Simmonds-Upton: Scribbler

Of late I have been listening to one song on repeat, and unable to shake the terrible feeling that its writers were far more prescient in their writing than I first realised.

The song is Endarkenment, by British Extreme Metal band Anaal Nathrakh. The lyrics, thankfully released by the band as they would in parts otherwise be unknowable,¹ were apparently inspired by the “evil gnome” Michael Gove’s now infamous proclamation during the 2016 Brexit campaign that the British people had “had enough of experts”.

The song itself is perhaps best described as a niche musical preference. Anaal Nathrakh is labeled as an “Extreme Metal” band, and is favoured by only the most extreme of metal enjoyers. However the raw guttural anger of Dave Hunt’s vocals and galloping pace of the music present a perfect complement to the lyrics and the message they convey. A scream against the doom we all see, and are all a part of, yet no-one can shake.

It tells the tale of our collective decline into ignorance and distraction. How we, the “good swine”, care only for our feed, our bread and circuses, not for matters of importance. We take what we will, to hell with the consequences. We refuse to doubt ourselves and our beliefs, and collectively charge into ignorance and self-delusion.

When it was released in 2020, during the opening months of the Covid Pandemic, it felt like perfect timing. The UK was barrelling towards a No-Deal Brexit that would have totally destroyed our economy, and conspiracy theorists and contrarians were openly doubting the reality of a global pandemic that was about to kill millions. Our online (dis)information bubbles were locking us into singular points of view, and hiding the breadth of reality from us. It felt fitting for the time, but eventually dropped from my listening rotation.

Rediscovering it now, the horrifying promise of decay rings truer than ever. Rather than a song that encapsulated a moment in time, it was a foreboding predictor of a trend we had only just begun to experience.

The first truly post-truth Western leader has been re-elected President of the United States. Social media is embracing the post-truth world, with Meta set to follow twitter in abandoning fact-checking. The richest man in the world spreads fascist propaganda on his personal global soap box, calling for the overthrow of democratic governments, and gaslights the world when giving Nazi salutes from the Presidential Podium.

States such as Russia and Israel wage genocidal wars of occupation and aggression against their neighbors, and at the same time describe these illegal actions as “self-defence” or “liberation”. Russia calls killing children “de-nazification”, while celebrating openly neo-Nazi units like Rusich in their army. Israel has repeatedly attacked civilians, journalists, medical staff, and areas it designates safe zones, then calls the IDF the “most moral army in the world”.

Campist thinking, X is bad so Y must be good, has never been more prevelant. Politics appears to be based on nothing but vibes and getting one over on the “other”. We question all authority figures except the select few we revere, and tear down any who dare to.

A genuinely horrifying aspect of this is that we all see it. Regardless of political orientation, there is a consensus that the truth no longer matters; both in the sense that influential political and cultural leaders see no importance in being truthful and that every group sees the “other” as living in a post-truth bubble. We can all see the problem, but we continue to delude ourselves that we are the exception. That we are still living according to enlightenment principles of reason and logic. That it is just the “other side” that has abandoned these.

This is not to say all are equally responsible. It is to say that we all know there is a problem. Nor is it to say that lies are a new problem. It is to say that the new means of digitally proliferating these lies, and distracting people, has made the issue far more significant.

We do not, however, act. I spent four years working in Westminster watching every attempt to counter misinformation be struck down. Every measure to control social media gutted. Anti-disinformation policy is repeatedly abandoned as politically complicated. Honest debate about the necessity and limits of freedom of speech is avoided at all costs. In the meantime, we remain glued to our phones, consuming endless content and little of value and watching the world literally burn.

If the enlightenment was the Age of Reason, of individual thought and skepticism of those in power, then truly the age we are in now is the opposite. In an age when we have all the information in the world at our fingertips, the power of propaganda has never been greater. Rather than set us free to challenge and learn, the internet has been bastardised into another method of control and distraction.

Where do we go? How do we fix this? Can we, short of a Coronal Mass Ejection event that fries the worlds power and sets us back to zero? (I really need to write about that, it’s my favourite apocalypse). How do we face the death of reason without descending ourselves into hopelessness? Why fight it, when instead we can drown in the distraction of TikTok cat or war crime compilation videos?

I honestly don’t know. I think the serious issue is that no-one else knows either, and those in power don’t care to.

So, to sign off, here’s the final verse of Endarkenment:

The noble search over, no answers to find

We retreat to dust, ignoble, sublime

Nothing to reach for, the death of the mind

Fuck all salvation, the truth is a lie

1. The band’s lyrics are infamously indecipherable at times, with a great many (?)s in lyric summaries online ↩︎