The trilogy. False Dawn - Straw Dogs

books:


	• Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia John Gray Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 9 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Best Book of 2008

Not often I give 5 stars to any book. But I have to give it to this one. Its good....I'm not sure that it compares with Niail Fergusson's latest Opus "The War of the World" in many ways... but from what he tries to do it is very good at analyzing apocalyptic politics - which I think no one has really done.

The danger is of course really only one that I can see... he does get reductionist at time. That and I think he savages Tony Blair a bit too much... but that's it... good contemporary analysis using the methodology of Cohn... his book is called "The Pursuit of Millenium." --- also a wonderful book!

His basic thesis is that people propounding ideas that are catagorically against commonly accepted explainations of what we know of human behaviour -- advocating ideas and theories -- these people have historically been millenialist, deluded, and very dangerous indeed.

Gray starts with a historical interpretation of apocalyptic ideas -- christianity, the crusades, and then advances into the twin scourges of 20th Century Naziism and Marxism. From this he comes right up to present day and argues the Bush League in the Whitehouse, along with Tony Blair and his compradours, are responsible for believing in and foisting an idealistic interpretation of Iraq and the results of war. He argues that it was never realistic to believe that Iraq would ever turn into a democracy, and that neocons deluded themselves into a sort of millenialist intepretation of the world. One unrealistic -- like marxism -- but one that was pushed to its limit with disasterous consequences for all: a war in a land waged for democracy, with no history of democracy, and no nuclear weapons.

It is a very dark interpretation of history in general and how History, writ large, has a way of reappearing in current times in ways that we may miss of interpret wrongly. Gray reminds us that history can slide backwards, darkness can invade the light of progress. That there is no guarantee that the US or all of the other Westminster style democracies will always be centres of liberal democracy. He sees the rise of illiberal democracies -- those that use the power of the majority to oppress the weak and minorities. This is trend he says in Russia, China and the logical outcome of the war in Iraq. That except for Britain and Canada, there has never really been a history of countries with multinational democracies.

Gray states that this has happenned in Iraq and will get worse. Moreover in most countries with no democratic tradition -- with almost the exception of Britain its commonwealths and the US, there has never been a country that did not, at some time engage in illiberal democracy. In fact he is worried about it coming back... since even the US has begun an official policy of intolerance.

He is a persuasive man indeed. Refreshing to see him savage the left and the right with an intellectual rigour unknown in the pale prose that passes as analysis from the right or the left. Along with Niail Fergusson he is one of the great minds writing cogent, rational analysis of the world around us.

In the end he advocates a sort of neo-realism to save the world. Areas of direct interest are worth dying for, but any intervention needs to be based upon a realistic assessment of the world, not ideology of the neo-cons or the power-based thought of the contemporary left - both merge into idealism, and idealism as a prop for foreign policy always has been, and will be, a path to the slaughter bench of disaster and human suffering.

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The trilogy. False Dawn - Straw Dogs - Black Mass

The other reviews say it all.
If you had to pick 3 books from john Gray, (I've read all of them) I'd place The three mensioned above as must have top 10, all times reference books in political science/economy/philosophy, among the hundreds i have.

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Will engage and enrage

Some arguments:

The modern neo-liberal project to impose Western style democracy around the world (most potently in the former secular leaning Iraq) is the successor ideology to Marxism.

The neo-cons (in Washington, and formerly the now fully fledged Catholic Tony Blair in Downing Street) are willing to mendaciously deceive the public in order to achieve their ultimate goals. In the UK, Blair might not have been able to mobilize religion behind him as Bush did in the USA, but for both men their project is essentially the same: the salvation of mankind.

The USA is a secular nation by constitution but is by far the most religious of all the developed democracies. Neo-conservatism, a mixture of crackpt realism and chiliastic fantasy, could only have emerged in such a nation, where millenarian thinking prevails very strongly.

US power is not nearly as secure as many believe it to be. The country is trillions of dollars in debt and depends on the economies of numerous other states, not necessarily democratic, to maintain its economic status. The emerging powers of the world such as China do not have to kowtow to America's hegemonic postition and they realise this.

End of History arguments - the Fukuyama thesis that liberal democracy is the final, unimprovable form government and changes in states are all moving towards this state - are ludicrous. Humans do not necessarily desire democracy, rather there are many different forms of organizing human societal affairs in a functioning manner.

Washington foreign policy makers would do well to heed the words of Maximilien Robspierre to the Jacobin Club, Paris, in 1792: 'The most extravagant idea that can be born in the head of a political thinker is to believe that it suffices for people to enter, weapons in hand, among a foreign people and expect to have its laws and constitution embraced. It is in the nature of things that the progress of reason is slow and no one loves armed missionaries.'

The humanism of modern secular ideologists such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett are versions of Christian concepts. For example, Dawkins assertion that humans, uniquely, can defy natural selection laws, the tyranny of the selfish replicatiors.

With natural resources likely to become scarce as the 21st Century progresses, we can expect a large amount of geo-political struggle as nations slug it out to control resources. The 21st Century will not necessarily be more peaceful than the first half of the 20th.

Sober, pragmatic realism is the only way to conduct international relations.

