A DARK SIDE TO THE ENLIGHTENMENT: ITS CREATION, NOT OF RACIAL PREJUDICE, BUT OF RACISM.

John Gray, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007) (From the book jacket: In Black Mass . . . 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, dominated the administrations of both George W. Bush and Tony Blair, and, indeed, come 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." From the text: "Modern politics is a chapter in the history of religion. The greatest of the revolutionary upheavals that have shaped so much of the history of the last two centuries were episodes in the history of faith--moments in the long dissolution of Christianity and the rise of modern political religion. The world in which we find ourselves at the start of the new millennium is littered with the debris of utopian projects, which through they were framed in secular terms that denied the truth of religion were in fact vehicles for religious myths." Id. at 1. "A number of Enlightenment luminaries were explicit in expressing their belief in natural inequality, with some claiming that humanity actually comprised several different species. [] Whether the disabilities of other peoples were innate (as was believed in the case of Africans) or due to cultural backwardness (as was supposed to be true of Asians), the remedy was the same. All had to be turned into Europeans, if necessary by force." "Beliefs of this kind are found in many Enlightenment thinkers. It is frequently argued on their behalf that they were creatures of their time, but it is hardly a compelling defence. These Enlightenment thinker not only voiced the prejudices of their age--a failing for which they might be forgiven if not for the fact that they so often claimed to be much wiser than their contemporaries--they also claimed the authority of reason for them. Before the Enlightenment, racist attitudes rarely aspired to the dignity of theory. Even Aristotle, who defended slavery and the subordination of women as part of the natural order, did not develop a theory that maintained that humanity was composed of distant and unequal racial groups. Racial prejudice may be immemorial, but racism is a product of the Enlightenment." "Many of those who subscribed to a belief in racial inequality believed that social reform could compensate for the innate disadvantages of inferior breeds. Ultimately all human beings could articulate in the universal civilization of the future--but only by giving up their own ways of life and adopting European ways. This was 'a form of liberal racism, making the best of European experience the model for everyone. . . '." Id. at 61-62 (citations omitted). "The belief that history has an underlying plot is central to the millenarian movements, secular and religious . . . . All who belong to these movements believe they are acting out a script that is already partly written. . . . [T]he demand for meaning is met by narratives in which each individual life is part of an all encompassing story." "The sense of having a part in such a narrative is delusive, of course." "Seeing one's life as an episode in a universal narrative is a fantasy, and while it is supported by powerful western traditions it has not always ben regard a a good thing." Id. at 204-205.).