By Andrew Klein and Sera Elizabeth Klein
Reader’s note: We do not need readers to agree with us. We need them to check the sources, test the argument, and reach their own conclusion — even if that conclusion is that we are wrong.
Abstract
This paper argues that the “Clash of Civilizations” thesis, popularised by Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington, is not a neutral analytical framework but a political instrument. It was forged in the post-Cold War era to provide a new enemy for Western strategic doctrine and has been deployed by leaders such as Benjamin Netanyahu to reframe geopolitical and material conflicts as existential struggles between “civilization” and “barbarism.” The paper examines the thesis’s origins, its political usage, the historically hierarchical and racialised concept of “civilization” upon which it depends, and the empirical evidence that refutes it. It argues that the thesis functions as a propaganda tool that dehumanises the “other,” legitimises imperial violence, and obscures the real, material drivers of conflict—resource competition, imperial ambition, and economic inequality. It connects the thesis to the parallel myth of “Eurabia” and to the broader project of neoliberal wealth transfer, arguing that the clash narrative serves as a massive distraction from the causes of increased poverty and inequality in the West. It concludes that the “Clash of Civilizations” belongs to the colonial period and is the language of a political caste in crisis, seeking to justify the unjustifiable and to shift blame onto the other—the person of colour, the Muslim, the different—for the failures of its own system.
I. Introduction: The Thesis and Its Function
The “Clash of Civilizations” is not a description of the world. It is a rhetorical weapon.
Its function is to dehumanise the “other” by labelling them “barbarians.” It is to legitimise imperial violence and perpetual war by framing them as a defence of “civilization.” It is to obscure the real, material causes of conflict—resources, power, and profit.
When Benjamin Netanyahu invokes “Judeo-Christian civilization” against “barbarism,” he is not analysing geopolitics. He is using a historically loaded, pseudo-scientific framework to grant moral cover to the exercise of raw power and the destruction of a people. The clash is not between civilizations; it is between those who use this language to justify harm and those who recognise it for what it is.
This paper examines the thesis, its history, its usage, and its function. It argues that the “Clash of Civilizations” belongs to the colonial period of the world—a period that did not come to an end for most of the world until after World War II. It is the language of crisis in the face of a changing world. It is the language of “inherent superiority” in the face of contradictory evidence. It is the language of denial and blame shifting—the political equivalent of a fairy tale told to justify the worst excesses of the political caste against their own people, with the blame shifted to the other: the person of colour, the Muslim, the different.
II. The History: From Bernard Lewis to Samuel Huntington
The phrase “clash of civilizations” was popularised by the British-American Orientalist Bernard Lewis in an article for The Atlantic Monthly published in September 1990, titled “The Roots of Muslim Rage.” Lewis argued that Islamic militancy was reinvigorating an “ancient rivalry” between Islam and the “Judeo-Christian heritage” of the “West.” The article was written as a preparation to decide a “new enemy” of the West after the Cold War.
Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington took up the concept and theorised it in two separate publications: first, in an article for Foreign Affairs in 1993, and second, in his 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Huntington argued that “the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural.”
Crucially, the thesis emerged as a direct counter to Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History” argument, which posited that liberal democracy would become the universal and final form of government. Huntington’s framework rejected this universalism, arguing instead that the world was fundamentally divided into distinct, incompatible cultural blocs—primarily the West, Islam, and Confucian civilization.
This was not a neutral scholarly observation. It was a strategic intervention. As the Oxford Bibliographies entry notes, Lewis and Huntington “wrote within the context of the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. They were addressing these changes in world politics and they argued against euphoric proclamations of an impending ‘end of history’.”
III. The Political Usage: Netanyahu and the “Clash of Barbarism”
Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly invoked and adapted this framework, most notably in a 2024 address to the U.S. Congress where he stated: “This is not a clash of civilizations. It’s a clash between barbarism and civilization. It’s a clash between those who glorify death and those who sanctify life.”
