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The 4 Horsemen Of The Western Apocalypse
Victor
Davis Hanson
September 12, 2025
OPINION
Europe is plagued by a number of existential crises. Yet they are all selfinflicted — and by a dominant, therapeutic culture that embraced utopian but lethal bromides.
These suicidal wounds are now nearing the end-stage. Indeed, they are destroying the very civilization that was soon envisioned to be heaven on
(Photo by SAKIS MITROLIDIS/AFP via Getty Images)
earth.
The global warming hysterics could not just entertain gradual transformations away from dependencies on traditional fuels and power generation.
Instead, elites have demanded catastrophic and near-instant “net zero” mandates. That radicalism entailed transitioning to unreliable and costly solar and wind energy. Fuel and electricity prices then soared.
The green socialist elite cared little that shutdowns of nuclear, coal, natural gas, and oil power generation would cripple industry, reduce living standards, and impoverish Europe.
Germany, the once economic powerhouse of Europe, became a shell of its former self. The same efforts accelerated under the Obama and Biden administrations in the U.S. (RELATED: VICTOR
DAVIS HANSON: Europe
In The Balance?)
Both administrations sought to slash new fossil fuel production and use, without regard to the costs, dangers to the economy, or deleterious effects on t
This photograph shows European flags outside the EU headquarters in Brussels on September 11, 2025. (Photo by Nicolas TUCAT / AFP) (Photo by NICOLAS TUCAT/AFP via Getty Images)
Second, for the last half-century, affluent Westerners embraced the idea that there were no normative lifestyles. Often, they claimed nuclear families with 2-3 children were parochial and passe.
Children supposedly inhibited the lifestyles and aspirations of women. Larger families, we were told, unfairly burdened upscale professionals with unneeded costs and offered biased and injurious models to gays, transgender people, and single, childless men and women.
The result is that the fertility rate plummeted in the West, particularly in Europe (1.4) and the United States (1.6), to unsustainable levels.
Academia, the media, government, and foundations promoted these ideas
of “empowerment” — despite the historical evidence that societies that cannot reproduce themselves age, ossify, and finally implode.
The third horseman of the Western apocalypse was unrestricted and illegal immigration.
Again, the elites discarded a century of research and common sense that immigration into modern Western societies is only beneficial if it is legal, measured, diverse, meritocratic, and met with robust efforts of the host to integrate, acculturate, and assimilate foreigners.
The arrogant West scoffed at all that.
Instead, it destroyed borders. It welcomed in millions of impoverished and unaudited illegal aliens, many of them with little desire or ability to adopt the values of their hosts.
What followed were unsustainable social welfare entitlements, rising crime, social chaos, and growing internal strife.
The last horseman was a new tribalism, euphemistically dubbed diversity/equity/inclusion.
WASHINGTON, DC – JULY 23: U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) speaks as (L-R) Co-President of Public Citizen Rob Weissman, President and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Maya Wiley, CEO of League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Juan Proano, and National Urban League President and CEO Marc Morial listen during a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol on July 23, 2025 in Washington, DC. Rep. Pressley held a news conference on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and equity in America. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
An elite Western class envisioned an entire set of reparatory actions for growing nonwhite populations to atone for purported prior, and sometimes ancient, sins of slavery, racism, colonialism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.
No matter that all of these pathologies are commonplace worldwide, only in the self-critical West was slavery first outlawed, and tribalism curtailed.
Indeed, nonwhite immigrants knew precisely why fellow non-Westerners flocked to Western nations in the millions. Only there do meritocracy, consensual government, and self-criticism ensure more prosperity, freedom, and security than in their own tribal, often sexist, religiously and ethnically chauvinistic, and statist societies.
Human nature dictates that once racial fixations for any reason normalize exemptions and advantages, then tribalism and civil strife inevitably resurface.
Self-perpetuating myths of everlasting victimhood are necessary to ensure permanent special preferences. The Western idea of the Enlightenment, that we are individuals, not tribes and collectives, free to question the world about us, is shattered. (RELATED: ROOKE: Is Europe Finally Having Its MAGA Moment On Unchecked Immigration?)
Instead, we descend into pre-civilizational tribalism, predicated on our superficial appearances.
There is some hope only because the four horsemen of our apocalypse were welcomed into the West by a minority of naive, secular, and privileged Westerners. They believed as demigods that their wealth and freedom were irreversible birthrights, that utopia was near, and that they would be exempt from any consequences of their failure.
As a remedy, the West needs to stop apologizing for its 2,500-year history and take pride in its unique European and Judeo-Christian tradition that is innately inclusive.
It does not have to be perfect to be good — only far better than the alternatives, as mass illegal immigration attests.
The West needs to resist top-down radical green bromides and assess their cost-to-benefit damage to most citizens.
Larger, multi-generational, and two-parent families are not strange but the historical lifeblood of robust civilizations.
If foreigners wish to move legally to the West, they should be reminded why they do so and thus integrate and assimilate to the hosts’ values — or stay home.
Finally, Americans especially need to speak out against anyone of any race or tribe who stereotypes and spouts hatred of others outside their tribe.
And feigned victimhood will end only when the invented victimizers say, “Sorry, enough is enough.”
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness. He is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of “The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won,” from Basic Books.