Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (a sympathiser of Italian terrorist organisations in the 1970s and imprisoned as such) wrote Empire, a book that purported to demonstrate a new concept of Empire sans imperialism, engaging with the ongoing march of globalisation. This book came to my attention at its publication when Hardt was interviewed on Radio 3; since the BBC viewed post-Marxist critiques and other explorations of jargon as vital contributions to high culture. It was theory-laden and empirically light, a strange attempt on the part of the Left to accept a ‘theory of globalisation’ by condemning all nationalism as reactionary. Even the Marxists found this theoristic verbiage too much to take.
Still, old Reds have never lost their airbrush, as this quote demonstrates:
The legacy of modernity is a legacy of fratricidal wars, devastating “development”, cruel “civilization” and previously unimagined violence. Erich Auerbach once wrote that tragedy is the only genre that can properly claim realism in Western literature, and perhaps this is true precisely because of the tragedy Western modernity has imposed on the world. Concentration camps, nuclear weapons, genocidal wars, slavery, apartheid; it is not difficult to enumerate the various scenes of the tragedy….
Modern negativity is located not in any transcendant realm but in the hard reality before us: the fields of patriotic battles in the First and Second World wars, from the killing fields at Verdun to the Nazi furnaces and the swift annihilation of thousands in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the carpet bombing of Vietnam and Cambodia, the massacres of Setif and Soweto to Sabra and Shatila, and the list goes on and on. There is no Job who can sustain such suffering!
Can you see the “hard reality” that they missed?
hmmm…. looks like they left the hard reality of COMMUNISM (or it’s cousin Socialism, which is just communism with marginally better taste in shoes.)
What do I win?
Hey, western modernity is responsible for slavery? I never stop learning! 😀
Snorre, and I thought the more modern half of the Republic (the north) fought the more backward half (the south) to end slavery.
Oh, and currently in the world, it sure isn’t the modern west that is still, to this day, engaged in slavery.
As we look around the world, it is clear that many of the highly modern states of Africa are in the throws of terrible civil wars. Their modernity has lead them to opress women, ban homosexuals, kill in the name of ethnicity, whilst the elites manufacture famines that kill their rivals and strengthen themselves.
Meanwhile the noble savage that is the European lives a life of peace and tranquility.
Where does one start? It’s a rather futile exercise searching for recognizable logic in the babblings of ranting leftist nutters.
By killing the TV-Tax.
If you look at the original draft, you will see that it is indeed a more well rounded list…