This is the first part of Guillaume Faye’s book-length essay The New Ideological Challenges, originally published in French in 1985, in which he argues that Europe’s theatrical postwar political struggles were giving way to more fundamental conflicts over identity, culture, sovereignty, and the continent’s place in the world.
The ideological and cultural atmosphere in post-war Europe, a Europe tamed by peace and the longest economic boom to date, was exclusively dominated by the illusion of political appearances until the seventies. The thinking elites could do nothing but indulge in dreams, for they were deprived of challenges, of history, as they remained huddled in a cosy society without visible threats.
The great fashion of commitment introduced by Sartre occurred precisely when engaging amounted to almost nothing and included neither risks nor fundamental consequences. “Many intellectuals,” writes Jean-Claude Guillebaud, “succumbed to Stalinist temptations when Stalin scarcely threatened the pacified world anymore. Simultaneously, cultural anti-Americanism thrived under the protection of Washington’s nuclear umbrella. And one experienced the imaginary fears of a victorious revolution, just as Europe was quietly approaching a social democratic model based on the welfare state ... As if the tragic, excluded from everyday life, was allowed to regain strength through the imaginary. Only peace and growth could permit such intellectual extravagances. Later, the so-called Third Worldism, i.e., solidarity with the Third World, undoubtedly emerged from the same instinctive desire: to find a substitute pathos and continue to participate—albeit by substitution—in all the reveries of history. Similarly, the fiercest criticism of consumer society, rural sensitivity, and fantasies of zero growth flourished just when the gross national product was growing most strongly.”
