{"id":409358,"date":"2026-09-24T15:42:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T15:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/409358\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T15:42:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T15:42:14","slug":"boris-johnson-came-to-fsu-to-talk-about-saving-the-west-but-what-is-the-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/409358\/","title":{"rendered":"Boris Johnson came to FSU to talk about \u2018saving the West.\u2019 But what is the West?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave a talk this week at Florida State University called \u201cSaving the West\u201d hosted by the university’s Institute of Governance and Civics<\/a> and the national conservative organization Young American’s Foundation.<\/p>\n

But what exactly does \u201cthe West\u201d mean? What does he mean by that? Does it even need defending?<\/p>\n

Students interviewed on FSU’s campus hours before Johnson’s lecture almost all heard he was coming to speak. But they all had different ideas about what \u201cthe West\u201d could mean.<\/p>\n

\u201cGenerally the phrase the West is mainly used to refer to the United States of America and North and South America is kind of what I think of,” said John Warmbold.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerica, UK, France, Spain, like Western European countries, more more largely like the global north,” said Alyssa Davis.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor lack of a better way to put it, like the white areas, which I mean it, probably comes off wrong, but it really is just Western Europe and then like colonization stuff like imperialism,” Owen Dubley said.<\/p>\n

Johnson has his own answer. <\/p>\n

Audio and video recording weren\u2019t allowed during his talk, but he referred repeatedly to NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty organization. That\u2019s the military alliance formed in the 20th century by capitalist aligned countries that opposed the USSR and communist countries. Today, NATO is heavily involved in defending Ukraine from its current 4-year long war with Russia that started when <\/p>\n

\u201cHe likes to see it as a more, I think, Eurocentric American focus, and as something that it’s our responsibility as America most paramount to defend Western civilization, Western society,” said Peter Teruchik, the vice chair of the FSU College Republicans who also attended the talk.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Boris Johnson really defines the West in an economic perspective. When he was talking about the free market, he was really heavy on that being crucial to part of what Western society is, and so I think he’s very heavy in his definition of the West in being capitalist,” said FSU student and event attendee Abigail Jennings.<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s talk comes at a time when segments of Gen-Z are souring on both Capitalism and defending Ukraine. <\/p>\n

A Cato Institute survey<\/a> found 53% of Gen-Z has a favorable view of socialism, compared to 45% having a favorable view of capitalism. While most younger people also support Ukraine over Russia in the war, they are the largest age group that thinks the U.S. funding military support for Ukraine is harmful to the U.S.\u2019s national interests, according to a Pew Research Center poll<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But some students I spoke to don\u2019t think “defending the West\u201d refers just to capitalism or Ukraine: they think it\u2019s referring to immigration.<\/p>\n

Owen Dubley is one of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe foundations are kind of changing, where there’s people moving in, and it’s not necessarily like a bad thing per se, but it needs to be done properly, in my opinion, where it’s not just those foundations of the traditional West just get overrun by people kind of coming in and imposing themselves,” he said.<\/p>\n

During the event, Boris Johnson said non-christian and non-white immigrants don’t harm the West, but said Western countries should encourage assimilation to broad cultural norms.<\/p>\n

Abigail Jennings thinks the idea that immigration could threaten \u201cthe West\u201d stems largely from discussions on social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cImmigration becoming more and more of a topic, I think, is just because of that social media extremism. I think it is like a topic that is needed to be discussed today. But I think the way that it’s being discussed is because of social media,” she said.<\/p>\n

John Warmbold thinks phrases about \u201cthe West\u201d is part of the problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like the phrase like “protect the West,” “defend the West”, it’s insinuating from the East, and I feel like there’s a lot of there’s a lot of potential for like racist origin of that phrase and those beliefs of wanting to defend the West from that place of prejudice, and I don’t think that’s great,” he said.<\/p>\n

Peter Teruchik thinks the West is worth defending, even if there are many definitions for what that means.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s a lot of different opinions, and we have to respect all of them. But when it comes down to it, I think Western civilization is a much more diverse and welcoming, encompassing idea,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave a talk this week at Florida State University called \u201cSaving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-409358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}