A dragon-like ouroboros in a 1478 drawing in an alchemical tract. Image Wikipedia.

The Serpent Eats Itself

How the Far Right's War of Hatreds Is Consuming Its Own Movement

There is an old and rather useful principle in political philosophy—useful, at least, to anyone not actively attempting to build a belief system out of fumes and grievances—that you cannot construct a livable house on a foundation of pure negation. You can, however, erect something like a haunted shack: all drafts and whispers, full of imagined enemies, structurally unsound and permanently one hard knock away from collapse.

Troy Nahumko is an award-winning author currently based in Spain. His recent book, Stories Left in Stone, Trails and Traces in Cáceres, Spain was published with the University of Alberta Press. As a writer and photographer he has contributed to newspapers and media such as The Globe and Mail, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Toronto Star, The Irish World, The Straits Times, Lonely Planet, Khaleej Times, DW-World, El País, SUR in English and HOY.

Jesse Jackson leading a march to the border near San Diego, 1984. (Screengrab from local TV coverage.)

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