--- Tara Isabella Burton, in conversation with Richard Aldous about her new book, Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World, The American Interest podcast June 2020.
From timecode 19:56
There's a phenomenon I've seen since Trump was elected, but also anytime something bad or surreal happens in the news, the sort-of Twitter meme becomes, "Well, this season of America is terrible, this season of America has jumped the shark, can you believe the writers added this plot twist?" And it's a joke, but I think it reveals something very real, which is the sense of, you know, we're aestheticizing our own destruction, as Walter Benjamin might say.
According to Wikipedia, Benjamin said that "fascism tends towards an aestheticization of politics", in the sense of a spectacle in which it allows the masses to express themselves without seeing their rights recognized, and without affecting the relations of ownership which the proletarian masses aim to eliminate. Benjamin said, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935), ch.XIX/Epilogue:
Fascism attempts to organize the newly proletarianized masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property. The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life. (...) Mankind, which in Homer’s time was a spectacle for the Olympian gods, has become one for itself. (...) Communism responds by politicizing art.
At 3:38, Richard Aldous notes that she sums up the key elements of religion as meaning, purpose, community, and ritual.
