In this provocative essay at The European Conservative, Dalrymple explores our cultural climate in which ugliness is embraced as a badge of authenticity and where aesthetic decay becomes intertwined with moral degeneration, arguing that uglification is less a revolt against beauty than a capitulation to despair.

When we look at something beautiful that has come down to us from the past, we are now encouraged to view it not through the lens of aesthetic appreciation, but through that of supposedly historical understanding—which in our present intellectual climate is that of the backward projection of current grievances and detection of past injustices.