The Age of Violence: The Crisis of Political Action and the End of Utopia

"Only martyrs know neither pity nor fear. Believe me, the day when the martyrs are victorious will be the day of universal conflagration". Such was Jacques Lacan's gloomy prophesy in 1959. Could his words also be used to describe our own time? Do the wars devastating the Middle East threaten to suck in the next generation, with all its political disillusionment and its desperate revolts? Do this drama, and indeed the terrorist attacks around the world, really just owe to 'the radicalisation of Islam'?

These are the questions that Alain Bertho answers in Children of the Chaos. In so doing, he breaks from the usual explanatory paradigms. He shows that jihad is very far from the only force behind the mounting chaos. For it is first and foremost driven by the weakening of states' legitimacy under the pressure of globalization; the generalized crisis of political representation; and the attempt by the powerful to ground their legitimacy in 'security measures', even as they sow the seeds of violence around the world. These factors also explain the riots and the variety of attacks that have spread across all continents since the 2000s.

Young people today are the lost children of neoliberal globalization, and the political and human chaos it produces. When they find it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, their revolt tends to take the paths of martyrdom and despair. The closing of the revolutionary hypothesis opens the way for an outburst of fury. All the police and armies of the world count for little faced with this fascination with death. The only answer is a new radicalism, able to inspire a collective hope that another future is possible. All over world, the bases of this possibility are there. Our task is to help them grow.