The Jesuits’ simulated disappearance of God founded modern spectacular politics

Evidence

This was the approach of the Jesuits, who founded their politics on the virtual disappearance of God and on the worldly and spectacular manipulation of consciences - the evanescence of God in the epiphany of power - the end of transcendence, which now only serves as an alibi for a strategy altogether free of influences and signs. Behind the baroqueness of images hides the éminence grise of politics. — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 16

Categorization

• XREF: Prefigures the chapter’s iconoclasm theme and anticipates Debord’s Society of the Spectacle — compare the two genealogies of spectacle.