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96thdayofrage · 6 years

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Dan Kovalik is a labor and human rights lawyer, but most of all he is an anti-imperialist and an author of three books. Kovalik’s first two books tackled the specific US war drives against Russia and Iran. His third installment, The Plot to Control the World: How the US Spent Billions to Change the Outcome of Elections Around the World, addresses the broad scope of US election meddling abroad. The book provides much needed political and ideological life support to an anti-war movement in the U.S that has been rendered nearly invisible to the naked eye.

The Plot to Control the World is as detailed in its critique of U.S. imperialism as it is concise. In just over 160 pages, Kovalik manages to analyze the various ways that the U.S. political and military apparatus interferes in the affairs of nations abroad to achieve global hegemony. He wastes no time in exposing the devastating lie that is American exceptionalism, beginning appropriately with the U.S. imperialist occupations of Haiti and the Philippines at the end of the 19thcentury and beginning of the 20th. The U.S. would murder millions of Filipinos and send both nations into a spiral of violence, instability, and poverty that continues to this day. As Kovalik explains regarding Haiti, “While the specific, claimed justifications for [U.S.] intervention changed over time- e.g., opposing the end of slavery, enforcing the Monroe Doctrine, fighting Communism, fighting drugs, restoring law and order -- the fact is that the interventions never stopped and the results for the Haitian people have been invariably disastrous.”

“Kovalik wastes no time in exposing the devastating lie that is American exceptionalism.”

US expansionism has relied upon the ideology of American exceptionalism to silence criticism and weaken anti-war forces in the United States. American exceptionalism claims that the U.S. is a force for good in the world and completely justified in its wars of conquest draped in the cover of spreading “democracy and freedom” around the world. Kovalik challenges American exceptionalism by showing readers just how much damage that US expansionism and militarism has caused for nations and peoples in every region of the planet.Russia, Honduras, Guatemala, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Vietnam and many other nations have seen their societies devastated by U.S. “election meddling.” In Honduras, for example, a U.S.-backed coup of left-wing President Manuel Zelaya in 2009 made the nation one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist, indigenous person, or trade-union/environmental activist. Thousands of Hondurans have been displaced, disappeared, or assassinated since the coup.

Another important aspect of The Plot to Control the World is its exposure of U.S hypocrisy surrounding the subject of “election meddling.” Since the end of the 2016 Presidential elections, the U.S. military, political, and media branches of the imperialist state have accused Russia of virtually implanting Donald Trump into the Oval office. The U.S. public has been fed a steady dose of anti-Russia talking points in an apparent effort on the part of the elites to beat the drums of war with the nuclear-armed state. No evidence has been presented to prove the conspiracy, as a recent National Public Radio (NPR) analysis states plainly. However, there is plenty of evidence that the United States is the most depraved and dangerous “meddler” in the affairs of other nations that history has ever known.

“The author shows readers just how much damage that US expansionism and militarism has caused for nations and peoples in every region of the planet.”

Just ask the much-vaunted Russians. Kovalik devotes an entire chapter to the 1996 Presidential election in Russia that re-elected the wildly unpopular Boris Yeltsin. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 began an era of “shock therapy” in the newly erected Russian Federation, a euphemism for the wholesale theft and transfer of socialized wealth into the hands of oligarchs and multinational corporations. Millions would perish in Russia from an early death due to the sudden loss of healthcare, housing, jobs, and other basic services. In 1996, President Bill Clinton ensured that Yeltsin maintained his near total grip on state power in Russia by providing the Russian President with a team of U.S. political consultants and over a billion dollars’ worth of IMF monies directly to the campaign. U.S. political and monetary support allowed Yeltsin to rig the election in his favor despite his dwindling popularity. Kovalik shows that if anyone should worry about election meddling, it should be the people of Russia and not the US elites that control Washington.

The Plot to Control the World takes readers into the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the CIA’s coup of revolutionary Patrice Lumumba continues to haunt the resource rich nation in the form of endless US-backed genocide. It travels to Guatemala, where the CIA overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz led to a U.S.-backed slaughter of a quarter million Guatemalans under the auspices of several military dictatorships. Kovalik shows us that the election of the fascistic Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil was no aberration, as the U.S. was primarily responsible for the rise in fascism in Brazilthrough its direct role in placing the nation under the control of a military dictatorship in 1964. The military dictatorship predated the CIA’s ouster of Chile’s Salvador Allende in 1973, which handed the once socialist state to Augusto Pinochet’s murderous and repressive leadership.

