Total war, upon its debut in the summer months of 1914, rendered unfamiliar and strange the entire preceding century which, one now saw and knew all at once, had spawned its terrible novelties. When it received the name, in 1916, judgements about the actions apposite to the new period, were stumbling in obscurity, though slightly more clear from case to case was what someone must not do (was man nicht tun darf, ist von Fall zu Fall klar),* and with or not with whom. Counsels phrased in the negative, did represent the most one reasonably could expect, until enough time had passed that a mode of analysis suited to the phenomena could be devised.
* Ludwig Wittgenstein, Nachlaß (dated 1948)
(published in his Vermischte Bemerkungen)
Comprised in this type of war, were new applications of industry and technology, in unrestricted submarine warfare and blockades, or aerial bombardment of cities. Less obviously but insidiously, spies, irregular combatants and the underworld, saboteurs were deployed in order not least to foment mutual suspicion amongst the population on the other side and demoralise it, while the more or less willing help of the press, the publishing houses, the publicity machines, the professoriate enabled several kind of propaganda to be delivered, for domestic consumption and foreign. – All this relays only a few items in a necessarily non-exhaustive listing, which yet may suggest how central in this warfare was the psychological factor. And indeed its importance grew, the longer the whole thing wore on, in what seemed an interminableness, where the cumulative effects began to register as if they had been calibrated, in fulfilment of an ulterior aim. Countries engaged in the warfare put themselves to a test, so one might surmise: the reserves of strength in their national lives assessed even as these stores were drawn on and expended, for an indefinite further stretch of time. How well might each hold out, and until when ultimately? Moreover, in the aftermath of hostilities, should an ending supervene at all, in what condition would they happen to find themselves?
Today more than a spectre of total war haunts much of the West, and especially countries in Western Europe. Again audible is the prospective appeal of it and its meaning: noises conveying that they have an advancing future to look forward to, albeit bleakly, or that at least there is, other than definite, something wherewith to feed or stoke the rancour of them, the many whom their own boredom captivates. If some day they too are devoured, what care could it be of theirs, they who ignore history while claiming to heed it, and make a creed of not knowing what they do?
Warfare pursued on a long timetable, by a variety of tactics, from the obviously violent to the refinements of psychological pressure and influence, advances the cause of an Islamic supremacy over Western countries. Though these campaigns ceased years ago to be sporadic and stealthy, still today they have need of pretexts so that those susceptible Westerners whose approval the aggressors count on have a somewhat plausible excuse ready at hand, should it be needed; the main thing that they seek to deny pro forma, is how the spectacle of these conflicts really does enliven and delight them, supplying to them an “experience” which they otherwise would lack and thereby in effect winning a covert assent from them, even though fewer and lesser pains seem to be taken to shroud discreetly their frissons which henceforth are for them a motivating factor, being actually a substance yet more dire than that most terrible drug (jene fürchterlichste Droge), the personhood that each of us imbibes while we are alone (die wir in der Einsamkeit zu uns nehmen).* – From the overall success of this war-formula, patent in Western Europe, palpable elsewhere too, for instance in universities and like institutions in the United States, an observer can reasonably infer a high degree of strategic forethought and canny insight into the mœurs of those who gradually become accomplices if not recruits, during an incessant process reprising the cacophony that was “la guerre totale,” this time playing in a muted, minor key while proving in the recital vastly more langgezogen, winding up its cord incrementally, as if not quite to conceal the extreme limit at which it will be finished off (entortille progressivement son fil, comme pour dissimuler l’extrémité qui la terminera)** – a finale long sought and waited for, to bring an end not simply to the warfare.
* Walter Benjamin, “Der Sürrealismus”
** Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques, ch. xxxvii
What this low dishonest cluster cannot stand, indeed it excites their gall, would be a moment of war whose character differs from the illimitable test of “guerre totale” that actually thrills them. Such a military action, precisely defined and executed, interrupts the continuance of the state they wallow in, illumining it as a whole, a misshapen complex they really do not wish to see (insofar as seeing implies an acknowledgment), no less than others do, but for other reasons. Unlikely in their case, however, is any recoil from the mess they themselves have made and made of themselves; so the distaste something better in them also feels, must be let out, by some manœuvre. A later event may give the occasion; its force erupts, in a rage.
