mands that international law protect that
most fundamental of freedoms: “the free-
dom of the natural cycles of life.”
The freedom of flight is a key issue in
the current climate change debate, and
its figurative appeal is indisputable — you
see the daring of an Icarus in the sheer
soar. Equally indisputable is the actual
damage done by emissions. In political
terms, though, there is more in it than
meets the eye.
The early twentieth-century Futurists,
who supported fascism and promoted violence, were obsessed with the rhetoric of
flight, and “Aeropainting” was a major expression of Futurism. One Futurist manifesto speaks mockingly of “a terrestrial
perspective”; painting from an aerial perspective “requires a profound contempt
for detail.” (The contemptible details being the likes of lizard, salt, pine marten,
tomato, difference, and plurality.)
When the novelist Rex Warner wanted
to express the glamour, appeal, and cruelty of fascism, he chose the image of
flight, and in his 1941 book The Aerodrome,
the commanding voice of the fascist air
vice-marshal calls to the young airman:
“Your purpose—to escape the bondage
of time . . . to obtain mastery . . . over your
environment.” Flight is the way to escape
the dank and oozing Earth, where the
huddled unhygienic trudge their dumb
ways. Above, superior, invincible, and superb, is the airman, the Übermensch. The
rhetoric of flight, of Deus Invictus, is audacious, certainly, and also contemptuous—hateful even—toward humanity
and the ordinary Earth.
One Libertarian in the UK comments
(in what purports to be an argument for
the freedom of speech), “We believe in the
right to promote hatred by any means that
do not fall within the Common Law defi-
nition of assault.” The Futurist Marinetti
wrote, “Our hearts are not in the least tired.
For they are nourished by fire, hatred and
speed!” Steel was the archetypal material
for Futurist sculpture, but there are materi-
als of the mind, too—the steel of selfish-
ness and the gunmetal of hatred.
Jay Griffiths is the author of Wild: An
Elemental Journey.
