THE ENLIGHTENMENT CONTAINS THE ROOTS OF THE COUNTER-ENLIGHTENMENT

Stephen Eric Bronner, Moments of Decision: Political History and the Crisis of Radicalism , 2d. ed. (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014) ("Progress has always retained elements of regression. Just as the Enlightenment provided the conceptual and political framework for the Counter-Enlightenment, indeed, modernity has generated (and will continue to generate) ever new critical reactions by premodern forces." Id. at 171. In the following passage substitute "liberal democrats" for "social democrats," substitute "racism" for "anti-Semitism," "anti-immigrant" for "xenophobia," and "extreme-right Republican or radical evangelicals or those who can taps into them" for "Nazis," and one has a good slant on the politics of the 2016 presidential campaign or the state of early twenty-first-century America. "Social democrats underestimated the ideological hatred directed against them by their enemies and often mistakenly ascribed a distinctly 'capitalist' frame of mind to them. Anti-Semitism or xenophobia bear as little relation to an instrumental bourgeois worldview as the 'leader principle' or the desire to join a 'death head squadron.' Yet beliefs such as these inspired the Nazis and their followers. The SPD never fully understood that ideology is not merely epiphenomenal or derivative of economic concerns. Instead, shaping the perception of 'rational' interests, it often becomes a factor in the determination of 'objective' conditions. Different movements with different worldview can consequently perceive supposedly calculable, instrumental and objective issues in very different ways." Id. at 35. "Historical experience suggests that only the given disenfranchised, exploited and marginalized group can lead the struggle for its freedom--and that undertaking requires ideological confidence. The process begins, as Simone de Beauvoir put the matter in The Second Sex, when two members of the oppressed say 'we.' With the collapse of the civil rights and antiwar movements, and the new recognition accorded to the fight against prejudice, the rise of identity political makes sense. For all its cultural importance, however, it ushered in a fragmenting political dynamic. Identity politics was initially based on race, gender, and then later sexual preference. But identity has an existential element that requires increasing precision with respect to an authentic understanding of individuality. If a woman is also gay, black, and working class, for example, it is questionable whether her specific identity can be determined by the National Organization of Women or any of the more generic original groups. A person can obviously share multiple identities and new forms of 'hybridity' or 'inter-sectionality' will constantly appear. New organizations are then required to represent these more precise configurations of identity." Id. at 110-111.)