The Antichrist Speaks Esperanto

Father Benson
Said the Antichrist would
speak Esperanto

Quick check: does Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders speak Esperanto? If so, some people might be afraid, very, very afraid. Let me be quite clear here that I am not suggesting that Senator Sanders is the Antichrist; the idea is utterly absurd. It’s just that on May 2, 1908, the New York Sun ran an article on Robert Hugh Benson’s 1907 novel[1] The Lord of the World, in which the Antichrist is a Senator from Vermont who becomes President of Europe, and eventually President of the World, and imposes Esperanto on the world.[2] Benson was a Roman Catholic priest and writer, though Benson was raised in the Anglican Church, as his father was the Archbishop of Canterbury.

I’ll admit to never having heard of the novel before this, and my expectation was that it would turn out to be a forgotten early-twentieth century work. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Instead, as Wikipedia notes, Popes Benedict XIV and Francis have praised the move. It seems to be favored reading among conservative Catholic intellectuals. It’s an apocalyptic novel, treating progressive social movements as harbingers of the End Times.[3] The novel makes it clear that the establishment of world peace is a rejection of God. A quick glance through it shows Father Benson’s fears were that modernity was a sign of the approach of the Antichrist, and so various internationalist movements like the Peace and Esperanto movements seem to have troubled him.[4]

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