What is *How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World* about?

*How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World* by Francis Wheen examines the late 20th-century rise of irrationality, pseudoscience, and anti-Enlightenment ideologies. The book critiques trends like postmodern relativism, political spin, New Age mysticism, and economic delusions, arguing that reason and evidence-based thinking have been sidelined by emotionalism and superstition. Examples include the 1990s dot-com bubble, celebrity culture, and political reliance on "gut feelings" over facts.

Who should read *How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World*?

This book appeals to readers interested in cultural criticism, political analysis, or the history of ideas. It’s particularly relevant for skeptics of pseudoscience, students of postmodernism, and those concerned with misinformation in public discourse. Wheen’s sharp wit and accessible style make it engaging for both academic and general audiences.

Is *How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World* worth reading?

Yes, the book offers a provocative, well-researched critique of modern irrationality. Wheen combines historical analysis with biting humor, dissecting topics from corporate greed to political charlatanism. While some critiques feel dated (e.g., 1990s examples), its core themes remain urgent in an era of conspiracy theories and "post-truth" rhetoric.

What are the main arguments in *How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World*?

Wheen argues that Enlightenment values like rational inquiry and empiricism have been eroded by: - **Postmodern relativism** in academia, dismissing objective truth - **Political spin** prioritizing slogans over substance (e.g., Tony Blair’s rhetoric) - **Economic delusions**, exemplified by the Enron scandal and dot-com bubble - **New Age mysticism** and celebrity-driven sentimentality (e.g., Princess Diana’s media canonization)

How does Francis Wheen critique Tony Blair in the book?

Wheen lambasts Blair for embracing "Third Way" political vagueness and relying on emotional appeals over policy rigor. He highlights Blair’s use of spiritualist advisors and symbolic gestures (e.g., Mayan birth rituals with Cherie Blair) as emblematic of a leader prioritizing image over rational governance.

What examples does Wheen use to show economic mumbo-jumbo?

The book dissects: - **Reaganomics** and Thatcherite deregulation as ideologically driven pseudoscience - The **Enron collapse**, where fabricated profits masked systemic fraud - The **dot-com bubble**, where irrational exuberance overvalued tech startups with no revenue

How does the book address postmodernism’s role in modern delusions?

Wheen condemns postmodern thinkers like Jacques Derrida for promoting relativism that undermines objective truth. He argues this academic trend enabled conspiracy theories and "alternative facts" by dismissing shared reality as a social construct.

What is Francis Wheen’s view of celebrity culture in the book?

Wheen critiques the 1990s "cult of sentimentality" around figures like Princess Diana, whose death sparked public grieving he deems performative and manipulative. He parallels this with politicians like Al Gore using emotional narratives over factual arguments.

I moderni barbari

Breve storia delle moderne delusioni

Francis Wheen

3.62(1597 Reviews)

Panoramica di I moderni barbari

L'esposto tagliente di Francis Wheen rivela come l'irrazionalità abbia conquistato la società moderna. Jeremy Paxman l'ha definito "esilarante", mentre Wheen smantella il postmodernismo, i guru del management e le ideologie politiche. Cosa succede quando i valori dell'Illuminismo crollano? Scoprite perché questa controversa difesa del razionalismo rimane oggi di un'urgenza estrema.

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Capitolo 1

The Triumph of Unreason: How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World

In January 1979, two pivotal events reshaped our world. In Tehran, Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile to establish an Islamic theocracy, declaring "Final victory will come when all foreigners are out" to ecstatic crowds exceeding one million. Meanwhile in Britain, Margaret Thatcher swept to power after James Callaghan's government collapsed amid nationwide strikes. Standing outside 10 Downing Street, she quoted St. Francis: "Where there is discord may we bring harmony..." These twin messiahs-one religious, one political-ushered in an era that would witness reason's retreat and the rise of irrationalism across politics, economics, and culture. Francis Wheen's book became an international sensation upon publication, with the Observer calling it "bullshit's enema number one" and the Literary Review comparing him to Goya depicting "the sleep of reason bringing forth monsters." This cultural touchstone resonated deeply with readers tired of magical thinking masquerading as wisdom. Even the Daily Mail-which Wheen criticizes as "the chief British purveyor of mumbo-jumbo"-praised the work, suggesting perhaps even purveyors of unreason occasionally recognize when they've gone too far.

