Review: Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy

Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy by Jonah Goldberg
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I don’t know what it will ultimately take for Jonah Goldberg to be taken seriously as a historian of political movements. Liberal Fascism remains an important and instrumental text, and Suicide of the West, with its equally-bombastic title and premise, provides a detailed and solid outlook into how our past is dictating our present and, more importantly, how we’re losing it.

The overall messaging may be the only stumble here, as Goldberg spends more time explaining this from his point of view rather than a sober analysis leading him there, but this is a tome with a lot to chew on. It’s difficult to read this and not feel a little bit like a lot of what is detailed here gets lost in modern times, especially in the Trump era, but it also has an inspiration and aspirational feel to it where the overall premise shows a way out in spite of how we got in.

Much like Liberal Fascism, this should be required political reading right now. Little of what I’ve read in the last few years really encapsulates the moment (or, unfortunately, how we got to this moment) the way this book does, and I would hope that it gets a wide play on a whole.

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