“The mission is always the same: to destabilize independent nations that refuses to bow down to the dictates of U.S. imperialism.”

The entire skeleton of the U.S. military state is on full display in The Plot to Control the World. The U.S. military state utilizes an array of tools to overthrow democratically-elected governments that it deems to be a threat to corporate interests. These tools include the U.S. intelligence agencies, so-called Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) such as the National Endowment for Democracy, and the various branches of the military itself, to name a few. Regardless of the tools employed, the mission is always the same: to destabilize independent nations that refuses to bow down to the dictates of U.S. imperialism.Thus, while Nicaragua, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Vietnam may possess unique histories, their economic and political development has been shaped by the destructive interference of the United States.

Dan Kovalik is not likely to be reviewed in the New York Timesor other corporate outlets. That’s because Kovalik unapologetically speaks out against U.S. empire and all that upholds it. In doing so, Kovalik’s The Plot to Control the World walks in the footsteps of anti-imperialists such as Michael Parenti and William Blum. Blum, a former State Department employee, spent his post-State Department life providing humanity with knowledge about how US imperialism operates on the global stage. The New York Timeswasted no time in slandering Blum in their obituary . This showed the great lengths that the ruling elites will go to discredit, defame, and condemn critics of the military industrial complex and how important it is for those who oppose war let go of any expectation that the corporate media will cover Kovalik’s work or anyone else who speaks out against war.

“White supremacy is the biggest lie of all and is completely embedded in the ideology of American exceptionalism.”

With that said, one of the reasons that the left in the U.S. is so weak is because it has been numerically and politically isolated by the lies of the Empire. White supremacy is the biggest lie of all and is completely embedded in the ideology of American exceptionalism. Despite the ruthlessness of the austerity and incarceration regimes, many Americans continue to be convinced that the U.S. is the most exceptional nation in the world and do not balk when its military wages wars abroad at the expense of U.S. tax dollars and civilian lives. U.S. imperialism has made sure that Americans feel that they are special colonizers who see the victims of the U.S. military state as savages worthy of slaughter. The Plot to Control the World is based on a different premise: internationalism. The book links the struggle against US imperialism to the needs of the oppressed and working class living in the heart of empire, making it an essential read for those who are sick and tired of the prevailing narrative of American exceptionalism and want to be armed with knowledge that is essential toward changing it.

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ara-la · 6 years

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A Specter is Haunting Europe

by Michael Novick, Anti-Racist Action-LA/People Against Racist Terror

The spectre is unfortunately not communism but a resurgent, zombie neo-fascist racial nationalist populism. I visited Sweden, Poland and Germany this summer and became more aware of troubling developments in all three countries, indicative of the growth of far right forces, rooted in old fascist elements in northern and western as well as eastern Europe. You can come and learn more about anti-fascism in Europe from two German antifa visiting L.A. on September 27. Contact ARA-LA for details.

Anti-fascists in Stockholm told me that although their movement was still strong and there was substantial, broad opposition to open Nazis, the racist right had successfully moved away from demonstrative street actions and confrontations and into the electoral arena over several years. Shortly after my visit, the far right Sweden Democrats, with neo-Nazi roots, who have promised to freeze migration and want to take the nation out of the European Union, became the third largest party in the elections, with 17.6% of the vote (up about 5% but short of the 20% that had been predicted).

Although there was much greater diversity in Sweden, apparently comfortably, than I saw in a visit 8 years ago, the ruling center-left coalition, led by the Social Democrats, had paved the way for the election outcome through over a decade of neo-liberal privatization policies and recent efforts to embrace anti-immigrant sentiment. The Social Democrats came in first, but their coalition, including the Greens and the Left Party, barely led a mainstream center-right coalition, and the outcome of the deadlock is unclear. Jimmie Akesson, leader of the far-right Sweden Democrats (a misnomer) portrayed himself as a kingmaker. "We see that we are this election's winner, but now we enter a new mandate period and now we are going to get influence over Swedish politics for real." If the center-right is willing to accept their support to take over the government, Sweden will join the ranks of European countries where neo-nazi-based parties are now part of ruling coalitions.

