It is characteristic of all political moments to reactivate a certain amount of evidence and sharing. Should we reform society? Upset what exists? Repair the world? The following text was written by a collective of teacher-researchers, Kylo V. Nèr, and who propose to resolve these eternal questions, for which in their eyes, there is but one possible answer: “There is nothing but to destroy.”
The state of things.
He belongs to this family of individuals who break into history from time to time, essentially to express anger. There were Ezekiel and Savonarola, Proudhon and Weininger. The race of those who imprecate. But I don’t know why here, now, I’m thinking of another, Cato the Elder, and his sentence that is probably still taught in Latin lessons, Carthago Delenda Est. Almost the only thing I know of Latin, with this strange, lapidary twist, to say Carthage must be destroyed. That’s all ; “destroy Carthage”, one says.
Apparently this Mister Cato was obsessed with it, he proclaimed it in all tones, concluded in this way all his speeches in the Senate, to the point that the sentence became a cream pie of Latin grammars, an eternal example of a certain reverse grammatical form exotic for us, and for which its author has gone down in history. Incidentally, Carthage was completely destroyed by I don’t know which Roman emperor or consul, and historians still wonder whether or not, as we say, the Romans covered the devastated fields with salt.
And it’s that phrase, or half of it, that keeps coming to my mind these days.
Because of its sounds, a perfect alternation of vowels and consonants, and then what it says, which seems so much to come from this point that we have reached, all of us, today. Delenda est. It must be destroyed.
As if, coming from a dead language, and from the brain of a man who was probably at bottom, a dirty guy, these words could accurately grasp what is at stake for us. “To destroy, it must be done”.
Because there is ultimately no more detail to save, no matter where one looks. Because no, we will not take prisoners.
Delenda est.
The interiors which, from Kuala Lumpur to Vancouver, from Brest to Shanghai, begin to resemble each other because everyone has communicated through networks where everyone dreams of themselves as sellers, stars, celebrities, millionaires, finally narcissistically delighted, coffee-hipster shops, vintage stores where adulterated electro music plays, cowork spaces where already dead souls display their ethical trinkets: let them be destroyed.
Mindless entrepreneurs whose pseudo-inventions would incrementally improve people’s lives, supposedly; these applications, which at bottom they scientifically explode the substance of, make a compost commensurable with their desires for uniformity, for padlocked, calibrated and registered progress; they each transform into abominable friend or follower, a creature whose only merit would consist in disappearing as quickly as possible from the web of the universe by erasing even the clues of their presence – that they be destroyed a thousand times over.
New transport, electric skateboards, hoverboards, electrically charged scooters, ecological alibis of those who want to seize the global disaster to become rich in millions, generating new panics, new fads, new whims, new sorcery , and above all new slaves whose invisible faces no longer even haunt our streets: that they be destroyed, annihilated, disintegrated, pulverized, like the vermin of the new times that they are.
The viscous hucksters who strut from stage to stage to promote their message of fear or hate, and whose satisfied imbecility fills the image merchants because it multiplies the mass of their customers: yes, they must be destroyed.
Digital preachers, a new tribe of priests or wizards, sort of our own Cohanim, so to speak, anxious every day to sink the weak, to denounce the small, the poor, the refugees, to make them the universal sources of revenge for all misfortunes, to agitate the masses so that they attack themselves and devour their children – that they be destroyed.
The administrators of misfortune, administrators of the misfortune of others, of their school as of their health, of their movements as of their births, fetishists of a parsimony which they appreciate all the more since they do not have to impose it on themselves, and happy to think that it was ordered from above to be able, in the end, to absolve themselves of all responsibility, little Eichmans of paper, without gas or camps, and who believe on this account that they can pass for benefactors of humanity – that they be destroyed, one by one, without looking back, without regard.
The small, needy engineers who help invent false needs in order to suck the resources of ordinary people and inflate the stomachs of other merchants, incestuously holed up in the silicon valleys of the world and anxious to preserve on a hard disk a brain that we will have patiently duplicated from a frozen body, a brain whose value measured on all existing scales is zero at best, most likely negative: delenda est. Judge them, perhaps, drown them, no doubt, destroy them, for sure.
New entrepreneurs, happy to sell new ways of being slaves to populations who dream of being less slaves by enslaving others, happy with their new Tourbillon watch, their 6G connection, their flat screen, their SUV, their cold pressed juice, or their eminently friendly way of selecting their own followers: let them be destroyed.