Capitolo 2

The Enlightenment Under Siege

In 1784, Immanuel Kant boldly declared that "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity." He optimistically predicted a revolution in human thought that would reconcile British empiricism with continental rationalism while demolishing religious claims to superior knowledge. The Enlightenment wasn't an ideology but an attitude-a commitment to discovering truths about mankind and nature through reason and evidence. The philosophes of the 18th century built upon foundations laid by Bacon, Locke, and Newton, extracting revolutionary implications from earlier scientific work. Despite their diversity, these thinkers shared commitments to intellectual autonomy, free inquiry, and rejection of authority as the infallible source of truth. They championed universal standards of morality not as cover for Western imperialism (as critics claim) but precisely to defend oppressed peoples against European invaders. Kant himself wrote regarding colonized lands: "When America, the Negro countries, the Spice Islands, the Cape and so forth were discovered, they were, to [the Europeans], countries belonging to no one, since they counted the inhabitants as nothing." Far from promoting imperialism, Enlightenment thinkers insisted on universal standards to protect the vulnerable. Yet today, reason faces retreat as counter-revolutionaries-from postmodernists to primitivists, religious fundamentalists to economic mystics-challenge rational inquiry's position as arbiter of truth. This retreat isn't merely academic; it manifests in newspaper horoscopes, bestselling books about angels and secret codes, and witches protesting the WTO with Harry Potter-inspired banners. What began as intellectual fashion has infected public discourse, with politicians embracing emotional appeals over reasoned arguments and media platforms giving equal time to scientific consensus and conspiracy theories. The consequences of abandoning reason aren't merely theoretical. As Elaine Showalter noted in "Hystories," paranoid narratives about government control share elements with the thinking of Timothy McVeigh, who bombed Oklahoma City in America's worst pre-9/11 terrorist attack. When societies lose their commitment to evidence-based reasoning, the vacuum gets filled with something far more dangerous.

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Capitolo 3

The Voodoo Economics Revolution

The year 1979 marked a pivotal moment when the world was jolted by violent reactions against the existing order. Under President Carter, America had begun challenging Cold War orthodoxy, warning that aid to strategically important countries depended on human rights improvements. Carter deplored the "inordinate fear of Communism which once led us to embrace any dictator," calling for a foreign policy based on "constant decency in its values." His conservative critics, most notably Jeane Kirkpatrick, argued that traditional authoritarian governments were less repressive than revolutionary autocracies and more compatible with US interests. Reagan later appointed Kirkpatrick as UN ambassador, using her distinction between "authoritarians" and "totalitarians" to justify supporting bloodstained regimes. Her theory that right-wing tyrannies might eventually mature into democracies while left-wing dictatorships never would was soon refuted by history. Meanwhile, in Britain, Thatcher won power not because voters embraced monetarism but because they wanted to remove Callaghan's exhausted government. Her cautious early approach soon gave way to radical free-market policies, encouraged by American neo-liberal economists like Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, who saw her as leading the Western world away from the "Fabian socialism" of the post-war consensus. Reagan similarly embraced "supply-side economics"-essentially a rebranding of discredited "trickle-down theory"-cutting top tax rates dramatically while promising balanced budgets. The reality proved far different: Reagan's eight years saw federal deficits balloon from $900 billion to over $3 trillion, while unemployment reached 10%. The 1980s resembled the Gilded Age a century earlier, with ostentatious wealth displays and a widening gulf between the elite and everyone else. Average Americans saw little benefit, with family incomes only returning to 1970s levels by 1987 while leisure time plummeted from 26.2 to 16.6 weekly hours. Blue-collar workers faced declining wages as employers threatened to move production overseas. Social Darwinism returned as right-wingers argued against government interference with market "natural selection"-yet they happily accepted government bailouts for the deregulated Savings & Loan industry's $1.4 trillion collapse.

