Word: chiliasm
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...their worst, the cults acquire a psychosis of millennialism. This chiliasm, playing at the drama of the last days, nourishes when life is no longer seen as ascendant. But no matter how democratically advertised, visions of the New Jerusalem, Utopia or an Edenic Jonestown are bathed in a totalitarian light. And they are shadowed by glimpses of enemies: Antichrist, Gog and Magog; paranoia is often a cult's principal instrument of discipline. Even in 1978, one catches whiffs of an old dementia and witchfire...
...then the air, apart from radioisotopes, must be better anywhere else now, even in a coal mine. A major earthquake was predicted, too, not merely by seismologists but by the religious protection rackets, which were transferring east to pray out the millennium and to await the second option of chiliasm there . . . At about that time, as well, the American Legion opened its campaign against my San Diego neighbor Professor Marcuse, an action I read as a warning to keep my peace about the war or risk being dealt with Chicago-style myself . . . I took the least frequently hijacked...
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