Uber, Ubeeq, Deliveroo, Lime, Bird, Foodora, Lyft, Line, Snap, Insta, Start, Skorg, names not yet named of all of these interchangeable cankers, their thinking and “inspiring” heads, as they say, they must fall, one after the other, and the hell which they reserve, that they suffer in turn, to be devoured by it, that they be welcomed and burned therein, without any return.
The new places where culture is shown to everyone in the form of a bookshop which will sell Hartung-shaped plates, ceramic dishes à la Fautrier, Mondrian calendars or Pollock T Shirts, infinitely continuing this transformation of art and of all art into jackpot, this laudable enterprise of educating the masses turned into an exacerbation of conspicuous consumption, by developing snobbery ad infinitum, by universalising the stupidity of the educated – they must be destroyed, one after the other, without discrimination, without procrastination.
The infinite spaces that have colonised the world today, spaces designed to drain these products manufactured by young serfs whose access to consumption is praised, who celebrate them and and sell them, as they multiply the advertisements for things that would set you free, cars, telephones, internet, airlines – false signs of a freedom that is obviously only an illusion, the freedom to crush the underprivileged, the poor, the fucked, of course, but freedom which is therefore not ours, we who thus become the stewards of the freedom of the much better equipped – that they be annihilated, burned, pulverized, reduced to ashes, to ashes of ashes, to ashes cremated.
The merchants of doubt or fear, who want to convince you that the world is beautiful, good, able to repair their mistakes with incredible techniques, able to meet all the needs of unborn creatures, capable for everything you would want to invent from the bottom of your thirst for unbelievable pleasures always renewed, these charlatans of desire and dread – let them be destroyed.
Merchants, prospectors, prophets, heralds, negotiators. There is no more time: there is no longer time, they have run out of time. They have come, and the picture is black, the world sooty, what remains is already corrupt, moldy. Let them be destroyed.
There is no need to redeem the sins of the world in this way; there is nothing to redeem. There is no need to work for better days, to offer generations to come a haven purified of our turpitude, to make ourselves worthy of who has not yet come. There is nothing but to destroy.
Let it be destroyed. Without hatred, but without hesitation. Without acrimony, but without trembling.
Politics in times of catastrophe (6)
Delenda est
lundi matin #221 (16/12/2019)
It is characteristic of all political moments to reactivate a certain amount of evidence and sharing. Should we reform society? Upset what exists? Repair the world? The following text was written by a collective of teacher-researchers, Kylo V. Nèr, and who propose to resolve these eternal questions, for which in their eyes, there is but one possible answer: “There is nothing but to destroy.”
The state of things.
He belongs to this family of individuals who break into history from time to time, essentially to express anger. There were Ezekiel and Savonarola, Proudhon and Weininger. The race of those who imprecate. But I don’t know why here, now, I’m thinking of another, Cato the Elder, and his sentence that is probably still taught in Latin lessons, Carthago Delenda Est. Almost the only thing I know of Latin, with this strange, lapidary twist, to say Carthage must be destroyed. That’s all ; “destroy Carthage”, one says.
Apparently this Mister Cato was obsessed with it, he proclaimed it in all tones, concluded in this way all his speeches in the Senate, to the point that the sentence became a cream pie of Latin grammars, an eternal example of a certain reverse grammatical form exotic for us, and for which its author has gone down in history. Incidentally, Carthage was completely destroyed by I don’t know which Roman emperor or consul, and historians still wonder whether or not, as we say, the Romans covered the devastated fields with salt.
And it’s that phrase, or half of it, that keeps coming to my mind these days.
Because of its sounds, a perfect alternation of vowels and consonants, and then what it says, which seems so much to come from this point that we have reached, all of us, today. Delenda est. It must be destroyed.
As if, coming from a dead language, and from the brain of a man who was probably at bottom, a dirty guy, these words could accurately grasp what is at stake for us. “To destroy, it must be done”.
Because there is ultimately no more detail to save, no matter where one looks. Because no, we will not take prisoners.
Delenda est.
The interiors which, from Kuala Lumpur to Vancouver, from Brest to Shanghai, begin to resemble each other because everyone has communicated through networks where everyone dreams of themselves as sellers, stars, celebrities, millionaires, finally narcissistically delighted, coffee-hipster shops, vintage stores where adulterated electro music plays, cowork spaces where already dead souls display their ethical trinkets: let them be destroyed.
