Third Stroke Did It. The Staggered End of European Civilisation

Product Description

During the last ninety-odd years, three big blows were struck against European civilisation by the Russian Revolution, the German Nazi Revolution and the Second American Revolution, launched by left liberals in the 1960s and 70s and shaping the West in the early 21st century. Desmond Fennell argues that while European civilisation in Europe and America survived after the first two assaults, it will not recover from the third. After the liberal regime has run its senseless course, it will dissolve into social chaos out of which, ultimately, a new civilisation will arise, consigning Europe’s to history.

Such is the gist of the main essay, which gives this book its title. It is followed by essays which explore some ancillary phenomena of the liberal regime—feminism, the ‘soft’ totalitarianism of the West, the special position of the Jews, the European Union. Concluding with Ireland in particular, Fennell discusses the Irish bias against thought, the Catholic Church’s recovery, the anti-suicide campaign, and the disintegration of the nation that carried out the Irish Revolution. With the hundredth anniversary of the 1916 Rising in sight, he recalls in a commemorative essay the humanism that motivated that insurrection.

The author

Dr Desmond Fennell is a cultural and political philosopher. Born in Belfast, educated in Dublin and Bonn, he is author of many books on Irish and international matters of which the most recent are The Revision of European History (2003); About Behaving Normally in Abnormal Circumstances (2005); and Ireland After the End of Western Civilisation (2009).