Capitolo 4

Snake Oil for the Soul: The Self-Help Industry

The financial excesses of the 1980s created a market for get-rich guides starting with Thomas Peters' In Search of Excellence (1982), followed by countless management bestsellers offering numbered steps to success. Money became equated with sex appeal, with films like Wall Street making corporate raiders seem glamorous despite their repulsive qualities. The spiritual-financial fusion reached its apex with Deepak Chopra, whose appearance on Oprah in 1993 catapulted him to guru status, selling millions of books blending Eastern mysticism with prosperity gospel. Chopra's message that "affluence is simply our natural state" appealed to both celebrities and executives, earning him over $20 million annually. His blend of Eastern philosophy, Christian parables, and materialistic affirmations attracted followers from Demi Moore to Michael Milken. Despite critics' mockery, Chopra built an empire selling the comforting message that wealth reflects spiritual development and that "people who have achieved an enormous amount of success are inherently very spiritual." The self-help industry's profitability is staggering: Kenneth Blanchard earning $6 million annually, Stephen Covey's consultancy generating $400 million with 3,000 employees across forty countries, Anthony Robbins amassing $80 million from motivational speaking, and John Gray collecting $10 million from his Mars/Venus empire. By century's end, self-help publications generated $560 million annually, with the entire "self-improvement industry" worth $2.48 billion. These gurus follow a predictable formula pioneered by Dale Carnegie: simplistic animal metaphors (dancing elephants, boiling frogs, fishing executives), and numbered lists of principles. Stephen Covey offers "Seven Habits," "Three Resolutions," and "Eight Ways to Enrich Marriage," while Anthony Robbins provides "Five Keys to Wealth" and even "365 lessons in self-mastery." These childish cliches gain credibility through sophisticated-sounding jargon like "re-engineering," "demassing," and "benchmarking." The political embrace of management theory intensified under Tony Blair, whose government increased spending on consultants by over 50% to 550 million annually. Labour ministers attended weekend seminars run by Andersen Consulting, while Edward de Bono was hired to develop "bright ideas" using his "Six Thinking Hats system"-which he immodestly claimed was "the first new way of thinking in 2,400 years." Yet gurus reveal their fallibility when attempting to identify real-world examples of their principles. Edward de Bono's 1985 book Tactics showcased "successful" entrepreneurs including Harry Helmsley (later convicted of tax evasion) and Robert Maxwell (exposed as a massive fraudster). Even Tom Peters, whose In Search of Excellence celebrated supposedly exemplary companies, found most of them in steep decline within five years, prompting him to pivot and write Thriving on Chaos, declaring "there are no excellent companies."

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Capitolo 5

The End of History and Other Grand Delusions

As the millennium approached, public intellectuals became obsessed with endings and conclusions. Post-modernism gave way to declarations about "the end" of everything from art to science to nature. This cultural pessimism found expression in unexpected bestsellers like Paul Kennedy's 677-page history tome The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, which predicted American decline through "imperial overstretch." Though Kennedy failed to foresee the Soviet Union's collapse, he claimed this actually confirmed his thesis. The appetite for grand historical narratives then elevated Francis Fukuyama's "End of History" thesis, which boldly declared Western liberal democracy "the final form of human government" and "the end point of mankind's ideological evolution." Fukuyama's thesis claimed liberal democracy as history's endpoint, though he contradicted himself by acknowledging that the Hegelian historical terminus was actually Prussian monarchy, not American capitalism. He dismissively suggested that unlike "less reflective ages," we've arrived at liberal democracy "exhausted" after pursuing alternatives. This hubris was matched by Samuel Huntington, who followed Fukuyama's marketing formula: first publish in a journal, devise a simplistic concept understandable by politicians and talk show hosts, then expand it into a bestselling book. Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" theory divided the world into seven or eight distinct civilizations, creating arbitrary categories that reflected his prejudices rather than reality. His crude "West vs. the Rest" worldview ignored that most conflicts occur within civilizations, not between them. Despite appearing opposed, both Fukuyama and Huntington shared a rigid determinism, reducing complex human affairs to simplistic grand narratives that policy-makers eagerly embraced. Their theories gained traction not because they accurately described reality but because they provided comforting simplicity in an increasingly complex world.

Capitolo 6

The Postmodern Assault on Reality

By the late 1980s, postmodernists dominated American academia, controlling the Modern Languages Association and faculty recruitment with the same intolerance they had once criticized. Yale University became the movement's center, with Derrida, de Man, and Miller as its high priests. The doctrine spread beyond literature departments into cultural studies, anthropology, and political science, where students learned that "reality" required quotation marks and the world was merely a socially constructed text. Literary theories had clear political alignments: Russian Formalists were linked to Bolshevism, while post-structuralism emerged after the failed 1968 Paris uprisings. Unable to break state power structures, theorists instead subverted language structures. This approach eventually evolved into a way of avoiding politics altogether. Michel Foucault even praised Khomeini's Iranian regime, claiming its "different regime of truth" made suppression of dissent acceptable as a "necessary and highly prized additional level of meaning." Despite rejecting grand narratives, many postmodernists accepted capitalism's triumph as inevitable, retreating into celebrating marginalized experiences and consumer culture while abandoning traditional radical concerns with production conditions. Their relativism collapses under scrutiny, as Richard Evans demonstrated during David Irving's lawsuit against historian Deborah Lipstadt. When Irving sued Lipstadt for calling him a pro-Nazi who distorted facts, Evans meticulously investigated Irving's footnotes, producing a 700-page report exposing his omissions, misquotations and fabrications. This old-fashioned source-checking-what postmodernists dismiss as "fetishising the documents"-definitively proved Irving wrong. The dangers of relativism extend beyond academia. Eric Hobsbawm noted that historical facts can be twisted into dangerous myths, as when the 1389 Battle of Kosovo was used to justify Serbian oppression of Albanians. Unlike opinions, certain facts remain objectively true-the Earth rotates on its axis regardless of what people once believed. Despite this, anti-scientific relativism flourished. Paul Feyerabend's "Against Method" argued that teaching science in schools represented state tyranny, claiming science was "not necessarily the best" form of thought. This intellectual climate enabled widespread rejection of scientific consensus-a 1993 poll found 47% of Americans believed humans were created in their present form within the last 10,000 years.

