Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
The ideological appropriation of Winston Churchill
The ideological appropriation of Winston Churchill
Jul 18, 2025 8:16 PM

If you’ve never watched Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, please do so. This is one of the best films about World War II ever made. Nolan, known for such works as The Dark Knight and Interstellar, was able to seize all the intensity, despair, courage, and hope present in one of the most dramatic moments of that war and in all of modern British history. The result is a claustrophobic film. For one and a half hour, it is practically impossible to breathe normally. What Nolan gives us is the closest war experience that anyone can have without ever putting a foot on the battlefield. Dunkirk is a priceless aesthetic experience.

The film narrates the aftermath of the fall of France in May 1940, when troops from the British Expeditionary Force were besieged in the coastal town of Dunkirk in France with no means of crossing the English Channel. British soldiers, generals, and politicians found themselves at a crossroads. On the one hand, if they decided to fight, death seemed a sure fate. On the other hand, the surrender would be humiliating, and the United Kingdom would be deprived of the necessary men power to keep fighting. In any case, the country seemed on the verge of doom.

With no choice, the British leadership called forth all civilian boat owners to risk their own lives and, crossing the English Channel, save patriots. The reaction was immediate. In the following days, thousands of boats piloted by fishermen and amateur navigators arrived in Dunkirk. Rescuing 400,000 soldiers that became the British army’s backbone for the next 5 years, this flotilla saved the United Kingdom.

On the occasion of this event, Winston Churchill gave one of the best speeches of all time: “We shall fight on the beaches.”

I watched Dunkirk in 2017 on the day of its debut in London. At the end of the movie, everyone in the room stood up and gave a round of applause to the movie. It was an unforgettable experience.

The events of Dunkirk made Churchill the 20th-century statesman per excellence. That was his finest hour. And that’s what I want to talk about.

Two events in recent months have drawn my attention back to the man I considered a hero for much of my adult life. First, I read Andrew Roberts’ Churchill: Walking with Destiny (2018) in December. Moreover, I watched Piers Morgan talk about the controversy between him and a Scottish National Party’ leader, who called Churchill a “white supremacist mass murderer.”

Both facts reminded me that the historical figure of Churchill, full of contradictions, was a victim of a historical reductionism to serve political purposes, which deformed pletely. On one side, the cultural left, fighting to destroy all the historical symbols that do not fit in the politically correct gospel, turned him into a kind of English Klansman. On the other, the neoconservative right, which only sees the world according to allies and enemies of liberal democracy, adopted Churchill the model of political perfection alongside Abraham Lincoln.

Not surprisingly, the two groups have many things mon. For instance, they share equal hatred towards all those who in one way or another do not confirm the messianic impetus of the political doctrine espoused by both.

While the cultural left is only about anarchy and nihilism, which is a hard sell to the general public; the neocons seek to reinterpret history according to political needs. They weaponized Churchill’s figure to justify their political crusade in favor of spreading democracy and capitalism around the world and, for that purpose, they were never ashamed of rewriting history — excluding inconvenient facts and people.

Avoiding the collective hysteria typical of the left, the neoconservative misconception is the most damaging for the right. In addition to the many thinkers who were excluded by this narrative because they did not pass on the test of loyalty to the liberal democratic statist ideology — Murray Rothbard, Paul Gottfried, Alfred Jay Nock, Joseph Sobran, and H. L. Mencken, to name a few — the neocons reshaped the American right towards the defense of egalitarianism and the managerial state, rather than the protection of individual liberties and traditional social arrangements. Therefore, nowadays, there are as many as liberals and conservatives defending the same ends — an egalitarian society, for example — and not too often disagreeing on the means of embracing this new utopia.

In part, the German-American political philosopher Leo Strauss initiated the civil religion surrounding Churchill, and his disciples spread the idea of him as a champion of democratic egalitarianism. An ideal interpretation for Cold War times, the former British prime minister was converted into an munist liberal or a more successful English version of Woodrow Wilson.

Roberts’ Churchill is contaminated by this neoconservative outlook from the beginning to the end, which is not surprising since the author made clear mitment to the idea that England has a democratic messianic role to play in the world.

In this reading, there is no room for traditional social arrangements, aristocracy, the established Church, or the English political system. In a nutshell, there is nothing conservative about the neocon version of Churchill.

Notwithstanding there was much conservatism in his writings and his aesthetic view of Anglo-Saxon history, I must concede that politically speaking Churchill was much more of an English imperialist liberal than a conventional Tory. However, it does not mean he was a neocon avant la lettre. Actually, if we follow the standards applied by many neocons, Churchill should be labeled as a white bigot since he deeply believed in the superiority of the British culture.

