With Laruelle against Paul

I'm not sure anyone who lives fully within one of the officially sanctioned forms of Christianity, whether consciously or not, can appreciate how oppressive it is when even the scholars of the radical left are engaged in lionizing a figure who is saved from the fate of heretics by 20–20 hindsight.

Yes, he was eventually killed by the Roman authorities, but so were Valentinus and countless other so-called Gnostics, also killed by Christian-Roman authorities later (and on and on, the Cathars, etc. etc.). On this view, Jesus was the first murdered Gnostic—murdered only for not appearing to hold the right beliefs.

It's thus that I find Anthony Paul Smith's translation of Laruelle's Future Christ highly refreshing. It's all very well to venerate someone who allegedly asserted the truth of the “Christ Event” or whatever—a rupture in being (and so on) that abolished the Beyond and its God. (Allegedly: there are plenty of right wing readings of Paul to contend with.)

From Laruelle's point of view (Anthony correct me if I'm wrong), this is about as hard as saying that Genesis is a far more subversive band than Pink Floyd. I mean come on—Paul has been number one in the official charts for two millennia...