In Austria (Hitler's birthplace, and once united with Nazi Germany in the Anschluss) the mainstream right's junior coalition partner, the Freedom Party once led by a former SS officer, now controls the defense, interior and foreign ministries. The Daily Beast reports that hackers discovered that the party’s chairman, Johann Gudenus, once had the Facebook password “heilheil”.

The neo-nazis have also taken aim at the intelligence services. A police unit headed by a Freedom Party member raided the homes of four staffers and an office of the domestic Austrian intelligence agency known as the BVT (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz und Terrorismus Bekämpfung, i.e., Federal Bureau for the Protection of the Constitution and for Counterterrorism) in May of this year. The bureau had released, supposedly accidentally, an intelligence report on right-wing extremism.

Herbert Kickl, Austria's Minister of the Interior from the Freedom Party, claimed they were investigating "corruption" in the BVT based on documents that exposed sex parties among staffers. The material, attributed to a BVT employee, was noised around for a year until Kickl took over the interior ministry. Peter Gridling, head of the BVT for the last 10 years, was fired several days after the raids. According to the Daily Beast, he had been the object of a virulent campaign by the website unzensuriert.at (known as “the Austrian Breitbart”). The former editor in chief of unzensuriert.at is now Kickl’s communications director. Gridling has been reinstated, but Germany's intelligence agency has limited its sharing of information with the Austrians after it turned out that some of their material was seized in the raids.

Austria also hosts the largest regular gathering of neo-Nazis in Europe. On May 12, about 10,000 Croatians – including neo-Nazis and Catholic officials – gathered in a field in the southern Austrian town of Bleiburg to commemorate the defeat of the Ustaše army in May of 1945. The fascist movement which collaborated with the Nazi invasion, was responsible for murdering hundreds of thousands of Jews, Roma, Serbs and Muslims during World War II, many in the organization's Jasenovac concentration camp in Croatia. It was the only concentration camp run without any German involvement. Thousands of Ustaše members were captured and killed by Allied forces in Bleiburg. According to VICE, the annual event mourning that fact is organized by the Croatian Catholic Church, which claims that the gathering is not political, but simply a Mass that aims to "remember the dead".

In Poland, where I visited with anti-fascists at a squat in Warsaw, I learned that the mainstreaming and embrace of open neo-Nazis has also taken place there. Whereas in earlier years, antifa had been able to forestall or disrupt neo-Nazi marches in the capital, beginning in 2015, the Nazi element had become part of a larger, nationalistic march on Nov. 11, Polish National Day (anniversary of the end of World War I when Poland again became independent). That year, several hundred neo-Nazis peeled off from the larger march and physically attacked one of the autonomous movement's squats in the city; although the squatters and supporters were able to fend off the attack, it was from a clearly defensive position.

In 2017, the 99th anniversary, 60,000 people including right-wingers from across Europe marched in Warsaw, in the "unofficial" celebration, many chanting "Sieg Heil" (Hail Victory, the chant of Hitler's Nazis) and carrying banners reading "Clean Blood" and "White Europe." Warsaw was by far the "whitest" and least diverse city I visited in Europe as compared to Gothenburg or Stockholm in Sweden, Frankfurt in Germany, or London. Vessel cancellations forced me to skip a visit to Bialystok, Poland, where my father grew up, but from what I was told, it is now a hot-bed of neo-Nazi activity, with swastika graffiti everywhere, and antifa forced to keep a low profile.

Poland's ruling Law and Justice Party [PiS] has taken a hard line against immigrants and refugees, and defended the racist and nationalistic Warsaw rally. Jaroslaw Kaczynski is the "power behind the throne" in Poland. With no official government or state position, he remains party leader and is considered the most powerful man in the country. The party has tightened its grip on the security services, the courts and the civil service, and the media, purging and replacing personnel at the public TV channel with party loyalists.

In Slovakia, the People's Party Our Slovakia (LSNS), led by Marian Kotleba, similarly moved from the fringes to winning seats in parliament. Kotleba used to wear a uniform modeled on the militia of Slovakia’s wartime Nazi puppet state. He rails against the Roma people (AKA "gypsies", also victims of genocide under Hitler) and is an admirer of Jozef Tiso, the Catholic priest and wartime leader who deported tens of thousands of Jews to Nazi death camps. In the post–World War II era, European politics have seen a long series of extremists, generally raging on the sidelines and creating a lot of noise while wielding limited power. His People’s Party-Our Slovakia got 23% of first-time voters in the last election, and took 14 seats in the 150-member parliament. Similar to Sweden, the left-wing populist Prime Minister Robert Fico had repeatedly vowed to protect Slovakia from an influx of Muslims, saying Slovakia would take in 200 Syrian refugees, but only if they were Christians. By legitimizing such anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim politics, he paved the way for the acceptability and electoral success of the openly racist far right.

