Falleció Norman Cohn

El 31 de julio pasado falleció Norman Cohn. Se me pasó la noticia, Javier Torres me llamó la atención sobre esto.

The distinguished historian Norman Cohn, who has died aged 92, unearthed the roots of European barbarism. His best known study, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (1957), demonstrated convincingly that the totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century, chiefly Marxism and nazism, shared a "common stock of European social mythology" with apocalyptic medieval movements such as the Flagellants and the Anabaptists. Common to both modern and medieval versions of this ideology was a belief in the end of history, culminating, after much suffering and struggle, in an earthly paradise for an elect, and the destruction of their enemies. Just as the established church, rich landowners and Jews were to be swept away by the poor of medieval Europe, so the "world Jewish conspiracy" was to make way for the Third Reich, or the Marxist proletariat succeed the bourgeoisie. This enduring strain of belief has found more recent echoes in both Islamism and the US evangelical right.

Tomado de:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2144440,00.html

Ver también:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/27/world/europe/27cohn.html

Y un artículo de Umberto Eco:
http://www.elespectador.com/elespectador/Secciones/Detalles.aspx?idNoticia=16210&idSeccion=25

OTRA MÁS:

El Times Literary Supplement, de octubre de 1995, hizo una lista de los cien libros más influyentes desde la segunda guerra mundial. "En pos del milenio", es considerado como uno de los libros clave de la década de los años 50. Ver la lista completa, es más que interesante: es como una lista de cien libros que toda persona culta debería leer, o conocer.

http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/grttls.html