A hush descends on the crowd. On the stroke of midnight a cheer goes up, but instantly dies away: all the lights have gone out. Bags are snatched and pockets picked; burglar alarms sound and panic spreads. Meanwhile, points of light shine out from farmhouses in the hills. The householders make sure their doors are bolted, check their supplies of ammunition and wait for what the night will bring.
That's one vision of a millennium. Another is more hopeful: "a terrible laugh would have exploded from amidst the tears, rising from the dungeon, from the ploughed furrow in the shadow of the odious tower, from the silences and abstinences of the cloister." This is the nineteenth-century French historian Michelet, depicting Europe's encounter with the first millennium - 1000 AD. Writing in an age of upheaval, Michelet stressed the revolutionary potential of the apocalypse: a moment when Heaven's judgment would prevail over the aristocratic world order, and the powerful would be judged by the Christian virtues to which they paid lip-service. Michelet encapsulates the fascination of the millennium - and gives us some pointers for understanding visions of the second great rollover.
Much of the appeal of years divisible by 1000 derives from a prophecy written in the first century AD:
And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years. ... And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison. And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle ... And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.
(Revelation, ch.20, verses 1-3 and 7-9)
The Christian Millennium, in other words, is a thousand-year interval between the Second Coming and the conclusive battle between good and evil. The question was, when would it begin? The early church expected the Second Coming to happen 6,000 years after the Creation: the reasoning was that this would make the Millennium the seventh - Sabbath - 'day' in the history of the world (One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day - 2 Peter, ch. 3, verse 8). It was then believed that Creation had taken place in what we now call 5500 BC; the Second Coming was scheduled for 500 AD. Some time around 400 AD, St Augustine - wary of the imminence of Year 6000 - pronounced that the book of Revelation should be understood figuratively. The Millennium had actually begun with the birth of Jesus; moreover, the thousand-year timescale should not be taken literally. However, this second point was often forgotten, with the result that, when 1000 AD arrived, many anticipated not the beginning but the end of the Millennium - to be followed by the last battle.
A thousand years on, believers in the Millennium have two main options. Some have revived the 'six-day', 6000-year model; taken with the timescale established by Archbishop Ussher in 1650, according to which the world was created in 4004 BC (at twelve noon on the 23rd of October), this gives a fair approximation to 2000 AD. Most follow Augustine and ignore the calendar. The Elim Pentecostal Church makes the contrast explicitly: "we are only the second generation since the earthly life of Jesus to celebrate the coming of a new Millennium. Who can tell how soon it will be before we enter the Millennium, the glorious time when Jesus shall reign upon the earth".
It's also worth noting the distinction between 'pre-millennial' and 'post-millennial' variants of apocalyptic belief. Pre-millennialists hold that the Second Coming will precede the Millennium; their main priority is making converts. For post-millennialists, on the other hand, the Millennium will be initiated by true believers; Jesus will only return when an appropriately Godly regime has been established on earth. Politically, this is associated with the belief that the existing system is hopelessly compromised - if not actually evil - and needs to be transformed by Christian activism. Prominent post-millennialists include the right-wing US Republican Pat Robertson.
Most current references to the millennium come from another quarter altogether: the Millennium Bug. This is a simple, although potentially catastrophic, design flaw: many computer systems record dates with only two digits for the year, so that '00' (2000) seems to come before '99' (1999). John Major's government took the problem seriously enough to set up Taskforce 2000, an independent group dedicated to publicising the Millennium Bug. Taskforce 2000 established an effective and independent presence, issuing uncompromising warnings to business and government about Britain's Y2K preparedness. The Blair government subsequently withdrew funding from Taskforce 2000 in favour of a new group, Action 2000, which reports directly to the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions.
