This blog was inspired by a conversation between Pesach Wolicki and James Lindsay. Their discussion raised a number of questions about Gnosticism, conspiracy thinking, and antisemitism that ultimately gave rise to the reflections that follow. The podcast can be viewed below.

Antisemitism is a witness, and witnesses are typically killed to protect the crime. It is a reminder that the cleavage caused by the incommensurability of transcendence and immanence will not be eliminated. When the facts of that cleavage become intolerable as witnessed, the Jews will become intolerable as witnesses. In these movements the most dangerous epistemological criminals are those who refuse to ignore what the theory leaves out; in the transition from movement to system this witness becomes its perpetual victim.

The theory will, like a corral, bring together in one place everything that fits in it; but it will always have to deal somehow with what will not fit, what is left outside the corral. This remainder poses a challenge to the completeness of the theory, and instead of revising the theory, the system turns on the remainder. What should serve as an occasion for humility becomes instead an enemy to be destroyed.

The Gnostic temptation lurks behind very many of these movements. Ancient Gnosticism took many forms, but they all shared a certain intuition: the world is fundamentally askew and its true condition is to be discovered through a kind of special knowledge. It’s not what it seems; hidden beneath its visible reality is a secret reality accessible only to those with eyes to see. Salvation comes not through repentance or reform or reconciliation, but through revelation: one must be taught the secret thing that explains everything. After the discovery has been made, the world’s complexity seems to dissolve into a single explanation. Thereafter, every instance of frustration, disagreement, setback, or lost opportunity serves to confirm the correctness of the diagnosis.

This brand of antisemitism is peddled by right-wing leaders like Steve Bannon, podcasters like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, thinkers like Alexander Dugin, Russian Eurasianists, and Iranian revolutionaries, which all become connected through a common explanatory structure. Lindsey’s point is that many followers are not initially motivated by hatred of Jews. They begin with disappointment and then become attracted to systems that promise to explain everything.

While few modern political and ideological movements are genealogically Gnostic, they often recapitulate Gnostic habits of thought. The world is divided into those who are awake to the truth and those in the thrall of illusion. Surface explanations are not to be trusted. Hidden structures, shadowy elites, and secret machinations are the key to understanding what is really happening. Conspiracist worldviews often begin with observations that contain some truth, perspectives that treat concentrations of power with skepticism. They then swirl those true things, with comforting half-truths and outright falsehood. Spiraling ever farther from reality, the non-reality at the center of these worldviews is mostly perpetrated and maintained by people who........

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