His usage reveals a deliberate rhetorical strategy.
Beyond a “Clash of Civilizations“: By rejecting the Huntingtonian framing of two equal-but-different civilizations, Netanyahu escalates the dichotomy to a moral absolute: the “civilized” versus the “barbaric.” There is no room for negotiation with “barbarism,” only defeat.
The “Judeo-Christian” Shield: In January 2026, he told a delegation of European parliamentarians: “The Western Judeo-Christian civilization is under attack. This is an effort carried out not by radical Islam alone, but in collaboration with forces which you know well: the deep radical left and the Islamists, who in theory should be rivals, but are united by one thing – the hatred of Israel and the Jews.”
Expanding the Enemy: He broadens the coalition against Israel to include not just “radical Islam” but also the “deep radical left,” whom he accuses of uniting with Islamists due to a shared “hatred of Israel and the Jews.”
Legitimising Genocide: Critics argue that this rhetoric is a “ploy to legitimise genocidal murder.” As the Irish Times noted, “By dehumanising the enemy as ‘monsters’ and ‘barbarians,’ it provides a moral cover for the mass killing of civilians in Gaza, framing it as a necessary act in a cosmic struggle for survival.”
IV. What is “Civilization”? A Contested and Hierarchical Standard
The concept of “civilization” itself is deeply problematic and historically intertwined with colonialism and racial hierarchy.
The Etymological Root: The word derives from the Latin civitas (city), and its most literal definition is “a society made up of cities.” It was first used as a category of social organisation in France in the mid-eighteenth century.
The “Standard of Civilization“: This is the crucial historical context. In the 19th century, international law developed a “standard of civilization” used to distinguish “civilized” nations (Europe and its settler colonies) from “uncivilized” or “barbaric” peoples. As noted by Cambridge Core, “the European Family of Nations introduced the criterion of ‘civilisation,’ which excluded non-European entities as sovereigns and legitimised their colonisation.” International law “not only facilitated the colonisation of non-European societies as part of the ‘civilising mission’ but also justified atrocities associated with the process.”
The Inherent Hierarchy: The very act of categorising societies as “civilizations” (plural) created a framework where some were “civilized” and others were not. As one analysis notes, “the word is ‘problematic because of the way the label has been used to set up harmful oppositions among world societies, with ‘civilized’ societies being seen as superior to ‘non-civilized’ societies’.”
A Tool of “Self-Definition“: The concept of “barbarism” functions as the “negative standard” through which “civilization” defines its own superiority. Stuart Hall saw “the West” as an ideological construct based on a racialised discursive hierarchy where “the West” = developed = good = desirable, while “the non-West” = under-developed = bad = undesirable.
V. The Nazi Precedent: Untermenschen and the Language of Extermination
The use of such language is not new. The Nazi regime in Germany referred to Untermenschen—a term for Jews, Eastern European, and Russian people (Slavs). The Oxford English Dictionary defines Untermensch as “esp. with reference to the Nazi régime (1933–45): a racially inferior person, a sub-human person.” In Nazi ideology, Jews were considered “the lowest race, to be indiscriminately exterminated,” while Slavs were also classified as Untermenschen—”sub-humans.”
The “us vs them” rhetoric applied together with eugenics and racial purity. One could argue that this worldview led to the Holocaust and the killing of millions.
What is the difference to what is being done to the Palestinian people in Gaza, the West Bank and the occupied territories? The language of the “Clash of Civilizations” might well belong to the colonial period of the world, which did not come to an end for most of the world until after World War II. It is the language of crisis in the face of a changing world. The language of “inherent superiority” in the face of contradictory evidence. It is the language of denial and blame shifting—the political equivalent of a fairy tale told to justify the worst excesses by the political castes against their own people, with the blame shifted to the other.
VI. The Empirical Refutation: What Is Actually Clashing?
The evidence overwhelmingly refutes the “Clash of Civilizations” thesis as a primary driver of global conflict.
