fear – ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY

The State of Emergency, Coercive Medicine, and Academia

“Two weeks to flatten the curve,” is what we heard across Canada1 just after March 11, 2020, when the World Health Organization unilaterally declared a global “pandemic” according to new criteria developed in 2009 that emphasized transmissibility over lethality.2 We are now approaching two years of a crisis that is routinely and deceptively blamed on “Covid”. […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

The Falcon Cannot Hear the Falconer: Nature vs. Culture in a Pandemic

Part 4 of 5 of the COVID-19 Series. The Seventh Seal As if taken from a plot of some 1950s science-fiction classic, or an episode from the original Twilight Zone series, our reality lends itself easily to the understandings produced by fictional approaches to truth: Imagine a town, besieged by an invisible alien invader—nobody has […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Globalization in the Widening Gyre of COVID-19

Part 2 of 5 of the COVID-19 Series. The Routes of Panic It turns out that when people panic, they panic according to a template. Panic follows established routes, and is more structured than we might think, since we might think of it as being amorphous, uncontrolled, and chaotic. Sometimes the template is handed to […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Preparing for Domestic War in the U.S.?

Every new day brings more grave news from the U.S. As the McCain-Palin campaign is now intent on whipping up the frenzy of the uninformed ever further, doggedly pursuing the line that the next President could himself be an enemy of the state; as McCain supporters shout “Off with his head!” about Obama at a […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Pragmatism in the “Shitstem” and Singing for Obama

Apolitical, as in Conservative “Apolitical intellectuals” is a poem by Otto René Castillo from Guatemala, appearing on Deathpower. An apolitical intellectual is an interesting idea, and there may be one some day. What I think Castillo is referring to as “apolitical” is not the absence of political subjectivity, but rather disengagement from the politics of […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

A White Woman’s Burden: Hillary Clinton, Imperialism, and Racism

The imperialist syndrome that has been institutionalized at least since 1492 in the Americas, with its familiar register of notions of superiority, a right to dominate, of the civilizing beneficence of Western rule, of force needed to tame wild creatures so that they can learn to take responsibility, with routinized actions and customary rituals, acting […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

09-11-1984, The Calculus of Fear: When Trivial Terrors Become the “Real Threats”

Orange has become America’s new national colour. Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room. The self-satisfied sheep-like face on the screen, and the terrifying power of the Eurasian army behind it, were too much to be borne: besides, the sight […]