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Being in Time: A Post-Political Manifesto
The events of 2016 - Brexit and Trump - broke the mould which shaped ideas of democracy, politics and social identity. In this book Gilad Atzmon argues that Left and Right have become indistinguishable and meaningless in the post-political universe in which we now live, and much of humanity has been reduced to serving the interests of big money and oligarchies. The freedom to think openly is now just a distant memory. Our Western liberal 'utopia' has turned into an Orwellian catastrophe, and the people are left bewildered and impoverished, and out in the cold. Being in Time is a courageous attempt to grasp the intellectual developments that led towards the current dystopia. The book delves into the bankruptcy of the ideological grand narratives. It explores the colossal failure of the media, academia and politics to detect and address the events that led us towards destitution. It identifies the ideologies that have planted Identitarian politics and the tyranny of political correctness in our midst. We, the people, have been demoted into mere audience in a Greek tragedy that happens to be the story of our own destruction. The time is ripe to understand it all.
200 pages, Paperback
Published May 24, 2017
69 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 1, 2017
One of the first books I have ever abandoned on this website, Being In Time: A Post Political Manifesto by Gilad Atzmon is a book about metaphysics and post-politics, as well as Jewish identity. Atzmon is very anti-identitarian politics, and against political correctness. He describes these topics as tyrannical, controlling how people think just to promote an individual's own perceived identity. He also criticizes Western Liberal democracy and its inability to adapt and apply innovative political ideas and functions into its structures. Atzmon utilizes metaphysical tools and anthropological ideas to explain why he thinks these concepts - identity, political correctness, and regimented political structures, are so damaging to our systems. Atzom also uses the later half of the book to discuss concepts surrounding Jewish identity and modern Jewish politics. I gave up before this point.
Atzmon, while offering some interesting concepts on identity and political correctness, largely falls flat, in my opinion. His use of history is poor throughout the book, which really detracts from his overall narrative. At one point, Atzmon claims that George Orwell's 1984 was not about authoritative Stalinism and its detractions after all, but instead about the oppression of political correctness due to the implementation of Newspeak. Atzmon has seen what no one else has! He also claims that George Orwell was against political correctness as a concept due to his history as a Socialist fighter in Catalonia, and his notorious list to British intelligence agents after his death which exposed fellow writers and journalists with Communist sympathies. This must mean he also hated political correctness!
This book was baffling, and maybe I didn't wholly understand it. Atzmon gets into concepts of metaphysics and tries to apply them to political philosophy - not so far fetched, but it certainly did not clarify his points in my opinion. He also seems to have a bone to pick with anything he terms "Left Wing" and is less critical of the right. The left wing, he says, is disillusioned and lives in a dream state, always moving toward goals that are not concrete or grounded in reality. The right, Atzmon claims, does not have such inhibitions. This is patently false - as reactionary right elements have historically, and continue to, invoke an idealized conception of the past as the best way to run a system - largely ignoring or forgetting the larger issues with how things used to be done. The right also invokes fantasies of military might, cultural and racial hegemony or superiority, and so on. Without bias, I certainly agree that many elements of the popular left nowadays are misguided, but the same can certainly be said about the right. Atzom, with what appears to be some nostalgia, looks at Fascist systems and asks the reader not to discount them - this is the failure of Western democracy in terms of its regimentation!
Frankly, this is the first book I have abandoned and one-starred on this site. Although Atzmon certainly had some interesting points to put forward, and the discourse was interesting in its own way, this book offered almost nothing to me as a reader. I would hesitate to bar this book totally however, and if the above concepts seemed interested, then by all means give it a shot. If not, then I would recommend a hard pass on this one.
Atzmon, while offering some interesting concepts on identity and political correctness, largely falls flat, in my opinion. His use of history is poor throughout the book, which really detracts from his overall narrative. At one point, Atzmon claims that George Orwell's 1984 was not about authoritative Stalinism and its detractions after all, but instead about the oppression of political correctness due to the implementation of Newspeak. Atzmon has seen what no one else has! He also claims that George Orwell was against political correctness as a concept due to his history as a Socialist fighter in Catalonia, and his notorious list to British intelligence agents after his death which exposed fellow writers and journalists with Communist sympathies. This must mean he also hated political correctness!
