A must-read book Richard Seymour, 2024 The pseudo-insurrection in Washington, DC, on 6 January 2021, intended to stop a supposed theft of the presidential election and restore Trump to power, was fantasy putschism minted by online disinfotainment: Caesarism for the QAnon “generation. But it was not the last of its kind. In the space of less than a year, an alleged coup attempt by the neo-Nazi Reichsbürger movement in Germany was thwarted, supporters of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro stormed government buildings in the hope of triggering ‘intervenção militar’ (military intervention), and the Russian paramilitary Wagner Group marched halfway to Moscow to force out the military leadership they blame for betraying the war on Ukraine. In every case, the pseudo-insurrection was justified by conspiracist paranoia. Mass violence in other forms, each motivated by its own fantasies of doom and redemption, has been enabled by national governments. In the Philippines, the line between police m...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51