Taskforce 2000 continues to operate, funded by donations. Its spokesman Robin Guenier takes a dim view of the prospects for the rollover. "Britain appears to be in the top division internationally for Y2K preparedness, but we know that Britain is not doing well enough: in June 1999, just over a quarter of the top 1000 British companies told us their Y2K preparations were not on course. Which is bad news in itself - and also makes me wonder about the rest of the world." While a 75% success rate is considerably better than many people feared in 1997 and 1998, it seems inevitable that Y2K will cause some major system failures - and some knock-on effects on the economy and society.
This bleak outlook contrasts oddly with the advice currently being given by the government, by way of Action 2000. Assessments like Guenier's have often been criticised for 'scaremongering', encouraging panic-buying and hoarding. Action 2000, by contrast, does not even acknowledge the possibility of panic-buying, telling us not to worry if we're "eaten out of house and home over the festive season": "Food manufacturers, distributors and supermarkets throughout the country ... are confident that you'll find their shelves well-stocked". Guenier's judgment is acerbic. "I find Action 2000's approach paradoxical: they're trying to raise awareness of the year 2000 issue, but they're talking down its effects. There's this attitude that we need to play the risks down so as not to cause panic. Well, I haven't seen any sign of panic - not even at this late stage. A bit more panic might not be a bad thing."
Signs of panic - and more apocalyptic emotions - can be found among computer programmers involved in fixing the Millennium Bug; in particular, on the Internet newsgroup comp.software.year-2000 (c.s.y2k for short), set up in January 1997 as a forum for discussion of Y2K among IT professionals. I was a regular contributor (or 'poster') to c.s.y2k until mid-1998, and helped set up a quarterly poll of the group's assessment of the effects of Y2K. The first vote in July 1997 recorded an average of just under 4, on a scale of 1 to 5 - where 1 equates to business as usual and 5 to total social collapse. The group's assessment of the risk rose steadily in subsequent polls, peaking at just under 4.4 in December 1998; it has fallen throughout 1999, and currently stands at under 3.5.
C.s.y2k's focus has also changed over time. Early discussions centred on rates of pay, expected to soar in the run-up to 2000; the group even organised a one-day stay-away - 'Geek Out' - in April 1998, in an attempt to heighten management's awareness of the importance of programmers. During 1998, an influx of non-programmers interested in the anticipated collapse of society, together with the failure of pay rates to take off, led to an increasing focus on forecasting Y2K-related failures - expected to begin early in 1999 - and on survivalist preparations. The quarterly polls show a negative correlation between experience in IT and belief in a Y2K disaster, owing mainly to the presence of non-programmers.
With the end of 1999 looming, the group has now entered a third phase. Bad news is collated assiduously ("shelf-stripping imminent, storm's a commin'" [sic]) while good news is challenged line by line: one poster reacted to a news report that "electricity supplies around the world will remain more or less stable" by demanding a definition of 'more or less'. Other posters have responded to good news by revising their forecasts of the date of the collapse - it may not come until the end of 2000 or even 2001 - and announcing that their survivalist supplies will come in handy whatever happens.
The political outlook of Y2K survivalists is sadly predictable. Firstly, there is a conviction that society will not function under the stress of Y2K: power and supply failures will remove social constraints and unleash a war of each against all. The only solution, therefore, is to be prepared - and to get out of town: "if you live within five miles of a 7-11, you're toast". Secondly, there is hostility towards those who are not preparing; one poster declared himself ready, come the big day, to shoot anyone who made a claim on his family's supplies - friends and neighbours included. The third element is a more general, elitist hostility towards the majority of society; some posters positively look forward to a Y2K disaster. Lastly, many American posters express hostility towards central government; this often takes the form of appeals to the US Constitution, which the current government's actions are thought to contravene. ("Don't you have people over there who collect guns, dress up in camouflage gear and complain about how the government's betraying the Magna Carta?" one American poster once asked me.)
