This is not a full-blown book review, but having invested several weeks' worth of bedtime reading and just having finished Aldous Huxley's 1952 nonfiction work, "The Devils of Loudun," I feel that it's worth comment. I confess that I first came across the subject thanks to Ken Russell's 1971 demoniacally extravagant epic, "The Devils," seen when I was less squeamish in my choice of films. English novelist Huxley is best known for his futuristic 1932 novel, "Brave New World," discussed a couple of years ago by Margaret Atwood in The Guardian.
The Devils of Loudun is not an easy read by any means, but it is a fascinatingly true story told with erudition and insight. A 17th century tale of possession, madness, and power in Louis XIII's France. The power was exerted by Cardinal Richelieu (who is synonymous with "éminence grise"), the possession was probably bogus, and the madness was the mass hysteria over witchcraft that Richelieu's henchmen stirred up as a means of dealing with the Cardinal's (or the state's) enemies. Huxley coined phrases to describe the phenomenon: "crowd delirium" and "herd-intoxication." Think housing bubble and "irrational exuberance" in our contemporary context.
Huxley wrote The Devils of Loudun in the early Fifties, when he had already been living in California for a number of years. With the ravages of Nazism and Fascism still very much in evidence, and the Cold War putting a chill on the wartime cooperation with Soviet Communism, isms were central to Huxley's tale: Catholicism under threat from Protestantism, and exorcism to banish the devils that were conveniently identified with an inconvenient priest in a town that was too tolerant of Protestants.
Huxley's book is anything but dated. Just read this:
By the beginning of the eighteenth century witchcraft had ceased to be a serious problem. It died out, among other reasons, because almost nobody now bothered to repress it. For the less it was persecuted, the less it was propagandized. Attention had shifted from the supernatural to the natural. From about 1700 to the present day all persecutions in the West have been secular... For us, Radical Evil has ceased to be something metaphysical and has become political or economic. And that Radical Evil now incarnates itself, not in sorcerers and magicians, but in the representatives of some hated class or nation.
In 1952, Huxley was all too aware of the McCarthy Red Scare sweeping the US. His pacifism had attracted the FBI's attention, which at one point took a student's shorthand markings in a copy of Huxley's "Brave New World" for a secret code.
There have been other Scares. If Reds inspired mid-century senators to hunt Communist witches, early 19th century officials were more concerned with the Black Flag, the anarchist movement that, as Barbara Tuchman reminded us in "The Proud Tower," was responsible for the assassination of six heads of state, including US President McKinley, in the two decades preceding World War One. Here's Tuchman, writing in 1962:
No single individual was the hero of the movement... which had its theorists and thinkers, men of intellect, sincere and earnest, who loved humanity. It also had its tools, the little men whom misfortune or despair or the anger, degradation and hopelessness of poverty made susceptible to the Idea until they became possessed by it and were driven to act. These became the assassins. Between the two groups there was no contact. The thinkers... issued trumpet calls for action... Unknown to them, down in the lower depths of society lonely men were listening.
Tuchman and Huxley wrote decades before Al Qaeda was conceived, but the worlds they describe resemble our own. A century ago, anarchism was as ubiquitous and as deadly as Al Qaeda and its spinoffs are today. Three centuries ago witchcraft "ceased to be a serious problem [and] died out... because almost nobody now bothered to repress it."
This is not to suggest that law enforcement and intelligence agencies cease their efforts to round up terrorists inspired by Al Qaeda and other obscurantist movements. But I do think that the kind of fear-mongering that former VP Cheney and others exerted during their years in office needs to be buried, along with their reputations, in the trash heap of history.
Almost a century ago, fears about the end of the world at the hands of anarchists were overtaken by the very real-world butchery called World War I, started by nation-states and ending several of them. Louis XIII's worries about witches' spells were the least of Louis XVI's concerns - he had the French Revolution and the guillotine to contend with. Anarchists and devils were overtaken by even bigger threats.
Al Qaeda-inspired terrorism is serious, but let's put it in perspective, and deal with a few bigger concerns - accelerating climate change, worldwide deflation, populations outstripping resources - all of which are world-class show stoppers. Witches, anarchists... Al Qaeda too will pass.
