concept of the New Man, as well as in art movements of Weimar culture that emphasized rationalism and embraced Futurism and the New Objectivity. Many Weimar period artists rejected the Futurists' fetishization of machinery and violence, for example the proponents of German Expressionism. Despite this, the return to order became a dominant theme in German culture and in that of other European countries. Present day Herf now applies the term to claim similarity to the governments of Iran under the Ayatollahs, the government of Iraq under Saddam Hussein, and extremist Islamist groups such as Al Qaeda. Other scholars, including Paul Berman, have also applied Herf's term to radical Islamism. Cultural critic Richard Barbrook argues that members of the digerati, who adhere to the Californian Ideology, embrace a form of reactionary modernism which combines economic growth with social stratification. Criticism of the Herf thesis Thomas Rohkrämer criticized the concept of reactionary modernism, arguing "It is simply not strange or 'paradoxical to reject the Enlightenment and embrace technology at the same time', but a common practice in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany as well as in many other countries. Instrumental reason and technology are available for an endless number of different purposes, many of which are not humane or enlightened". Support for this view also came from Roger Griffin, who argued "fascism as an ideology and movement can be seen as proposing a radical alternative to liberal and socialist visions of what form modernity ideally should take. It represents an uncompromising rejection both of thorough-going liberalism and extreme 'modernism', whose logical culmination it sees as relativism, anomie, subjectivism, and the loss of definitive meaning and 'eternal' values. It is an attempt to re-anchor modern human beings within that highly modern phenomenon, the totalitarian state (a term used positively by Fascism) through consciously manipulated historical, national and racist myth (all deeply modern ideological constructs)". See also Dark Enlightenment Fascism Metamodernism Retrofuturism Revolt Against the Modern World (Julius Evola) Ideology of Ioannis Metaxas References Modernism Political ideologies Theories of aesthetics 1980s neologisms Conservative Revolutionary movement