What emerges is a vision of the end of society - the end of the world as we know it, or TEOTWAWKI in survivalist jargon. According to an analysis of Millennium Thought Contagion by the 'memeticist' Aaron Lynch, TEOTWAWKI is a secular vision of hell: "The religious vision of hell has long motivated believers to spread their thoughts in order to save family and friends, making it a thought contagion in its own right. The idea that 'the end is near' implies that one must hurry up and spread the beliefs. ... As the year 2000 approaches, a secular version of the hell-doomsday combination spreads the same way." The problem with this analysis is that a belief in Y2K disaster induces behaviour changes considerably more radical than 'hurrying up and spreading the news'. Moreover, survivalists see something rather more complex around the corner than a 'religious vision of hell' - something freighted with hope as well as fear. The clear implication of many posts to c.s.y2k is that a disastrous Y2K crash will render the existing, illegitimate government unable to control its people; in the wake of its collapse a new elite will emerge, in the form of the Y2K survivalists.
What is suggestive about Lynch's essay is the parallel with religious millennialism. For Richard Landes of the Centre for Millennial Studies what we are seeing is millennial business as usual: like Christians making one last pilgrimage before the Second Coming, Y2K survivalists "have entered apocalyptic time". Suggestively, one long-time c.s.y2k poster, who has been signing off his messages for the last two years with a countdown of the number of days remaining until 2000, ended one recent message thus: "58 days. Beware, the End of Days is coming."
This apocalyptic agenda has attached itself to discussions of the Millennium Bug far beyond c.s.y2k; one of the people most assiduous in promoting it - and the doom-laden prognosis on which it depends - is a Christian commentator called Gary North. The two themes of this discussion meet here; Gary North, like Pat Robertson, is a believer in the Second Coming and a post-millennialist. Specifically, North is a Christian Reconstructionist, working to establish a Christian government in the USA. North's millennialism disavows any direct connection with the year 2000, however. (As North's critics point out, he was foretelling the end of the world before he'd ever heard of Y2K.) In a letter to Landes, he argues that "it has been secularists, and especially left-wing secularists, who have been fascinated for over two hundred years by the Year 2000. ... If you want to know why European political centralists have mandated that banks and businesses revise computer code for the sake of the Euro rather than work to fix Y2K, this is why: the fulfilment of their Year 2000 dream of a New World Order. ... This, in my view, is what Y2K is really all about: destroying the messianic dreams of would-be autonomous men."
A secular millennialism: you don't have to buy into North's world view to find this suggestive. Millennialism does not necessarily imply disaster: even North's vision of the downfall of the New World Order is a kind of hope for the future. The question is how we would recognise this type of millennialism. Landes believes clues can be found a thousand years ago. While Michelet's "terrible laugh" was poetic licence, 1000 AD was a time of real ferment. In France there were huge rallies, called by the nobles in response to demands from the people, whose participants committed themselves to a 'Pax Dei' (Peace of God) - a society in which no Christian would kill another. (As Landes notes, the usual means for dealing with complaints from the peasantry in this period was either execution or the amputation of hands and feet.) The same period saw a rise in pilgrimages and church building throughout Western Europe, as well as the spread of popular heresies beyond the control of the priesthood. The peace movement ebbed after a few years - during which the nobles went back to killing peasants and fighting among themselves - only to revive in the years leading up to 1033, the millennium of the Crucifixion.
"We find the advent of the millennium energising the entire culture," comments Landes. Millennial believers "are capable of great feats of social creativity"; the energies liberated by the utopian movement for absolute peace were subsequently channelled into movements for reform. "The entire eleventh century is known as a time of fervent reform," Landes argues; in the longer view, "much of what we call modern is actually a phenomenon which started out apocalyptic and, in mutating to adjust to the failure of expectations, took on its more stable and recognisable forms".
