Political religion and the rise of transnational right and left-wing social movements since 9/11

Abstract

The Austrian philosopher, Eric Voegelin, argued that the ideological fanaticism of the Nazis was a spiritual perversion. More precisely, so far, as the political religions of the twentieth century, Fascism, Stalinism, Maoism and Islamism, are concerned, the meaning or substance of religious phenomena moved from a spiritual concern with transcending the mundane world towards the realisation of imaginary fantasies of immanent apocalypse and the fashioning of this worldly utopias. These fantasies are not always recognised for what they are because the image of an earthly condition of perfected humanity was often expressed in scientific language. This was not the case with revolutionary Islamic thought, but it remains so with other ideological social movements of both left and right that have evolved since 9/11. This is the case with both race-based and anti-capitalist social movements that pursue national or global purificationism. In this essay, we shall discuss the commonalities between these evolving political religions before examining the Western state response and its implications for the future of secular, liberal democracy.