About this Episode
What if the West’s problem isn’t too much empathy — but too little self-respect?
Philosopher Benedict Beckeld returns to the Brussels Signal Horizon podcast to discuss oikophobia — the idea that hostility toward one’s own civilization may be mistaken for compassion toward outsiders.
The conversation begins with Beckeld’s recent essay on “ethnic memory” and moves through assimilation, multiculturalism, American identity, immigration, third-worldism, and the controversial idea of “suicidal empathy.”
Beckeld also discusses why the concept of oikophobia has struggled to gain the same recognition as “xenophobia,” whether certain questions have become too dangerous to ask, and why conversations about Western civilization repeatedly return to God — even for an atheist.