Live your true life, all the self-help books tell us. Embrace who you are, own your faults, become better by turning them into strengths. It’s cheap pop psychology, but it might be liberating for repressed individuals and, we would argue, for Western civilization. It is time for the West to finally own its truth and set itself free.
The horrific war in the Gaza Strip oddly represents an opportunity for this liberation. Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza is now forcing a reckoning, exposing Western claims about the sanctity of its loudly embraced global norms.
Rather than retreating into a defensive battle of narratives, the West should see this as an opportunity to move beyond a discourse that has never held water. The West will have a better hope of cementing global influence if it is more honest about this reality, offering global partnerships based on deal-making and shared interests rather than infantilizing the global south with hollow talk of international rules.
