**4. Secular Fundamentalism**

When fundamentalism is treated as an attitude, this suggests, from the theoretical perspective, that the quite widespread conviction about the exclusively religious nature of fundamentalism needs to be corrected. Even though the analyses presented above, based on extensive literature on the subject, were focused on the religious forms of the fundamentalist attitude, it can hardly be concluded that any of its characteristic features (for example, a selective way of thinking, or a desire to change the world in accordance with one's own standards) are limited only to the religious attitude. Moreover, fundamentalists can see a threat in both secular and religious stances. In view of the above conclusions, we need to ask about the existence of secular fundamentalisms. If the theory of fundamentalism outlined above is correct, the fundamentalist approach should then be also possible to detect on secular grounds.

## *4.1. Classical and Contemporary Manifestations of Secular Fundamentalism*

A review of studies on the political phenomena of the 20th and the 21st century, including in particular secular religions (Aron 1962; Voegelin 2000), leaves practically no doubt that the above statement is substantiated. One of the most well-respected Polish sociologists, Edmund Wnuk-Lipi ´nski, demonstrated the legitimacy of considering communism as a form of secular fundamentalism. In *Swiat ´ mi˛edzyepoki*, he showed that the communist logic includes all the symptoms of a fundamentalist attitude: the belief in possessing the truth, a selective approach to "sacred texts," rebellion against the existing order coupled with a commitment to creating an ideal world, worship of the leader, and hatred of the "enemies of the system," activism in striving to change the world, etc. (Wnuk-Lipi ´nski 2004, pp. 281–84). It is characteristic that already in 1917 Lenin believed that his "prime task is to re-establish what Marx really taught" (Lenin 1918), and therefore—in a typically fundamentalist way—demanded that everyone should accept his own as the only right interpretation of canonical texts, radically distancing himself from those who—also drawing on the teachings of Marx—were not revolutionary enough, in his opinion, and in fact falsified Marxism by "deceiving the people." For even though the writings of the author of *Das Kapital* were the communists' "sacred" texts, they were not so in every interpretation. The right one, just like in the case of the interpretation of Islam by the ideologists of the Muslim Brotherhood, was that of the current leader and his entourage.

In fact, as has been pointed out by Eric Voegelin, who demonstrated the gnostic sources of Marx's thought, Marxism itself was a theory aimed at "incarnating the *logos* in the world by means of revolutionary human action" (Voegelin 1975, p. 275) thus representing a specific, fundamentalist type of mindset. Voegelin points out that Marx transformed Hegel's contemplative gnosis into practical action, becoming "a Paraclete in the best medieval, sectarian style, a man in whom the *logos* had become incarnate and through whose action in the world mankind at large would become the vessel of the *logos*" (Voegelin 1975, p. 276). Without going into a more detailed discussion of a fundamentalist character of "political religions," insightfully analysed *inter alia* in the classical works of Erich Voegelin (2000) or Raymond Aron (1962), it is worth noting, however, that secular fundamentalist tendencies are found not only in "total phenomena."

John Gray points out that radical Islamists are essentially not very di fferent from communists or neoliberals in terms of the structure of their mindset. He says, "In the new world as envisaged by Al Qaeda power and conflict have disappeared. This is a figment of the revolutionary imagination, not a prescription for a viable modern society; but in this the new world envisioned by Al Qaeda is no di fferent from the fantasies projected by Marx and Bakunin, by Lenin and Mao, and by the neoliberal evangelists who so recently announced the end of history" (Gray 2007, p. 4). The same thought can also be found in the writings of Agnieszka Kołakowska, who describes several examples illustrating how the ideologisation of certain categories of contemporary political discourse due to political correctness in fact hinders any rational debate. She says that a good exemplification of the "anti-empirical, anti-rational, and anti-scientific approach is the issue of 'globalisation'": the "evil" of globalisation, just like the "good" of sustained development, is a kind of dogma which "must not be questioned" (Kołakowska 2010, pp. 21–24). The conviction that one possesses the truth and the ultimate knowledge of the proper order of things results—in accordance with the fundamentalist paradigm—in open animosity of the "politically correct" to those who think otherwise, and in a radical suppression of anyone who questions "the one and only truth." As pointed out by Matthieu Bock-Cote, "progressivism inherently includes the temptation of fanaticism and paves the way for the practice of presenting 'reactionaries' as public enemies, as enemies of the human race...it sanctions intolerance by justifying it with noble motives" (Bock-Cote 2017, p. 302).

The question is whether the above claims are su fficiently substantiated—whether in the aspirations of Karl Marx to finally set the course of history towards salvation, and in the "politically correct" activities aimed at silencing certain views, ideas, or groups, a similar logic can be found. In other words, can it be demonstrated that in both cases we are dealing with a belief in the "inerrancy" of the elite who possess the formula for an ideal order; an exclusive patent on knowledge of the proper form and sense of socio-political institutions and relations, i.e., with an analogous fundamentalist potential.
