Who on Earth could read about Giordano Bruno* in 2019 and draw parallels with the world today? What sort of a twisted mind could see in the world of the 1590s and the battle against conformity to a bigoted and oppressive world view the mirror to todays deceit and fear-mongering. Of the divine rights of so called conservative ‘progressive’ governments to act in our own best interests .. as they see fit. The use of fear in order to maintain a petty grasp on power & a myopic promise of limited futures. Who indeed …

Fear and insular isolation as the protector of freedom and individuality? Who indeed?

Who but a maniacal malcontent, could look into the eyes of the children and think, ‘you poor things .. your souls you have sold for a petty catholicism.’ What sort of fool would dare to speak out of turn! To voice heresies against a world leaping and bounding into such a wonderful future … Who indeed?

The Owl of Minerva** may …

What sort of retrograde mystic could look at Mr Berners-Lee’s Internet and see in it the same sort of tool as the Reformation’s Inquisition or the adventures of fascism in the 1930s ; a tool to stifle free speech and thought. To see an idea meant to enable the expansion of knowledge for all mankind used as the tool of ignorance and petty self justifications … What sort of fool?

“If there is one undeniable fact, attested a thousand times by experience, it is the corrupting effect of authority on those in whose hands it is placed … The functions of members of the government have come to be regarded as the private property of individuals … They have become in their own eyes the government; and it appears natural that their own particular ideas should seem to them to be the official and only authorised doctrine … while divergent ideas expressed by others become no longer a legitimate expression of opinion equal in value to their own, but a veritable heresy.” – Karl Marx.

*Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair – John Bossy. Yale University Press.
**The Owl of Minerva – the Autobiography of Gustav Regler.