Seldom was an assumption as naive as the idea prevailing since 1989 that political radicalism was over, just because the major agitator - the Soviet Union - had collapsed under its own weight.
This notion in the heads of security services, politicians and the general public supports the evidence that the West swallowed Communist disinformation and propaganda, hook, line and sinker. Here's one that pervades Western popular thinking to this very day.
Also on the level of ideas 'Leftism' and its origins, has been very badly understood.
The first harbinger of a better understanding was posited by philosopher and historian Sir Isaiah Berlin who coined the term, the Counter-Enlightenment in his book "Against the Current" in 1979 (Hogarth Press). In all probability this trouveille can be attributed to Nietzsche, who used the term "die Gegenaufklärung" at the end of the nineteenth century.
Objectivist philosopher Stephen Hicks has explained the origins and history of the anti-modern Counter-Enlightenment movement very succinctly in his 2004 tome "Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault".
More recently Richard Wolin in "The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism" bridged the gap even further, showing how an amalgam of Left and Right collectivism resurfaced in Postmodernism. (Here's a sample chapter available from Princeton University Press.)
The reactionary movement sought to counter and destroy the rational and humanistic ideals of the Enlightenment, modernism. The first anti-modernist is the erroneously classified hero of the Enlightenment, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He broke with reason and individualism, in effect laying the groundwork for Socialism and the notion that a collective has a 'will' of its own.
After Rousseau, the influential anti-philosophers Kant and Hegel furthered the anti-modernist cause against reason. Kant was remarkably effective in isolating the mind within the confines of the skull, rendering it practically useless as a tool for exploring knowledge and the universe. Precursing Orwell, he typified it as Pure Reason.
From Kant onwards, the avant-garde considered man incapable of knowing anything. Kant's irrational theories are the greatest disaster in the history of the post Renaissance world. They are responsible for all pernicious ideas about the nature of thought that persist to this day.
It opened up the field for Marxism (Left collectivism), National Socialism (Right collectivism), currently culminating in Postmodernism. The latter think of the human species as a whole as a collective, a idea of Kantian origin.
Humanity as a collective is pushed today by swathes of world elites, from the transnational "one world" movement, to multiculturalists and Postmodern anti-globalists.
The Greeks identify the latter by their proper name, anarchists. The rest of the W est knows them as the squatter movement, animal rights activists, radical environmentalists, and anti globalists. They are not anti globalism as such, but just anti Western dominated globalism.
After Left and Right collectivism were dealt with through the realities of history and Francis Fukuyama briefly enjoyed "The End of History and the Last Man" the storms of Islamic radicalism were already brewing in the Middle East and spilling over on the streets of the countries favored by Muslim migrants.
The onset of the 21st Century saw a revival of Leftist radicalism. While the old 1968 hippy generation saw it's ideals drowned in a cesspool of drugs and experiments in social licentiousness, Postmodernism has shed itself of all values: life is futile, man's efforts are absurd in their presumptiousness and arrogance.
This radical Left movement is just as ready for a scorched earth as radical Islamism is. Whereas the former have nothing left to lose after their ideals collapsed over their ears, the latter are urged to self-sacrifice for a global victory of the collective Ummah. It is a marriage quite literally made in hell: both are negators of the life-force, but for different reasons.
A culture's implicit sense of life is all-pervasive. Theirs has translated into the negative territory of nihilism and death-worship. For Muslims man is a mere plaything in the hands of a fickle God. To Postmodernists man is a drifter in a purposeless, unknowable universe whose fate is determined by chaos and glandular secretions.
And this is how we got here.
World Security Network: "Urban Radicalism in Europe and Terrorism", by Ioannis Michaletos
Urban radicalism in Europe as portrayed by the recent riots in Athens is a constant worry of the European security services, since there is ample evidence of wider connections between radicals and terrorists.
There are two major themes to be looked upon. Firstly the relationship between the extreme-leftist terrorist groups that operate in the so-called "Mediterranean axis" - France, Italy, Greece and Spain - and secondly, the connection of these groups to Islamic extremists.
The radical - anarchist movement in Europe is pretty strong and well organized with thousands of loyal supporters. Back in 2005, the riots in Paris proved that the radicals and second-generation Muslim immigrants in France were able to form the political agenda of that time, although they were not successful in preventing Sarkozy’s ascendance to power 18 months later.
In June 2008, the French authorities and in particular the Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure (French Directorate-General for External Security or DGSE) announced that French anarchists were behind the attempted sabotage of the TGV railway, that if successful could have killed hundreds of people. It was also revealed that the anarchist group labeled "The Invisible Committeel" was in contact with other Italian and Greek groups over the previous period. (...)
Get it all, read the latest revelations by Greek intelligence analyst Ioannis Michaletos >>>
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