Nieświęte „Święte wojny” nowożytności

The Author argues that the medieval notion of holy war did not pass away at the dawn of modernity. Rather, it has only taken a new form. Indeed, modern ideological wars constitute a secularized form of medieval crusades. The wars conducted by the French revolutionaries, the Bolsheviks as well as the contemporary American neoconservatives have all aimed at the construction of different versions of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. Indeed, the Jacobins desired to make true an enlightened dream of a perfect social order of democratic republic. The Bolsheviks tried to put into practice abstracts rules of communist society. The Americans were determined to impose all over the world a democratic order based on human rights. In all these cases, the ideological purposes made legitimate a rejection of the traditional rules of just war. Although it lacks a transcendental component, the rhetorics of all these modern ideological wars is strikingly similar to that used in the Middle Ages.