This book was baffling, and maybe I didn't wholly understand it. Atzmon gets into concepts of metaphysics and tries to apply them to political philosophy - not so far fetched, but it certainly did not clarify his points in my opinion. He also seems to have a bone to pick with anything he terms "Left Wing" and is less critical of the right. The left wing, he says, is disillusioned and lives in a dream state, always moving toward goals that are not concrete or grounded in reality. The right, Atzmon claims, does not have such inhibitions. This is patently false - as reactionary right elements have historically, and continue to, invoke an idealized conception of the past as the best way to run a system - largely ignoring or forgetting the larger issues with how things used to be done. The right also invokes fantasies of military might, cultural and racial hegemony or superiority, and so on. Without bias, I certainly agree that many elements of the popular left nowadays are misguided, but the same can certainly be said about the right. Atzom, with what appears to be some nostalgia, looks at Fascist systems and asks the reader not to discount them - this is the failure of Western democracy in terms of its regimentation!
Frankly, this is the first book I have abandoned and one-starred on this site. Although Atzmon certainly had some interesting points to put forward, and the discourse was interesting in its own way, this book offered almost nothing to me as a reader. I would hesitate to bar this book totally however, and if the above concepts seemed interested, then by all means give it a shot. If not, then I would recommend a hard pass on this one.
November 24, 2023
A harsh and realistic analysis of the jews by one of their own. It claims capitalism is a jewish invention, while in reality it was taken over and used to their advantage like so many other things. Insightful for jews and a tool for understanding for european descent peoples.
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February 13, 2021This is a quote from page 26 of Being in Time:
“Fascism, I believe, more than any other ideology, deserves our attention, as it was an attempt to integrate left and right: the dream and the concrete into a unified political system … And it is to our detriment that, in the post-World War II ‘liberal’ intellectual climate, it is politically impossible to examine fascism and ‘national socialism’ from an impartial theoretical or philosophical perspective … stifling honest examination of national socialism has left open the question of whether the problems of global capitalism may be alleviated by combining socialism with nationalism.”
The whole chapter, entitled, Bye Bye Lenin (!), from pages 23 to 33 is a vomit of fascist apologia. On pages 31 and 32 he gushes his supreme admiration for filmmaker Lena Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, glorifying the Nuremberg Rally of 1934. Passing through the section when “the entire stadium erupts in excitement as the Leader (best not write Führer!) pauses before he delivers his punch-line – “be ready to die” to his fascist audience, we come to this:
“The massive stadium is shouting and saluting, accepting the Leader’s call for sacrifice. The Real (?) seems possible; in a collective spectacle, the young Germans and their spiritual guide touch the essence of Being (Oh FFS!). Did Hitler beg for legitimacy? He had no need to. Hitler doesn’t ask for approval, he attempts to touch the Real (Oh FFF again). I am not sure whether any democratic or liberal system has ever achieved a level of support equal to the trust the Germans bestowed on Hitler (Oh FFS again and again).”
Atzmon does not ask how he achieved this “level of support”? What level of “support” did he have in the concentration camps where the leaders of the now illegal trade union awaited their fate?. Or in the workplaces where remaining trade unions leaders were summarily executed by the Gestapo for going on strike? What role did Lena Riefenstahl play in this? She made the Nazi propaganda film of the 1933 Nuremberg Rally from August 30 – September 3, called the Rally of Victory, to celebrate the overthrow of the Weimar Republic in January of that year. On the night of June 30, 1934, leaders of the Brownshirts (SA) including top man Ernst Rohm, Kurt von Schleicher; the last chancellor of the Weimar, Gregor Strasser, the ‘left Nazi’ who proposed a pact with Stalin, later to come to pass, were all assassinated on Hitler’s orders. Until 1932 Rohm was second only to Hitler in the Nazi Party. At the 6th Party Congress from September 5–10, 1934, which was attended by about 700,000 Nazi Party supporter, Lena Riefenstahl made her Triumph of the Will, the documentary that impressed Gilad Atzmon so much and which was justly credited with contributing to the climate that enabled the Holocaust. Rohm had stood next to Hitler in that 1933 film, but Riefenstahl claimed not to know Hitler had ordered all copies to be destroyed. This was part of her pleas of ignorance to escape the hangman’s noose post war. Martin Heidegger adopted a similar stratagem; the title Being in Time is a tribute to that Nazi man’s Being and Time, the famous work on philosophy which impressed the pro-establishment pro-Stalinist left like Jean Paul Sartre post war. Heidegger remained a Nazi from 1933 until the victorious Allies dissolved the party and never apologised or the Holocaust. Atzmon is likewise unconcerned with the relationship between Nazi ideology and the Holocaust.
