Theme: Civilization

TODD: THE END OF IDEOLOGY 1965-1990

(Via Craig WIlly)

**The end of ideology: 1965-1990**

“The 1960s, era of verbal political tumult, were in fact in the last throes of ideological politics: “Faith, in the broadest sense of the term, ideological as well as religious, leaves European political life.” (p. 545) The causes are wealth and education: “The two fundamental causes of the dissolution are indeed the rise of the cultural [educational] level of the populations and the achievement of an acceptable earthly city. […] It is indeed the compensatory ideology which disappears.” (p. 599)

“There is the universalization of secondary education and the democratization of tertiary education. A person with only primary education is still highly dependent intellectually on his educational “betters” and may have only learned the holy texts he must submit to. Todd: “On the ideological level, [secondary education] dissolves the religious or quasi-religious submission to traditional sacred formulas.” (p. 550) Todd notes that this level of education also coincides with teen and young adult rebellion.

“Individuals vote less and no longer live more-or-less encadrés by organizations (church, trade union, party…). The emancipation of the individual from the family coincides with the political disorganization of society.

“There is then an unprecedented peace and a religious reunification of Europe through indifference:

“As we near the year 2000 a new map of Europe is emerging, religious unified, but by indifference. In this world where religious practice is tending towards zero we cannot speak anymore of confrontations between Catholics and Protestants, between secularists and Christians. The continent remains of Christian tradition and civilization, but the Churches are socially insignificant there. [p. 560]

“The proletariat begins shrinking and, very quickly, intellectuals and workers cease to believe in its “inevitable” historic mission and destiny to change humanity. The débâcle, which often precedes the Soviet collapse, is particularly dramatic in France and Italy. Nominally “socialist” center-left parties, more or less ingloriously, cease to be workers’ movements and move on to be embraced by the conformist and well-thinking elements of the rapidly-growing middle classes. In the 1980s, the “new” French Socialist Party and the German Social Democrats make gains in the formerly Catholic areas (when disappointed these voters often then turn to Greens).

“The collapse of collective religion and political beliefs, indeed of authorities, leaves the individual “free” and alone in the world, free and alone to find meaning, through his own limited capacities, in an unfathomably complex universe. On the rise of free and anxious individualism-nihilism:

“Identification with any traditional ideological force allowed every individual to develop a feeling of being part of a group and a powerful feeling of security. The disintegration of collective beliefs isolates individuals and atomizes, in the area of representations, European societies at the very moment when they are reaching, for the first time in their history, a certain degree of material homogeneity, through mass consumption. […]

“The disappearance of ideological encadrement adds to the concrete disappearance of the social class to cause a genuine feeling of panic. Workers, threatened by an unemployment which is no longer temporary but definitive, who are no longer able to believe in the Church, in the radiant future of communism, social-democracy or anarcho-socialism, or even in the greatness of their nation, experience the social transformation like an abandonment, like a cataclysm. Despite their relatively high living standard. An automobile, a refrigerator, a television, a telephone do not compensate for the feeling of social uselessness. [p. 599-600]

“Thus, despite high standards of living, anxieties emerge and these are addressed by what Todd calls “micro-ideologies”: environmentalism, regionalism and xenophobia. In the case of Austria:

“[The Austrian Freedom Party] is designating Yugoslavs as a whole, who make up the largest immigrant group in Austria, as scapegoats for a fairly undefined anxiety caused by the decline of the Church. [p. 604-5]

“Todd apparently considers these micro-ideologies to be marginal phenomena, the expression of minorities who are only heard because of rising electoral absenteeism and apathy. He calls regionalism a “parody of nationalism.” He remarks ironically that both immigrants and xenophobic voters tend to be “workers, artisans or small shopkeepers”. He argues:

“Micro-ideologies do not try to dream or create new societies. They are conservative, trying to protect the ideal city of the present. Environmentalist movements want to prevent environmental degradation by technology, whether nuclear or chemical. Xenophobic movements worry of the destruction of society by immigrants. Greens and Greys want to stop history. (p. 605)

Whatever its “marginal” origins, environmentalism is officially a major issue for almost all nations and capable of providing an “ideal city” as valid as any.

“Nationalism,” whether of the xenophobic, regionalist or sovereignist type, also appears resurgent and plausible in Europe. Todd speaks of immigration with his usual candor and indifference to political correctness, speaking of “immigration’s problematic, non-European core – Muslim, African or West Indian.” (p. 609) Again:

“One of the commonalities of current sociological literature is to speculate on the ability of various immigrant groups to integrate. They stress that, until recently, immigrants were of a European, Christian origin, and that the existence of a common cultural foundation between the indigenous populations and the immigrants facilitated the process of integration. They also stress that immigration from the Third World poses specific problems, because it places in contact peoples with different family and religious traditions, sometimes opposed. [p. 616]

“Todd considers the Front National untouchable. There is a scarcely a TV appearance in which he does not very vocally disown the FN, all the more so because it is the only major party which actually shares his political ideas on protectionism and Europeanism. Presumably this is because Todd, though having no patience for political correctness, is himself clearly a well-meaning, non-revolutionary moderate progressive, a “good liberal.” He also writes for example: “As we near the year 2000, Turks, Arabs and Pakistanis seem perfectly apt to assimilation.” (p. 617)

“In any event, this is what Todd has to say about the FN in the book:

“Front National voters themselves are undoubtedly, unbeknownst to leftwing and rightwing politicians, unnoticed universalists. They demand less the throwing into the sea of immigrant populations than their absolute alignment on majority French habits and customs. The inability of political elites to produce a brutally assimilationist discourse of the type, “Immigrants will become Frenchmen like the others whether they like it or not,” has encouraged the emergence of the Front National. Elitist discourse on the right to difference generates incoherence and anxiety in the land of the universal man. [p. 614]”