The Anti-Axial Age

Karl Jaspers famously characterized the period from the beginning of the eighth to the end of the third century before Christ as an “Axial Age” in which intellectual freedom and creativity blossomed as never before. This article argues that it was followed, five hundred years later, by an “Anti-Axial Age”, which devised a novel formula for intellectual and political repression. Its essence was the state’s capture of the millenial narrative, which had first been developed as religious doctrine within Zoroastrianism and Christianity. Involving the two great classical empires of Western Eurasia, Persia and Rome, and then empowering the expansion of Islam, the Anti-Axial Age left an ideological legacy that continues to haunt the contemporary world.     

Police Perceptions of Irrational Unstable Behaviours and Use of Force

Police identification of people experiencing mental illness is usually based on either the person having an official contact history with police or through observing behavioural indicators commonly associated with mental illness during an encounter. Police have voiced concerns with their ability to identify and respond to people experiencing mental illness in a timely way and report that they commonly resort to more coercive tactical options to resolve encounters. The present study employed a mixed method design to examine 286 police use of force incidents to investigate the association between force used on and by offenders displaying irrational-unstable behavioural characteristics. The irrational-unstable offenders were two times more likely to be perceived by police to have an apparent mental disorder and almost four times more likely to have a known mental health history; one in six had an official record of contact with mental health services. There were few differences in police and offender use of force, considering force as both a categorical and a continuous variable, while incident-level comparisons suggested that police force was generally proportional to offender resistance. Implications are discussed in terms of the need to redress limitations with the traditional police approach style.     

On Jordan Peterson,Postmodernism, and PoMo-Bashing

Jordan Peterson says that postmodernists say no interpretation is better than another. I would no sooner identify Peterson’s adversaries as those who have been misled by “postmodernism” than I would identify them as misled by “sustainability,” “diversity,” “multiculturalism,” or “intersectionality.” Such fare is mainly symptomatic. “Postmodern” invocations are often like “sustainability” invocations: inessential. This piece is not a defense of postmodernism. It is a critique of PoMo-bashing.     

President-Elect Trump: Is the Past Prologue?

There is worldwide interest and concern over the pending US Presidency of Donald Trump. This article recounts the experience of the author and entrepreneur Merv Griffin with Trump in his business career and suggests clues for examining his exercise of the power of the Presidency. His choices for his cabinet and his advisers may well determine his success or failure. The evidence thus far is troubling.     

Aleksandr Dugin and the ideology of national revival: Geopolitics,Eurasianism and the conservative revolution

This article examines the emergence of Aleksandr Dugin as the leader of the Eurasian Movement and later Party in Russia. For much of the 1990s Dugin was a prominent intellectual among the Russian nationalist‐communist opposition, moving from the position of ideologue of a fringe political party ‐ Edvard Limonov's National Bolsheviks — to advisor to the communist speaker of the State Duma, Gennadiy Seleznev. Dugin's ideology combined an anti‐Western interpretation of geopolitics with mysticism, Aryanism, conspirology, authoritarian statism and Eurasianism. Dugin's expanding set of Internet sites became an ideological empire of a virtual society. In 1999, in the aftermath of the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia, Dugin saw an opportunity to move from the marginal opposition to the ideologue of the post‐Yeltsin president. In this capacity, Dugin and his Eurasian Movement emerged as prominent supporters of Vladimir Putin, whom Dugin identified as the embodiment of the ‘Eurasian capitalist’ model of statist development. Dugin developed a close working relationship with Gleb Pavlovsky, a spin doctor for Putin's Kremlin. In the aftermath of 11 September and Putin's move towards supporting the United States in the war on terrorism, Dugin has continued his nominal support for the president, even as he has criticized his pro‐Western policies as anti‐Eurasian and a threat to Russian interests.