Politics, Religion, and the New Inquisition

Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco, the Italian polymath, has an important scene in his first novel, The Name of the Rose. His protagonist, Brother William of Baskerville, debates the fugitive heretic Ubertino of Casale (who was a very real person). Ubertino questions why William abandoned his prestigious position as a prosecutor in the Inquisition. William previously took charge against Dulcineans, Pseudo-Apostles, and other violent dissidents from Roman ecclesial authority.

William notes that “confessions” extracted from dissidents, often under torture, are almost verbatim identical. The accusations leveled against Dulcineans in William’s time, are indistinguishable from accusations leveled against Bogomils, Cathars, Arminians, and Paulicians in prior centuries. Why, William dares suggest, it almost appears these confessed heretics work from identical scripts, which inevitably reinforce Roman papal authority.

“What does that matter?” Ubertino replies. “The Devil is stubborn, he follows a pattern in his snares and his seductions, he repeats his rituals at a distance of millennia, he is always the same, this is precisely why he is recognized as the enemy!”

I first read these words nearly thirty years ago. They struck me then, as now, because they’re perfect examples of projection. They assume Satan demands his followers practice ritual, not as means for achieving greater metaphysical good, but as ends in themselves; and that Satan stands changeless across the ages, deaf to evolving demands placed on his followers by society, economics, and other contingent events.

Tell me that doesn’t describe the Roman church before the Counter-Reformation—or many White Evangelical churches today.

These accusations have plagued me recently. Ubertino’s accusations describe QAnon, the conspiracy theory contending that our former President holds all the cards and would, any minute now, expose and overthrow a sinister cabal of blood-drinking kiddie diddlers who control the levers of society. The fact that this overthrow kept not happening, proves, somehow, the depths of control this cabal actually has. It’s a masterpiece of self-sealing argument.

Smarter writers than me observe how QAnon precisely mimics the Blood Libel, a medieval belief that Jews control society by drinking Christian children’s blood. These same beliefs, almost verbatim, came crawling back onto dry land during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, levied not against Jews, but against day-care providers. In both cases, someone awful controlled society, in ways that, as Ubertino accused, remain unchanged across millennia.

We could apply Freudian analysis to these accusations. Correlating persistent images of vampirism and child rape, with loss of worldly control, seems so obvious, it doesn’t require deeper explication. In both cases, powerful people suck the souls from our culture’s most vulnerable citizens. Vampires (with their sexual connotations) and child rapists gain power by dominating those least able to defend themselves.

Watching today’s news, though, I notice another reiteration of Ubertino’s withered imagination. President Biden, immediately upon taking office, signed orders bringing America back into the Paris Climate Accords; and his campaign promises include a pledge to double the minimum wage. Both actions have received criticism from his opposition, which isn’t unusual. But both have achieved the same criticism.

REPORT: Joe Biden’s Proposal to Raise National Minimum Wage to $15 Could ‘Kill 3.7 Million Jobs’ https://t.co/ke4sfIEc8t

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) January 20, 2021

Supposedly, increasing the minimum wage will—we’re constantly warned—cause massive price inflation, unemployment, and misery. I remember hearing that in college Economics 120, and from the conservative commentators I read as a teenage Republican. Don’t hoist the minimum wage, we’re always enjoined, lest we cause economic catastrophe! Yet somehow, it keeps not happening. Almost like the premise is fundamentally unsound.

Conservatives (including my younger self) constantly cite this same crinkum-crankum scare against even the most salutary efforts to improve anything. Any change, no matter how necessary or scientifically sound, will cause inflation and unemployment. Pay workers consummate with the value they create? Inflation and unemployment. Stop dumping sewage upriver from the city reservoir? Inflation and unemployment.

✔️Biden is revoking the Trump-approved permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, which is *already under construction* by U.S. union workers.

This is, again, an alarming move in Biden's War on Energy.

This will do some damage and will almost certainly be met with litigation.

— Andrew Clark (@AndrewHClark) January 20, 2021

Like the Satanic accusations Ubertino admits apply equally to any reform-minded sect, these claims aren’t factual. Rather, let’s call them liturgical. That is, they’re words repeated, in unison, to remind believers of their shared values and precepts. Liturgy serves important purposes, when believers face a hostile world that offers constant temptations to sin. But when liturgical continuity becomes a substitute for doing right, it undermines believers together.

When powerful people combine liturgy with Blood Libel, it becomes clear that politics has become religion. Half of America’s political debate isn’t arguing the best system for governing the citizenry anymore, it’s devising Inquisitions to punish heretics. Like Ubertino, who became entangled in his own accusations and vanished from history, this kind of religion always destroys itself. But not without hurting others along the way.