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While many Americans view the September 11th terrorist attack as the act of an anachronistic and dangerous sect, one that champions medieval and outmoded ideals, John Gray here argues that in fact the ideology of Al Qaeda is both Western and modern, a by-product of globalization's transnational capital flows and open borders. Indeed, according to Gray, Al Qaeda's utopian zeal to remake the world in its own image descends from the same Enlightenment creed that informed both the disastrous Soviet experiment and the new neoliberal dream of a global free market. In this "excellent short introduction to modern thought" (The Guardian), first published in 2003, Gray warns that the United States, once a champion of revolutionary economic and social change, must now understand its new foes. He also confronts some of the faults he perceives in Western ideology: the faith that global development will eradicate war and hunger, trust in technology to address the coming catastrophe of population explosion, and the belief that democracy is an infallible institution that can serve as political panacea for all.… (more)
User reviews
I will need to re-read this book before I can say I've really understood its message. Fortunately, it is written in a pretty readable style, so that shouldn't be a problem. Now I've just got to find the time...
Grey correctly locates the fundamental danger of the modern world in the urge on the part of any group to use technology to radically remake society. Also, he emphasizes Al Qaeda is another consequence of post-nation-state globalization(and probably the first of many similar movements), and must be addressed as such. It is an ideology and a movement, not a discrete group of people and not ultimately defeatable by attacking states or killing individuals. He paints a bleak picture of the coming decades, but I’m afraid a largely correct one.