that, despite having made various inroads that might overcome these barri-
ers, has remained limited in impact. As a result, most Muslim societies typ-
ically pose formidable barriers to political democratization and economic
growth. One consequence of these factors has been fundamentalism. Ironically,
fundamentalisms, while anti-modern, adroitly use modern technologies to
gain voice and/or secure popular political power, which are modern notions.
Critical Theory
In the early years of the twentieth-century, market society (rational capital-
ism), was riven with multiple crises of legitimacy. In Germany, unemploy-
ment, inflation, and its military defeat in WWI engendered fear, shame,
humiliation and rage. Its ideological support of Reason, freedom and democ-
racy were belied by irrationality, domination and elite power. Fascism, as a
mass movement and compensatory ideology that promised amelioration,
flourished. Its emotional appeals to unreason, charismatic leadership and
anti-modernist ideology sutured totalitarianism governance and modern tech-
nologies with intense emotions of loyalty to the State and hatred to “blame-
worthy” Others. The emergence of totalitarianism in the early twentieth-century,
in Fascist and Communist forms was not easily understood within the then
available theoretical frameworks. Critical Theorists rested on Marx’s critique
of capitalist political economy, but in reaction to various notions of economic
reductionism, they stressed the role of Marx’s cultural concerns with alien-
ation, ideology and politics. More specifically, they found that Marx’s (1963a)
analysis of Bonapartism anticipated the rise of Fascism as an alienated petty
bourgeois peasantry supported a “farcical” military hero/ruler. Louis Napoleon
staged a coup d’etatand seized control of the French State, acting as a “rep-
resentative” of the bourgeoisie who united monarchists andlumpenproletariat
against workers and fears of communism.
For the Frankfurt School, while Marxism addressed the economic malaise
of the working classes, it failedto address the role of culture and psychoso-
cial yearnings of some segments of the workers, as well as other groups, espe-
cially the petit bourgeoisie. National Socialism, an authoritarian ideology, led
by “powerful” yet “ordinary men”, “erased” the notion of class, and promised
economic prosperity and restoration of a once glorious nation that had been
usurped and/or betrayed. Nazism promised to repair the “damaged” com-
munity and provide the “people” [volk] with recognition, pride, dignity and
agency. Moreover, Nazism named a vile, blameworthy enemy culprit respon-
290 • Lauren Langman