Charles Eisenstein writes: 

“Today, the Western world and particularly the United States appears to be in the midst of a classic… sacrificial crisis. Once-reliable social institutions crumble. The public loses trust in its authorities: political, financial, legal, and medical. The new generation is poorer and sicker than the last. 

Few of any political persuasion believe that society is working or that we are on the right track. Reason, markets, and technology have failed to redeem their utopian promise. The gods have failed us, and we glimpse monsters emerging from their shadows: ecological collapse, nuclear Armageddon, the poisoning of our bodies, minds, and world. Simmering differences and rivalries, once subsumed under a general civic consensus, take on a new intensity as each side grows more militant. 

As confidence wanes in the state’s capacity to hold evil at bay, latent ritualistic instincts come back to life…” 

Read more: Fascism and the Antifestival