THE MEDIA AND OUR COUNTRY'S AGENDA
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They talked about movies-which may be the one cultura l experience
shared by all Americans, no matter what their criminal background.
But there was another reason why they may have found the conver–
sation so congenial. This right-wing extremist, mathematical Luddite,
and Islamic fundamentalist shared a disgust of Western civilization.
Each had rebelled against the twentieth-century culture of modernity.
And each rebellion was undertaken in the name of some utopian notion
of identity slighted by capitalism, democracy, and the Enlightenment.
McVeigh's militia mind objected to the liberal institutions born in the
Enlightenment, and intended to establish a new world in which his
notions of social order would reign supreme . Kaczynski left a trail of
mutilation and murder in his attempt to eliminate what he called "mod–
ern man," dreaming of an identity that wou ld rise out of untamed
Nature "independent of human management." Yousef's view about the
modern nation-state and its democratic organization is, unfortunately,
all too familiar. In none of these cases would any sort of addressing of
"root causes," transformations of the modern enterprise or shifts in pol–
icy or culture have been desirable nor would it have ameliorated the
hatred-something bear in mind as contemporary events are analyzed .
The radical rebellion against modernity is unappeasable because moder–
nity is irreversible; and the attempts to undo modernity have led, in the
past, to totalitarianism and absolutism.
It
is remarkable, though, how often this kind of opposition to West–
ern Enlightenment uses the very vocabulary and ideas that characterized
the En li ghtenment. This was most evident in the pre-9ir
I
World Con–
ference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related
Intolerance in Durban, South Africa, where the most impassioned
attacks on racism and most ardent defenses of liberty were made by
states who have institutionalized racism and resisted liberty. The vocab–
ulary has become a badge of virtue but only to cow those who really
take it seriously.
It
is put to use to undermine the culture that gives it
meaning. Even domestically, it is astonishing how Western ideas seem to
feed their own opposition . When commercial culture-a by-product of
democratic culture-is added to the mix, the embrace becomes even
more passionate, mixing envy and yearning with hatred and disgust.
And the media here are simply the megaphones magnifying the embrace
and the repulsion.
Rather than focus specifically on the media, it is worth asking about
the culture they at once respond to and shape. How do such perversities
arise? How does democracy simultaneously inspire such opposition and
such attraction? It may be that attacks against democracy and moder-
