Former United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave a talk this week at Florida State University called “Saving the West” hosted by the university's Institute of Governance and Civics and the national conservative organization Young American's Foundation.
But what exactly does “the West” mean? What does he mean by that? Does it even need defending?
Students interviewed on FSU's campus hours before Johnson's lecture almost all heard he was coming to speak. But they all had different ideas about what “the West” could mean.
“Generally the phrase the West is mainly used to refer to the United States of America and North and South America is kind of what I think of," said John Warmbold.
“America, UK, France, Spain, like Western European countries, more more largely like the global north," said Alyssa Davis.
“For lack of a better way to put it, like the white areas, which I mean it, probably comes off wrong, but it really is just Western Europe and then like colonization stuff like imperialism," Owen Dubley said.
Johnson has his own answer.
Audio and video recording weren’t allowed during his talk, but he referred repeatedly to NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty organization. That’s the military alliance formed in the 20th century by capitalist aligned countries that opposed the USSR and communist countries. Today, NATO is heavily involved in defending Ukraine from its current 4-year long war with Russia that started when
“He likes to see it as a more, I think, Eurocentric American focus, and as something that it's our responsibility as America most paramount to defend Western civilization, Western society," said Peter Teruchik, the vice chair of the FSU College Republicans who also attended the talk.
“I think Boris Johnson really defines the West in an economic perspective. When he was talking about the free market, he was really heavy on that being crucial to part of what Western society is, and so I think he's very heavy in his definition of the West in being capitalist," said FSU student and event attendee Abigail Jennings.
Johnson’s talk comes at a time when segments of Gen-Z are souring on both Capitalism and defending Ukraine.
A Cato Institute survey found 53% of Gen-Z has a favorable view of socialism, compared to 45% having a favorable view of capitalism. While most younger people also support Ukraine over Russia in the war, they are the largest age group that thinks the U.S. funding military support for Ukraine is harmful to the U.S.’s national interests, according to a Pew Research Center poll.
But some students I spoke to don’t think "defending the West” refers just to capitalism or Ukraine: they think it’s referring to immigration.
Owen Dubley is one of them.
“The foundations are kind of changing, where there's people moving in, and it's not necessarily like a bad thing per se, but it needs to be done properly, in my opinion, where it's not just those foundations of the traditional West just get overrun by people kind of coming in and imposing themselves," he said.
During the event, Boris Johnson said non-christian and non-white immigrants don't harm the West, but said Western countries should encourage assimilation to broad cultural norms.
Abigail Jennings thinks the idea that immigration could threaten “the West” stems largely from discussions on social media.
“Immigration becoming more and more of a topic, I think, is just because of that social media extremism. I think it is like a topic that is needed to be discussed today. But I think the way that it's being discussed is because of social media," she said.
John Warmbold thinks phrases about “the West” is part of the problem.
“I feel like the phrase like "protect the West," "defend the West", it's insinuating from the East, and I feel like there's a lot of there's a lot of potential for like racist origin of that phrase and those beliefs of wanting to defend the West from that place of prejudice, and I don't think that's great," he said.
Peter Teruchik thinks the West is worth defending, even if there are many definitions for what that means.
“There's a lot of different opinions, and we have to respect all of them. But when it comes down to it, I think Western civilization is a much more diverse and welcoming, encompassing idea," he said.