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Capitolo 7

The Catastrophists: Superstition in the Modern Age

The chapter opens with the nursery tale of Chicken Licken, who believes the sky is falling after an acorn hits her tail-a metaphor for irrational panic. It then describes a 1962 incident at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles when a planetary conjunction coincided with a partial solar eclipse. Despite the astronomical event's harmlessness, many visitors displayed extreme anxiety, repeatedly asking "What is going to happen?" and "What does it mean?" One woman was found weeping hysterically, demonstrating how susceptible some people are to suggestion and catastrophic thinking. In 1982, the Griffith Observatory faced another panic when terrified residents called about the world ending on March 10th. This fear stemmed from "The Jupiter Effect," a bestselling 1974 book by British astrophysicists John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann who claimed a rare planetary alignment would trigger massive earthquakes in Los Angeles. Though quickly debunked by scientists and even retracted by Gribbin himself by 1980, the media revived the scare as the date approached. The revelation that President Reagan and his wife consulted astrologer Joan Quigley for "virtually every major move and decision" caused surprisingly little outrage. Columnist Alexander Cockburn noted this merely reflected mainstream America's superstitious tendencies, with the United States retaining "about the same per capita level of religious superstition as Bangladesh." A study found 48% of Wall Street stockholders used horoscopes for investment decisions. By the late 1990s, Britain's 36,000 general practitioners were outnumbered by 50,000 practitioners of complementary and alternative medicine. As journalist John Diamond discovered when diagnosed with cancer, well-meaning people bombarded him with suggestions for unproven treatments. Richard Dawkins noted that there's only "medicine that works and medicine that doesn't"-if alternative treatments are proven effective in controlled trials, they simply become medicine. The British royal family's embrace of alternative therapies parallels their dependence on another irrational faith-hereditary monarchy. Queen Elizabeth II carries homeopathic remedies at all times, Princess Diana practiced reflexology, and Prince Charles has championed "holistic" treatments since 1982. Even the conservative Prince Philip had his eccentricities, subscribing to Flying Saucer Review since the 1950s. By the 1990s, alien visitation had saturated popular culture through films like Close Encounters and TV shows like The X-Files. Creator Chris Carter admitted prioritizing supernatural explanations over rational ones because they made better entertainment, dismissing concerns about his show's impact with "it's just fiction." Richard Dawkins countered in his 1996 Dimbleby lecture that consistently portraying rational explanations as wrong creates harmful bias. In 1995, after decades of UFO conspiracy theories, "proof" finally emerged: grainy footage allegedly showing military doctors autopsying aliens from the 1947 Roswell incident. Television networks worldwide broadcast this "evidence," with even respected journalists like the Guardian's Martin Walker declaring it "the first hard evidence" that seemed "convincingly to be the autopsy of some kind of being." The truth was far more mundane-the entire film had been shot in a Bedfordshire barn in 1994 by two karaoke video producers using orange peels for alien eyes and chicken guts from a local butcher.

Capitolo 8

With God on Our Side: Religion and Politics

God has been a permanent American resident since the Mayflower, but it was during the Cold War that America discovered the political utility of religious invocation. President Truman framed the fight against Communism as a crusade against atheism, while Billy Graham warned that "Communism is inspired, directed and motivated by the Devil himself." This religious framing of politics intensified during Reagan's presidency, who characterized the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" and appealed to evangelical voters by rejecting Carter's talk of "limits and self-denial." Many Reaganite evangelists became stalwart defenders of Israel, seemingly abandoning the anti-Semitic tradition represented by figures like Father Charles Coughlin. Jerry Falwell declared that "whoever stands against Israel stands against God," though this philo-Semitism had ulterior motives-in his pre-millennialist creed, Israel's rebuilding was necessary for the mass conversion of Jews during the Second Coming. When Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989, religious conservatives often sided with Iran against free expression. Pat Buchanan condemned The Satanic Verses as "a blasphemous assault on the faith of hundreds of millions," while President Bush merely warned Iran against harming American interests. Even in England, Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey expressed understanding for "devout Muslims' reaction" without condemning the death threat. Following the Cold War's end, America struggled to identify new enemies. As Colin Powell lamented in 1991, "I'm running out of demons." Japan briefly became the replacement bogeyman, with a 1990 Gallup poll showing 60% of Americans considered Japanese economic power the "critical threat"-nearly twice those concerned about Russia. Politicians fanned anti-Japanese sentiment during the 1991 recession, with Pat Buchanan warning "we're going to play hardball" and local officials making openly racist remarks. America's constant need for enemies stems not from psychological necessity but from the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about in his 1961 farewell address. The defense industry thrived on the post-9/11 "war on terror," with Bush proposing a $396 billion defense budget exceeding the next fifteen highest-spending countries combined. The demonology shifts capriciously-Iran was enemy number one after 1979, then Washington sold arms to Iranian mullahs to fight the Sandinistas while helping Saddam against Iran, only to mobilize against "the Hitler of the Gulf" when he invaded Kuwait.

