1. Russia's brutal repression and lawlessness have pushed people towards Islamic fundamentalism.

2. That's what's embarrassing: that in the last twenty-five years, the ideology of the garage-pit has again become so powerful that its representatives no longer have to face criticism, must no longer justify themselves, but rather denounce any kind of critical spirit as unworldly and amoral, knowing full well that force of the masses is on their side, that public discourse swallows up or makes fun of every doubt about the underlying values of society. At the same time, the fears and motivations of neo-conservative high-handedness are easy to comprehend: the outbreak of the Aids pandemic at the beginning of the 1980s, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the increase in Islamic fundamentalism in the 1990s, the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, bracketed by imperialist US wars over oil.