Guilt Killing the West from within

Figures from the East Pediment of the Parthenon, exhibited as
part of the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum.
(Image source: Andrew Dunn/Wikimedia Commons)

Italian writer Giulio Meotti addresses the problem of the crisis of the West ("Is Guilt Killing the West from Within?"  Gatestone Institute July 1, 2018):

  A "sense of guilt" for colonialism is debasing the West from within, according to Professor Bruce Gilley, and authoritarian regimes such as Iran, Russia, China and Turkey are profiting from this weakness. [...] The cultural elite in the West now seem so haunted by feelings of imperialist guilt that they are no longer confident that our civilization is something to be proud of. [...] The French scholar Shmuel Trigano suggested that this ideology is turning the Westerners into "post-colonial subjects" who no longer believe in their own civilization, but instead what will destroy it: multiculturalism.  

The antiquities we collect are also involved in this existential struggle, the campaign to repatriate cultural artifacts is born of this guilt artifacts taken out of Third World countries for safekeeping in former times are seen now as "thefts" committed by the colonial powers at the time. Not everyone agrees,  Zareer Masani, a historian of Indian origins, writing in the British newspaper The Telegraph, took a different position. It was the colonialists, he said, who had a decisive role in preserving the antiquities of the civilization:

"It was their dedication, often at huge personal sacrifice, that unlocked the wonders of many lost classical civilisations... The fact is that we have no idea what would have become of the world's 'looted' antiquities if they hadn't been preserved in Western collections. Would the treasures of Beijing's Summer palace have survived Mao's Cultural Revolution? Would the Elgin marbles have survived Turkish tour guides chopping off chunks to sell as souvenirs? Would Daesh [ISIS] have spared those Middle Eastern artefacts that survive in European museums?".

This has repercussions, western elites have excused many crimes committed in the name for example of political Islam, as if these were the consequences of our own colonial crimes. In 2015, ISIS destroyed Palmyra, one of the most important cities of the ancient world. But the West watched this cultural destruction passively and nothing was done to stop them.  As was stated by France's most important scholar of Islamism, Gilles Kepel:

Unfortunately, what we are "returning" are not only the colonial artifacts, but our very pride in Western civilization. A new "damnation of the memory" is taking place in our own museums, academia and chattering classes -- and it has deep consequences for our ability to deal with the enemies of civilization. "Postcolonial material provides an important fuel for jihadism."