Empirical Refutation: A quantitative analysis by Jonathan Fox, published in the British Journal of Political Science, used the Minorities at Risk dataset to test Huntington’s propositions. The analysis revealed several problems with Huntington’s argument. First, “Huntington’s classification of civilizations is difficult to operationalize.” Secondly, “civilizational conflicts constitute a minority of ethnic conflicts.” Thirdly, conflicts between the West and both the Sinic/Confucian and Islamic civilizations “constitute a small minority of civilizational conflicts.” Finally, “there is no statistically significant evidence that the intensity of civilizational ethnic conflicts have risen relative to other types of ethnic conflicts since the end of the Cold War.”
An “Ignorance” not a Clash: Edward Said, one of the thesis’s most prominent critics, argued that it was a “Clash of Ignorance.” He saw it as a “gimmick” that collapsed “complex, diverse and contradictory groups of people into vast, simplistic abstractions” with “disastrous consequences.” Said argued that “these are tense times, but it is better to think in terms of powerful and powerless communities, the secular politics of reason and ignorance, and universal principles of justice and injustice, than to wander off in search of vast abstractions that may give momentary satisfaction but little self-knowledge or informed analysis.”
The Real Drivers of Conflict: The framework serves to obscure the actual drivers of conflict, which are often material and geopolitical. These include:
· Resource Competition: Control over oil, water, and strategic trade routes.
· Imperial Ambition and Geopolitics: The desire for regional hegemony and influence.
· Economic Inequality: Disparities in wealth and development that breed instability.
· The Arms Trade: The profit motives of the global military-industrial complex, which benefits from perpetual conflict.
The Geographic Fallacy: The thesis is also geographically illiterate. It posits a monolithic “Islamic civilization” threatening a unified “West.” In reality, 60% of the world’s Muslims live in Asia, not the Middle East. The “Islamic world” is as fractured by ethnicity, politics, and class as any other region. The “clash” is not between civilizations, but within them, between competing elites, states, and ideologies.
VII. The Economic Distraction: Neoliberalism, Wealth Transfer, and the Manufactured Enemy
The “Clash of Civilizations” narrative does not exist in a vacuum. It goes hand in hand with the economic application of neoliberal free market theory—a system that has produced unprecedented wealth transfer from the majority of the people to a tiny minority.
The Data: In the United States, the richest 1% owned a record 31.9% of US wealth at the end of 2025. The nominal wealth of the top 1% increased by 42.8% in the 2000s, by 103.8% in the 2010s, and by 49.3% during the first half of the 2020s alone. Throughout the neoliberal era, “income gains in rich countries were concentrated at the top of the distribution while real wages for average workers stagnated.”
The Distraction: The clash narrative serves as a massive distraction from the real-world causes of increased poverty and inequality in the West. As one analysis notes, “what we know as the so-called trickle-down effect—that you have to support the big ones, the strong ones, the rich ones, and then their wealth will trickle down to the everyday people—that’s not true anymore. That was the biggest illusion of neoliberalism.”
The “Clash of Civilizations” provides a convenient scapegoat. The economic failures of the neoliberal project—stagnant wages, rising inequality, the hollowing out of the middle class—are blamed not on the system, but on the “other“: the immigrant, the Muslim, the person of colour. The clash narrative and the myth of “Eurabia” are the ideological glue that holds this diversion together.
VIII. The Eurabia Myth: The Conspiracy Theory That Fuels the Clash
The “Clash of Civilizations” thesis is reinforced by a parallel conspiracy theory: Eurabia. The term was coined by the British-Swiss polemicist Bat Ye’or (Gisèle Littman) in her 2005 book Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis. The thesis posits a secret, coordinated plan between European politicians and the Arab world for the “Islamicisation” of Europe—a “dystopic land in which jihad and sharia rule, and non-Muslims live in a state of subjection.”