Mindless entrepreneurs whose pseudo-inventions would incrementally improve people’s lives, supposedly; these applications, which at bottom they scientifically explode the substance of, make a compost commensurable with their desires for uniformity, for padlocked, calibrated and registered progress; they each transform into abominable friend or follower, a creature whose only merit would consist in disappearing as quickly as possible from the web of the universe by erasing even the clues of their presence – that they be destroyed a thousand times over.
New transport, electric skateboards, hoverboards, electrically charged scooters, ecological alibis of those who want to seize the global disaster to become rich in millions, generating new panics, new fads, new whims, new sorcery , and above all new slaves whose invisible faces no longer even haunt our streets: that they be destroyed, annihilated, disintegrated, pulverized, like the vermin of the new times that they are.
The viscous hucksters who strut from stage to stage to promote their message of fear or hate, and whose satisfied imbecility fills the image merchants because it multiplies the mass of their customers: yes, they must be destroyed.
Digital preachers, a new tribe of priests or wizards, sort of our own Cohanim, so to speak, anxious every day to sink the weak, to denounce the small, the poor, the refugees, to make them the universal sources of revenge for all misfortunes, to agitate the masses so that they attack themselves and devour their children – that they be destroyed.
The administrators of misfortune, administrators of the misfortune of others, of their school as of their health, of their movements as of their births, fetishists of a parsimony which they appreciate all the more since they do not have to impose it on themselves, and happy to think that it was ordered from above to be able, in the end, to absolve themselves of all responsibility, little Eichmans of paper, without gas or camps, and who believe on this account that they can pass for benefactors of humanity – that they be destroyed, one by one, without looking back, without regard.
The small, needy engineers who help invent false needs in order to suck the resources of ordinary people and inflate the stomachs of other merchants, incestuously holed up in the silicon valleys of the world and anxious to preserve on a hard disk a brain that we will have patiently duplicated from a frozen body, a brain whose value measured on all existing scales is zero at best, most likely negative: delenda est. Judge them, perhaps, drown them, no doubt, destroy them, for sure.
New entrepreneurs, happy to sell new ways of being slaves to populations who dream of being less slaves by enslaving others, happy with their new Tourbillon watch, their 6G connection, their flat screen, their SUV, their cold pressed juice, or their eminently friendly way of selecting their own followers: let them be destroyed.
Uber, Ubeeq, Deliveroo, Lime, Bird, Foodora, Lyft, Line, Snap, Insta, Start, Skorg, names not yet named of all of these interchangeable cankers, their thinking and “inspiring” heads, as they say, they must fall, one after the other, and the hell which they reserve, that they suffer in turn, to be devoured by it, that they be welcomed and burned therein, without any return.
The new places where culture is shown to everyone in the form of a bookshop which will sell Hartung-shaped plates, ceramic dishes à la Fautrier, Mondrian calendars or Pollock T Shirts, infinitely continuing this transformation of art and of all art into jackpot, this laudable enterprise of educating the masses turned into an exacerbation of conspicuous consumption, by developing snobbery ad infinitum, by universalising the stupidity of the educated – they must be destroyed, one after the other, without discrimination, without procrastination.
The infinite spaces that have colonised the world today, spaces designed to drain these products manufactured by young serfs whose access to consumption is praised, who celebrate them and and sell them, as they multiply the advertisements for things that would set you free, cars, telephones, internet, airlines – false signs of a freedom that is obviously only an illusion, the freedom to crush the underprivileged, the poor, the fucked, of course, but freedom which is therefore not ours, we who thus become the stewards of the freedom of the much better equipped – that they be annihilated, burned, pulverized, reduced to ashes, to ashes of ashes, to ashes cremated.
The merchants of doubt or fear, who want to convince you that the world is beautiful, good, able to repair their mistakes with incredible techniques, able to meet all the needs of unborn creatures, capable for everything you would want to invent from the bottom of your thirst for unbelievable pleasures always renewed, these charlatans of desire and dread – let them be destroyed.
Merchants, prospectors, prophets, heralds, negotiators. There is no more time: there is no longer time, they have run out of time. They have come, and the picture is black, the world sooty, what remains is already corrupt, moldy. Let them be destroyed.
There is no need to redeem the sins of the world in this way; there is nothing to redeem. There is no need to work for better days, to offer generations to come a haven purified of our turpitude, to make ourselves worthy of who has not yet come. There is nothing but to destroy.
Let it be destroyed. Without hatred, but without hesitation. Without acrimony, but without trembling.
Delenda est.