An assessment of the Arab Spring half a year later, in light of (1) the “clash of barbarisms” between the U.S. and Al Qaeda, (2) Marx’s concept of revolution, and (3) the possibilities for a revolutionary future – Editors With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the dominant Western paradigm for interpreting international conflict underwent something of a transformation. No longer seen as a death match between capitalist “freedom” and communist “slavery,” international conflict instead came to be understood by many as stemming from cultural differences. That is, the world was seen as being enveloped by a “clash of civilizations.” With the intellectual backing of influential academics in the West like Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington, this worldview has served as a new bunker mentality, especially in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.[1] According to this view, the United States is not at war because of its policies. Rather, what is under siege is Western culture itself, the barbarians mercilessly pounding at the gates.[2] From its outset, the notion of a clash of civilizations encountered critics on the Left—thinkers like Edward Said who dismissed it as nothing more than a foolish delusion, as “a gimmick like ‘The War of the Worlds.’”[3] More recently, Gilbert Achcar turned this infamous thesis completely on its head, suggesting that what we have before us in the age of the global “War on Terror” is not a clash of civilizations, but rather a clash of barbarisms—the barbarism of the strong (the United States and its military, the transnational capitalist class, and the neoliberal agenda) versus the barbarism of the weak (reactionary theocrats and fundamentalist terrorists).[4] Thus, the world is not ensconced in a battle between primordially opposed civilizations, a kind of tribal feud gone global. Rather, a war is being waged between the oppressors in power and the underdog oppressors out of power, between the warmongers in Washington and their equally reactionary adversaries abroad. Meanwhile, the rest of humanity is held hostage, standing on the sidelines and serving only as innocent casualties as the deadly doppelgangers remained locked in their perpetual war of attrition. Obama and Osama, then, share more

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