New Imperialists : Ideologies of Empire

The New Imperialists
MOOERS: Introduction
INTRODUCTION: THE NEW WATCHDOGS
Colin Mooers
In this atmosphere of sickness, thoughtful men – members of the
ruling stratum – are struggling to recapture that old sense of
well-being and that peace of mind and that old certitude regarding
the future of Western Civilization. They write books and reports,
they give sermons, they conduct conferences and symposia, and
they attribute almost everything that is happening in the world to
diverse forms of temporary insanity (all curable) and diverse false
opinions (all easily corrected). . . . The advent of disorder has shattered
the serenity and the security of the powers that be. These
powers are now seeking to regain their lost paradise.
(Paul Nizan, The Watchdogs 1 )
Nizan wrote Les Chiens de garde, his philosophical tirade against the
complacency of the French intellectual establishment, shortly before
he was killed at Dunkirk in 1940. In Nizan’s view, the retreat of the
philosophical elite into idealist obscurantism had disarmed an entire
generation against the catastrophe that was about to envelope it. First
published in 1960 at the height of France’s bitter colonial war in Algeria
(which claimed the lives of 1.5 million Algerians, 27,000 French soldiers
and 4,000 French colonials), Nizan’s book was incendiary. Its implicit
target was a new generation of French intellectuals: those who
constructed baroque apologies for colonialism or rationalized the
murderous methods used by French forces during the eight-year-long
Algerian war of independence. 2