Friday, July 21, 2023

Anti-gulagism

"Total abhorrence of dominant ideologies. And anti-gulagism is the dominant ideology today, The anti-gulag priests are every bit as bad as the gulag torturers. The sheep have taken over from the beasts of the apocalypse."

Back in 1983, when the postmodernisation of western thought was only just taking shape, Jean Baudrillard scribbled the above, slightly self-contradictory, statement.

I mean, are the sheep really as bad as the beasts of the apocalypse? Are Coutts & Co as bad as the Stasi? etc.

The real interest in this observation however is that Baudrillard pinpointed the way our political polarities have been turning non-binary (for want of a better term), the way all oppositions have become stuck in a self-referential, practically auto-catalytic whirl, such that it has become increasingly difficult to place the lines between the priesthood and heretics, between the dogmatists and those simply seeking freedom of conscience and operation in society.

Even between the different kinds of hooved beasties. 

 

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