Over recent years, it seems ‘radical’ has become a dirty word. In the wake of the anniversary of 1968, and with books and films galore about the romance and failures of revolutionary life and thought, it seems we’re comfortable with radicalism as an object of nostalgia, but less willing to understand its contemporary legacy – and its trivialisation.

Culture Wars is exploring radicalism – past, present and future – in an attempt to understand a lived tradition as well as how certain ideas filter through the culture. Having focused on past ‘Radical Thinkers’ and the legacy of 1968, touring from Iran to Haiti, investigating the role of ideology and demise of the traditional Left, we turn towards two contemporary variants: ‘political Islam’ and the environmentalist movement. These reviews and essays constitute a critical investigation of what shapes contemporary attitudes towards the future.

Ghostly Demarcations

Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx, by Derrida et al (Radical Thinkers III series)

Having played fast and loose in his interpretation of Marx, Derrida seems very angry that any of his respondents should be so cavalier with him. His scorn for the attempt to seek Marx’s heritage seems like bad manners after so pointedly dancing on his grave.

Savage civility

Wolf Totem, by Jiang Rong - translated by Howard Goldblatt (Hamish and Hamilton)

Rong is dual spokesman: Outer Mongolian to the Chinese and Chinese to everybody else, not caught between fact and fiction but navigating a path between the two roles.

Ali Shari’ati: between Marx and the Infinite

An Islamic Utopian, by Ali Rahnema (IB Tauris)

Is Ali Shari’ati, the so-called ideologue of the Iranian Revolution, a poster boy for a utopian Islamic left, lost but not forgotten? Or is his legacy rather an allegory of good intentions gone awry and the irresponsibility of pursuing an exotic Leninist eclecticism at the edge of unreason?

The most disappointing generation ever produced?

1968ers from the Barricades to Baghdad

The end of the Vietnam War took much of the wind out of the sails of the American ‘68ers, many of whom were more interested in dodging the draft than fighting imperialism.

Like imperialism? Love sharia

The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, by Noah Feldman (Princeton University Press)

What is of course excluded from this entire discussion is any reference to the most defining discourse in the Middle East: anti-imperialism.

You won’t fool the children of the ‘revolution’

Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy: Corporate PR and the Assault on Democracy, by William Dinan and David Miller (editors)

Dismissing political opponents’ ideas on the basis of ‘guilt by association’ means adopting a less critical approach than if one actually sets out to argue against them.

Radical Oxford Blues

Oxford Radical Forum, Wadham College, Oxford, 29 February - 2 March 2008

If anything came out of the Forum at all, however, it was a snapshot of the radical state of confusion on the left today, combining nostalgia for the themes and slogans of the past with many of the prejudices of the present.

A spectacular failure

Critical Lives: Guy Debord, by Andrew Merrifield

Guy Debord was an alcoholic French intellectual whose Situationalist group played a modest role in the dramatic events of May 1968 in Paris. In the 1970s he became a radical film-maker and spent the aftermath of those tumultuous times in rural seclusion until committing suicide in 1994.

The stone and the chicken

On Practice and Contradiction, by Mao Zedong (introduced by Slavoj Žižek)

If the liberal consensus nowadays is that Robespierre’s French Revolution went too far in the pursuit of liberté, egalité, fraternité, then that’s not as damning as it at first may appear.

Putting the hippies on the payroll

Green Capitalism: Manufacturing Scarcity in an Age of Abundance, by James Heartfield

Everyone has gone green. Even reprobate oil corporations have stopped funding the ‘global warming sceptics’, as they retool their operations to cash in on the bonanza of carbon-trading. Bewildered by the sudden desertion of their corporate allies, a few isolated libertarians fight a rearguard action against the green tide.

The end of faith is not the answer (on romanticising reason)

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, by Sam Harris / The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left, by Ed Husain

Leering under the surface of both these texts is a fear of ideology, of anything with a utopian tinge, and a tendency to merge having ideals with both these things. Rather than vetting individual beliefs for rationality, Harris would be better settling for rationality as a bearer of value and cornerstone of a broader world-view.

Cynical capitalism, cynical anti-capitalism

How an unloved system survives by default, and how its would-be critics condemn us to more of the same

In the run-up to Christmas last year, German churches and trades unions joined forces to protest against the loosening of the country’s traditionally restrictive opening hours for shops. Berlin’s city administration, run by Social Democrats and reformed Communists, had passed an amendment allowing shops in the capital to open every Sunday in December, despite objections in terms of both religious tradition and the perceived interests of shop staff.

Reasoning out suicidal mass murder

The Second Plane, by Martin Amis

Martin Amis is one of an increasing number of intelligent independent minds who identify the paralysing malaise at the heart of Western liberalism brought sharply into focus by the paradigm shift created by the Islamist attack on the Twin Towers on 11 September 2001. In his introduction to the current work Amis says that if this had to happen - the wake-up calls to the West - ‘then I am not at all sorry that it happened in my lifetime’.

Defending the Terror

Virtue and Terror, by Maximilien Robespierre, with an introduction by Slavoj Žižek (Verso)

Maximilien Robespierre was a fearless critic of tradition and incorruptibly committed to liberty: a million miles from today’s webcam jihadists.

In defence of ‘radicalisation’

The Islamist, by Ed Husain

Critiques of Hizb ut-Tahrir focus less on its dodgy mishmash of politics and religion and more on its intense intellectualism. But what’s wrong with devoting oneself to the battle of ideas?