>>731119A lot of people misinterpret Marx's "first as tragedy then as farce" as if history is cyclical, usually for the sake of memes like picrel but some people act like he meant it literally. In reality he was talking about cases like this where people adopt the 'costumes' of those who came before them to push political programs steeped in issues of modernity.
Salafists are actually some of the best modern examples of this because AQ/ISIS propaganda portrays jihadists as part of a continuity that started with Mohammad and his warriors in the desert, when in reality the spread of political Islam has little to do with things that happened in the 7th century and a lot to do with the institutional failures of Arab nationalism, Cold War great power politics and Western imperialism specifically, the interests of wealthy Saudis, and elite overproduction in the ME.