Said Daniel Trilling, on the right wing violence, in August 2024:
It’s also important to resist the temptation to believe that the violence has a simple economic explanation. It’s no accident that much of the rioting is taking place in parts of the country from which political power and wealth have drained away as Britain has become a more unequal place – and where, as in many other places, vital social institutions that keep communities happy and healthy have been gutted by fourteen years of austerity economics. But these riots are not a cry of pain from the most deprived. They are perpetrated by people who can only find a sense of belonging by singling out and attacking others on the basis of their ethnicity, and who indulge in the destructive fantasy that their own frustrations will diminish so long as other people are having it worse.
Terry Eagleton’s speech on hell.
Could it be that the energy driving at least part of the Nazi endeavour was – how much can we get away with? In other words, is there a thrill with transgressing some basic rules of social human life – not just transgressing it in a way that one tribe does when they go to war with another – but transgressing it in a way which happens when there is a mass slaughter of an entire population or village – which appears to have no end. What I mean by that is that whilst the genocide appeared, looking back on it, to be an attempt to wipe out the entire Jewish population. In some other way we can see that the gas chambers were the final point for not just Jews, but a range of different groups, and that potentially the industry of the gas chambers – almost created this demand – and this sense and wonder and fear of when will this stop? Its a bit like volunteering to take a rollercoaster ride – which you know will eventually deliver you off a cliff edge – but where the loops keep getting bigger and bigger – and at any given point you don’t know whether you are going to get one last even bigger thrill or meet your ultimate demise.
In other words could it be that the Nazi movement – like any far right violent movement – is essentially a riot – that you know transgresses the norms of togetherness and connected society – and that will prompt a response from the wider society – that will destroy your own movement – and that the thrill is in how long can you keep the riot going on for before you are destroyed, quelled and quietened.