Keen On

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