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Capitolo 9

The Age of Feeling Over Reason

In September 1981, shortly after Reagan entered the White House, Alasdair MacIntyre's philosophical tract "After Virtue" became a surprise bestseller following Newsweek's praise for this "stunning new study of ethics." MacIntyre argued that the Enlightenment had been "a catastrophe" for ethical discourse, creating a "new dark age" of barbarism and nihilism. His solution was retreating to medieval monastic orders, writing that "the barbarians are not waiting beyond our frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time." MacIntyre's work struck a powerful chord with intellectuals across the spectrum. The Weekly Standard described him as "possibly the greatest moral philosopher of the last fifty years." Following his lead, conservatives, Marxists, post-modernists and pre-modernists queued up to attack Enlightenment ideas. John Gray, professor at the London School of Economics, became particularly vicious in his attacks, publishing increasingly apocalyptic works advocating Eastern mysticism as salvation from "Western shipwreck." More seriously, critics like Adorno and Horkheimer accused the Enlightenment of leading directly to Nazi gas chambers and Soviet gulags. Their "dialectic of Enlightenment" argued that by replacing myth with science, modernist thinkers created repressive power systems culminating in Hitler. This argument is fundamentally flawed-Hitler was a fanatical nationalist from the Romantic tradition that opposed Enlightenment rationalism. The philosophers who developed human rights concepts-the very standards by which we condemn Nazi atrocities-are conveniently omitted from their critique. Beyond intellectual attacks, intense sentimentality has replaced reasoned consideration in public discourse. Reagan's presidency was "the era of good feelings," while Clinton mastered empathy. His successor Al Gore attempted calculated emotional displays at Democratic conventions-first describing his son's near-fatal accident in 1992, then in 1996 recounting his sister Nancy's death from lung cancer in excruciating detail. Despite his tearful pledge to fight tobacco until his last breath, Gore had previously boasted to tobacco farmers about his lifelong experience growing and selling tobacco, even accepting contributions from the tobacco lobby. The age of feeling produced celebrities who competed to display their vulnerabilities. After Diana's death, even questioning the mass mourning became treasonous. Professor Anthony O'Hear merely suggested the reaction lacked proportion, yet was savaged as a "rat-faced little loser" by the Daily Mirror and even criticized by Prime Minister Blair while on diplomatic business abroad. This pillorying confirmed O'Hear had discovered an intolerable truth.

Capitolo 10

The Third Way: Politics Beyond Left and Right?

Andrew Martin's 1998 novel Bilton satirizes a fictional British prime minister who announces his guiding principle is "Social Dynamics"-a policy so vague and contradictory that it's "both, either or neither" left-wing or right-wing. This ideologically ambiguous program rewards "socially useful" acts through complex tax breaks while promoting both "community" values and profit motives. The narrator describes it as "like one of those trick drawings of a staircase which at first glance looks plausible enough, but which then takes on the appearance of something quite unclimbable." Blair began as a left-wing barrister writing for the New Statesman, defending unions against Thatcher's restrictions and supporting unilateral nuclear disarmament. In 1987, he still insisted "the 'free' market does not distribute fairly or efficiently" and predicted Thatcherism's failure. Yet after becoming Labour leader in 1994, he orchestrated a stunning ideological reversal. He rewrote Labour's founding principles, embraced nuclear weapons, accepted Thatcher's union restrictions, rejected interventionist industrial policy, and endorsed privatization and low taxation. Just as Harold Wilson had embraced science in 1963 to modernize Labour's image, Blair sought his defining vision. Speaking to Singapore business executives in 1996, he unveiled the "stakeholder economy" concept borrowed from Will Hutton's book The State We're In. Blair briefly made "stakeholder" his mantra-stakeholder economy, stakeholder society, stakeholder welfare system-before abandoning it upon realizing Hutton was an unreconstructed Keynesian. Blair then flirted with Amitai Etzioni's "communitarianism," which emphasized responsibilities over rights, and embraced the think-tank Demos, founded by former leftists Geoff Mulgan and Martin Jacques, who specialized in clothing right-wing ideas in progressive language. Demos claimed to have moved "beyond left and right" and promoted concepts like "holistic government," "flexible networks," and most significantly, "the Third Way"-Anthony Giddens' vague ideology positioned somewhere "between the Second Coming and the Fourth Dimension." Giddens, a former leftist who lurched rightward, proposed contradictory ideas like legally binding children's responsibilities to parents and simultaneously arguing for both more and less market regulation. His book became sacred text for Blairites, impressing leaders from Clinton to Schroder who hoped to be all things to all people. Blair's own Fabian Society pamphlet on the Third Way was equally contradictory, claiming entrepreneurs naturally promote social justice while simultaneously arguing government intervention was necessary to protect workers. The Third Way reconciled contradictions by pretending they didn't exist-praising both market competition and welfare states without acknowledging the tension between them.

