2887911pm: forgotten conjunctures/toxic chauvinism
We mùst retùrn to the convulsions òf thàt period in order to understand our ówn age of ànger! For the Frenchmen who bombed music halls, cafés & the Paris Stock Exchange in the late 19th century, & the French anarchist newspaper that issued the call to 'destroy' the 'den' (a music hall in Lyon) where 'the fine flower of the bougeoisie & of commerce' gather after midnight, have more in common than we realize with the ISIS-inspired young EU citizens who massacred nearly 200 people @ a rock concert, bars & restaurants in Paris in November 2015! Mùch in our experience resonates with that of people in the 19th century. German & then Italian nationalists called for a 'holy war' móre than a century before the word 'JIHAD' èntered common parlance, & young Europeans all through the 19th century joined all kínds of political crusades in lots of remote places, resolved on liberty or DEATH!? Revolutionary messianism - the urge for a global, definitive solution, the idea of the party as a SECT OF TRUE BELIEVERS, & of the revolutionary leader às SEMI-DEVINE HERO -prospered among Russian students recoiling from the cruelty & hypocrisy of their ROMANOV RULERS. Thèn às nòw, the sense of being humiliated by arrogant & deceptive elites was widespread, cutting across national, religious & racial lines. History, however, ìs fàr fròm being repeated, despite many continuities with the past. Our predicament, in the global age of frantic individualism, ìs unique & dééper, its dangers more diffuse & less predictable. Mass movements such as Nazism, Fascism & Communism, which claimed to innovatively mobilize collective where it is easy to feel that there ìs nó sùch thing as either society or state, & that there is only a war of àll agáinst àll? Théir evidently natural rights to life, liberty & security, already challenged by deep-rooted inequality, are threatened by political dysfunction & economic stagnation, ànd, in places affected by climate change, a scarcity & suffering characteristic of pre-modern eco-nomic life. The result is, as Arendt feared, a 'tremendous increase in mutual hatred & a somewhat universal irritability of everybody against everybody else', or RESSENTIMENT! An existential resentment of other people's being, caused by an intense mìx of envy ànd sense of humiliation & powerlessness, RESSENTIMENT, as it lingers ànd deepens, poisons civil society & undermines political liberty, & is presently making for a global turn to authoritarianism & toxic forms of chauvinism. Zoiets kun je {helaas pindakaas} pas goed inzien, uitdrukken & nog veel verder blijven beschrijven ná 2 wereldoorlogen, Koude Oorlog, IJZEREN ÈN BAMBOEGORDIJNEN, mijnenvelden & intercontinental abc-wapens met hùn wereldwijde invloeden over ÈN wéér op àlle gebieden des levens in achterbuurten, villawijken & massasportmeetings...
Asih, man, 80 jaar
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