia—the violent spousal abuser, M-13 gang-member, and previously deported illegal alien. He was neither arrested nor even cited by the officers who pulled him over.
One of the great hallmarks of Roman civilization and subsequent Western civilization was its ability to create large cities by importing clean water, removing waste through sewers, and collecting garbage from the streets. Even in the age before microbiology, ancient and premodern city planners knew the connection between cleanliness and epidemics and how to lessen disease through sanitation.
But in the last two decades, our major cities have been de-civilizing. Citizens are told not to flush non-biodegradable plastics down their toilets, both to preserve the environment and to ensure municipal septic systems work properly. They are reminded to pick up their pets' excrement on sidewalks and in parks. For purposes of collective health, they are taught not to urinate, spit, or defecate in public areas.
Is all that for naught? After all, our mayors and city councils in our biggest and most iconic cities simply destroyed centuries of such health protocols and allowed tens of thousands of homeless people with impunity to inject, urinate, defecate, and fornicate in or on storefronts, streets, gutters, parks, and sidewalks. The stench, flotsam, and jetsam have utterly transformed American inner cities. Central Seattle, Los Angeles, parts of San Francisco, Portland, and Washington, DC, now resemble medieval London or Paris—as if a millennium-long knowledge of basic public health was simply ignored or mocked. In truth, the centers of America's big cities are spaces where public health protocols are no longer enforced, where all the ancient and hard-won rules of civilization no longer apply. It would likely be safer to walk through Dickensian London of 1850 than to take a nocturnal ride on the New York subway.
Another hallmark of Western civilization was the creation of a judiciary that gave the state the power to enforce laws, ensure justice, and deter criminals by swift punishment, unaffected by ideology, bias, bribes, and personal vendettas. From the law codes of Justinian to the American Constitution, ascendant civilizations rose with a codified legal system applied uniformly, disinterestedly, and fairly.
Not any longer. Ideology has turned the American legal system into a commissariat of sorts in which relativism is now the norm. Vandalize a Tesla in a blue state and, like the South of old, the laws will be lightly if even enforced and applied selectively. No one seriously believes that Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Jack Smith, and Fani Willis were interested in real crimes rather than concocting them to destroy a presidential candidate and thus warp the political system. In contemporary America, it was far more likely to suffer a jail sentence for walking peaceably but unlawfully in the Capitol than for torching a federal courthouse, historic church, or police precinct in the summer of 2020.
From the ancient world to the medieval city to the modern era, universities were catalysts for the advance of science, medicine, law, politics, and the humanities. Their civilizing missions were predicated on two unquestioned assumptions. One, unlike prior superstitions, inductive reason would guide intellectual inquiry; examining all evidence would lead to general conclusions rather than cherry-picking data to "prove" predetermined dogmas.
Today, DEI, the Green New Deal, and the "critical theories"—legal, race, and monetary—in the university start with deductive reasoning and then warp evidence to support such faith-based dogmas. If any of the current violent pro-Hamas and anti-Semitic campus protests were instead directed at reducing abortion, ensuring that biological men do not compete in women's sports, or banning racial preferences, the protestors would have long ago been arrested, expelled, or deported.
Tribalism was a premodern obstacle to civilization. It remains so in many parts of the Middle East, where it is routine to hire, promote, retain, and reward on the basis of kinship and bloodlines. In America, we were supposed to have a singular meritocracy, civilization's effort to ensure that those with the most expertise and experience were charged with the most important tasks and responsibilities to ensure the safety and welfare of the majority. Race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation were neither rewarded nor punished.
Instead, we here, too, returned to premodern tribalism and race quotas, regressing to precivilization ideas that we owe our allegiance first to those who share a superficial appearance rather than to the body politic at large.
Finally, civilizations were often judged by their physical infrastructures—whether iconic, like the Parthenon, the Pantheon, medieval cathedrals, or modern towering skyscrapers, or practical by their roads, aqueducts, government buildings, and water and sewage systems.
But by that standard, too, we are decivilizing. Future generations will be amazed at California's decaying high-speed rail to nowhere. Tens of billions of dollars and over a decade after the start of construction, there is still not a single foot of track laid, but instead only half-finished massive concrete overpasses that now resemble half-destroyed Mycenean palace walls. The nearly one-billion-dollar, half-finished, five-year-old Obama library resembles an oversized Stonehenge monolith.
In California, we do not just blow up dams, the brilliant work of a now-forgotten earlier generation. Instead, we use public bond funds, voted by the citizens to build new dams and reservoirs, to destroy them.
The more California requires lumber for new homes, fuel for its 31 million vehicles, and energy for its 15 million homes, the more the governor and legislature decivilize the state by shutting down timber companies, forcing oil refineries to flee the state, and closing nuclear power plants and fossil fuel generation, while witnessing replacement, new-age battery-power generation plants blow up into flames.
When preventable fires consume whole neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a paralytic government has no clue how to rebuild the work of past generations. The city government of Los Angeles proved uncannily efficient in ensuring such conflagration—canceling preventive brush clearing, the mayor junketing in Africa during fire season, reservoirs left empty, hydrants that did not work—but cannot rebuild, only destroy.
Why is America decivilizing?
In part, our mediocre schools have not produced competent stewards to maintain and expand the sophisticated infrastructure and ethos of a prior, far more capable generation.
In part, the sheer richness of our inheritance lulled our Lotus-Eater generations to consume what they inherited rather than reinvest it, given that since birth they had been insulated from the elemental and unchanging human and natural challenges to civilization.
And in part, a nihilism arose that despised the hard work of civilization and instead romanticized the wild—clueless that natural man, without the bridles of civilization, is a very dangerous beast, as we so often and lamentably see today."