Douglas Murray (author) facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Douglas Murray
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Murray in 2019
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| Born | Douglas Kear Murray 16 July 1979 London, England |
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| Education | St Benedict's School Eton College (6th form) |
| Alma mater | Magdalen College, Oxford |
| Period | 2000–present |
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Douglas Murray (born 16 July 1979) is a British neoconservative political commentator, cultural critic, and journalist.
He is currently an associate editor of the conservative British political and cultural magazine The Spectator, and has been a regular contributor to The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Sun, the Daily Mail, New York Post, National Review, The Free Press, and Unherd.
His books include Neoconservatism: Why We Need It (2005), The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (2017), The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (2019) and The War on the West (2022). Murray was the associate director of the Henry Jackson Society, a neoconservative think tank, from 2011 to 2018.
Murray is a critic of immigration and Islam. He became more well-known internationally due to his advocacy of Israel after the October 7 attacks in 2023.
Murray has been praised by conservatives, and criticised by many progressives. Articles in the academic journals Ethnic and Racial Studies and National Identities associate his views with Islamophobia and he has been described as promoting far-right ideas such as the Eurabia, Great Replacement, and Cultural Marxism conspiracy theories.
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Early life and education
Murray was born in Hammersmith, London, to an English school teacher mother and a Scottish, Gaelic-speaking father who had been born on the Isle of Lewis and who worked as a civil servant. He has one elder brother. In an interview with The Herald, Murray stated that his father had intended to be in London temporarily but stayed after meeting his mother, and that they "encouraged a good discussion around the dinner table" when he was growing up but "neither are political."
Murray was educated at his local state primary and secondary schools, before going to a comprehensive which had previously been a grammar school. Recalling this experience in 2011, he wrote, "My parents had been promised that the old grammar school standards and ethos remained, but none did. By the time I arrived the school was what would now be described as 'an inner-city sink school', a war zone similar to those many of the children's parents had escaped from." Murray's parents withdrew him from the school after a year. He won scholarships to St Benedict's School, Ealing, and subsequently Eton College, taught briefly at a school near Aberdeen, then took a degree in English at Magdalen College, Oxford.
Career
He founded the Centre for Social Cohesion in 2007, which became part of the Henry Jackson Society, where he was associate director from 2011 to 2018.
Media career
Murray is an associate editor of The Spectator.
In 2016 Murray organised a competition through The Spectator in which entrants were invited to submit offensive poems about Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, with a top prize of £1,000 donated by a reader. This was in reaction to the Böhmermann affair, in which German satirist Jan Böhmermann was prosecuted under the German penal code for such a poem. Murray announced the winner of the poetry competition as Conservative MP Boris Johnson (former editor of the magazine, and former Mayor of London, and later Prime Minister of the United Kingdom).
In April 2019 Murray spent weeks urging New Statesman journalist George Eaton and editor Jason Cowley to share the original recording of an interview between Eaton and Roger Scruton, with Murray branding the published interview – which attributed a number of controversial statements to Scruton – as "journalistic dishonesty". Murray eventually managed to acquire the recording, which formed the basis of an article in The Spectator defending Scruton, arguing that his remarks had been misinterpreted. It is unclear how Murray obtained the recording. The New Statesman subsequently apologized for Eaton's misrepresentation.
In October 2023, Murray reported from Israel for 6 months following the October 7 attacks. He visited the kibbutzim that were attacked in the October 7 war and interviewed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Political views
Murray has been described as a conservative, a neoconservative a regular critic of Immigration, and Islam.
Islam
Murray is a frequent critic of Islam, saying that there is "a creed of Islamic fascism – a malignant fundamentalism, woken from the Dark Ages to assault us here and now".
In 2008, Murray listed the cases of 27 writers, activists, politicians and artists – including Sir Salman Rushdie, Maryam Namazie and Anwar Shaikh, all three of whom had received death threats due to their criticism of Islam. Murray said that "Unless Muslims are allowed to discuss their religion without fear of attack there can be no chance of reform or genuine freedom of conscience within Islam."
After Murray refused Paul Goodman's offer to disown these comments, the Conservative Party frontbench severed formal relations with Murray and his Centre for Social Cohesion.
