Whom God Wishes to Destroy, He First Drives Mad | Giorgio Agamben

It is worth reflecting upon a fact so incredible that we attempt to repress it at all costs: namely, that the state which claims to be the most powerful in the world has been governed for years by men who are technically demented. This is not to give an extreme form to a political judgment. That Trump—like Biden before him—must be considered demented in the pathological sense of the term is an evident fact now shared by many psychiatrists, and one that anyone observing his mode of expression cannot fail to endorse.

Quem Deus vult perdere dementat.

It goes without saying that what interests us here is not the clinical case of the individuals named Trump and Biden; rather, the question we cannot fail to ask ourselves is: what is the historical significance of the fact that a country like the United States—which stands in some way at the helm of the entire West—is governed by a mentally ill person? What radical spiritual and moral decline, even before a political one, could have led to such an extreme consequence?

That the destiny of the West was marked by nihilism is something Nietzsche had already diagnosed more than a century ago, alongside the death of God. Yet, it was by no means a given that nihilism would take the form of dementia. Perhaps it is out of some measure of compassion and mercy that the God who wishes to destroy the West leads it to its end not through awareness and accountability, but through oblivion and madness.

Giorgio Agamben, March 30, 2026.

Can Penguins Go Insane? | Werner Herzog

These penguins are all heading to the open water, but one of them caught our eye: the one in the center. He would neither go toward the feeding grounds at the edge of the ice nor return to the colony. We saw him heading straight toward the mountains. But why?

 

Nihilist penguin?

» Could he just have had enough? «

 

Here he is, heading off into the interior of the vast continent. With 5,000 kilometers ahead of him, he is heading toward certain death. Could he have just gone crazy because he has had enough of his colony?

 

Reference: 

Werner Herzog (2007) - Encounters at the End of the World.

I told Tucker Carlson 'We are Fighting the same Enemy' │ Alexander Dugin

I think Russian and Western patriots have exactly the same enemy. And my recent conversation with Tucker Carlson, with whom I had the chance to speak here in Moscow during his visit, has totally convinced me about this. Because we started immediately to speak as brothers to each other, not as enemies who fight each other. Tucker Carlson is absolutely not pro-Russian. He's a liberal and an American patriot, and I am a Russian patriot. 

 

Saint George killing the dragon, the common enemy of the human race.

Obviously, we have many things in common but also disagreements concerning geopolitics, multi-polarity, Protestantism or Liberalism, for example. But in spite of all these, the main core of our world vision is the same. We are both fighting for Christianity, for the faith, for the roots, for the tradition, for the eternity, and for the human dignity. And we are fighting exactly the same enemy. So we need to take inspiration from each other. I am considered to be the main anti-Western Russian thinker. But I love Western tradition and admire Western philosophers. I am a follower of Plato, of Heidegger, of Aristotle, and of Christian thought in the West and in the East. We are totally free to have this inspiration from the classical heritage of each other because the Russian tradition has maybe the same roots as the Western one.

 

Plato, Aristotle, Greece, Rome, Byzantine Empire, Roman Empire, Mediterranean culture - all that we have in common. And we try to preserve, to conserve and to save something of it because the modern Western elite eliminates anything that has real classical roots. In that sense, we are in the same boat and on the same front line with American and Western European patriots. It is not about either West or East. It is about tradition and roots versus globalism and its artificial, anti-human and nihilist hegemony. That is our common enemy.

 

Quoted from:

Dimitri Simes Jr. (Feb 15, 2024) - Alexander Dugin and Pepe Escobar on Russia’s Fight against Globalism. (complete video)