Needless to say, the main problem of the neoconservative interpretation is with history itself. Returning to Dunkirk, what made those people risk their lives to rescue the besieged soldiers was not faith in liberal democracy or even the desire to save Europe from the Nazi threat, as the neoconservatives want to believe, but one of the most primitive and constant human feelings: the desire to protect their home. Those people threw themselves into the sea to protect their children’s and parents’ country and to defend the land where their ancestors were buried. In summary, they risked their own lives for their God and their freedom.

Photo Credit: Dunkirk’spromotional poster.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
How were people On Call in Culture 165 years ago?
What is so special about 1837? That was the year Abraham Kuyper was born. September 29th is his 165th birthday. So we thought we would go back to 1837 and see how people were being On Call in Culture back then. We don’t know if they were all believers on a mission to bless the world, but by seeing what was going on 165 years ago, we hope you are encouraged to engage your world in 2012! How did people...
Want to Help the Poor? Promote a Free Market in Health Care
Want to help the poor? Promote a free market in health care. That’s the argument made by John C. Goodman, author of the new book Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis. Timothy Dalrymple recently talked with Goodman about the best approach for restoring free-market pricing mechanisms into the market for medical care and health insurance: Aren’t there some people, however, who have little of money and lots of time, and would prefer to wait in order to receive cheaper care? There...
Did 2,362 Millionaires Get Unemployment Checks in 2009? (Answer: Yes they did.)
The Congressional Research Service (CRS), a group that works exclusively for the U.S. Congress, issued a report with one of the greatest titles I’ve ever seen on a government document: Receipt of Unemployment Insurance by e Unemployed Workers (“Millionaires”) Now the first nine words are nothing special, typical policy-wonk speak. But whoever added in the word “millionaires” with scare quotes and parentheses is a genius. Most people would have been nodding off around the word “Insurance” but seeing millionaires (that’s...
Rev. Sirico on Life, Work, and Human Flourishing
J.Q. Tomanek of Ignitum Today interviewed Rev. Sirico about life, work, human flourishing, and his new book, Defending the Free Market: JQ Tomanek: Back in the day, holiness was misinterpreted as a cleric or religious life thing. How can a lay Catholic practice their faith? What are some ways to sanctify our work as lay Catholics? Is “ora et labora” just a monk thing? Reverend Sirico: Yes, religious people are often tempted to e so “heavenly minded they are no...
Counting the Profit of a Third Party Choice
Joe Carter recently highlighted the discussion at Ethika Politika, the journal of the Center for Morality in Public Life, about the value of (not) voting, particularly the suggestion by Andrew Haines that in some cases there is a moral duty not to vote. This morning I respond with an analysis of the consequences of not voting, ultimately arguing that one must not neglect to count the cost of abstaining to vote for any particular office. One issue, however, that I...
Is it really ‘aid’ if it goes to relatively wealthy nations?
Alan Duncan, an aid minister in the UK, says his government is “forced” to hand over large amounts of money to the EU’s foreign aid budget, but has no say in how the money is spent. The problem is that much of the $2 billion+ “aid” money (one-sixth of the British budget) goes to projects such as making a Moroccan water park more eco-friendly, an art project in St. Petersburg, and building a hotel and plex in Barbados. Britain’s International...
Dodd-Frank: The Other Serious Threat
At least es at us head on. The greater legislative threat may be the one that most Americans have never heard of. Economist Scott Powell and Acton friend Jay Richards explain in a new piece in Barron’s: While Obamacare received more attention, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, also known as Dodd-Frank after its Senate and House sponsors, … unleashed a new regulatory body, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to operate with unprecedented power. Dodd-Frank became law in...
Stop Apologizing for Our Liberties
You cannot apologize to a fanatic, says Lee Harris. It only serves to convince him that he was right all along: The last few weeks have witnessed a peculiar and disturbing spectacle: An American administration that has spent a great deal of time and energy apologizing for our liberties—in particular, for what many would regard as the foundation of all our other liberties, namely, the freedom to express our minds as we see fit. This signature freedom, of which Americans...
Markets and culture: A time to play, a time to pray
Faced with the prospect of a professional athletic career, a nearly-half million dollar salary, and a perfect lady, what’s not to like? Apparently, for Grant Desme, it was the noise and unrest of the world. Can a culture of life and the noise and tumult of the marketplace co-exist? Rev. Robert Sirico, reflecting on this, says they can, so long as it is not a place where: [C]apitalism…places the human person at the mercy of blind economic forces…What we propose,...
On Call with Dr. Pamela Casson
Dr. Pamela Casson, a pediatrician in Colorado Springs, knows what it means literally to be “On Call.” This week she shares with us in this video interview with Jon Hirst how she sees God working through her in her work with families, children and the world around her. Thank you Pamela for giving us an inside look at how you see your work as blessing the world. ...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved