“Far-right activism takes many forms. There are sophisticated, educated and resourceful campaigners working towards ridding the country of anyone not considered white and British. I became close to well-funded, well-connected extremists who sought to widen the Overton Window – the range of ideas acceptable to the mainstream – to include race science and eugenics. Some of them enjoy the support of American tech tycoons and Conservative policymakers, work in the right-wing think tank scene and, in one case, write policy papers for downing street.”

“As law, the Tokyo trial had grand ambitions to establish international principles for a safer postwar world – a revived international law that outlawed aggression and atrocity. It sought to reestablish the battered authority of the old international laws of armed combat, such as the illegality of killing innocent civilians or abusing prisoners of war. It insisted that powerful persons had to face individual judgement for war crimes committed under their commands, rather than claiming immunity as generals and cabinet ministers. And like Nuremberg, it made a revolutionary attempt to enshrine aggressive war as the cardinal international crime, the one war crime that led to all the others.”

“ – after every crisis, power seems to become more concentrated in the hands of the people that caused it.”

“everything you know about capitalism is wrong.”

“Nobody planned for the financial crisis. But the response to that crisis was determined by a tight-knit network of financiers and politicians deciding amongst themselves who would be saved and who would be sacrificed.”

“Once I knew of about d’Offay’s painting, I could no longer put the behaviour of Printz and King-Nero down to inexperience. The existence of the canvas suggested instead a deliberate policy to reshape Warhol’s achievement, to rewrite art history by denying authenticity of a pivotal work, which they had the strongest evidence of Warhol’s authorship.”

“Stewart liked to look like someone willing to square up and fight in the streets and fields of America, when it came down to it, he was always behind police lines, just toeing the legal line and never actually leading the charge into the fray. And thankfully so.

“I believe that the more extreme elements, like the Proud Boys, saw through this image Stewart tries to portray very quickly and saw him as a poser in that regard.”

ahead of the curve.

The curious & brilliant Gary Lachman was already familiar to me through his rather seminal 2014 biography on Aleister Crowley, the most extensive & revealing on the man I’ve read so far.

As a prolific & respected scholar on occultism, former bass player for Blondie, & a supposed practitioner of “the craft” himself, his knowledge & expertise carry even more weight on the subject.

So when I heard he had written a book on $ump – Dark Star Rising – relating to occultism & black magic, I was instantly allured & wanting to read it as soon as possible.

“In the half-decade following the end of World War II, both McCarthy and Cohn had taken advantage of growing anxieties over social transformations and an uncertain global political situation to secure positions of influence in the emergent national security state. They had portrayed themselves as founts of masculinity, able to undertake the urgent task of defending the United States from enemies foreign and domestic.”