After months of the hostilities against Israel launched by the pogrom of October 7, 2023, an attack which sent out something like an activation signal to the hordes of its enemies throughout other Western countries, who lost no time at all to jubilate in the streets and since then have been doing their parts in furtherance of warfare that is either already a lower-grade variant of total war, or even a prelude to what would be a full-scale eruption of the latter – or would have been, were it not for the timely intervention which came by surprise, two months ago, in a well-defined and well-executed campaign, an endeavour that is limited nearly by definition. At last the country’s armed forces took action against the most potent single weapon in the arsenal of its chief foe, whose purpose was both military and psychological, the programme of building atomic armaments espoused by the régime in Iran; and very rapidly attained many of the operation’s goals. Estimates of the results, from some whose judgements are notable by dint of their combinations of expertise and impartiality, appeared almost immediately. (Can any proper evaluation be reached so rapidly? Yes, quite possibly, given the acceleration in all fields, it can be.) Israel’s campaign, wrote one, is a textbook case in modern operational art. Capacities of warfare were utilised in a synchronized, multi-domain offensive whose goals are definite and limited. The military techniques have been subordinate to the main aim; this already suggests how well this mode of warfare avoids the pit into which “total war” is inclined to fall (whenever the “end” vanishes into the “means”). And the role played by the factor of the unexpected in the outcome, strengthens this assessment. That surprise remains possible in this field, may itself seem surprising, but, of greater importance, it suggests that human deliberation asserts control here over the instruments – and in some crucial regard also reins them in. In so doing, the campaign could exemplify one better possibility amongst some others which are obviously not warfare of the past.* (Amongst those a more perilous is on the march, where they who otherwise would decide the matter affect resignation and hand the decisions over to artificially intelligent instruments, while exclaiming: these servants will take care of it for us (les serviteurs feront cela pour nous)!**)
* John Spencer, “Redefining Shock and Awe,” 1
** Auguste de Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Axël, pt. iv, § 2
Then, in a second round of the surprise, Israel’s chief ally and Iran’s chief enemy, the United States, moving with a similar precision and even more quickly, gave what is, at least temporarily, a coup de grâce to the régime’s atomic ambitions, destroying its best-guarded facilities. It came quite unexpectedly, after a feigned dissensus between the partners, an artfully sustained ruse, though not without some risks, had convinced the other side that nothing of the kind would happen. Both their leaderships, wrote another observer, acted as maestros, conducting their respective symphonies in tandem to ensure that nothing was revealed, nothing shown that didn’t need to be shown.* And indeed, in times when all information practically demands to be shared publicly and every temptation calls out for disclosure, it was an accomplishment to have orchestrated these tactics of dissimulation and secrecy along the way towards an imminent military action. In view of the skilfulness of it, musical analogies are aptly employed, also since they would most probably spring to mind here in any case. Yet even so, why they come in bears thinking on: not the success of the military intervention, such as it was, but rather its limited, definite character summons them, as it were, and renders their application persuasive.
* Eric Schorr, Tweet, June 13, 2025
Just as aptly, this observer’s avowal that deception is licit, even necessary to deploy in war, is prefaced by a Biblical proverb which as he conveys it says just that. And in fact his epigraph is borne out by the King James, indeed, deepened. For there what the book commends as needful in war, with an equal fidelity to the original term, is “wise counsell.”* Well-advised those who make the decisions in warfare may be to utilise some piece of deception; this the word “תַחְבֻּלוֹת” (taghbulot) itself suggests, since its meaning comprises both things. A knowledgeable etymologist avers that written in the singular the Hebrew noun signifies direction, counsel, wisdom, cunning, while the adjective “תַּחְבּוּלָנִי” (taghbulani) denotes the qualities wily, crafty, cunning, tricky. So, one infers, the counsel and the cunning are joined together that they should hold one another in balance, lest in such intricate affairs those who must decide tilt either towards an excess or towards a deficit of caution when the time approaches for the deceptive stratagems they require. Advice and advisors heeded wisely, helps in steering a better course, maximising prospects for safety, minimising chances of shipwreck – which here are no aberrant metaphors. For, as it happens, the source from which the Hebrew terms came, is nautical, a verbal sense something like “rope pulling,” from which also come the words for sailor (חוֹבֵל, ghovel) and rope (חֶבֶל, ghevel).** This kinship in the lexicon, granted it is credible, may call to mind a ship, to which the city or the polity had been likened elsewhere in antiquity, in a famed Socratic remark,*** but at the same time the seafaring Odyssean slyness which became so legendary.**** – Apocryphal though the foregoing may be, still it underscores the delicacy with which, in the optimal case, deceptive stratagems were resorted to in war, evidently in the awareness that their efficacy would lessen whenever applied too often. Some distinction had to be maintained between the confusions they brought about, and the degree of trust upon which common life relied at other times. Their usage, in short, if it were not really exceptional, would at least have to be restricted within fairly clear limits.
