
The ‘cosplay Caliphate’ of ISIS is a deadly fantasy, but a familiar one - Thevet
http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/the-appeal-of-isis-isnt-so-far-from-that-of-tolkien/
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krig
There is a parallel, but it is shallow. The author keeps pointing out the
differences between the fantasy of Tolkien and the mythology within ISIS, and
the more you think about it, the less the comparison holds. Religion, from the
outside, is no different than any other romantic fiction. Does that mean that
all romantic fiction and religion is essentially the same? I think that is a
very shallow analysis.

You could draw similar parallels to any narrative which inspires actions that
seem mad from the outside. The christian right of the US has the apocalyptic
narrative of the Rapture, just waiting for the right circumstances to blow
into the same kind of fanatic destruction as that of ISIS.

There is an allure in pointing to the mythology as the inspiration for some
misdeed as if that may provide some insight, but I don't think so. The simple
fact is that it doesn't take much to inspire us humans into doing things that
seem unthinkable to others. Just about any fiction can inspire just about any
deed. Mark Chapman shot Lennon after reading The Catcher in the Rye. Yes,
perhaps it says something about the nature of humanity. But then what?

From the outside, any of these narratives seem like cosplay, like play acting.
Just look at Manson or Waco, for example. The fiction is always ridiculous.
The acts are real, though.

"A lot of people like cosplay." Everyone, apparently.

~~~
api
I think the author is talking more 'meta' than this, about the dark side of
the deep human desires and archetypes that these stories tap into. It goes far
beyond the near-universal story template of the 'return of the king.' That's
just one permutation. What it's really all about is the need for meaning and
significance to one's life.

There's a light side too. The human need for transcendent, powerful,
_meaningful_ motives can inspire amazing achievements.

One of my favorite modern crusades-in-the-making is the colonize Mars crowd. I
could see it drawing its appeal from much the same psychological basis as
ISIS, but channeling that energy in a much more interesting and productive
route. I can also imagine the soul searching articles of future Bourgeois
critics: "why would upper middle class young people with promising futures
give it all up to go try to settle a desolate, airless, radiation-bathed
desert and likely die in the process?" Yet I predict they would, and in far
greater numbers than we see joining ISIS.

The need for meaning and significance can drive people to do the near-
impossible and inspire us all, or it can drive them to take a gun and shoot up
a school or go join a death cult. I personally suspect we'll see the latter in
proportion to the absence of the former. One thing this author doesn't really
address is how the appeal of ISIS (and other smaller-scale episodes of
apocalyptic-nihilistic violence) is rooted in the banality of our culture, and
what we might do about that. We spend an amazing amount of time and energy on
worthless bullshit, and an equally amazing amount of energy convincing
ourselves it's important.

~~~
krig
Well, I think your thoughts on the dark side of human desire and how it
relates to fiction are very close to my own. I don't think the article is even
close to probing those questions. The article is just drawing a very lazy
comparison but not digging any deeper than that, insinuating that there's
something specifically about this kind of "return of the king"-narrative that
can inspire something like ISIS. I think that's turning the cause and effect
backwards, and it's shallow. It's the "dark side of the deep human desires" as
you say that inspires these fictions, not vice versa.

~~~
api
It's a little shallow but not wrong. It definitely got me thinking in that
direction, and it's a great deconstruction.

------
ChuckMcM
Perhaps the only thing I got from that was that young people in wealthy
democracies do not understand how a government like theirs works and so do not
understand the power they hold within themselves.

Way too often I've encountered young adults who express both a dislike of the
way things are, and a feeling of helplessness to do anything about it. For
those who feel strongly about things that "should" be done but aren't, the
idea of just shooting anyone who disagrees with you appeals to them.

There are two problems, one is that political change is gradual enough that
its hard to see when you are young. I point out victories like gay marriage
rights, civil rights before them, and the fact that prohibition, as a
constitutional amendment, was reversed by the people. But I totally get how
unsatisfying it is to have to wait 5 years for any movement. I also ask them
to look around at their friends, for the world is made up of people who have
grown up from kids, and if you look in the "CEO" ranks or the "politician"
ranks you will see they cluster around ages. Those people were babies before
and are running the world now, when you and your friends are their age you
will likely be running the world so think about which friends you want to
motivate into office and which ones you would rather not get elected :-).

------
Apocryphon
The connections to Tolkien are cool, but isn't always the case with right-wing
extremism? Fascists from Mussolini's regime to the Third Reich idolized
imagined versions of their ancient nations. Even today, the Confederate flag
represents a romanticized, fictitious version of the Antebellum South. Western
right-wing extremists love to collect memorabilia of their fallen regimes, and
historical reenactments are nothing if not scholarly cosplay.

~~~
spiritplumber
Yeah.

One good thing that came out of it is that the Fascist regime (which,
incidentally, didn't do very well on the trains running on time front) put
some organized effort in restoring and preserving Roman buildings and
artifacts.

The current crop of assholes can't even get that far and is in fact doing the
exact opposite.

