THIS IS WHAT WE GET WHEN WE THINK WE ARE FIGHTING THE COSMIC WAR
THE COSMIC WAR! HUH! WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!
I keep saying (to myself) this is what we get when we think we are fighting a Cosmic War. We get Christian Nationalism. We get Doug Wilson and Pete Hegseth and western Zionism. We get this bloody war.
The Cosmic War is fought along other axes as well.
Kia Ora Koutou, and welcome to Ending the Cosmic War with me, Karen Effie.
On March 15 2018 a far right terrorist with links to organizations in Australia and Europe opened fire on worshipers at the Al Nur mosque and then the Linwood Islamic Centre in my town of Otautahi Christchurch. 51 people were killed.
It was a terrible day. I was supposed to be working, heading out to clean someone’s house. The Police were warning everyone in my area, close to the Linwood Islamic Centre, to stay home and not go near windows. I phoned my employer and said I wasn’t going in. Then I alternated between crying and pacing and looking at my phone.
I had already been looking into far right ideology, especially the pipeline that went from gamergate into the far right among young people. As the terrorist’s livestream of his massacre hit social media, I tried to look for his manifesto before it was shut down. I read about 12 pages on Kiwifarms, and then figured I had the measure of it. It was very similar to that of Anders Breivik, and mentioned the usual stuff: the great replacement, immigration, eco-fascism, the weakness of western civilization.
This was the time when Facebook was a relatively genial presider over mainstream social media. Yesterday I looked at the “memories” section and saw exchanges on that day in 20218 between me and others, warnings, predictions, offers of help. I saw the terrorist’s last post on Kiwifarms about how he was sick of shitposting and planned to take action. I posted I AM ONE PISSED OFF LIBTARD. Meanwhile, people were dying.
During the months that followed, I was working interviewing bus patrons about the bus service. I got to interact with a large cross section of people. If I had extra time I would ask tourists about how they felt about the massacre, how awful it had been, how they must be appalled at us. They were much more sanguine. No, they said, where we come from this happens all the time.
This happens all the time.
Yesterday I went to a commemoration of the massacre at the Peace Bell in the botanical gardens. The Peace Bell was given to the city of Christchurch by the World Peace Bell Association, based in Japan. Here it is.
There were karakia (prayers, invocations) in te reo Maori and Arabic, and speeches, there was talk of forgiveness and unity, and then the bell was tolled once for each of the people who were killed. I cried. Meanwhile, people were dying.
A shooting at Virginia’s Old Dominion University late Thursday morning was committed by a veteran and convicted ISIS supporter. He killed one person and injured two others before a classroom of students subdued and killed him, the FBI said. Less than two hours later, an explosives-laden vehicle plowed into the Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, setting part of it ablaze while dozens of children were inside. Less than two weeks earlier in Austin, Texas, a shooter killed three people and injured more than a dozen others in the city’s bustling entertainment district. Underneath a hoodie, the shooter was wearing a T-shirt featuring an Iranian flag design. These acts of terrorism seem to have been motivated by the current Israel/US war in the middle east. This makes them more reactionary than the Christchurch terror attack, which was years in the planning, but nevertheless the cash value is the same: people dead. And a nasty uptick in antisemitism, that plague on the west since medieval times.
There is never one explanation for events, no matter how groovy that explanation is. However, because I write about the problem that is the Story of the Cosmic War, I am emphasizing that here. We would not be having these wars if they weren’t part of the Cosmic War. Sure, there would be wars that are not Cosmic. There would still be disputes over territory and resources and the means of production. Groups of people would still be prejudiced against each other and there would still be xenophobia. But wars become extra sticky and bloody when they have cosmic import. Let’s say, for fun, that the reality is pretty cynical, namely that warmongers tell us a war has cosmic import in order to justify it. But that is beside the point, for two reasons. Firstly, the cash value is that people are dead. Secondly, the Cosmic War is a Story regardless. People think they are fighting a Cosmic War whether they are told that, or whether they go to war thinking that in the first place. We are not talking about geopolitics here, we are talking about a very old pervasive Story that we have almost instant recourse to because it so backgrounded in our culture. An example of this is after 9/11 when George W Bush almost automatically resorted to the word “crusade” when describing the US response. Of course he did. He didn’t even think about it; it was just there. Islam, violence, threat, crusade, holy war, Cosmic War.
A good example is the Ukraine war from the Russian point of view. There are very obvious geopolitical things happening here. Near the beginning of the war, Putin got important buy-in from the Russian Orthodox Church. Archbishop Kiril, in a move that hurtles us back to Pope Urban and the first crusade, announced that any Russian soldier killed in battle would go straight to heaven. I presume the good Archbishop would have a word with his people and nods and winks would happen and the soldiers, regardless of their conduct otherwise, would just be sorted, just like that. All of this sounds pretty damned cynical and worldly, like the blessing of the Church turned the conflict into part of the Cosmic War. However, there is an element of this that is part of Russia’s deep structure, part of Mother Russia as it struggled into being in the early modern period. This semi-mythical, spiritualized Russia is the heart of Eurasia, as set against Europe and USA, and the Far East (I nearly said Oceania and Eastasia, how Orwellian, lol). Eurasia is unique, marked by its destiny, and blessed. Its chilly soil and febrile climate have given rise over the centuries to a singular dark mysticism and some eccentric and esoteric ideologies. Its destiny is Cosmic and so are its conflicts.
For the Christian Nationalists currently holding sway in parts of the West, the Cosmic War is clear and present. Of course Armageddon is just a shot away, as it has been since the book of Revelation. With Iran in the conflict, we are looking straight at the end times, if you have Hal Lindsay’s The Late Great Planet Earth. The Late Great Planet Earth has influenced the thinking of evangelicals since the 1970s. It was Hal Lindsay who mapped the end times onto geopolitical events recognizable today, with Israel, Russia and Iran all playing predestined parts. So anything that happens in these countries has a particular Cosmic War valence for anyone in the evangelical world.
For the rest of us, the Cosmic War is backgrounded. We receive the Story filtered through its characters, such as the saviour hero, and the small band of virtuous rebels, and Satan and the Antichrist, and the Last World Emperor. They function a bit like archetypes, accessible to us through smaller stories and pop culture. We don’t need to think about the Cosmic War to be recruited into it, and anyway it will take its predestined course without us. It will be fought by Christian nationalists, Muslim jihadists, far right terrorists, all of varying stripes, and people will die and die and die.
Thank you for reading this, if you got this far, and ma te wa.
Further:
https://ccc.govt.nz/parks-and-gardens/christchurch-botanic-gardens/attractions/world-peace-bell
Lachman, Gary. The Return of Holy Russia: Apocalyptic History, Mystical Awakening, and the Struggle for the Soul of the World. Inner Traditions, 2020.