Abstract
Extremism—in attitudes and actions—appears to be expanding. What makes one prone to extremism? Umberto Eco’s The Prague Cemetery, a narrative built on diary entries of the man who forged the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, exposes the two-self nature of extremists. It also exposes the two-self nature of the Narrator, who imposes coherence on the diary entries. This essay peels off the layers of images that allow extremists of all kind to appear other than they truly are.
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Notes
“And Now for the News: The disturbing freshness of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall.” The Atlantic Monthly March, 1997, p. 17.
The Art of the Novel, p. 5
For example, Larry J. Sabato, A More Perfect Constitution: 23 Proposals to Revitalize Our Constitution and Make American a Fairer Country. Walker and Co. 2007.
Yale Univ. Press, p. 60.
Quoted in Robert D. Kaplan, The Coming Anarchy, Vintage Books, 2001, p. 172.
In addition to the text, the diary contains fifty eight illustrations scattered throughout, five of which are ugly caricatures of Jewish faces. Only four chapters contain no illustrations; two of these carry titles that include the name of Abbe Dalla Piccola.
Eco provided an historical chronicle of the forgery of The Protocols in another location, in the sixth and final of his Norton Lectures he gave at Harvard. See Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, Harvard Univ. Press, 1994. The myth of a world-wide Jewish conspiracy emerged from an even longer history of the claims against the Rosicrucians in fourteenth century. They were described by their detractors as a secret society that began after the Knights Templars had been destroyed. Four centuries later, a similar allegation was made against the Freemasons in France. In the middle of the eighteenth century, the Jesuits, fearful of the anticlerical priests associated with the wars over Italian unification “adopted … the claim that Italian carbonari were the agents of a Judeo-Masonic plot.” Novelist Alexander Dumas, in Joseph Balsamo, “chronicled” the life of an Italian charlatan, Cagliostro, who changed his name to Balsamo and became involved in a secret organization. One conversation from that novel was lifted by a German postal employee who published a novel titled Biarritz under a British pseudonym. That conversation was transformed into a discussion, in the Prague cemetery, of a vision of a world conspiracy by a gathering of Jews representing the twelve tribes of Israel.
A meticulous Reader might wonder if Simone’s grandfather was hiding something when he declared to his grandson, “Now, as you know, I am a fervent Catholic and profess the highest respect for any man of the cloth, but a Jesuit is surely always a Jesuit – he says one thing and does another, does one thing and says another.” Such a reader might also wonder if in light of the intensity of his hatred of Jews, that when the fact that the grandfather repeats to his grandson that he learned about the Jewish conspiracy from someone who had converted from Judaism to Christianity the grandfather might have been that convert.
Some studies suggest that internet addiction is often associated with depression, particularly in teens and preteens. Internet addicts may struggle with real-life human interaction and a lack of companionship, and they may have an unrealistic view of the world. Some “experts” even call it “Facebook depression.” Perhaps it is too early to jump to that conclusion. In a 2010 study, researchers found that about 1.2 % of people ages 16 to 51 spent an inordinate amount of time online, and that they had a higher rate of moderate to severe depression. However, the researchers noted that it is not clear if Internet overuse leads to depression or if depressed people are more likely to use the Internet. But see Stephen Marche, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” The Atlantic, May 2012.
Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History, Univ. of Chicago Press, 2008, pp. xxiv and 2.
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Plax, M.J. On Extremism in our Time. Soc 50, 196–203 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-013-9629-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-013-9629-1