Parallels with the 1630s

 Read: https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2025/04/07/neo-iconoclasm/

One could certainly draw a parallel between the division between elitist (“papist” – itself a term synonymous with the modern left’s use of “nazi” or “fascist”) Catholics and Protestants in the 1630s, and the divide between the modern supranational elites and their useful idiots and the growing national populist movements across the western states.  But the more worrying parallel is with the introduction of a new media (the printing press then, social media today) which left the majority (on both sides of the divide) ill-equipped to distinguish between fact and slop.  Take a look at the quote from the Cornishman at the beginning of this post. [“Ill-affected posts which fly abroad in such swarms as are able to cloud the pure air of truth and present a dark ignorance to those who have not the two wings of justice and knowledge to fly above them.”] It was not written yesterday, but in 1641 (cited in Michael Braddick’s God’s Fury, England’s Fire: A New History of the English Civil Wars) and refers to the mushrooming volume of printed religious-political pamphlets of the period.