The Humanitarian Language of Syria

On this edition of Parallax Views, Suzanne Schneider of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research joins us to discuss her new book The Apocalypse and the End of History: Modern Jihad and the Crisis Liberalism. We discuss how Suzanne is using liberalism in its technical broad context outside of the common colloquial usage of the term to refer to Democrats. Rather we discuss liberalism in regard to the Enlightenment, its values, and modernity. This leads us into a discussion of how contemporary jihadi violence by groups like ISIS and al Qaeda may, as other commentators and public intellectuals like John Gray have argued, be more modern than we are often willing to consider. This bring us to discuss the contradictions of liberalism today and the crisis point it can and seemingly has led to it. Additionally we deal with issues related to neoliberalism and its consequences, Francis Fukuyama's The End of History, German legal theorist Carl Schmitt's concept of the Sovereign, the rise of extremist movements in the West, and much, much more.