That also helps to make sense of why many of these superstitions (not just History Channel bs but alt medicine, new age spirituality, and the like) so often lead into far right political spaces. It’s just another way to divide the working classes, and make money off people while they’re at it. Lots of people go into these places very angry with “the system” and their lot in life, so it also heads off a lot of revolutionary potential.
What I find most interesting, or maybe ironic, is how (according to the oft quoted Caliban and the Witch) the ruling class at the dawn of capitalism used the which hunt around the Renaissance/enlightenment period to eradicate all of this type of superstition, magic, and folk knowledge. At that time such knowledge had exactly the opposite potential it does now, namely undermine the power of a bourgeoisie state to exploit the nascent working classes and force people to go along with the newfound scientific method of understanding, controlling, and shaping the world.
I think the witch hunts were about disempowering women, destroying indigenous knowledge of the land, so that the only means of getting resources as a peasant were to work in a factory. Destroying people’s ability to provide for themselves forces them to have to sell their labor to a capitalist instead of living off of the commons. Witches perhaps acted as a power center supported by a superstitious superstructure to enforce their power that conflicted with the Bourgeoisie need to have everyone working for them.
Probably both. It was part of a battle in the class war, a fundamental one, of the information control. Back then the non-mainstream superstition flown from another sources, and was uncontrolled, offered alternative narration and, as you said, alternative possibilities, so it needed to be destroyed. Right now, the non-mainstream superstition flow from the same source as the mainstream, they are only the safety valve. “Don’t like capitalism? Consumerism sickens you? Hear what this guru here have to say, or whatever, we have full offer to you, even with discounts and home delivery! Class? Marx? Never heard of it.”
That also helps to make sense of why many of these superstitions (not just History Channel bs but alt medicine, new age spirituality, and the like) so often lead into far right political spaces. It’s just another way to divide the working classes, and make money off people while they’re at it. Lots of people go into these places very angry with “the system” and their lot in life, so it also heads off a lot of revolutionary potential.
What I find most interesting, or maybe ironic, is how (according to the oft quoted Caliban and the Witch) the ruling class at the dawn of capitalism used the which hunt around the Renaissance/enlightenment period to eradicate all of this type of superstition, magic, and folk knowledge. At that time such knowledge had exactly the opposite potential it does now, namely undermine the power of a bourgeoisie state to exploit the nascent working classes and force people to go along with the newfound scientific method of understanding, controlling, and shaping the world.
I think the witch hunts were about disempowering women, destroying indigenous knowledge of the land, so that the only means of getting resources as a peasant were to work in a factory. Destroying people’s ability to provide for themselves forces them to have to sell their labor to a capitalist instead of living off of the commons. Witches perhaps acted as a power center supported by a superstitious superstructure to enforce their power that conflicted with the Bourgeoisie need to have everyone working for them.
Probably both. It was part of a battle in the class war, a fundamental one, of the information control. Back then the non-mainstream superstition flown from another sources, and was uncontrolled, offered alternative narration and, as you said, alternative possibilities, so it needed to be destroyed. Right now, the non-mainstream superstition flow from the same source as the mainstream, they are only the safety valve. “Don’t like capitalism? Consumerism sickens you? Hear what this guru here have to say, or whatever, we have full offer to you, even with discounts and home delivery! Class? Marx? Never heard of it.”