The Unbearable: Toward an Antifascist Aesthetic

A really thought provoking article on irrational politics — and you’re probably thinking of irrational in an entirely pejorative way, but here it means a politics that uses symbols and myths rather than “facts” and arguments. Knausgaard contemplates the appeal of Nazism to Germans in its symbols and philosophical promise to provide simplicity and depth, rather than as a response to the collapse of the Weimar Republic, mass unemployment and other economic and historical factors.

It strikes me that — at the very least — we need to understand this rather than see Trump, Brexit and other modern irrationalities simply in terms of a failure of reason.