* Proverbs, 24, 6
** Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the
Hebrew Language for Readers of English, s. vv. “תַּחְבּוּלָה” and “תַּחְבּוּלָנִי”
*** Plato, Republic, bk. vi, 488a7-89a2
**** regarding the sources of the Homeric poem, see
Victor Bérard, Les Phéniciens et l’Odyssée, vol. ii, bk. xii, ch. i
Neither deceptions, nor the consequences of a too flagrant usage, are kept under constraint in the kind of warfare the other side engages in, whether it is in Israel’s vicinity or, increasingly, amongst the scores elsewhere in the West who’ve allied themselves to that country’s enemies – in hostilities that are intrinsically without limits and with no end of lies. Their peculiar lack of definiteness exerts a force of attraction of its own on those who would like to flatter themselves that they make a difference; especially since October 2023 this odd un-quality itself has seemed to entrance them. No wonder, then, that the great success of the other kind of clever stratagem, an instrument that of itself calls to be utilised only sparingly, against the efficacious threat posed by those Iranian installations, would draw out waves of counter-moves by way of response, much as has transpired so predictably since June. Once more the propaganda machine throughout Western countries was set into high gear; difficulties brought on in Gaza in the train of its denizens’ own acts have been transfigured, thus serving as one more pretext for hostile undertakings against Israel, mounted from the side of the United Nations, by the governments of countries in Western Europe and elsewhere, etc. – actors from which nothing else was to be expected, for patently they have long been yearning for such a chance.
Now official recognition of a non-existent entity is being prepared, a step which some of the more reckless already have taken, in effect rewarding the pogrom of October 7, as should be obvious even to the donkeys (“auch ich muß es verstehen”), provided they still can muster a little bit of honesty. Less patent, but not very, is the reality that – state their names! – the United Kingdom, France, and Germany care not a whit about the suffering of those on whose side they range themselves so ostentatiously. What they and others like them in fact are concerned to achieve, is a prolongation of the conflict between Israel and its adversaries; though in each case the motives vary, the commonalities seem evident enough to summarise.
By this posturing, in the hands of politicians there will remain an item with which the electoral flocks can be herded when needed, for the time being at least; while in these governments’ relations with their counterparts the “common enemy” that is the Jewish state becomes a focal point, facilitating consensus and co-operation that would otherwise not materialise; and moreover, as a further incentive, the existence of this bogeyman is found to excuse the parts in these countries’ histories they would prefer to wish away, even implicitly to justify them long after the fact – be they the perfidy that in effect revoked the Balfour Declaration, the unofficial razzias at the time of the Affaire and the official under the Occupation and Vichy, or the immense crimes of National Socialism (for which, as a renowned joke has it, the Germans at heart never will forgive the Jews). So these governmental efforts are exercises in self-serving publicity more than that they represent serious policy; despite themselves they give their game away, revealing a great lack of bona fides and deflating their moral pretensions at the very moment they try to puff them up. Morally speaking, their stances carry little to no weight, nor would anyone in his right mind trust anything they say, as already a decade and a half ago, in a public debate about the motion “This House Believes a Nuclear Iran is Better Than War,” one of the speeches ended by insisting: a prescient finale by Douglas Murray.*
* debate held at the Cambridge Union, March 3, 2011
However, in terms of today’s global power politics their machinations cannot be ignored, since, though one hopes that here too they will prove not to matter, the interventions, by design or otherwise, are helping to advance the arrival of the next régime or form of rule, accelerating the transformation of Western nations which one has grounds to characterise in the negative, as “civilisational suicide.”