John Gray's new book may be one of the most significant publications of the year. It presents in clear, unambiguous but scholarly sound language a startling and somewhat pessimistic account of the rising influence of apocalyptic religious ideology in modern politics.

He takes a broad vision and while he devotes substantial sections to the impact of Islamic fundamentalism, which he suggests is not as quite as fundamental to the essence of Islam as some might have it, it is the sections that deal with the West, well the USA and the UK, that may be the most interesting. He is not the first to point out the influence of the Christian Right and the neo-cons in recent American administrations, but the way in which he locates Tony Blair (and it is often Blair alone rather than the whole Labour movement) on this matrix is both revealing and perceptive.

He describes the Thatcher years as relatively benign in the beginning, and the paradox of her success was that by so decisively defeating the socialist ideals of the Labour Party and the social democratic consensus of post-war Britain, and establishing a new pattern of political orthodoxy, Thatcher managed to make the Conservative Party in Britain irrelevant — it had nothing to react against. Conservatism was ruined by its success and the way was open for a radical new aggressive Rightism. The collectivism that had negatively defined its purpose was no longer an entity let alone a threat and so, Gray suggests that it is Blair who really carried through what Thatcher in her harridan phase and her ideologues began. Blair operated in anew reality — with of course, New Labour branded like a laundry detergent as newer, better, cleaner. According to Gray, Blair and his small coterie of supporters saw politics as the acquisition and exercise of power and ideology, at least traditional social democratic ideology, was at best a convenient slogan and at worst an inconvenience that should be easily jettisoned if necessary. As Blair said of himself, "I only know what I believe."

The positioning of Blair, who has a dangerous tendency to take himself rather too seriously, as a neo-con in the mould of the American hawks may seem a little revisionist, but Gray makes a persuasive case. His actions in taking the UK into the Iraq war against a consensus not only in Britain but in Europe as a whole (and it worth reminding ourselves that the UK is part of the EC although its alliances may not always give that impression) seem straight from the book of a 'conviction politics'. Blair was not dragged kicking and screaming onto Iraq. He, like the now defeated John Howard in Australia who at least had the intellectual honesty to belong to a conservative party, was enthusiastic about the use of force to ensure the triumph of good over evil — no prizes for guessing who was on which side. It should not be forgotten that between 1998 in Iraq and 2003 in Iraq again Blair took Britain into war five times — and this is the man who can apparently find lasting peace in the Middle East.

Gray notes how the 'facts' were altered to fit the situation. The original case being made about Weapons of Mass Destruction seamlessly morphed into the fight for freedom when the no actual evidence could be found for the former. But was less obvious, at least less publicly discussed, according to Gray, was the radical theologies that underpinned these decisions. Blair may have the good sense not to speak in the millenarian or dispensationalist terms of George W Bush and the American neo-cons, but he shares their unshakable faith in the justice of the cause and that God is on his side.

The other sections of Gray's book that deal with the central position of American sense of destiny in shaping foreign policy, the linking of apocalyptic theologies of all shades, including a most interesting analysis of the appeal of Nazism, are all noteworthy and demand and benefit from close attention and often a second reading. It did seem as though the general irrational movement that emerged at the turn of the Twentieth Century might have had more prominence, as might the anarchist movements that also had a millenarian intensity, but these are minor points.

This is a fine book, lucidly argued and persuasively written. At the end, however, I felt myself reminded of the words of WB Yeats:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming!

© 2007 Mark Welch

Mark Welch, PhD, British Columbia, 2007.

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