Episode 2243: Frank Furedi on why the West must fight for its History

The endless culture wars rage on. In his new book, The War Against the Past, the sociologist Frank Furedi believes that unless what he calls “the West” fights for its history, the “grievance entrepreneurs” will take over and undermine all our hard won intellectual freedoms. It’s the convention conservative argument, of course, but what’s interesting about Furedi is that he used to be a revolutionary communist. So I wonder if Furedi’s rightward shift is the standard intellectual fate of old leftists. Alternatively, perhaps, the woke crowd has become so corrosive that even former communists like Furedi are now manning the barricades in defense of western civilization.

Frank Furedi is a sociologist and social commentator. He is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent in Canterbury. Since the late 1990s, Frank has been widely cited about his views on why Western societies find it so difficult to engage with risk and uncertainty. He has published widely about controversies relating to issues such as health, parenting children, food and new technology. His book Invitation To Terror; Expanding the Empire of the Unknown (2007) explores the way in which the threat of terrorism has become amplified through the ascendancy of precautionary thinking. It develops the arguments contained in two previous books, Culture of Fear (2002) and Paranoid Parenting (2001). Both of these works investigate the interaction between risk consciousness and perceptions of fear, trust relations and social capital in contemporary society.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

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