Religious identification with populist authoritarians is now ubiquitous in the US, Israel, India, Turkey and elsewhere. Put another way, universal fascism is inveterate to our very epoch and, as a constitutively archetypal, planetary phenomenon, no national, political fix exists.
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Copy of tweet, image and quote tweet here:
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Pictured speaker / quoted attribution: Nick, six pictured bodies Saved source record associated with pictured writing; full saved record, not an exact pictured excerpt. Passage boundary: Source: archive.nickroutledge.org/post/1892595125374611634 Preserve quoted-author distinctions; the containing tweet does not confer authorship. Here we are, then, upon the threshold of a transcultural, transnational, religio-political complex of fascist universalism and its demonic perversion of an authentic, planetary yearning offering us the only way out of our 'war of all against all', rightly called salvation. Image one: Agreed and, frankly, a worldwide contagion: Jihadists, Zionists, Hindutvavadis, 969ers, Crusaders, they're all at it. And whilst we're not the only only ones suffering from this plague, nor are we the only ones God welcomes. This, hardly news to planetary prophetology, of course. Quote Tweet Clearly, the supercharged universality of this phenomenon - pat, predictable, cookie-cutter dialectics of ethnonationalism, purity and exclusion, span a dizzying array of languages, cultures and borders, just now - powerfully affirms its common, transcultural, archetypal origins. Image two: 1/ Hence the fundamental nature, role and promise of the political liberator, savior or Great Emancipator, here to revision the bodies, minds and souls of men in a bastardized, religio-nationalist image of the messianic hopes of our times. The transcendent function, perverted. Quote Tweet In other words, the bastard appeal of such ethno-nationalist analogs is universally paradigmatic. How then, to effectively address the immense planetary forces encouraging the emergence and powerful enchantment of such personalities and their platforms? Quote tweet: Hardly news, even as the illuminating recognition that no one culture, creed, philosophy, religion, nation or otherwise can save us, inevitably requires a planetary reckoning with an inclusive eschatology. We're saved, finally, by the beauty and brilliance of our togetherness.
Open original document@trippfuller 🧵1/12 'Opening up a revolutionary chance.' A question. Did Benjamin's messianic/revolutionary thesis ultimately succumb to a Franco-Vichy-Nazi storm uncannily paralleling the global, fascist surge of our time? The gas chambers were, of course, but a year ahead. Context, then.
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Only in the posthumously published letters of Gershom Scholem have I come across the same note of helpless clear-sightedness and warning. Over and over, even prior to 1933, my father labored to warn, to alert, to awaken to refuge not only those whom he and my mother had left behind in Prague or in Vienna, but the French political-military establishment with which his international dealings had brought him into contact. His “pessimism,” his “alarmist prognostications” elicited only officious dismissal or hostility. Family and friends refused to move. One could come to reasonable terms with Herr Hitler. The unpleasantness would soon pass. The age of pogroms was over. In diplomatic and ministerial circles, my father was regarded as a tedious Cassandra, prone to well-known traits of Jewish hysteria. Papa lived those rancid 1930s like a man trapped in cobwebs, lashing out and sick at heart. There was also, however, a more private and constant regret. George Steiner