* As if an interminable line of pallbearers (une immense défilade de croque-morts)** were on the march through the avenues of public life, now one witnesses libels with a terrible pedigree again circulate, and not only through the usual channels. The spectacle of the co-ordinated defamation is met with glee, more and more openly, since, as the libel-lovers appear to believe, here a way is being cleared to an order which, how ever terrible it may prove, will at least be new. So, one asks, how boring/bored must their lives have been, to ready them to partake in today’s explosions of the oldest hatred, if only as onlookers pleased by the crime-scenes? – Frequently the proponents no longer cover themselves in deniability; they have calculated that even a residual prudence is not needed. And indeed, now on their agenda is the pulverising of how ever much consistency remains to the terms and the themes that once were weightier. Absurdly they may deem themselves apostles of a new morality; but the mistreatment of the political lexicon brings older names to mind. Because their attack on the words is indefinite and unlimited, much like the warfare they do an adjunct’s part to further by other means, patently mixed into the undertaking are vandalism and nihilism. Yet when those -isms become virulent, as seems to be the case today, how to work effectively against them? It is a quandary. – Deployed carefully, sparingly, the words “vandalism” and “nihilism” may catch some aspects of the problem, but caution is advisable, lest an analyst imagine that knots such as these could ever really be untied. For then he might err and ensnare himself in the trap serious endeavours to treat a question: as a disease (behandeln eine Frage; wie eine Krankheit)*** do tend to set, running headlong into the danger that the process of treatment itself will be infected, metastasising as an illness of its own and even an attraction. Nor is this the sole pitfall to avoid; too often the point of departure is forgotten: “vandalism” and especially “nihilism” (both the words and the things), more than simply a fascination, exert a perverse appeal on many. To wield them at the point where we’ve arrived,**** could actually turn to the advantage of the allies in other Western countries of Israel’s enemies, they who delight in anticipating the coming universal caliphate,***** if only due to a renewed public notice. Under the tenuous conditions of political hygiene today, terminological cordons sanitaires, in our countries, would not be means of protection (dans nos pays, les cordons sanitaires ne seraient point un moyen de protection) against them, indeed might conceivably work against us, insofar as such barriers would soon themselves become vectors for spreading and reinforcing the sickness (ces cordons deviendraient bientôt eux-mêmes des foyers de renforcement et de dissémination de la maladie).****** – So the question remains: what is to be done. On the political plane and in the sphere of personal relations, how to handle those who reek of the oldest hatred, since the pogrom of October 7 has been heeded as a signal that once again they can exude and enjoy its stench (fœtor antijudaicus)?
* a phrase of J. D. Vance’s, quoted in Andrew Buncombe,
“JD Vance: Europe is engaging in civilisational suicide”
** Charles Baudelaire, “De l’Héroïsme de la vie moderne”
*** Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen, pt. i, § 255
**** compare Giorgio Agamben, A che punto siamo? L’epidemia come politica
***** see Bat Ye’or, Europe, Globalization, and the Coming Universal Caliphate
****** Adrien Proust, Essai sur l’hygiène internationale, pt. i, ch. v
Addressing how personal relationships may be navigated through the tensions of today, would take me too far afield. – As concerns the matter of the public figures, a strict policy of silence in regard to them, under different circumstances, might be the cleanest option, but now it is redolent of unaffordable luxury. More befitting current affairs would be tiny stratagems that encourage or provoke them to spin out the rope with which they hang themselves in the view of that part of public opinion the anti-Israel propaganda has not managed to inveigle. And in some egregious cases, they do produce great lengths of it! – rather perplexing to see in the instance of commentators who not long ago showed notable promise, but have tuckered out, their incandescence departed, as if brought (one wonders how) to cast themselves into the gutter.* With such little stratagems too, prudence requires that their usage be seldom, the better to elicit a self-exposure from hollow people who individually have virtually nothing but rather, as it were, collectively are had by immemorial bile, envy, and rancour, affects or sad passions which are audible in nearly their every utterance. May they be moved to ventilate it all again and again – this repetition will offer the best course of treatment that still is possible, though not for them, since they are too far gone, but for others as a prophylaxis.
* On this point a mea culpa is in order, since one of these mercenaries, as they’ve shown themselves to be, who did once impress me was lauded in an earlier essay.
