īruckner argues that the West has inadvertently collaborated with Islamists who seek to destroy Western liberal values and political freedom by focusing on western sins including slavery, imperialism, fascism, communism, thereby conceding the right of Islamists to impose their standards on the Western countries to which they immigrate. 'There is no doubt,' Bruckner writes, 'that Europe has given birth to monsters, but at the same time it has given birth to theories that make it possible to understand and destroy these monsters.' The problem with the tyranny of guilt, according to Bruckner, is not the West is without sin, but that the Western culture of remorse is a disabling form of narcissism that makes it impossible to effectively criticize contemporary non-Western violations of human rights. Themes īruckner acknowledges Western sins including racism and slavery, but points out that the west is also responsible for the creation of such things as civil liberties, modern democratic government and abolitionism.

Richard Wolin preferred to describe it as a 'pendant,' a revisiting of the theme of Tears of the White Man. Roger Kimball regards Tyranny of Guilt as a sequel to Bruckner's 1983 book The Tears of the White Man. It was published in French in 2006 as La Tyrannie de la Pénitence: Essai sur le Masochisme Occidental and in English in 2010.

Essai sur le masochisme occidental) is a book by Pascal Bruckner about the origin and political impact of the contemporary political culture of Western guilt. The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism ( French: La tyrannie de la pénitence.

The Tyranny of Guilt by Pascal Bruckner