The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State shows how the cataclysmic vision of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi echoes violent Christian millenarian movements in the 16th century and in Divine Destruction, journalist Stephanie Hendricks studies contemporary Christian Dominionists, who believe that climate change should not be stalled but accelerated in order to bring about the Second Coming of Jesus and the beginning of God’s Kingdom on Earth. The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages outlines how medieval Christendom abounded in apocalyptic movements, where the book of Revelations was considered indispensable to political comprehension. “There are no breaks on this train!” proclaims a popular meme series that pictures the President of the United States as the alt-right mascot Pepe the Frog, helming what can be identified as “the rapetrain,” which in this memeplex functions as a symbol of joyful, unstoppable victory through destruction. The desire for destruction, apocalypse, and disintegration takes different forms, from eschatological to bloodthirsty. This is the only issue worth fighting for. Let us therefore apply ourselves to seeing things - values, concepts, institutions - perish, seeing them disappear. This is as marvellous as being there at the beginning. Imagine the amazing good fortune of the generation that gets to see the end of the world. ![]() Who would not want to witness the end of the world, to feel that one dies without regret, leaving nothing behind? Only worse now than they had been before but that, despite our cosmic insignificance, our times are the most significant of all: the end times. It is historically ubiquitous to believe that things are not “A refounder of future ruins, if you like,” writes François Laruelle, “that’s the best definition of philosophy.” This ostensibly cosmological problem casts its shadow over human affairs. Philosophy trades in re-articulating this matter, from Nietzsche’s poetic vision of humans as “clever animals,” whose knowledge cannot save them from the universe’s relentless entropy, to Ray Brassier’s recent attempt at unbinding philosophy from the paralysis of unthought solar extinction. Human thought, whether in word or meme, has long been molded by the fact that the Homo sapiens are a species of ape, living on a rock surrounded by a deafening void, circling around a slowly dying star. Alice Walker, Possessing the Secret of Joyīook chapter from Post Memes (Punctum books) When the ax came into the forest, the trees said:
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