Who will stand up for “the West”?
An illiberal America and a war-torn, world-weary Europe are failing to champion our Western civilisational values
Features
14 October, 2025
By
Daniel Johnson
“All Cretans are liars,” said the prophet Epimenedes, himself a Cretan, more than 2,500 years ago. Ever since, philosophers have puzzled over his paradox. Now, however, the paradox has been solved: for in Georgios Varouxakis we have a Cretan who, beyond any shadow of doubt, tells us the truth. It is, moreover, a truth we need to know: the truth about the story we have told ourselves, the story of our civilisation, the story of the West.
Growing up in the 1970s on an offshore island close to three continents, Varouxakis learned early in life that Western civilisation was a problematic concept. In 1974 Turkey, a Nato member, invaded nearby Cyprus and his father was mobilised. Opinion was divided between those who insisted that Greece was a Western nation and those who blamed the West for betraying the Greek Cypriots.
Looming over such Levantine conflicts was the global confrontation of the Cold War. That had been preceded by the equally cosmic struggle between Nazi Germany and the Western Allies. The Battle of Crete in 1941 had been a disaster for the British, only slightly redeemed three years later by the daring abduction of General Kreipe, the German commander in Crete, by an SOE team led by the writer Patrick Leigh-Fermor and the Cretan resistance.
https://thecritic.co.uk/who-will-stand-up-for-the-west/
