Atenism and Jes Grew in the Second World

If Mumbo Jumbo is the story of the interaction between Jes Grew and the Wallflower Order of the Atenists in the first world, and we can see the flare-ups of Jes Grew across our own history, then we can also see ideas of Jes Grew and Atenism in what was known for portions of the 20th century as the second world: the Soviet Union, the Soviet-aligned Eastern bloc, and areas such as the former Yugoslavia. As a historical side note this is why we no longer really say second-world, the communist states of the second world no longer exist. So now we talk about the first world and the third and I’m sure most of us have wondered at some point what happened to the second one. 

Ishmael Reed mentions in his novel his belief that Marx secularized the teachings of Jesus Christ. This strongly implies Marxism and Western communism in general, to be Atenist modes of thought, even if, like the battle between the Teutonic Order and the Knights Templar, these various branches of Atenist thought were locked in struggle. And certainly, for almost the entirety of their history, the nations of the Eastern bloc had a deeply, deeply Atenist and highly conservative view of art and culture. Forms other than the classical (traditional ballet, classical music, etc) were forced underground for decades. The most prominent art movement of the Soviet period is probably socialist realism, a deeply, deeply Atenist art form, dedicated entirely to replicating logic, industrial production, and human figures in their most boring form. Jazz and rock were prohibited for decades, with underground movements emerging in the later Soviet period to copy Western rock labels onto used x-ray sheets, producing what became known as skeleton albums (because they usually had been used to photograph a bone). 

If, however, that was a later emergence of Soviet Jes Grew, it is the earlier that is more interesting. The early 1920s saw the emergence of several entirely new and deeply radical art movements. The most distinct of these was the art movement known as suprematism, characterized by various overlapping simple geometric shapes, generally avoiding human forms. I’m not sure Reed would like this as a Jes Grew movement due to its geometric and non-human centric nature, but it certainly was a radical departure from established Western norms, which appeared, grew rapidly, and then was decisively and deliberately suppressed by conservative authorities. Early Soviet film was also in many cases highly experimental, looking very little like Western film. By the Stalinist period, this too had mostly disappeared, replaced by various forms of patriotic propaganda.