An illustration for the better usage of such a stratagem is provided by one witty retort to a figure prominent amongst the sectors of international officialdom which never miss an opportunity to vilify Israel regardless how spurious the pretext may be, a special rapporteur of the United Nations whose motivation, rather patently, has been animus against the Jewish people, modulated evidently by an avid desire for self-display. Both impulsions were active in an interview she gave earlier this year, when, asked to elucidate her position in the question of anti-Semitism, the appointee chose to put on a performance, huffing and puffing, crossing her arms, and wearing frustration and arrogance on her face* – making a spectacle of herself, in a bit of low theatre. And her histrionic streak she accentuates by tweeting out often, in answer even to slight notes of non-news, the phrase “no words” – a gesture that does rather invite jokes at her expense, once it became habitual. But as haste itself speeds up, how many times might make a habit? Already very few, it seems. So, in punctual response, as if to accept the invitation, a month ago there came the witty retort. Hope spreads around the world (la speranza si diffonde in tutto il mondo), a sharp critic of the United Nations’ hostility towards Israel tweeted back at her (in her own language, though she furnishes not the best of advertisements for Italian education), every time you announce “Words fail me!” (ogni volta che continui a dire «Non ho più parole»). Punctiliously he appended several such exclamations from her feed, lest they be disappeared, since real scrutiny is anathema for her lot. Yet, so one hears, hope is barred from some establishments, and in the instance of this gatekeeper too it has to be abandoned. Very soon “words” occur to her once more, and, of course, then you do tweet again (poi twitti di nuovo).** – With his witty dart he points out how she is a hollow functionary whom only air of the oldest hatred does inflate (or, in other words, blows up).
* Mohammad Tawhidi, Tweet, February 14, 2025
** Hillel Neuer, Tweet, July 16, 2025
In her officious comportment she is typical of cohorts beyond the United Nations; her sort are numerous in and around the power-centres of the United Kingdom and the European Union as a whole and several of its member-states in particular. Amidst such environs, to be sure, there are also those who will mention their dissenting views in the matter of Israel and other related questions in confidence, but otherwise keep silent, whether from calculations of their self-interest, or from sheer cowardice, or from both at once, as an anecdote suggests which recently was relayed by Murray.* However, taking the factor of self-selection into account, not to mention forces such as informal surveillance, conformism, etc., in all likelihood there they constitute not only a silent, invisible minority but also quantitatively a very small one. – Predisposing the greater numbers of these officials, along with the counterparts established in non-official groupings (some day soon these people may be known as Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter), towards the positions against Israel, is the awareness that this focus strengthens the sense of cohesion amongst those quarters which in its absence would largely splinter. Sentiment of “we” is what this phantasm of a “common enemy” is meant to foster, and its effect may suggest why the question is accorded so much time and energy in Brussels and the capitals of the member-states in Western Europe; the effort figures as an experiment that if successful may provide a model for similar procedures on a vastly larger scale. An obvious challenge would have to be met, namely, that the great European “we” it is the aim to conjure up does not exist at all, neither in political, nor in military, nor in social terms (dass das große europäische “Wir”, das dort beschworen wird, weder politisch, militärisch noch gesellschaftlich überhaupt existiert).** Now, watching all this unfold, especially during the last months, old suspicions recur, and this time even more markedly than before. Who or what stands behind the conjuration? – with a squint of eye, one may notice phantoms rising out of the European Union’s own past. – Perhaps they never ceased to guide it, covertly, as powers have been centralised. And then the readiness in several European capitals to seek pretexts for measures against Israel in the course of the war, looks sinister indeed. But why would one expect anything else from those who are (shocking to say it) continuing what an “international of ex-Nazis” had such a large share in beginning, as per the researches of the historian Bat Ye’or? (Passing through this sector of history, not tarrying unduly, was done elsewhere, and I’ve no need to rehearse the topic now.)
* interview with Guy Spier, June 12, 2025
** Julian Reichelt, Tweet, March 1, 2025
Efforts from above to conjure into being a European “we”-sentiment which does not really yet exist, dead set against Israel, or rather, all the defamations large and small that are substituted for it, as a negative focal point, are abetted from below by the concurrence of large numbers of adherents to the left-wing, or what deems itself such, particularly in countries of Western Europe where “submission” (إسلام) is envisioned with a jouissance already rumbling so loud that one wonders when the pleasure of it will dare openly to speak its name. Little does it matter to these cohorts that they take part in what is genealogically and more than genealogically a drama written by National Socialists, for though many of them divinise history they omit to read much of it. The spectacle they then make of themselves would be embarrassing in its ignorance and illiteracy, did the consequences not overshadow it; for whatever might be the changes they are assisting to bring about elsewhere than in Europe, on this continent their labours do contribute to spread the desert they call peace.* What a sad coda in the case of a movement that took pains during its late nineteenth-century heyday not to lend itself out to other powers (and the oldest hatred indeed is a power)! Anno 2025 its actions often have the look of senile gestures, those bits of behaviour manifest in an infancy a human being transcends for the longest part of his lifetime and then displays again in its senescence (when their expression perhaps is sharpened by residues of spite). Yes, analogies drawn from the cycle of biological existence are apposite once more; their usage does appear to clarify some facets of the, in a word, lives of groups in the public domain nationally and internationally. Thus, if animus against Israel holds factions on the European left together which otherwise would turn against one another, or if it postpones an outbreak of their strife, this condition brings to mind, in general terms, a very complex organism’s mode of persistence during its lifespan’s last active phases. Similar comparisons, moreover, seem apt in view of the actions against Israel announced so breathlessly by the governments in London, Paris, Berlin, and other capitals: they are exhalations redolent of entities nearing some sort of convulsive end. (For example, the Bundeskanzler’s suspension of arms sales to Israel, betrays the fumbling of amateurs (handwerkliche Stümperhaftigkeit),** a sign of both premeditation and hesitation amidst the ranks of German officialdom, indicative of crude intramural machinations that have nothing at all to do with morality.) And then it is but a small step to regard the vicissitudes of those nations under a similar biological aspect: when they are said to be committing “suicide,” the word denotes a protracted dying by something like a wilful self-starvation.
