Lions vs. Scavengers: Who Hates the West?

For the last decade, radical Left-wing protests have unleashed chaos across our cities. They have vandalized our neighborhoods. They have hijacked our college campuses. 

There’s nothing new about protest movements, of course. But today, it’s the same people who are constantly marching – they just seem to switch the flags they carry from cause to cause. Radical Muslims, radical LGBTQ+ advocates, communists, anarchists, environmentalists. But virtually all of these causes conflict with other causes in the coalition. “Queers for Palestine,” for example, is a ridiculous and self-contradictory name for a group – and yet it exists, despite the fact that Palestinians throw queers off buildings or drag them behind motorcycles.  

So, what keeps these disparate radicals on the same side? 

What unites them?

The answer is obvious: the only thing they have in common is hatred of the West and a desire to tear it down.

They are, in short, scavengers. 

Until recently, they have been thwarted by the lions —  those who cherish and defend Western Civilization, those who produce more than they take. 

Elon Musk is a prime example. 

There are tens of millions of lions, from entrepreneurs and factory workers to your next-door neighbors who work hard every day to provide a better future for their children.

But in the last few decades, the scavengers have gained significant ground. 

So, who are the scavengers? Those who believe — even as they live in a free society — that they have been denied their “fair” share by oppressive systems of power; that those systems are designed by a conspiratorial elite to keep them down.

Scavengers come in several forms. 

Some are looters: those who feel entitled to the fruit of others’ labor. They seek not to earn wealth by creating something of value and being useful. That’s hard. Instead, they take — usually through taxation, but sometimes through actual theft — from those who have done the hard things necessary to achieve success. 

Think Black Lives Matter or Antifa. 

Some are lechers: those who completely reject conventional morality, those who believe they have been culturally and socially dispossessed by a Judeo-Christian value system. 

Think of the drag queen reading twisted, sexualized fairy tales to young children. 

Some are barbarians: those who say their failed cultures are the result of Western civilization, and that Western civilization must be ground into the dirt in recompense. 

Think Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan socialist, who, along with his successor, Nicolás Maduro, destroyed the wealthiest country in South America.

The scavenger does have identifiable personality traits.

Scavengers are vengeful – in the words of philosopher Eric Hoffer, “They see their lives and the present as spoiled beyond remedy, and they are ready to waste and wreck both: hence their recklessness and their will to chaos and anarchy.” 

Think Luigi Mangioni, the murderer of a prominent health insurance executive. Mangioni had no motive other than his own incoherent anger.

Scavengers are alienated – they perceive themselves as outsiders, even if they are born and raised in the West and given every privilege and opportunity you can imagine.

Think Ta-Nehisi Coates, the best-selling author who never fails to express his hatred of his native country. 

Scavengers believe they are underappreciated – the pseudo-intellectual and artistically unsuccessful, who believe their supposedly extraordinary talents are undervalued, or, worse, have gone unrecognized.

Think of the legions of ethnic studies professors who write abstruse articles for obscure journals no one reads and wouldn’t understand if they did. 

And finally, scavengers are bored: it is one of the great ironies of history that revolutionaries are typically drawn not from the ranks of the poor but from the middle and upper classes. The bored need not struggle for their daily bread. They are disconnected from family, friends, or religious communities, and go in search of meaning – and, all too often, find it in the thrill of revolution. 

Think Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Mayor Zohran Mamdani, both  darlings of Democratic socialism, both raised with every possible advantage. 

Because the scavengers direct their energies toward the systems that make the West unique, they despise: 

Free minds.

Free markets. 

Public virtue.

And the rule of law. 

They believe free minds are a threat to their own prospective tyranny; they know free markets undermine their collectivist and centralized control; they worry public virtue sets up a standard of morality outside of their own power; and they understand the rule of law prevents them from imposing their will. 

These central pillars of Western Civilization must therefore be torn down to make way for their utopian future.

Ultimately, the members of this scavenger coalition will turn on each other because they have no common end. But this is cold comfort. Now, they march together – because all they really care about is destroying the civilization that has given them their wealth, freedom, and opportunity.

So, who can stop them? 

The lions, the defenders of Western Civilization. 

Will they muster the strength and courage to do so?

Only you can answer that question. 

I’m Ben Shapiro, author of Lions and Scavengers: The True Story of America (and Her Critics), for Prager University.