But as Sweden shows, electoral success for the Nazi-rooted far right is not limited to former Warsaw Pact countries or former soviet republics like the Ukraine, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. The Dutch PVV and Marine Le Pen’s Front National in France are now partnered with the neo-Nazi Austrian FPO in the European Parliament. Other allies include the Danish People’s Party (DPP) and Vlaams Belang (VB) in Belgium. Filip Dewinter, who is now the leader of Vlaams Belang, published a 70-point program in 1992 calling for the forcible deportation of all ‘immigrants’ -- up to the third generation born in Belgium -- back to their countries of "ethnic origin" — in practice, this would imply the repatriation of the majority of ethnic Belgians, whether or not they were Belgian citizens. Dewinter opposed efforts to integrate “non-European foreigners” into “Flanders and eventually all of Western Europe” as a dangerous plot to create “multi-racial utopias.”

According to an article on Medium, Belgian philosopher Etienne Vermeersch, professor emeritus at the University of Ghent, points out that Dewinter founded the NJSV (Nationalist Young Student Association) in 1980, with a flag bearing the traditional Nazi colors — black, white and red. Dewinter’s NJSV published Signal, a magazine which in several issues featured a sword with a ribbon, stating, “My honor is loyalty”, the original slogan of the Nazi SS.

Meanwhile, in Italy, two far-right parties formed the core of a new government earlier this year. The right-populist, anti-establishment Five Star Movement agreed to form a government with the Liga Nord (Northern League) after Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia, which had been part of an electoral coalition led by the League, agreed to support the government in Parliament "from the outside" (without entering into the government itself or getting any cabinet posts). League leader Matteo Salvini took the post of Interior Minister, and in addition to blocking entry to refugees (he refused to let a vessel carrying several hundred migrants rescued at sea to dock in Italy), he has ordered a census of Roma, with the aim of deporting those who are not Italian citizens.

The other noteworthy lesson I learned while in Europe is the similarity of other struggles going on over housing and gentrification/displacement, in Stockholm and Frankfurt, although with less police violence than is the case in Los Angeles. But those cities, and according to reports from British antifa, London among others are seeing poor people and migrants driven out of areas by rising housing costs or new upscale and corporate construction projects. Comrades in Frankfurt were involved in a rent strike and in efforts to build a tenants' union; they were very interested in developments in Los Angeles along those lines.

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hadarlaskey · 3 years

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Discover the fast-paced thrills of this hard-boiled Euro crime drama

“A press release and a handful of front pages. Then it’s gonna be the back pages tomorrow – and who cares when everything will be forgotten, right?”

This is the complaint of Police Inspector Giorgio Solmi (Luc Merenda) about the small public impact of the political corruption and conspiracy that he is investigating. “Are you surprised?” replies Solmi’s sometime girlfriend Maria (Delia Boccardo), who is herself a journalist. “You know how things work in this world.”

This is some way into Sergio Martino’s Silent Action, which belongs firmly to the grouping of films known locally as poliziotteschi (aka Eurocrime), an Italian subgenre of the 1960s and ’70s which married the gritty sensibility of recent American police films like The French Connection, Dirty Harry and Serpico to the fraught particularities of Italy’s so-called Years of Lead, when politics were polarised, and kidnappings and terror became the conventional tools of either extreme.

Silent Action begins with a series of four murders. First we see three military top brass killed in succession by a crew of assassins who then make the deaths look like suicides. Each of the scenes is briefly followed by images of a printing press, with superimposed text captions to show the transformation of these professional hit jobs into ephemeral news headlines which declare them not as murders, but as deaths which are at best somewhat suspicious. The fourth is different: for we meet Solmi and his team at the luxurious villa of Salvatore Chiarotti, an electrician and part-time private investigator whose death (bludgeoned about the skull with a fire poker) is unambiguously, officially murder.

The film’s initial juxtaposition of Chiarotti’s murder to those other three assassinations suggests a connection which Solmi himself will take some time to discern. Meanwhile the image of those printing presses and ledes suggests that we are dealing with a story ‘ripped from the headlines’, an impression which is only reinforced by the slyly worded disclaimer at the end of the closing credits: “The facts narrated in this film are pure fiction even if in reality they can happen or have happened.”

Indeed, as the maverick Solmi works with by-the-book DA Michele Mannino (Mel Ferrer) and Maria – each of whom, in embodying respectively the police, the law and the fourth estate, represent different mechanisms of society – he gradually uncovers a fascist plot for a coup d’état clearly modelled on the real-life Golpe Borghese of 1970.

Yet even as Silent Action anatomises the relations between different, sometimes conflicting power structures in an all too recognisable Italy of the ’70s, it is also a gripping thriller, full of the action promised by its title – a punishing car chase, vicious fights, several explosions, a prison riot, and a climactic raid on a paramilitary camp.

Each time the absurdly handsome Solmi approaches or arrests someone for questioning – a Tunisian escort (Paola Tedesco), a mysterious ‘agent’ (Carlo Alighiero), a hired ex-con (Antonio Casale), a foreign mercenary (Franco Gironelli) – they end up murdered by an invisible hand (with the original Italian title serving as something of a spoiler here) before they can ever be brought by Mannino to a court hearing. Eventually teaming up with secret services operative Captain Sperli (Tomas Milian), Solmi gets to the bottom of a right-wing conspiracy that has him, as much as Italian democracy itself, in its sights.

Set to Luciano Michelini’s propulsive score and driven with a barreling forward momentum, Silent Action plays out with all the spectacle and violence of a Bond film. But it is also hard-boiled, paranoid and cynical, very much in keeping with the mood of its times. For here, the forces of fascism carry on with impunity, having penetrated every echelon and institution in Italy – and Martino suggests that any victory for freedom is doomed to be short-lived.

Today’s newspapers are tomorrow’s fish wrapping, but in turning Italy’s perilous predicament into unsettling cinematic entertainment, Martino has ensured that this Italian story, however fictionalised, lives longer in the collective memory.

Silent Action is available on Blu-ray from Fractured Visions on 12 April.

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Doctor Who: Ranking the Dalek Stories – Which is the Best?

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“… hideous, machine-like creatures. They are legless, moving on a round base. They have no human features. A lens on a flexible shaft acts as an eye, arms with mechanical grips for hands.” Terry Nation’s script for ‘The Survivors’ (aka ‘The Daleks’ Part Two)

The Daleks, along with Judge Dredd, are fictional fascists beloved by a wide audience. At their heart is a combination of terrifying concept – Nazis who always return (imagine) – with a triumph of design. The greatest Dalek stories tap into this uneasy alliance.

A quick summary of the thinking behind this article:

A. We thought people would enjoy it.

B. If a story features the Daleks in a small cameo role, I’ve not included it (for example, ‘Frontier in Space’, ‘The Wedding of River Song’, ‘The Pilot’). I’ve removed ‘The Day of the Doctor’ and ‘The Time of the Doctor’: it seems silly to rate them based on their Dalek content.

The rankings are not based purely on how entertaining I find the stories, but also on how the Daleks are used and developed, the Doctor’s response to them and what that says (within both the larger context of the show’s history and the stories surrounding it). As this only covers television stories, I should mention that I think the best Dalek story of all time is the Big Finish audioplay ‘Jubilee’ by Rob Shearman, which you should know as little as possible about before listening to.

24. Planet of the Daleks

Having not seen this until its DVD release, I don’t have any residual affection for this story from childhood (unlike other stories on this list; I thought ‘Resurrection of the Daleks’ was great when I was nine).

‘Planet’comes across as lazy now. To be fair to Terry Nation, no one could rewatch episodes in 1972, and so his first script for the show since 1965 drew heavily on his old stories. The result is a rote traipse through the familiar.

It’s not without positives: The Doctor’s grief and rage when he thinks Jo is dead is very well acted, although the oft quoted “Courage isn’t just a matter of not being frightened” line works better in isolation than in the actual scene, which feels like HR has invited Jon Pertwee in to do a motivational seminar.

23. Destiny of the Daleks

Terry Nation’s final script for Doctor Who clashed with Script Editor Douglas Adams. Adams tried to zest up what he regarded as tired Nation standards (including radiation poisoning, overambitious monsters, a rare mineral, a quest, things named after their primary characteristic, invisible monsters, jungle planets, aggressive vegetation, flaky Daleks, unfortunate comedy episodes and plagues). The lack of budget is obvious, with knackered Dalek props and an ill-fitting Davros mask (actor David Gooderson also cannot lift Davros’ generic villain dialogue).

Some jokes land (‘Ooh look! Rocks!’) as does some of the Mild Peril (Episode 3’s cliff-hanger especially), but the story about inertia reflects its subject. K9 doesn’t appear because Nation didn’t want him to distract from the Daleks, then reduces them to impotent robots in thrall to their creator anyway.

22. Daleks in Manhattan/ Evolution of the Daleks

It’s not that this re-treads ideas from ‘Evil of the Daleks’, or that the science strains credulity even by Doctor Who standards, it’s that this story feels strangely perfunctory despite its ambitions. This is a shame because there are some great moments in the first episode where the Daleks plot, skulk and lament. It feels salvageable, but Russell T. Davies was ill and unable to perform his usual rewrites on the scripts, and the result feels like ticking off items on a Tenth Doctor Bingo card.

We do get the mental image of the Cult of Skaro sneaking around 1920s New York trying to kidnap a pig though, so you can’t say that it’s all bad.

21. The Chase

‘The Chase’ starts off well and cosy. Terry Nation sets the initial action on a desert planet called Aridius where some aliens from RADA are menaced by a giant ballbag. The regulars are all enjoying themselves. Then we getawkward comedy skits, a poorly judged trip to the Marie Celeste, and a sequence in a haunted house where everyone is stupid for some reason. The momentum never fully recovers from this.

Giving the Daleks time travel to pursue the TARDIS is an important development, and it’s a fantastic set for the interior, but the middle of this story lets it down.

20. Resurrection of the Daleks

From this point on, using the Daleks required approval by Terry Nation or his estate. Nation had been unsatisfied by other writers’ version of the Daleks, which is quite the take, and refused to allow another writer to tackle them until a convention appearance changed his mind. Nation’s feedback on an Eric Saward script meant that the story was revised and became overfull to satisfy both writers’ visions.

A delay in production gave time for streamlining, but nonetheless ‘Resurrection’ is messy and ultimately doesn’t seem very interested in the Daleks (focussing again on Davros and Saward’s mercenary characters). Indeed, the Daleks here seem even weaker than in ‘Destiny’, relying on mercenaries to take over Davros’ prison ship and being insecure enough to give them little Dalek decorations on their helmets.

In its defence, Matthew Robinson directs it with gusto, somewhere in there is a critique of its own violence, and Tegan’s departure is excellent.

19. Revolution of the Daleks

This is not a story that uses the Daleks on more than one level, and yet also possibly the nearest thing its era gets to political satire. We have someone using the remains of a Dalek to build security drones, associating a representation of fascism with law enforcement and connecting it to government, but the story moves away from this idea into cloned Dalek mutants hijack the drones and kill people, and then the original Daleks turn up to kill them because they’re not genetically pure. The Doctor’s solution to the remaining Daleks is good, but while this one doesn’t do anything outrageously wrong, it doesn’t do anything especially right either.

18. Resolution

Likewise, this story is just sort of there, like Shed Seven or thrush. The Daleks have a new form of controlling people, with the mutant wearing them like the title creatures from ‘Planet of the Spiders’ (as strong an image as it was in 1975) and the DIY Dalek shell mirrors the Doctor’s rebuilding of the sonic screwdriver.

The Dalek also demonstrates its firepower quite impressively, but contrasting this with ‘Dalek’ shows what’s missing: this doesn’t have anything like the personal stakes of that story, and so we have some pulpy and familiar thrills but little depth.

17. Into the Dalek

The main job of ‘Into the Dalek’ isn’t getting under the skin of the Daleks, but setting up the Series 8 arcs. We have a good Dalek, which turns out to have a damaged inhibitor allowing it to feel compassion, and a Fantastic Voyage-style journey through its interior. This lacks existential dread (in contrast to Clara being trapped inside a Dalek during ‘The Witch’s Familiar’), but Ben Wheatley directs the Daleks in combat extremely well.

It’s very busy, ambitious and patchy: the gag where the Doctor keeps finding Clara unattractive gets old quickly, the dialogue is of variable quality, and everyone has to be stupid for the plot to happen. There’s an interesting story to be had about a broken Dalek and the Doctor’s response to it, but this isn’t it.