Where, then, is the radical millennialism of the year 2000? Not in mainstream politics - although there's something millennial about a political leader who harps on the need to make all things 'New', denounces all opposition as a form of 'conservatism' and declares himself ready to 'prepare for a thousand years'. Some pointers can be found in Millennium Culture by Neil Leach (text) and Katja Hock (photography): a quirky and beautiful pocket guide to the dying days of the century, published by ellipsis. "A millennium which is not a millennium, a dome which is not a dome, and an experience which is not an experience: the Millennium Dome Experience." As Leach analyses the National Lottery, the Teletubbies and the cult of Princess Diana, a theme emerges through the postmodern haze: the devaluation of cultural reference points - and ultimately of authenticity - has led to a return of the repressed urge for the sacred. "The very shallowness of our culture of the image is what triggers the mythologisation of the present". Ecstasy replicates religious visions, answering "our contemporary need for the ecstatic"; even hypermarkets are "enchanted religious landscapes". New rituals, signs taken for wonders, a revival of the sacred - it's a suggestive combination. Perhaps the cult of St Diana and the rituals of the dancefloor are the seedbed of a new Pax Dei.
Or perhaps radical millennialism is already afoot. One movement which has gained impetus from the calendar is the Jubilee 2000 Coalition: a campaign for the cancellation of the unpayable debt owed by the world's poorest countries. Appropriately enough, the campaign's title is biblical. Chapter 25 of Leviticus instructs creditors to offer debtors a remission - a repayment holiday - one year in every seven; every fiftieth year (seven times seven, plus one) is to be a jubilee year, in which all debt is cancelled. Founded in 1995, Jubilee 2000 has active campaigns in fifty countries; it has had public endorsements from the Pope, Bill Clinton and Bono, and 'supportive statements' from Tony Blair. The results already achieved by Jubilee 2000 would have been unimaginable a few years ago: cancellation of the debt, a goal of 'Third World' activists since the 1980s, is now a mainstream political issue - and actually looks achievable.
Curiously, Jubilee 2000 shares its name with another campaign, also aiming to get results in 2000. According to this Jubilee 2000, the 'three complexities' used to organise society - government, law and money - are now generating injustice and disorder, and are on the point of collapse. "When governments cease to be meaningful, when laws are totally ignored, when money is worthless, when the whole thing comes apart and no one knows how to fix it, then what do we do?" The answer is simple: we put a better system in its place. Jubilee 2000's Internet-based 'workgroups' are sketching out answers to the basic questions about social organisation - how to ensure that everyone can be fed, housed, educated, etc. The workgroups have one, deceptively simple, guiding principle: the 'three complexities' are to be excluded from any possible solution. The resulting blueprint will be publicised in 2000; what happens next is up to us. "It's the 5% with the money that write the rules. It is our fervent hope that we have finally reached that point in human history when the 95% will determine the future."
Whatever the success of either the Jubilee 2000 Coalition or its utopian twin, the year 2000 seems sure to spark some of the radical social creativity anticipated by Landes. If nothing else, the triple zero prompts us to take the long view - and take the possibility of change seriously. In the 2000 Socialist Register, subtitled 'Necessary and Unnecessary Utopias', Norman Geras notes how curious it is that reformists can have endless patience with "a type of economic relation that has been with us for a few hundred years, unceasingly dealing out human misery together with its achievements", while at the same time dismissing socialism "after one inauspiciously-placed and historically much briefer experiment".
Which is not to say that all millennial visions can be endorsed by the Left: some really are crazy. As Terry Eagleton cautions in the Socialist Register, "Authentic utopian thought concerns itself with that which is encoded within the logic of a system which, extrapolated in a certain direction, has the power to undo it,". Like the peasants in 1000 AD who took the commandment 'thou shalt not kill' literally, like the Jubilee 2000 campaigners who realised that where there are debts there are write-offs, today's radical millennialists will only succeed if they harness the contradictions within the existing system. The result could just be the end of this world as we know it.
Phil Edwards, 15th November 1999
A much shorter version of this piece appeared in the January 2000 issue of Red Pepper.