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Capitolo 11

The Market as God: Globalization's Contradictions

Benjamin Barber's observation that neither tribalism nor globalism promotes democracy was borne out by figures like Rupert Murdoch, who despite championing freedom, shamelessly kowtowed to Chinese autocrats for business advantage. Murdoch's media empire demonstrated the hypocrisy, removing BBC World Service from his Star network to gain permission for a Chinese cable station and dropping Chris Patten's memoir to secure market access. The global market became a quasi-religious entity, with business books like "God Wants You to Be Rich" becoming bestsellers and Harvard divinity professor Harvey Cox noting how market commentary mimicked religious language with its myths of origin, fall, and redemption. Cox observed that in the era of Market religion, skeptics and freethinkers had disappeared, with questioning the Market's omniscience becoming tantamount to questioning Providence itself. Thomas Friedman's bestseller "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" became the gospel of this faith, dividing humanity between modern consumers aspiring to luxury and "dodos" still fighting over tradition. Friedman particularly disdained the French for resisting McWorld, boasting about American cultural dominance in traditionally French-influenced regions. His encounters with the world's poor were superficial yet self-confirming, like interpreting a Vietnamese woman's sidewalk weighing service as proof that "globalization emerges from below" rather than being imposed by unaccountable institutions like the IMF and World Bank. The expansion of foreign intellectual-property claims drains resources from developing countries and prevents them from following successful models like South Korea or Taiwan. Historically, economic development preceded trade liberalization, often requiring import restrictions, tariffs, subsidies and exchange controls. Yet the Washington consensus now demands poorer nations liberalize before they can compete-essentially "kicking away the ladder" as economist Ha-Joon Chang puts it. America demands rights without responsibilities, promoting global markets while refusing political consequences. It imposes the New World Order on "rogue states" yet opts out of international obligations like the landmines treaty, international criminal court, and Kyoto protocol, citing sovereignty concerns. When poorer nations assert their sovereignty, they're punished for impeding free trade. Globalization didn't begin in the 1980s but has been dominant since the fifteenth century voyages of discovery. By the Enlightenment, it was already widely discussed. In 1770, Abbe Raynal described a "revolution in commerce" linking continents with "flying bridges of communication." The most concise account of globalization appears in The Communist Manifesto (1848), where Marx and Engels described how the bourgeoisie's need for expanding markets "chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe," giving production and consumption a "cosmopolitan character" and creating "universal inter-dependence of nations." Today's globalization contains fatal contradictions. While rich nations demand free movement of capital and goods (at least their own), they reject free movement of labor-perhaps the biggest difference from nineteenth-century globalization, when migration faced few barriers. There's no historical evidence that simple laissez-faire drives prosperity. The IMF's own data shows that 1950-1973-characterized by capital controls, fixed exchange rates, strong unions, large public sectors and government demand management-was the most successful period of the twentieth century, with average annual growth in per capita GDP of 2.9%, twice as high as the neoliberal era that followed.