In 2010, Murray argued against the motion in an Intelligence Squared US debate titled "Is Islam a Religion of Peace?"
Murray has described Islamophobia as a "nonsense term" and in 2013 argued "a phobia is something of which one is irrationally afraid. Yet it is supremely rational to be scared of elements of Islam and of its fundamentalist strains in particular. Nevertheless, the term has been very successfully deployed, not least because it has the aura of a smear. Islamophobes are not only subject to an irrational and unnecessary fear; they are assumed to be motivated (because most Muslims in the West are from an ethnic minority) by "racism". Who would not recoil from such charges?"
In 2009, Murray was prevented from chairing a debate at the London School of Economics between Alan Sked and Hamza Tzortzis on the topic "Islam or Liberalism: Which is the Way Forward?", with the university citing security concerns following a week-long student protest against Israel's attacks on Gaza. The debate took place without Murray chairing. The move was criticised by the conservative press such as The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator.
In June 2009, Murray accepted an invitation to a debate with Anjem Choudary, leader of the banned group Al-Muhajiroun, on the subject of Sharia law and British law at Conway Hall. Members of Al-Muhajiroun acting as security guards tried to segregate men and women at the entrance of the event. Clashes broke out near the entrance between Choudary's and Murray's supporters and Conway Hall cancelled the debate because of the attempted forced separation of men and women. Outside the building, a confrontation between Choudary and Murray over the cancellation of the event occurred. Murray's Centre for Social Cohesion later published a study arguing that one in seven Islam-related terrorist cases in the UK could be linked to Al-Muhajiroun.
Murray has argued in defence of Muslim reformers in his writing. In 2021, he criticised Islamists who celebrated and supported the demise of the counter-extremism Quilliam Foundation thinktank in Britain, claiming "Some of this country's best citizens, who happened also to be Muslims, gave Islamic reform a good shot here. But it was they – and not their critics – who as a result became the principal target."
Brexit
Murray supported the 'Leave' side in the UK's 2016 EU referendum, citing concerns with the Eurozone, immigration and the prospect of ever-closer union. In a 2016 article for The Spectator, Murray asserted "I am not the world's most ardent Brexiteer. I voted to leave because I could see what the EU now wanted to become, and whether or not that direction was right for the rest of the continent, it was not right for the UK." In the wake of the Brexit vote, Murray expressed concern that the result "has just not been accepted by an elite" and said that the result "should be celebrated by anybody who actually believes in democracy".
Immigration
Murray has been described as a vocal critic of immigration. In March 2013, Murray claimed that London was a foreign country due to "white britons" becoming a minority in 23 of 33 London boroughs. In Murray's book The Strange Death of Europe, he writes that Europe and its values are dying due to mass immigration and in the opening pages calls for halting Muslim immigration. In the book Murray also details crimes committed by immigrants in Europe and writes favourably of immigration hard liner Viktor Orban. ....." Koch interviewed a senior editor at the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, Mark Pitcavage, who stated that there was "almost certainly prejudice in the video" and that it was "filled with anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric". Similarly, the Southern Poverty Law Center described the video as a "dog whistle to the extreme right".
In September 2016, Murray supported Donald Trump's proposal for a wall along the southern border of the United States. In January 2017, Murray wrote an article defending Executive Order 13769 which banned entry to the U.S. by citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries. In September 2022, Murray supported Florida governor Ron DeSantis sending illegal immigrants to Martha's Vineyard and criticised vice President Kamala Harris for saying the border is "secure" despite the fact 2 million illegal migrants entered the US.
Foreign policy
In his book Neoconservatism: Why We Need It, Murray argues that neoconservatism is necessary for fighting against dictatorships and human rights abuses. Murray has called for continuing the War on terror on Iran, Syria, and any regime which supports terrorism. He has also said that he believes that the political left or right have no desire for foreign interventions since John McCain's death.
Murray supported the Iraq War and wrote in 2004 "Iraq may be the big intervention of this generation. Success means the success of the Iraqi nation in a region of failing states and unprecedented freedom for a nation previously cowed by brutalism and ignored by pacifism. Failure means not only the failure of the Arab world to allow freedom and democracy to stick, and the failure of the civilized world to stand up to tyranny, but the failure and loss of many more lives in a country which finally found hope and a future". On December 16, 2017, Murray criticised a decision by the High Court to award large payments to Iraqi civilians who claimed they had been mistreated while detained by British soldiers.
