The 100-Year Life Health Education and Government
In November, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said he was physically mauled by a “demon” in an assault that left “claw marks”. In the same month, the Romanian presidential frontrunner Călin Georgescu claimed carbonated drinks contain nanochips that “enter you like into a laptop”.
These examples have been identified by Anne Applebaum as part of a broader movement she calls the New Obscurantism, a mix of pseudo-science, mysticism, politics and superstition, which falls outside right-left political structures.
“In a world where conspiracy theories and nonsense cures are widely accepted, the evidence-based concepts of guilt and criminality vanish quickly too,” Applebaum argues in the Atlantic.
These “new Rasputins” – a nod to the Russian’s affinity to mysticism and faith healing – also include a number of Donald Trump’s cabinet picks: Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel and Robert F Kennedy Jr.
