(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL (September) - Read:
Norman Cohn "The fanatics of the Apocalypse" (fr, it, pt) [machine
translation]
What's common between Nazism and Communism? It is around this provocative analogy, on
which more than a "thinker" stumbled, as Norman Cohn founded the preface to his reference
book, The fanatics of the Apocalypse, appeared for the first time in 1957. This classic ,
republished in 2010 in a beautiful edition by Belgian house Aden, proposes brilliantly
studying millenarian revolutionary movements active eleventh to the sixteenth century, as
indicated by its subtitle. ---- The crusade pauperes the Peasant War in Germany, the
British historian offers us a vivid and scholarly overview of labeled heretical movements
that shook Europe in the late Middle Ages for nearly 500 years. The study of Christian
eschatology (speech on the ultimate fate of the world) should be understood in the first
sense of the word "Apocalypse", that is to say, the revelation, the establishment of a
millennial or eternal society full of bliss. But nothing is so simple, the advent of
paradise must necessarily be preceded by a period of turmoil and great misfortunes,
crucible of a purge saving, redemptive, leaving enjoyment of Eden who give birth in a
minority elected representatives chosen by God. This terrible battle against evil,
personified by the Antichrist, obviously has its roots in the apocalyptic Judeo-Christian
texts incorporated in the Old Testament.
This messianic and eschatological vision of the course of history can actually be similar
in some ways, the totalitarianisms of the twentieth century, they boast of fascism or
communism supposedly. But the interest of the study is not there.
Norman Cohn is interested in those of these movements, far from being marginal, which he
describes as "revolutionary". For, indeed, behind the religious veneer explained by the
influence of the Roman Church over the medieval mentality, many of these movements owe
their popularity to the critique of the authoritarianism of the church hierarchy and the
front layout social demands up to claim the complete equality of social and economic
conditions. The will of a paradise on Earth in fact, modeled on the mythical communism of
the early Christians ("All believers are sharing all they have. They sell their
properties, they share the money among all, and each receives what it needs "- Acts 2, 43-46).
The author then explains this social agitation, which found its culmination in the early
sixteenth century with the radical wing of the Protestant Reformation, by the great
upheavals - pre-industrial development and urban - which touched Europe over the
centuries. Thus, to quote Marx, "The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the
criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo".
Julien (AL Strasbourg)
Norman Cohn, The fanatics of the Apocalypse - millenarian revolutionary currents of the
eleventh to the sixteenth century, ed. Aden, 2010, 473 pages, 28 euros (on the publisher's
website).
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Lire-Norman-Cohn-Les-Fanatiques-de