16. Victory of the Daleks

Another riff on a Troughton-era story, in this case ‘Power of the Daleks’, this is easier to criticise now separate from the outcry over the New Paradigm design.

And it is… okay. The twist that the Doctor’s hatred of Daleks is what progresses their plan is a better use of this than the usual abyss-gazing. The Daleks win, but this doesn’t land with sufficient weight as the meat of the ending is given over to the ongoing series arc.

It’s a hybrid of Dalek event story and Companion Proves Themselves (with all the iconography of Churchill, World War Two and the Daleks) and is so by necessity somewhat pat in its resolution. Also, by Printing the Legend of Churchill a more interesting story is compressed into the line “If Hitler invaded hell I would give a favourable reference to the Devil”.

Putting aside the Dalek designs, which didn’t work for most people, this story fulfils a function and attempts to disguise this amiably enough.

15. Death to the Daleks

This is a story that, thanks to it being four parts rather than six, we could afford on video. I can’t say for sure how much this impacts my preferring it to ‘Planet of the Daleks’, but I do think it stands out slightlyfrom other Terry Nation stories despite the familiar elements (rare minerals, quests, a first episode featuring just the regulars).

Carey Blyton’s score, along with Arnold Yarrow’s performance as Bellal, has an endearing quirkiness. There are little flourishes like the Daleks using a model TARDIS for target practice, and the Doctor’s melancholy at the destruction of the city. Its oddness occasionally overcomes the quaintness of Nation’s approach to Doctor Who, which doesn’t seem to have changed since 1965.

14. Army of Ghosts/ Doomsday

Having successfully brought the Daleks back, Russell T. Davies held off on using them again until the Series 2 finale. We have the Daleks versus the Doctor and – for the first time – the Cybermen. The Dalek threat is resolved fairly swiftly as a mechanism to separate the Doctor and Rose, but what we do get is the Cult of Skaro (the return of the Black Dalek! Daleks with names! I don’t know why these are exciting but they are!) and the joy of subverting the two biggest monsters finally meeting by – instead of a huge space battle – having four of them read each other in a corridor with sassy putdowns.

13. Revelation of the Daleks

Eric Saward’s second Dalek story features Davros turning humans into a new race of Daleks leading to the stirrings of a civil war with the originals.

There are always garish edges to Saward’s writing, but the sequence where a character discovers her father’s body inside a glass Dalek – and he alternates between ranting about genetic purity and begging him to kill her – is at its core such a terrifying idea that it succeeds where the horrors of ‘Resurrection’ seem shallow. It does share that story’s lack of interest in the Daleks for the most part though, but this scene makes them scary for the first time since ‘Genesis’.

This also features Alexei Sayle fighting Daleks with a ray gun that fires rock’n’roll. If you don’t like that then we’re probably not going to agree on much about Doctor Who.

Doctor Who: Ranking Every Single Companion Departure

By Andrew Blair

Doctor Who: A History of Dalek Redesigns and Fan Reactions

By Andrew Blair

12. Day of the Daleks

This is an example of the Daleks’ importance to Doctor Who. After talking to Huw Weldon, who had been responsible for the length of ‘The Dalek Master Plan’, producer Barry Letts decided to bring the Daleks back for the Season 9 finale, with Terry Nation’s permission, only to decide that the show instead needed a hook for the opening story of Season 10. As a result, the Daleks were inserted into the story planned for that slot. This is a common feature of Dalek stories: it’s hard to write something original that they’re intrinsic to.

The production suffers from the small number of Dalek props available, and director Paul Bernard not using the ring modulator effect for their voices. This is a good story (though maybe not a good Dalek Story) with a then novel time paradox plot and Aubrey Woods’ Controller is a really strong performance. Viewing figures broke the 10 million mark for the first time since ‘The Dalek Master Plan’, so the decision to bring the Daleks back was absolutely vindicated.

11. Mission to the Unknown/The Daleks’ Master Plan

Essentially a longer and darker version of ‘The Chase’ with higher stakes – it’s not simply that the Daleks want to kill the Doctor, it’s that the Doctor stole part of their superweapon – with a subpar comedy episode and lots of hostile planets (deadly plants, invisible monsters, a rare mineral: such familiarity!). Extended to twelve episodes, it loses its way but commits to its scale with an incredibly downbeat ending that uses jungle planet cliché for contrast: Kembel is reduced to sand and dust.