Capitolo 12

The Return to Reason: A Path Forward

The economic experiment Margaret Thatcher initiated in Britain a quarter-century ago was later imposed worldwide by her followers and even copied by liberal and social democratic politicians. Yet this new orthodoxy has failed to match its predecessor's achievements and has proven fundamentally irrational. Ironically, Thatcher herself witnessed the consequences when she joined Tiger Management's advisory board in May 1998 for $1 million annually. Five months after hiring her for her "political insight," the hedge fund lost $2 billion in a single day betting against the Japanese yen. The financial market that destroyed Tiger Management was the same one that had made its fortune. Even Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan had warned of "irrational exuberance" in 1996, triggering market drops worldwide. His caution about share prices needing correlation with earnings was quickly forgotten as markets succumbed to dotcom mania between 1998-2000. Investors abandoned rational valuation, pouring money into companies with no earnings whatsoever. After 9/11, the left struggled to apply rational materialism to explain religious extremism. Philosopher Michael Walzer urged fellow leftists to acknowledge that "material interests don't exhaust the possibilities of human motivation" and to defend "secular enlightenment, human rights, and democratic government" against religious radicalism. Yet since Khomeini's return to Iran, many leftists had embraced Islamic fundamentalism through the "my-enemy's-enemy" principle. Depicting Islamism as essentially political represents what philosopher Gilbert Ryle called a "category mistake"-yoking together incompatible concepts. While Islamism has political antecedents, it's fundamentally different from conventional political movements. Unlike secular predecessors, Islamic terrorists don't call themselves freedom fighters. Their sole ambition is exterminating infidels and establishing shariah law. Anti-American Muslims and Western conservatives like Samuel Huntington share the same flawed thesis of unbridgeable fault-lines between civilizations. This theory that liberal democracy cannot transfer between cultures has been repeatedly disproven throughout history. In the 19th century, critics claimed democracy was limited to Anglo-Saxons or Protestants; when Catholic Spain embraced democracy, the fault-line shifted to "Slavs" and "Orthodox Christians." India's democratic success shattered the notion that only Christian societies could sustain liberal institutions. Truth is great and will prevail-or in George Santayana's tougher formulation, "The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it." Santayana's warning that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" stands chiseled over the entrance to the US Archives in Washington DC. He described this historical amnesia as the condition of "children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience." But those who refuse to learn from experience and instead discredit rationalism-whether holy warriors, anti-scientific relativists, economic fundamentalists, post-modernists, New Age mystics or doomsayers-aren't just condemning themselves to repeat the past. They wish to consign us all to a life in darkness.

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Temi chiave in I moderni barbari

irrationalism in politics
enlightenment values
voodoo economics
magical thinking
postmodernist critique

Citazioni da I moderni barbari

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.
Affluence is simply our natural state.
Where there is discord may we bring harmony...
The sleep of reason bringing forth monsters.

Personaggi di I moderni barbari

Francis WheenAuthor and critic of modern irrationalism
Ayatollah KhomeiniIranian leader who established an Islamic theocracy

Sull'autore

Francis James Baird Wheen, autore di How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World, è un pluripremiato giornalista e scrittore britannico, rinomato per le sue incisive critiche all'irrazionalità moderna e alle delusioni politiche.

Vicedirettore di Private Eye ed ex editorialista per The Guardian e il London Evening Standard, la carriera di Wheen vanta decenni di taglienti commenti su cultura, ideologia e dogmi.

La sua competenza nello smascherare pseudoscienza e autoritarismo deriva dalla sua acclamata biografia Karl Marx: A Life (1999), vincitrice del Deutscher Memorial Prize e tradotta in 20 lingue, così come da Marx’s Das Kapital: A Biography (2006). La raccolta del 2003 Hoo-Hahs and Passing Frenzies, vincitrice dell'Orwell Prize, ha consolidato la sua reputazione di polemista impavido.

How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World (2004), bestseller del Sunday Times, analizza l'ascesa dell'anti-razionalismo in politica, finanza e cultura — un tema amplificato attraverso le sue apparizioni su BBC Radio 4 e i suoi commenti televisivi.

Nato nel 1957, l'opera di Wheen rimane una lettura essenziale per comprendere la disinformazione moderna.

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Creato da alumni della Columbia University a San Francisco

LOVED BY

1,000,000+ curious minds.

4.7

avg rating

1M+ learners

"Instead of endless scrolling, I just hit play on BeFreed. It saves me so much time."

@Moemenn

"I never knew where to start with nonfiction—BeFreed’s book lists turned into podcasts gave me a clear path."

@Chloe, Solo founder, LA

117

"Perfect balance between learning and entertainment. Finished ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ on my commute this week."

@Raaaaaachelw

"Crazy how much I learned while walking the dog. BeFreed = small habits → big gains."

@Matt, YC alum

108

"Reading used to feel like a chore. Now it’s just part of my lifestyle."

@Erin, Investment Banking Associate , NYC

254

"Feels effortless compared to reading. I’ve finished 6 books this month already."

@djmikemoore

"BeFreed turned my guilty doomscrolling into something that feels productive and inspiring."

@Pitiful

4.5K

"BeFreed turned my commute into learning time. 20-min podcasts are perfect for finishing books I never had time for."

