Is it worth reading?

Yes, Barber was an important thinker during the “war on terror”. His theory is interesting and good to keep in mind. It can explain many current current secular socio-political developments in our globalised world.

Who was Barber?

Benjamin Barber was an American academic, author and political theorist. Barber worked as an adviser to Bill Clinton of the Democratic Party. His two best-known books are If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations in which he argues for a decentralised state and the book this text is about Jihad vs McWorld.

Jihad vs Mc World

His book has three parts. The first part deals with McWorld, the second with Jihad and the third with both and the risk they pose to democracy. In his book, he notes that at the time there were two types of views on the course of the world that seemed contradictory to him. The first is best represented by Huntington’s Clash of the civilisation and the other by Francis Fukuyama’s The end of History. The aim of the book was to chart a world in which both views could be true simultaneously, in a way where they had something to do with each other. The author analyses Jihad and McWorld using examples from different perspectives: cultural, political and economic.

The days of the national state are numbered! Jihad and McWorld are undermining the national state.

Barber has invented two terms in this book: jihad and McWorld. Barber defines McWorld as a “force” of internationalism: global trade politics and world markets. According to him, the capitalist world market economy would cause a homogenisation of culture. Mc comes from McDonalds, the company that established itself around the world by glocalising its marketing culture. The Mc implies the rapid spread of a homogenising capitalist consumer market. The differences in culture and economy by country are disappearing to make way for a homogeneous market and consumer society.

The new global economy, which McWorld is said to have brought about through the globalisation and integration of world markets, differs from the traditional economy in which commodities dominated. Nation-states no longer live in autarky and have become (through globalisation) interdependent through trade in indispensable commodities. Barber says that this commodity interdependence marks the end of the nation-state. Nation-states, due to the lack of raw materials, can only cooperate in interdependence to survive. McWorld thus stretches states out of their autarchy and is therefore responsible for undermining the power of the nation-state.

Infotainment Telesector 

Barber introduces another new term in his book: the telesector of infotainment. The telesector of infotainment, he says, is the most important economic activity on earth. It is said to consist of the people who create symbols and control those symbols through which all information, communication and entertainment is mediated. This is how McWorld spreads. Through these symbols spread through a videology (Movies- Hollywood but also YouTube and MTV) but also television. This would ensure the homogeneity of culture within McWorld.

Barber underlines the injustice of McWorld. The capitalist system creates an unequal distribution of wealth that results in an unbalanced situation for some within McWorld. As a result, people may be more inclined to embrace Jihad. McWorld is thus a capitalist force that homogenises the world in terms of culture and economy, undermining the nation-state in the process.

What did he mean by “Jihad”?

By the term Jihad, the author means the people who resist the uniformisation and homogenisation of global markets and their culture. For them, ethnic, racial and religious affiliation is still very important, they are not yet ready to give it up to McWorld. It is an anti-Western and anti-universalist movement. Jihad wants to return to pre-modern times and revive those times: they do not want a modern globalised world. Jihad can take different forms:

Jihad within democracies is different from other forms of government. In Europe, Jihad takes the form of provincialism against the centre. Small towns harbour contempt for big cities and their cosmopolitanism. Despite French cultural protectionism (by banning popular foreign speech, for example), Jihad encourages a revival of a cultural and sometimes ethnic identity of regions of France with their own language, undermining the overall central French culture. Another form of Jihad within democracy is the case of Catalonia. Catalonia has embraced McWorld to make itself dependent on Spain.

In countries “on the road to democracy,” Jihad presents itself differently. There, subnationalist fragments in some countries seek a minimalist form such as religious and ethnic self-determination on which they can build a nationality with the help of the hatred of others.

According to Barber, the situation of Jihad is also different in Muslim countries. Islam sees the definition of the Western form of democracy and free society as corrupting. Jihad has also started there with the fight against McWorld. Author takes las example Hasan Al-Banna who said Muslim world had gone down on a wave of atheism and lust. Western culture and thus McWorld was dangerous. The struggle was against everything modern, worldly and cosmopolitan.

The Nation-State threatened!

The days of the nation-state are numbered! Jihad and McWorld are undermining the nation-state. Jihad splinters them; and McWorld pulls nations out of their autarchy and undermines their power by making them dependent on others. McWorld cannot do without Jihad. It needs Jihad’s cultural provincialism to keep expanding. But vice versa, Jihad also needs McWorld to market its culture in order to expand. It also needs McWorld to promote the “other” culture to oppose it. Jihad cannot but declare war on the present to ensure that the future becomes more like the past: no more pluralistic culture, but a restoration of the magic of nostalgia. They cannot live without each other, but neither can they live peacefully side by side. If the most damaging form of McWorld is gluttony, for Jihad it is a form of extreme intolerable insecurity.

According to the author, nations are under attack by both forces, but young people are the target who are being torn apart by these two forces. By splintering the nation-state and its democratic institutions, Jihad and McWorld in their own way weaken democracy itself. If not only democracy but also youth is torn apart by the influence of Jihad and McWorld then our future is in danger.

Sources:

Benjamin Barber, Jihad vs McWorld (Amsterdam 2001).

 Mitch Nauffts, “Benjamin R. Barber, Author, ‘Jihad vs. McWorld: Democracy As an Antidote to Terrorism’” (versie 30 september 2020), https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/newsmakers/benjamin-r.-barber-author-jihad-vs.-mcworld-democracy-as-an-antidote-to-terrorism (20 maart 2003).