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“What if this sounds almost proto-fascist, a celebration of violence and such? I will give you a horrible answer. “Why not?” This line of questioning is the typical liberal trap. In These Times - those crazy loonies, they are my friends, I like them, Leftists - published an essay of mine apropos Leni Riefenstahl in which I ferociously attack a typical liberal reaction against fascism. You don’t really have a theory of fascism. So you look a little bit into history, encounter something which superficially reminds you of fascism, and then you claim that it’s proto-fascist already. Before making her famous Nazi movies, Riefenstahl did so-called bergfilms, “mountain movies,” filled with this heroic, extreme danger, climbing mountains, passionate love stories up there. Everybody automatically assumes these films must already be proto-Nazi. Sorry, but the guy who co-wrote the scenario for her best known early film, Das Blaue Licht (The Blue Light), Béla Balézs was a Communist. [Chuckles]. Now, liberals have an answer to this one, which is [spoken in a half-whisper] “this only proves how the entire society was already penetrated by the spirit of Nazism.” No, I violently disagree. Take the most popular example used again and again by Susan Sontag in her famous text on Leni Riefenstahl: mass public spectacles, crowds, gymnastics, thousands of bodies. I’m very sorry, but it’s an historical fact that the Nazis took these forms from the Social Democrats. Originally, these forms were Leftist. The liberal point would be, “Oh, this only proves how totalitarianism was in the air.” I am totally opposed to this line of argument. We should not oppose something just because it was appropriated by the wrong guys; rather, we should think about how to reappropriate it. And I think that the limit is here - I admit it here, we are in deep critical waters - very refined, between…engaging in redemptive violence and what is truly fascist, the fetishizing of violence for its own sake.” - Slavoj Žižek The tacky album cover comes from Impaled Nazarene’s Ugra Karma. It seemed rather appropriate, since it somehow touches the fine line between “redemptive violence” and “the fetishizing of violence for its own sake”. I.e. redemption/divine violence vs the black metal “fetischist” context.

“What if this sounds almost proto-fascist, a celebration of violence and such? I will give you a horrible answer. “Why not?” This line of questioning is the typical liberal trap. In These Times - those crazy loonies, they are my friends, I like them, Leftists - published an essay of mine apropos Leni Riefenstahl in which I ferociously attack a typical liberal reaction against fascism. You don’t really have a theory of fascism. So you look a little bit into history, encounter something which superficially reminds you of fascism, and then you claim that it’s proto-fascist already. Before making her famous Nazi movies, Riefenstahl did so-called bergfilms, “mountain movies,” filled with this heroic, extreme danger, climbing mountains, passionate love stories up there. Everybody automatically assumes these films must already be proto-Nazi. Sorry, but the guy who co-wrote the scenario for her best known early film, Das Blaue Licht (The Blue Light), Béla Balézs was a Communist. [Chuckles]. Now, liberals have an answer to this one, which is [spoken in a half-whisper] “this only proves how the entire society was already penetrated by the spirit of Nazism.” No, I violently disagree. Take the most popular example used again and again by Susan Sontag in her famous text on Leni Riefenstahl: mass public spectacles, crowds, gymnastics, thousands of bodies. I’m very sorry, but it’s an historical fact that the Nazis took these forms from the Social Democrats. Originally, these forms were Leftist. The liberal point would be, “Oh, this only proves how totalitarianism was in the air.” I am totally opposed to this line of argument. We should not oppose something just because it was appropriated by the wrong guys; rather, we should think about how to reappropriate it. And I think that the limit is here - I admit it here, we are in deep critical waters - very refined, between…engaging in redemptive violence and what is truly fascist, the fetishizing of violence for its own sake.” - Slavoj Žižek

The tacky album cover comes from Impaled Nazarene’s Ugra Karma. It seemed rather appropriate, since it somehow touches the fine line between “redemptive violence” and “the fetishizing of violence for its own sake”. I.e. redemption/divine violence vs the black metal “fetischist” context.