* vide the words of Calgacus quoted in Tacitus, Agricola, 30
** Julian Reichelt, Tweet, August 8, 2025 (i), and also the one following
At present, how readily one turns to the life-force of an organism as a source of political metaphors! Yet those who want to observe but also to understand and assess today’s events, should link that facility to the inarticulate presentiment now widespread, though many of course will never admit to it, that a variant of total war either is nigh or has already commenced. Between these things there may be close connections which a finer analysis could help to discern (but not to untie); then it can begin to describe how such interminable hostilities are guided by the notion of race. – A better idea might come of the dismay, even the consternation these priorities in Western Europe arouse in other regions of the European Union, those which have shown themselves to be hardier and not so largely oblivious, captivated neither by phantoms of that organisation’s past, nor by phantasms of their own devising, or both at once. Thus, some governments in Central Europe, to their credit, have not joined the campaigns against Israel, while they speak boldly when identifying real problems in Brussels. With regard to the latter, one of these findings carries implications that are especially shocking (to perceive them ears well-schooled in history may be needed). In effect, suggests a foremost critic, the power-centres throughout the European Union serve as locales for, to utilise the renascent idiom of organic life, the breeding of a biological species, even a new one. Officialdom and its auxiliaries spawning in the European Union, represent less a caste, than a set of people who want to be taken and to take themselves for an incipient race. – A self-conception which their conduct announces! – To convey better what that attitude signifies, was one of his aims during an address given last year; a few strokes created a silhouette of the type: professional responsibilities have afforded him occasions to observe it and them in the type’s own habitat. (His remarks apply at once to individuals and to the group of which they are members. Discernment patent in the phrasing of what he said, and a memory well-stocked with better literature, together could suggest that had his life taken another course, he might have made a capable author. Who knows, perhaps it would have been an authorship in English as well as in his native tongue, where his talents probably are very considerable, in view of how deftly he can handle today’s lingua franca.) In talks with Western Europeans, reported Viktor Orbán, leaving it to his public to understand that what those counterparts’ actions say is the key thing, not their words, in every gesture we feel grandiosity instead of greatness. To expand a little on his pointed statement: unsure of themselves, compensating slightly or unsubtly for it, these types tend to reveal they are aware of the divergence of their aspirations and their reality. Moreover, despite themselves they notice time is working against them and their plans; sentiment rises in them of being wrongly thwarted. – So his silhouette seems true to life, but what kind of life? Then, suddenly, the insight: the attitude he describes is the hallmark of some grouping other than a people. These types, numerous now in Western Europe in this prolonged sunset era as they too regard it, as ostentatiously grandiose and inwardly disgruntled as they can be, do think of themselves as a race whose life has barely started and yet already it sees its expiration ahead. Bereft of prospects, flush with debris, with them a situation has developed that we can call emptiness, and the feeling of superfluity that goes with it gives rise to aggression. – This also is well-observed and stated; they apprehend something of what those forerunners who made their peace with totalitarian rule felt nonetheless, fear that its dispensations over any of them would prove other than peaceful. Angst like that is disclosed again as an accelerant force, if only by the speed it lends an emergence of the “aggressive dwarf” as a new type of person.*
* “Lecture of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at the 33rd
Bálványos Summer Free University and Student Camp”