The Time of the BedouinIan Dallas' political masterpiece represents a completely new mode of understanding power in the world today. A searing indictment of political democracy, The Time of the Bedouin shows that Terror is the inescapable essence of the democratic system with which all peoples and nations are now forced to comply. Analysing the French Revolution, its genocidal slaughter and the character of its protagonists, Dallas places it as the inseminating event of modern democracy. The debased Aristocracy was necessarily swept aside and personal rule declared 'ancient', but the new, illegitimate elite, which gradually replaced them, was based purely on the acquisition of wealth. Now, with the disgrace and inevitable downfall of that financial elite, a new Aristocracy will emerge, foretells Dallas, and it will stem from what Ibn Khaldun calls the 'Bedouin' - not desert Arabs, but peoples not tied into a settled social order. With The Time of the Bedouin, Ian Dallas has set up a monumental gateway of vision and understanding through which every man and woman genuinely concerned about the world situation today must inevitably pass. |