@SofiaP

"BeFreed replaced my podcast queue. Imagine Spotify for books — that’s it. 🙌"

@Jaded_Falcon

201

"It is great for me to learn something from the book without reading it."

@OojasSalunke

"The themed book list podcasts help me connect ideas across authors—like a guided audio journey."

@Leo, Law Student, UPenn

483

"Makes me feel smarter every time before going to work"

@Cashflowbubu

"Instead of endless scrolling, I just hit play on BeFreed. It saves me so much time."

@Moemenn

"I never knew where to start with nonfiction—BeFreed’s book lists turned into podcasts gave me a clear path."

@Chloe, Solo founder, LA

117

"Perfect balance between learning and entertainment. Finished ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ on my commute this week."

@Raaaaaachelw

"Crazy how much I learned while walking the dog. BeFreed = small habits → big gains."

@Matt, YC alum

108

"Reading used to feel like a chore. Now it’s just part of my lifestyle."

@Erin, Investment Banking Associate , NYC

254

"Feels effortless compared to reading. I’ve finished 6 books this month already."

@djmikemoore

"BeFreed turned my guilty doomscrolling into something that feels productive and inspiring."

@Pitiful

4.5K

"BeFreed turned my commute into learning time. 20-min podcasts are perfect for finishing books I never had time for."

@SofiaP

"BeFreed replaced my podcast queue. Imagine Spotify for books — that’s it. 🙌"

@Jaded_Falcon

201

"It is great for me to learn something from the book without reading it."

@OojasSalunke

"The themed book list podcasts help me connect ideas across authors—like a guided audio journey."

@Leo, Law Student, UPenn

483

"Makes me feel smarter every time before going to work"

@Cashflowbubu

"Instead of endless scrolling, I just hit play on BeFreed. It saves me so much time."

@Moemenn

"I never knew where to start with nonfiction—BeFreed’s book lists turned into podcasts gave me a clear path."

@Chloe, Solo founder, LA

117

"Perfect balance between learning and entertainment. Finished ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ on my commute this week."

@Raaaaaachelw

"Crazy how much I learned while walking the dog. BeFreed = small habits → big gains."

@Matt, YC alum

108

"Reading used to feel like a chore. Now it’s just part of my lifestyle."

@Erin, Investment Banking Associate , NYC

254

"Feels effortless compared to reading. I’ve finished 6 books this month already."

@djmikemoore

"BeFreed turned my guilty doomscrolling into something that feels productive and inspiring."

@Pitiful

4.5K

"BeFreed turned my commute into learning time. 20-min podcasts are perfect for finishing books I never had time for."

@SofiaP

"BeFreed replaced my podcast queue. Imagine Spotify for books — that’s it. 🙌"

@Jaded_Falcon

201

"It is great for me to learn something from the book without reading it."

@OojasSalunke

"The themed book list podcasts help me connect ideas across authors—like a guided audio journey."

@Leo, Law Student, UPenn

483

"Makes me feel smarter every time before going to work"

@Cashflowbubu

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Capitolo 11

I moderni barbari

PanoramicaPanoramica di I moderni barbari

Un libro. Tanti modi per ascoltarlo.

The Triumph of Unreason: How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World

The Enlightenment Under Siege

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The Voodoo Economics Revolution

Snake Oil for the Soul: The Self-Help Industry

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The End of History and Other Grand Delusions

The Postmodern Assault on Reality

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The Catastrophists: Superstition in the Modern Age

With God on Our Side: Religion and Politics

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The Age of Feeling Over Reason

The Third Way: Politics Beyond Left and Right?

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The Market as God: Globalization's Contradictions

The Return to Reason: A Path Forward

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Temi chiave in I moderni barbari

Citazioni da I moderni barbari

Personaggi di I moderni barbari

Sull'autore

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1,000,000+ curious minds.

1,000,000+ curious minds.

Un libro. Tanti modi per ascoltarlo.

The Triumph of Unreason: How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World

The Enlightenment Under Siege

Vedi ogni parola mentre la ascolti

The Voodoo Economics Revolution

Snake Oil for the Soul: The Self-Help Industry

Ottieni di più da I moderni barbari

The End of History and Other Grand Delusions

The Postmodern Assault on Reality

Vedi ogni parola mentre la ascolti

The Catastrophists: Superstition in the Modern Age

With God on Our Side: Religion and Politics

Ottieni di più da I moderni barbari

The Age of Feeling Over Reason

The Third Way: Politics Beyond Left and Right?

Vedi ogni parola mentre la ascolti

The Market as God: Globalization's Contradictions

The Return to Reason: A Path Forward

Hai raggiunto la fine di I moderni barbari

Agli utenti è piaciuto anche

Scopri di più

Panoramica di I moderni barbari