Eurabia, Georges Sorel and Social Scission

If I was to compile a list of thinkers from the Fin de Siecle period whos' ideas where still very much in vogue today, I would have to save space near the top for Mr Sorel. Although the political ideology he was most associated with, that of revolutionary Syndicalism is probably deader than the career of John Leslie say, many of his ideas have remained both in use as heuristic tools of interpretation and as strategies of political extremism. His admiration for the Bolshevik coup d'etat of 1917 and the subsequent terror and his position as one of the primary thinkers in early fascism mark him out as the totalitarian's thinker of choice, regardless of their place within the political spectrum.

Today, we can clearly see the work of his 'energizing myths' and of social scission (the increasing violent separation of a multi-polar society into a bi-polar one) in the rhetoric of the totalising Islamists such as HuT, the various MB fronts and Jamaat-e-Islami. The myth is based on the Ummah versus everything else, controlled as is the fashion for these constructs by a shadowy cabal of Jews/Zionists/ZioNazies depending on their preferred level of euphemism. Cultivated by the sectarianism of the Koran and thereby sacralised, the myth marks out the contours of an apocalyptic battle, where via will and violence, by the destruction of any areas of grey or overlap, Jerusalem is retaken, the Jews of Israel are flung into the sea and the Ummah is reunited and refortified with a homogeneity of faith and ritual. Sorel's mission for the proletariat of early 20th century France (and indeed his challenged to the bourgeoisie) has been successfully franchised out.

Yet never to be out done, the home of idiotic modern group identities, Europe has begun to produce examples of a counter myth, sacralised in part by religion but mainly by ethnocratic ideology and good ol' nationalism. The myth is Eurabia, a vast, baffling and deeply threatening conspiracy of a cabal (see....) of 'bureaucrats', 'leftists', 'liberals' and 'Big Business' to turn Europe over to Islam as part of some unclear but no doubt nefarious plot. Eurabia is a booming mythological narrative, taken up by both the 'core constituency' of Ultra-Nationalists such as the BNP and the VB and moving gingerly into ethno-cratic Liberals such as the NF and the FPO and the wider radical right community such as the Northern League. Just as contact with Islamist thought (and a great deal of lazing thinking) has poisoned the left with toxic antisemitism, this grand narrative of 'Islamisization' has taken a hold over much of the right.

The myth is clear only in its division of good and bad, it's manichean axis, if you will. If you buy into the conspiracy that Gordon Brown, Paddy Ashdown and Romano Prodi are actively seeking to institutionalise Islam as the dominant faith or that they are merely seeking cheap labour (the National Bolshevik tendency), then you logically must seek to combat that. Thus increasingly virulent calls for 'de-islamisization', defending Serbian ethnic cleansing and Russian expansionism and a full blown rhetorical attack on the 'rotten' liberalism' that has brought us to this point of crisis are in order. The jump from violent and inciting language and actual violence comes when the idea becomes not only widespread but so does its urgency. This democratisation of panic feeds of Islamist tactics of their stragedy of tension, making any common ground treachery and indeed sacralige. The contours of the mythology are self-creating and self-reinforcing

On the other half of the divide will eventually be lumped all those who failed to respond to the clarion call. Now inseparable from the the most vicious of Islamist demagogues and terror fetishists, old skool Conservatives, leftists of all shades (even those actively fighting for an anti totalitarian left) and of course, the true bete-noire, limp wristed decadent and effete liberals become a evil conglomerate. This Kraken is thus defined, formed from a contradictory Chimera and made real by the permutantions of the myth, its intent universally evil and malignant.

If i might suggest Oyvind Strommen blog here http://eurofascism.info/ (I have yet to read the book as I am very very poor)

As for those would be Sorel fans, may I recommend Jack J. Roth's 'The Cult of Violence: Sorel and the Sorelians' (London, University of California, 1980), old but still very good.