There’s also a cast of priests and bishops, queens and Jewish rabbis, peasantry and court nobles. It’s hard to explain this complex read in a nutshell, but it more or less follows Jacob Frank, a would-be messiah who roams 18th century Poland and recruits a band of followers. But more than that, it’s also an interesting study in power: how one acquires it and how it corrupts. But it’s an interesting, almost endlessly fascinating book with a huge cast, a timeline that ranges up to modern day and covers nearly all of Eastern Europe. He’s the subject of Olga Tokarczuk’s novel The Books of Jacob, which came out in an English translation earlier this year via Riverhead Books.Ī huge, sprawling read about a Jewish messianic sect in the late 18th century, The Books of Jacob may not sound like a typical page turner. One such would-be messiah was Jacob Frank, who flourished in Poland during the mid 18th century.
Would be messiahs have existed probably as long as there was a messiah to pretend to be. And they are not even a specifically American phenomenon. Regrettably, such groups are not new to American politics: fringe groups have existed in one form or another almost as long as the United States has. There’s even a subreddit about losing loved ones to this quasi religious, quasi political group. Drawing people out of this cycle isn’t as easy as just showing them facts, one has to essentially deprogam them as one would a brainwashed individual.
The whole Qanon movement has taken a weird turn from being a troll spouting nonsense on a message board to an ex-president spreading lies about an electoral defeat, a so-called Deep State, and attempting to upend democratic norms. Indeed, cults are on the rise here in North America. But if you can’t rule the world, how about a small portion of it? As the song goes, everybody wants to rule the world.
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