“Fascism, I believe, more than any other ideology, deserves our attention, as it was an attempt to integrate left and right: the dream and the concrete into a unified political system … And it is to our detriment that, in the post-World War II ‘liberal’ intellectual climate, it is politically impossible to examine fascism and ‘national socialism’ from an impartial theoretical or philosophical perspective … stifling honest examination of national socialism has left open the question of whether the problems of global capitalism may be alleviated by combining socialism with nationalism.”
The whole chapter, entitled, Bye Bye Lenin (!), from pages 23 to 33 is a vomit of fascist apologia. On pages 31 and 32 he gushes his supreme admiration for filmmaker Lena Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, glorifying the Nuremberg Rally of 1934. Passing through the section when “the entire stadium erupts in excitement as the Leader (best not write Führer!) pauses before he delivers his punch-line – “be ready to die” to his fascist audience, we come to this:
“The massive stadium is shouting and saluting, accepting the Leader’s call for sacrifice. The Real (?) seems possible; in a collective spectacle, the young Germans and their spiritual guide touch the essence of Being (Oh FFS!). Did Hitler beg for legitimacy? He had no need to. Hitler doesn’t ask for approval, he attempts to touch the Real (Oh FFF again). I am not sure whether any democratic or liberal system has ever achieved a level of support equal to the trust the Germans bestowed on Hitler (Oh FFS again and again).”
Atzmon does not ask how he achieved this “level of support”? What level of “support” did he have in the concentration camps where the leaders of the now illegal trade union awaited their fate?. Or in the workplaces where remaining trade unions leaders were summarily executed by the Gestapo for going on strike? What role did Lena Riefenstahl play in this? She made the Nazi propaganda film of the 1933 Nuremberg Rally from August 30 – September 3, called the Rally of Victory, to celebrate the overthrow of the Weimar Republic in January of that year. On the night of June 30, 1934, leaders of the Brownshirts (SA) including top man Ernst Rohm, Kurt von Schleicher; the last chancellor of the Weimar, Gregor Strasser, the ‘left Nazi’ who proposed a pact with Stalin, later to come to pass, were all assassinated on Hitler’s orders. Until 1932 Rohm was second only to Hitler in the Nazi Party. At the 6th Party Congress from September 5–10, 1934, which was attended by about 700,000 Nazi Party supporter, Lena Riefenstahl made her Triumph of the Will, the documentary that impressed Gilad Atzmon so much and which was justly credited with contributing to the climate that enabled the Holocaust. Rohm had stood next to Hitler in that 1933 film, but Riefenstahl claimed not to know Hitler had ordered all copies to be destroyed. This was part of her pleas of ignorance to escape the hangman’s noose post war. Martin Heidegger adopted a similar stratagem; the title Being in Time is a tribute to that Nazi man’s Being and Time, the famous work on philosophy which impressed the pro-establishment pro-Stalinist left like Jean Paul Sartre post war. Heidegger remained a Nazi from 1933 until the victorious Allies dissolved the party and never apologised or the Holocaust. Atzmon is likewise unconcerned with the relationship between Nazi ideology and the Holocaust.
June 6, 2020
A book with agenda. Meaning that there is some true insight there, but then it is often overshadowed by anti-capitalist agenda. Linking capitalism directly to Judaism and Judaism to capitalism is one of such agenda-traits that makes the book less serious as it could have been.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews