A quick search in the #Interwebnets provided a kickstart to this worst-post, dear worst-reader. It was originally supposed to be just another quick quote-post as I was so tickled how Hannah Arendt uses the word mob. Putting all my worst-silliness aside, though, I eventually came around to thinking about all the ways the word mob can/should be used. To my worst-surprise, it’s quite a versatile word. First, there’s its use in behaviourism. As in. You know. One can use the word mob when a group of stupid people get together to do stupid things. That’s pretty nifty considering how the riff-raff of my beloved & missed #Americant raid Walmarts on sale-days and/or try to over-throw democracy after an election. (Seriously. Is there a difference?)
Then there’s the word mobbing. As in. What people have to deal with if/when they subject themselves to corporatist employment, i.e. modern, consume-to-survive, careerist subjugation. For. Don’t you know. As a corporatist your greatest achievement is having survived all the mobbing. Am I wrong!
Which brings me to its use as an acronym. Or did you not know that MOB is the fun-name of the Swiss Railway? But even more important than all that, I want to address the use of the word mob in the context of a society hellbent on systemic political dysfunction–you know, #Americant. But before we go there, just one more worst-thought?
Did you know that mafia and mob are NOT interchangeable? That is, they are not synonymous. Or are they? I, for one, have always been kinda confused when thinking about whether or not there’s a difference between mafia and mob. Could that be due to having been raised on films like Godfather or all those TV police shows? You know, Dragnet, Hawaii Five-O, etc. No? No. For, don’t you know, dear worst-reader, films and TV have raised a nation. As in. My beloved & missed #Americant is a nation-state of big-screen dunce minds all hellbent on law, order and big boobs. Hence. Once Reagan’s bat$hittery took over the $hitshow that is the new & improved real-politik, and has since lost its fail-upward way, what’s left? That’s right. All that’s left are the ingredients of a mob: hate, spite, bigotry, etc. And so. The whole idear of questioning whether or not you’re a criminal (mafia) or just a bunch of morons (mob) is kinda mute. Or is it?
Let’s be clear. In worst-writer’s world there’s a huuuuuuuge difference between mob and mafia. Simply put, Mafia is Italian and is inherently connected to that whole Italian mother-obsessed il-duce thing. Indeed. Where would the Godfather/Mafia be without the Roman Catholic Church and a bunch of sexually repressed mother-lovers lust-driven to the hilt of confusion?
Mob, on the other hand, is #Americant through and through and requires much less history than, say, Italy. Maybe that’s the reason so many TV shows and movies don’t use the word mob and thereby misuse the word mafia. Sopranos anyone? Also. The word mob is kind of a perfect fit for such a young nation-state. So much less mystical and religious history than Italy. Then again. Unlike the Italians, where would #Americant be if it weren’t allowed to fcuk its mother, hence the land of motherfcukers. Or am I the only one to worst-assume #Americant invented that (word)?
What really perturbs me as I’m trying to worst-(re)define things is when #Americant media stretches truth a bit too much. Like labelling former president piss-hair as a mafia boss when, in fact, he’s really more of a mob boss. But. Wait a sec. Let’s not shoot our load too fast here. I don’t mean in anyway to give credit where it’s most certainly not due. #Trump is not smart enough to even be a mob boss. And you certainly can forget about applying the whole Italian mafia thing his way. I mean. Seriously. A mob boss with that hair-do? Really? Also. Considering how/when he was able to become the 45th president–and I mean considering everything, especially Hillary & Co.–and then looking at what he did with such a privilege/opportunity…. Wow.
The man is truly a fcuking moron galore.
Or is there such a thing as a mob boss moron? But on that note I should die-gress because, well, we want to get back to the differences when labelling the perpetrators of not only worldly crime but also worldly stupidity.
My worst-point in this worst-post is this. Not only is there a huuuuuuge difference between mob and mafia but there’s a whole lot more history to one over the other. Hence the Italian mother worshipping thing combined with church idolatry–yeah, it’s a recipe of mega (#MAGA?) stupid. Or? That worst-said. This also brings me to even more worst-confusion. Namely, could there be a huuuuuuuge difference between a Mob and the mob? Have I stretched things enough for ya, dear worst-reader? With that in mind, let’s purge a bit and move on. Ok?
Puff! (It’s all gone.)
Having just finished Part One, amply titled Antisemitism of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, I can’t help but give a worst-thought or three about the word Mob. Of course, it is probably below Arendt to spend any time on such a trivial word. Instead, she thoroughly and concisely details the history of post enlightenment #Eurowasteland by explaining how and where and with whom hate derives. You know. As in. Europe has done a pretty good job of establishing the parameters of hate and bigotry and spite since (insert your century of choice here, but I’ll go with) the seventeenth century. And so. Almost like an epiphany, I couldn’t stop the thought of how relevant Arendt is today–especially when I’m so preoccupied with how my beloved & missed #Americant can get to a place that has #Trump as president. Or. Let me rephrase that.
Hannah Arendt wrote the book of #Trumpism and the GOP and the Mob that is the 74m people that voted last November, 2020–for the grand wizard of idiocy–even though he lost his re-election bid. And she did it long before the likes of Limbaugh & Co got his fangs in the neck of all the fun-wheeling STUPID that is the privilege of white-man country obsessed with holy water splattered all over ovulating bimbos in t-shirts that love dancing on tip-toes as they sing their sweet songs of fcuk-me-motherfcuker, fcuk-me-motherfcuker.
Or maybe not.
Here’s a a bit of text from Arendt’s Antisemitism that threw me for a loop and got me (re)thinking about the word mob. Considering that she wrote this in the 1950s as a way of comprehending the likes of Hitler and Stalin should also make one think WHY she’s not required reading today. Oh wait. Could you imagine a #MAGA hater reading this stuff? Na. Me either.
Friedrich Engels once remarked that the protagonists of the antisemitic moment of his time were noblemen, and its chorus the howling mob of the petty bourgeoisie. This is true not only for Germany, but also for Austria’s Christian Socialism and France’s Anti-Dreyfusards. In all these cases, the aristocracy, in a desperate last struggle, tried to ally itself with the conservative forces of the churches–the Catholic Church in Austria and France, the Protestant Church in Germany–under the pretext of fighting liberalism with the weapons of Christianity. The mob was only a means to strengthen their position, to give their voices a greater resonance. Obviously they neither could nor wanted to organise the mob, and would dismiss it once their aim was achieved. But they discovered that antisemitic slogans were highly effective in mobilising large strata of the population.
Of course, from the text above, one can easily replace petty bourgeoisie, all mention of religion and all mention of anti-semitism with pretty much everything modern day #Americant has done from a Republican/GOP POV, including its amateurish but well unorganised Putsch attempt on Jan. 6, 2021. And so goes the culmination of #Trumpism. Or?
Throwing worst-writer for a loop doesn’t stop there, though. Here’s more:
Where discrimination is not tied up with the Jewish issue only, it can become a crystallisation point for a political movement that wants to solve all the natural difficulties and conflicts of a multinational country by violence, mob rule, and the sheer vulgarity of race concepts. It is one of the most promising and dangerous paradoxes of the American Republic that it dared to realise equality on the basis of the most unequal population in the world, physically and historically. In the United States, social antisemitism may one day become the very dangerous nucleus for a political movement(*). In Europe, however, it had little influence on the rise of political antisemitism.
Here’s the footnote (*) that belongs to the above text and really, really, really threw me for double loop on account, well, WTF! Was Hannah Arendt clairvoyant–along with being so friggin’ über-smart?
Although Jews stood out more than other groups in the homogeneous populations of European countries, it does not follow that they are more threatened by discrimination than other groups in America. In fact, up to now, not the Jews but the Negroes–by nature and history the most unequal among the peoples of America–have borne the burden of social and economic discrimination. § That could change, however, if a political movement ever grew out of this merely social discrimination. Then Jews might very suddenly become the principal objects of hatred for the simple reason that they, alone among all other groups, have themselves, within their history and their religion, expressed a well-known principle of separation. This is not true of the Negroes or the Chinese, who are therefore less endangered politically, even though they may differ more from the majority of Jews.
Source for all text quoted here from: Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism; bold text is from worst-writer.
What goes around comes around, eh, dear worst-reader? What was—will be again. And so. Maybe there should be a bit more room in this worst-life of consume-to-survive that allows people to study-up on history–and how it can so easily be repeated and/or fulfilled as though it were a premonition.
Or maybe not.
Rant on.
-T