The last point, embodied in the last chapter of Black Mass, was a relief to me. After being engrossed in 200 pages of scare mongering, I was wondering what Gray's final conclusion would be - complete exchange of the world's nuclear arsenals, total unravelling of the institutions of international capitalism leading to God knows what. Black Mass is not the kind of political theory book you can read with a quiet reflection - broad consensus on this point, minor disagreement on that point. It is likely that readers will either worship Gray's thinking (along with the pseudo dark philosophers of Will Self, John Banville and J.G. Ballard in the 2007 reviews of the year sections) or be enraged by it (the right wing political commentators, the prosletysers of democracy, the international liberal thinkers who are enraged at the fact that women in Iran do not enjoy the same freedoms as their counterparts in the West).

In fact, with his revealing last point, a desire to reclaim the lost art of realism, Gray's book is revealed for the essentially modest argument he is making - essentially a call for clarity, for stepping back, for sober assessment of the situations on the ground before embarking on any great utopian projects. This used to be the hallmark of the Conservative party in the United Kingdom (as John Stuart Mill said, the 'Stupid Party' (meant as a compliment), the party Gray used to support. If we can escape the modern trend towards neo-con thinking (uncertain in the UK with the likes of Michael Gove gaining ascendancy in the Conservative Party), human affairs might not necessarily be doomed. The 21st Century might not necessarily be as much of a bloodbath as the last. See how things unfold.

To start with, 2008 will see a new President in the White House, and many in the US are fed up with their country's millenarian imperial pretensions. Coming assessments of how world affairs will unwrap in the coming years would do well to start with an awareness of these facts.

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A great read, but a lost opportunity

Gray's basic argument that modern political movements are based on or disguised as religions is not really new. But, if you think you've heard it all, don't let that stop you from reading this book. Even if the arguments are rather familiar, I found reading Grey's exposition of these ideas an enjoyable experience.

While some reviewers seemed to think that the author crowned his achievement in the final chapter, "Post-Apocalypse", I found he over-reached himself and fell into glibness too often. I wondered if one reason the hyperbole fell a bit flat was the evanescence of the movements he cited earlier, including Communists, Nazis, and now the neocons.

I noted that the New Yorker magazine reviewer observed that Gray tried "to fit too much into his model of utopianism with too little argument". To the contrary, I thought that Gray's argument was persuasive enough, and that there was much more that he should have fitted into his model; in other words, he failed to adequately discuss all of the available modern utopias. Gray seems unaware of any genuine research into the 9/11 events, therefore shapes his arguments to fit the received mythology about Islamofascism (which he calls Islamo-Jacobinism -- fair enough) and the phony war on terror, which is actually a war *of* terror. His analysis of the neocons is therefore unfortunately stunted, as he misses out on the true implications of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) and the New Pearl Harbor that was called for by PNAC. If these ideas are unfamiliar, I suggest searching both Amazon and the web using the terms "PNAC" and "New Pearl Harbor". In any event, his emphases on religio-political movements that have either been eclipsed (Nazism, Communism) or are in the process of being eclipsed (neocons and Islamofascism) will soon make the book seem unfortunately dated. The neocons are now being replaced by the Trilateralists in anticipation of an Obama presidency and the Islamofascists will eventually cease to be regarded as Enemy Number One, as happened with the Communists.

There is another perhaps less well-known but no less dangerous utopian project that Gray missed out on, and that is the Anglo-American elitist cabal that is behind the current food and fuel shortages. Utopia, according to the world's power elite, consists of a world with a greatly reduced population, a goal they have been working towards in a patient, methodical fashion for over a century. The belief system that drives them is no less dangerous and crackpot than Nazism or neoconservatism, and needs to be exposed and skewered by talented writers like John Gray. I refer readers to F. William Engdahl's latest book, Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation for a gripping up-to-date analysis of this utopian dream that endangers the lives of all of us in its pursuit.

While I thought "Black Mass" was an excellent book as far as it went, I consider it a lost opportunity due to its failure to mention the most persistent and insidious utopian movement of the past one hundred years. This utopia had an early manifestation in the eugenics movement, which was very popular among elite Americans in the early to mid-20th century. Eugenics was soon adopted by the Nazis, who featured prominently in "Black Mass". This thread of discussion would have enhanced Gray's arguments against unachievable utopias, and given it even more relevance to our time. For, while Nazis, Communists and neocons may come and go, the elitist utopian dream of population reduction has outlasted all of them.

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Enlightening

Like all books by John Gray, Black Mass is a compelling example of the power of an overwhelming and logical examination of vital events. At this point, I would classify Mr. Gray as one of the five top philosophers in the English language. In addition to the impeccable quality of his reasoning, he writes in an accessible and beautiful Englsih, without all the word-splitting typical of philosophers, particularly of the French breed. Kudos!

reviews: page 1, 2

For the decade that followed the end of the cold war, the world was lulled into a sense that a consumerist, globalized, peaceful future beckoned. The beginning of the twenty-first century has rudely disposed of such ideas?most obviously through 9/11and its aftermath. But just as damaging has been the rise in the West of a belief that a single model of political behavior will become a worldwide norm and that, if necessary, it will be enforced at gunpoint. In Black Mass, celebrated philosopher and critic John Gray explains how utopian ideals have taken on a dangerous significance in the hands of right-wing conservatives and religious zealots. He charts the history of utopianism, from the Reformation through the French Revolution and into the present. And most urgently, he describes how utopian politics have moved from the extremes of the political spectrum into mainstream politics, dominating the administrations of both George W. Bush and Tony Blair, and indeed coming to define the political center. Far from having shaken off discredited ideology, Gray suggests, we are more than ever in its clutches. Black Mass is a truly frightening and challenging work by one of Britain?s leading political thinkers.

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