Abolish Everything, Replace It With What?
1st July 2026
For neo-decolonial activists, Western civilisation reflects all of the things they regard as oppression: capitalism, Zionism, borders, prisons, police, property, universities, legal systems, national sovereignty, and the ordinary habits of middle class life.
To call for our civilisation’s “total eradication” is to demand a revolutionary unmaking of the world that Western people inhabit. It is a politics of purification. It’s hard to view this as anything other than naked destructivism. They are talking about dismantling our whole society.
Western civilisation is a lot of things beyond simplistic labels like “capitalist”. Western civilisation is the assumption that government is limited by law; that a person can speak, worship, publish, own property, marry, dissent, sue, vote, and be judged as an individual. Western civilisation means the various habits of argument, self-criticism, contracts, due process, scientific inquiry, and voluntary association that make modern life possible. It is the system that has lifted billions of people out of poverty worldwide.
During the George Floyd protests, when another user asked whether there was a better slogan than “defund the police,” Chevalier reportedly replied: “Fuck you. We’re gonna defund and abolish. You don’t get to water down our movements.” When someone suggested that abolition meant ending policing “as we know it,” she corrected them: “No. It means ending policing full stop. Period. No more police at all ever.”