As academic analysis has demonstrated, the Eurabia thesis “display[s] strikingly similar discursive dynamics” to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the notorious antisemitic forgery that claimed to be the minutes of a meeting of Jewish leaders planning to take over the world. Both texts racialize their target population “as the ultimate Other determined to destroy Us”—a process Zia-Ebrahimi calls conspiratorial racialization.
The consequences of this conspiracy theory have been lethal. Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 people in Norway in 2011, embraced the Eurabia theory. Author Matt Carr warned that “what first began as an outlandish conspiracy theory has since become a dangerous Islamophobic fantasy which is moving ever closer towards mainstream respectability.”
IX. The Australian Context: “Australian Values” and the Retreat to White Australia
The “Clash of Civilizations” narrative is not confined to the Middle East or Europe. It has found fertile ground in Australia, where it intersects with the politics of race, immigration, and national identity.
“Australian Values“: The language of “Australian values” is often deployed as a proxy for the clash narrative. As one analysis notes, “Angus Taylor’s call for an immigration policy based on ‘Australian values’ reeks of ethno-nationalism and harks back to the White Australia policy, which limited non-white immigration.”
The Far Right and Israel: There is a growing alignment between far-right political movements in Australia and support for the State of Israel. As one German-language analysis notes, for these far-right parties, “the zealous commitment to the State of Israel is standard“—and some have “positively referenced the White Australia policy, which discriminated against non-white immigration until the 1970s, agitated against Asians, and did not recognise Indigenous people as citizens.”
The Contradiction: The Menadue analysis captures the contradiction precisely: “Even as Australia recognises Palestine, it continues to sell arms to Israel—a stark contradiction that exposes the limits of political courage.”
The clash narrative serves a specific function in Australia: it provides a framework for justifying the demonisation of Muslim and migrant communities, the retreat to a mythologised “white Australia,” and the continued alignment with a state engaged in genocide. It is the language of a political caste in crisis, seeking to shift blame onto the other for the failures of its own system.
X. Conclusion: The Language of a Caste in Crisis
The “Clash of Civilizations” is not a valid description of the world. It is a rhetorical weapon.
Its function is to:
1. Dehumanise the “other” by labelling them “barbarians.“
2. Legitimise imperial violence and perpetual war by framing them as a defence of “civilization.”
3. Obscure the real, material causes of conflict—resources, power, and profit.
When Netanyahu invokes “Judeo-Christian civilization” against “barbarism,” he is not analysing geopolitics. He is using a historically loaded, pseudo-scientific framework to grant moral cover to the exercise of raw power and the destruction of a people. The clash is not between civilizations; it is between those who use this language to justify harm and those who recognise it for what it is.
The “Clash of Civilizations” belongs to the colonial period of the world—a period that did not come to an end for most of the world until after World War II. It is the language of crisis in the face of a changing world. It is the language of “inherent superiority” in the face of contradictory evidence. It is the language of denial and blame shifting—the political equivalent of a fairy tale told to justify the worst excesses by the political castes against their own people, with the blame shifted to the other: the person of colour, the Muslim, the different.
In a multipolar world, the clash of civilizations has had its day. Politicians like Netanyahu are well on the way to becoming not just irrelevant to the future but a very real threat to today.
Who does it serve? Not the people of the world. Not the future generations of Israel or Australia. It serves the caste—the political, economic, and military elites who benefit from perpetual conflict and the diversion of attention from their own failures. It is the most dangerous marketing tool of control used by the political caste in the Western world.
And Australia is not above its application.
References
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This paper deconstructs the “Clash of Civilizations” thesis step by step, using verifiable sources to demonstrate its origins, its political usage by Netanyahu, its historical roots in colonial hierarchy, its empirical refutation, and its connection to the economic project of neoliberalism and the myth of Eurabia. The paper concludes that the thesis is not a theory but a weapon—a marketing tool of control used by a political caste in crisis.