------
guard-of-terra
You should just proceed reading Simlarillion which will discourage you from
persuading heroic goals.

It's a sad story of permanent apocalypse, how everything falls apart due to
proud and heroic attitudes of characters.

I don't think young people will understand it tho. I only enjoyed it when
turned 30.

[https://pp.vk.me/c627125/v627125869/6689/GK3YLpGn9eM.jpg](https://pp.vk.me/c627125/v627125869/6689/GK3YLpGn9eM.jpg)
here bookmarked is every death of a named character in Silmarillion. It's that
serious.

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arethuza
LotR took on a new dimension for me when I read more about the horrors of the
Western Front in WW1 and a wee note that Tolkien wrote in a letter:

 _“My ‘Sam Gamgee’ is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the
privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior
to myself.”_

[https://johngarth.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/sam-gamgee-and-
to...](https://johngarth.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/sam-gamgee-and-tolkiens-
batmen/)

~~~
sliverstorm
I can't find it now, but I once read an interesting bit comparing Gandalf to a
ranking officer- knowing far more about the big picture than any private,
always disappearing to tackle other bigger problems, and swooping in with
overwhelming support to turn the tide at the last moment when circumstances
look dire for the foot soldiers.

------
jessaustin
_...a dress-up festival of blood-soaked nostalgia whose very pretensions to
antiquity mark it as the rankest kind of modern innovation._

This reminds me of Ernst Gellner's critique of the "natural explanation" for
nationalism. There was no ancient Germany, France, UK, etc. to which the
modern states can trace a lineage. (Even the Roman Empire was not in any sense
Italy.) Those nations were created as a response to the modern situation, just
as this zany caliphate is a response to our postmodern world.

------
afarrell
This reminds me also of the idea of warfare as a force purifying yourself
personally from the mundane failures of personality and habit that frustrate
you day-to-day. It is strange to look at an advertisement such as
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=MZ73FEXSQRQ](https://youtube.com/watch?v=MZ73FEXSQRQ)
which I found so compelling as a preteen and which now looks laughably
cartoonish.

------
api
This is utterly brilliant and absolutely needed to be said.

I don't see it as bashing Tolkien per se, but as pointing out the dark side of
nostalgic fantasy. Tolkien's fiction is wonderful to read, but it can also be
deconstructed pretty brutally.

There's an author who did the ultimate in this area. He told the story from
Mordor's point of view:

[http://www.salon.com/2011/02/15/last_ringbearer/](http://www.salon.com/2011/02/15/last_ringbearer/)

A similar deconstruction can be carried out in the real world against, for
example, the nostalgic hipsterism of people like James Howard Kunstler. I
actually agree with many of Kunstler's aesthetic criticisms of suburbia, but
if you dig deeply into his corpus you find a strong thread of reactionary
elitism -- what I call a "white pastoral fantasy" set in an imaginary past.

Of course nostalgic fantasy isn't the only thing you can deconstruct...
"progress" oriented sci-fi like Star Trek can also be turned upside down. A
friend of mine sort of popped that bubble long ago when he pointed out that
Star Trek is exclusively told from the point of view of military starships
with world-destroying weapons. Think that might be a biased perspective? Would
the "Singapore in space" federation really be a good place to live? Ever
notice that there's basically no culture, music, or art?

~~~
fennecfoxen
> Ever notice that there's basically no culture, music, or art?

No culture? What are you talking about? You've got Sir Patrick Stewart
performing the likes of Gilbert and Sullivan, Shakespeare, _et cetera_.
Culture!!! ;)

More seriously: proper cultural artifacts from the future are really hard to
convincingly fabricate in the context of a cultural artifact of the present.
Most of the time people just toy with the world's current trends, like the
gritty downtown Los Angeles nightlife of _Blade Runner_ or the self-parody of
the 1980s in _The Fifth Element_. Star Trek's "culture" is a shallow
reflection of 1990s Hollywood trends. Witness the fetish for tribal artifacts
from distant alien peoples, cherry-picked for display by the ostensibly
erudite, stripped from anything resembling the visceral reality of their
original context, and pseudo-analyzed in order to support some trite lesson
upholding only purely modern values.

But it's okay, since we're all understanding, empathetic, tolerant, and
perfectly inoffensive people, and our introspective self-examination will
never reveal otherwise. :P

~~~
api
Good point.

It'd be easier to pull off today due to the fragmentation and fractalization
of modern culture. By mining smallish, fringe, and new aesthetic movements you
could portray a convincing future aesthetic to a mostly naive audience.

Toss this on the Enterprise and it'd be convincingly 24th century:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brvFJZT_YjM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brvFJZT_YjM)

------
7952
I am not sure it is wise over think this. Perhaps the things that we find so
repulsive about ISIS are exactly what attracts certain people from western
countries. They want to attack women, abuse people and kill. These are hardly
unusual traits.

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selimthegrim
I think David Brin likes to make similar points, but sbout feudalism and Star
Wars.

