1974 Talking About 2022?

 The Baffler published Volutions by Guy Hocquenghem, a 1974 essay which I thought critiqued the failed May 1968 rebellion in French. That is until I read the following:

Enough of the hopeless ones easily softened by their own fates. Ex-militants doomed to getting high joylessly, who have already seen everything but not lived at all. In their own eyes, born too late in a world too old—already an old tune. Ridiculous like children born late to that elderly couple, fascism and fashion. In a new 1929, we have new Cocteaus; it’s once again “Surprise me, Jean,” without surprise but drunk with remorse. Pleasure is reclaimed from failure by those who find themselves agreeably kept by the future fascisms, failed copies of a Maurice Sachs or of those women shaved by the Liberation, swimming in caviar that tastes like ashes. Images only good for selling the idea of “no longer believing in anything,” as if it were a question of belief. Not beyond, but on this side of Good and Evil. The allure of an unhappy consciousness nurturing its unhappiness with the pleasure of dancing on the volcano. Such is the libidinal charm of the fascism cropping up today.

Sounds like current right-wing American politics to me.

 The author proposes no program, saying instead:

But why bother enjoying the leftovers and burning their ships in the final party of ressentiment? We are talking about going elsewhere, leaving the ideological rot still studded with glitter; splitting, no longer giving in to the civilized neuroses tasting of angst. The fumes of the contemporary nervous breakdown only affect weak heads....

sch 5/18/22