On June 24, 2013, Murray wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal opposing the U.S intervention in the Syrian civil war. In 2021 Murray criticised the Biden administration for withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. He criticised the Biden White House for attempting to portray the withdrawal as a success.
In 2013, Murray criticised reporter Owen Jones for mistakenly saying that Israel had killed a 11 month old child in a military strike. Jones responded by criticizing Murray for ignoring a UN report which reported an Israel airstrike had killed numerous innocent civilians. During a visit to Israel in 2019, Murray praised Israeli society, saying that Israel "has a healthier attitude towards nationalism than Europe" and lauded Israel's restrictive approach to immigration. In 2019 Murray supported the Trump administration's decision to formally recognize Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
In May 2020, Murray criticised people labelling the COVID-19 lab leak theory, a theory which states that COVID-19 came from a lab in Wuhan China as a Conspiracy theory. Murray has advocated for punishing China for their role in allowing COVID-19 into the United States. Murray has also criticised TikTok referring to it as "a piece of malware from China" and accused the Chinese Communist Party of using it to corrupt society.
Donald Trump
In November 2016 Murray questioned US Democrats calling Trump sexist, homophobic, and racist as they had also attempted to portray Mitt Romney and John McCain in the same way. Murray also said that Trump's foreign policy plans were less provocative than Hillary Clinton's would have been.
Ahead of the 2020 United States presidential election, Murray argued that while Trump had personality flaws and enacted certain policies he didn't agree with, his re-election would be more beneficial for the United Kingdom in terms of foreign policy and Brexit over a Biden administration. Murray praised Trump for having brokered the Israel–United Arab Emirates normalization agreement, and wrote of the assassination of Qasem Soleimani: "American forces took out Iran's leading general, a man who had overseen the deaths of countless numbers of British and American troops, not to mention Iraqi and other civilians in the area, and Iran took it. Not least because they seemed to fear that they were dealing with a madman".
In 2021, Murray criticised the January 6 United States Capitol attack perpetrated by supporters of Trump and said that Trump alone was responsible for stoking the riot.
In 2022, Murray reiterated his criticism of Trump's behaviour following the Capitol riot but argued some Democratic Party politicians were contradictory in condemning the violence and claiming the riots were a danger to democracy after they had endorsed the rhetoric of the Black Lives Matter movement during the riots that followed the murder of George Floyd and Hillary Clinton's claims that the 2016 election had been stolen. Murray also argued that the Trump administration had enacted strong policies in regard to immigration, Iran, and China and it would be a strategic mistake of the Biden administration to reverse them. However, Murray has also asserted that the Republican Party should distance itself from Trump's stolen election theories and not seek 2024 primary candidates based on Trump's personal approval if it is to win the next presidential election.
Viktor Orbán
Murray is known for his association with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. In March 2018, Orbán posted a photo on his official Facebook account of himself reading the Hungarian-language edition of The Strange Death of Europe. Murray has disputed the claim that Hungary is experiencing significant democratic backsliding under Orbán, and has called Freedom House's comparisons of Orbán's government to a dictatorship as "increasingly off-kilter". In May 2018, Murray was personally received by Orbán in Budapest as part of the "Future of Europe" conference along with other conservative figures like Steve Bannon, and according to Hungarian state media had an individual discussion and photograph with Orbán.
Other activities
Murray is on the international advisory board of NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based NGO described as pro-Israel and right-wing, which was founded in 2001 by professor Gerald M. Steinberg. As of 2022[update], he was also one of the directors of the Free Speech Union, an organization established by British social commentator Toby Young in 2020 which advocates for freedom of speech, and criticises cancel culture.
Honours and awards
- Manhattan Institute – 2024 Alexander Hamilton Award.
- Special recognition from President Isaac Herzog of Israel in 2024.
Personal life
Murray is gay. He had a regular partner for 10 years up until 2018. As of 2023, he lives in New York.
In 2015 and 2017, Murray described himself as a cultural Christian and a Christian atheist, and having been an Anglican until his twenties. In a 2024 interview, he said that he now identifies as agnostic.
See also
In Spanish: Douglas Murray para niños
