The revolutionary Algerian nationalist Frantz Fanon once wrote in his seminal work The Wretched of the Earth that ‘All the elements of a solution to the great problems of humanity have, at different times, existed in European thought’. Today, the Caribbean born thinker would probably be denounced as a Eurocentric or a Europhile, or worst a racist. Fanon was a first class anti-imperialist, and he fully recognized that the project of anti-imperialism was not to oppose Western ideas and the Western tradition, but to in fact rescue them for all of humanity. Fanon understood that the ideas of objectivism, reason, progress, democratic politics and the scientific method were deeply imbedded in the Western tradition. Fanon also wrote that ‘Europe has done what she set out to do and on the whole she has done it well; let us stop blaming her, but let us say to her firmly that she should not make such a song and dance about it’. Such progressive universalism shown by Fanon cannot be found in Western radical thought these days. Western radicals and liberals have jettisoned the Western tradition and have fully embraced a nihilistic form of multiculturalism instead. The very act of making a judgemental statement about values and beliefs from other cultures is seen as politically un-correct. Radicals and liberals now view societies and cultures in terms of their differences. This view perceives differences as fixed, or permanent. According to this perspective difference cannot be overcome, the struggle for universal equality become an irreconcilable grievance. In other words, if other cultures have fixed differences, like the cult of victim hood, how can they resolve any grievances? The answer is they can’t. The politics of multiculturalism has turned the majority of the world’s peoples into victims, and in turn this has transformed the West, and more importantly America into some kind of all-powerful force were by anybody and everyone must rally against it. For example, in the Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, one of the main characters, Saladin, while in prison realises that the other prisoners have been miraculously turned into different animals like snakes, buffaloes and other such beasts. He even turns into a goat. Saladin turns to a fellow inmate and asks ‘how can they do this?’ The prisoner reply’s ‘they just describe us – that’s all’. They (the Great Satan – America) apparently have the power and the force to describe and everybody else just succumbs to the image that the Great Satan has built. This is almost the same way that today’s Western radicals perceive America. This extreme fatalistic outlook has much in common with Islamic fundamentalism. Western radicals and Islamic fundamentalism at first sight seem to be worlds apart - for example fundamentalists hate Western materialism and Western radicals are frightened by fundamentalist absolutism. But what draws them together is the current fashion for nihilistic multiculturalism. Both schools of thought reject the project of modernity and the science of historical materialism. Both express a hatred for Western scientific progress and the politics of universality. But what’s more important is that both exaggerate the inequalities of the capitalist system - and both have no viable coherent alternative to Western capitalism. The positive aspects of the free-market economy, its advancement of technology are constantly overlooked by both radicals and fundamentalists. They frown upon the West’s adherence to the ideas that emerged from the period of the Enlightenment - commitment to equality and its ideas of social progress. And the negative sides of capitalism, its inability to resolve its deep social divisions, or its cyclical tendencies towards acts of barbarism are seen by both as natural. This goes in some small way to explaining why some Western radicals said ‘good – they deserved it’ as they watch the television pictures of the Twin Towers collapsing after the terrorist attacks. And the rage that drove the planes into the Towers was cultivated by the fatalism that is all pervasive in Western societies. The anti-Americanism that feeds Western radicals and Islamic fundamentalists alike have nothing in common with anti-imperialism, in fact, both can be viewed as a by-product of the failure of anti-imperialism and the rise of general cynicism towards modernity. The irony of it all is that both schools of thought can actually be traced back to the Western tradition of modernity itself, but we should remember that they are the more backward elements of that great tradition. I’ll leave the last words to the Marxist historian, revolutionary thinker and political activist CLR James, from his seminal essay The Making of the Caribbean People, wrote ‘I denounce European colonialism - But I respect the learning and profound discoveries of Western civilisation.'