Needlehooks

I occasionally come across quotations that snag my attention like a needle-hook to yarn. I may or may not agree with the writer's perspective, but the quotation represents something that stirs my thinking and, sometimes, imagination. From time to time, I'll share them and their source, but caveat emptor.

But what all of these moments had in common was that they sparked self-delusion among the elites. After Brexit and Trump, the response was downright hysterical. Politicians and the opinion-forming set refused to reckon with either, and chose instead to denigrate and depoliticise them. The Brexit vote was a ‘howl of rage’. Trump’s victory, according to one columnist, was the ‘greatest calamity to befall the West since World War II’. The Nazi references flew. By treating these moments as aberrant, racist, apocalyptic, the product of ignorant masses whipped up into a Nuremberg-style fury, they absolved themselves of responsibility. If anything, this became the pretext by which they could pose as the defenders of civilisation.