The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
546. The West Is Too Weak For Radical Islam | Douglas Murray
12 May 2025
What really happened on October 7th? What does it reveal about Israel, Hamas, the West—and the future of civilization? In this gripping and deeply disturbing conversation, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson speaks with author and journalist Douglas Murray about his newest book, "On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization." Together, they walk through the harrowing details of the Hamas invasion of Israel, the unprecedented October 7th terrorist attacks, and the shocking moral inversion that followed in Western media, academia, and public discourse. Douglas Murray is a journalist and bestselling author of 7 books. His latest publication is the international bestseller, The War On The West. His previous book, The Madness of Crowds, was a bestseller and ‘book of the year’ for The Times and The Sunday Times. The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, published in 2017, spent almost 20 weeks on The Sunday Times bestseller list and was a number 1 bestseller in non-fiction. Mr. Murray has been a contributor to The Spectator since 2000 and has been associate editor at the magazine since 2012. He is a columnist for The New York Post, The Free Press, The Sun, The Telegraph, and contributes regularly to National Review and numerous other outlets. This episode was filmed on May 2nd, 2025. Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy | Links | For Douglas Murray: Douglas’s latest book, “On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization” https://a.co/d/fjx85qB “The War on the West” https://www.amazon.com/War-West-Douglas-Murray/dp/0063162024 On X https://x.com/DouglasKMurray?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor On Instagram https://www.instagram.com/douglaskmurray/?hl=en On Facebook https://www.facebook.com/DouglasKMurrayOfficial/ On YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@douglasmurray Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
The billions of dollars that went into Gaza were largely used by Hamas leaders to enrich themselves, to build an incredibly elaborate terrorist infrastructure throughout Gaza. The misconception was Hamas leadership were happy with just being corrupt.
The terrible hand of Iran is behind Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran has absolutely no compunctions about sacrificing every single Palestinian to the cause. What possible response could Israel have except to roll over and, what, submit?
MUSIC
Hey, everybody. So I'm talking today to Douglas Murray, who just wrote this book on democracies and death cults, Israel and the Future of Civilization. That's this. We basically walk through the book chapter by chapter. It's a relatively short book, although it doesn't lack in intensity. What happened October 7th when Hamas invaded Israel?
What I saw, Douglas' account of his sojourn through Israel in the aftermath of the catastrophe. How the world turned. We discussed the protests primarily originating on university campuses, much to their eternal shame.
The disconnect, the fact that the propaganda exercise and what would you say, the zeitgeist of the West was such so that Israel was demonized almost immediately after the attack for daring to defend itself. And then Douglas's conclusion from defeat into victory. Well, that's where the conversation got a little bit more,
Theological, possibly, and inevitability when talking about the existence of good and evil.
We discussed Douglas's observations that the Israelis have been very successful at pushing forward a truly pro-life, pro-abundance ethos, and the consequence for their thriving, for their resilience in the face of really insuperable opposition, and the meaning of that for hope, not only in Israel, but in the West in general, and a hope we most desperately need in these strangest of all times.
Join us for that. So, Mr. Murray, I read your book on democracies and death cults, Israel and the Future of Civilization. Yeah, it's a pretty rough read in like five different dimensions. It's brutal and unnerving and like terribly relevant and not merely relevant. merely because of the situation in Israel. So I think what we should do first is, I'm going to ask you questions about each chapter.
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