A highlight of this story is the alliance of Outer Galaxy emissaries who join with the Daleks, a group of Doctor Who villains who inevitably bicker and betray each other. This, rather than the Space Security Service, is what Terry Nation should have focussed on for his spin-offs.

10. Asylum of the Daleks

Steven Moffat’s first proper Dalek story was part of Series 7A, an attempt at weekly blockbusters driven by high concepts. Here, then was the promise of a Dalek asylum with old and replica props, while also attempting to unify both the New Paradigm designsand the lack of emotional fallout to Amy and Rory Pond’s baby being kidnapped. Moffat also threw in a surprise new companion appearance and it’s this, combined with a nano cloud weapon that turns people into Daleks.

It’s not that the others don’t get resolved, but it’s done swiftly in another busy story. While the Daleks have previously controlled people, the idea of actually being turned into Daleks is both macabre and slightly jarring. It feels like, considering their last story involved a plotline about genetic purity, this isn’t the right fit. What does work better is the concept that the Daleks have a concept of beauty, and it’s based around hatred. While this episode does fulfil its blockbuster ambitions it also feels like it needs more room to breathe in order to do justice to all its concepts.

9. The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End

This is the logical conclusion of the Daleks’ return to the show: invading present-day Earth with a huge fleet (complete with Davros backseat driving). Also here, on top of the scale and sheer pace of the storytelling, is the logical conclusion of the Daleks: they attempt to destroy all other life in the universe in one go.

However, there’s also a sense of their ‘Day of the Daleks’role. They’re the Big Guns, so out they come for Doctor Who’s version of Infinity War. They’re developed here by virtue of Davies giving some of them distinct characters (Hello Dalek Caan, hello another stellar Nick Briggs performance). The Daleks here are aggressive and powerful (until Donna finds the off-switch in their basement), but the Doctor’s storyline is more tied up with the companions’ fates than the Daleks.

Davros is also here, trying to suggest to the Doctor that his friends trying to kill Daleks – the most evil race in the universe who are currently trying to obliterate all other sentient life – is bad (this idea worked once in a specific context and no one else has managed it before or since). On the other hand, Davros recognising Sarah Jane again is a thrilling way to bind Doctor Who to its past.

8. The Daleks

On the one hand, I find this story drags towards the end after a strong and uneasy start, but on the other Doctor Who doesn’t exist as we know it without ‘The Daleks’.

It’s hard to imagine the impact of this story on a 1963 audience, especially as we’re so familiar with what the Daleks and Doctor Who were to become. Consider, then, a story with the fear of the bomb writ large (broadcast a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis) and the Daleks in that context. That’s the existential fear angle for the adults covered, which meant they were happy to watch along, but more important was the response from children: love.

Many people contributed to the story and to the Daleks. Nation’s desire to avoid a Man-In-A-Suit monster is important, but key is the work of designer Raymond Cusick, voice actor Peter Hawkins and the Radiophonic Workshop’s Brian Hodgson. What the initially sceptical BBC found was that by the third episode, children who had watched the show were impersonating the Daleks.

There’s a lot to be written about the ageing geek audience who take their childhood toys with them into adulthood, and this article is written by a 35-year-old man who grew up when Doctor Who was off-air. However it’s worth stressing: next time you complain about the show reaching out to primary school aged children, remember that without kids in the playground, Doctor Who would simply not have survived.

7. The Evil of the Daleks

This is an excellent four-part story. Unfortunately it’s seven episodes long.

After a ludicrously convoluted scheme to get the Doctor into the actual plot, amid subplots that go nowhere, there are great parts of David Whittaker’s tale: The Daleks have kidnapped the Doctor and Jamie in order to isolate the Human Factor – the quality humans possess that enables them to regularly defeat the Daleks – to enable them to finally overcome humanity.

Firstly, if Russell T. Davies had written this the forums would never stop complaining about its scientific accuracy. Secondly, what this concept does is allow Whittaker to put the Doctor and Jamie into conflict, with the Doctor’s trickery leading to the unnerving scene of Daleks acting like children and then ultimately a Dalek civil war. We also see the first appearance of the Dalek Emperor, with a huge prop built for the story. When ‘Evil of the Daleks’ is good, it’s electric. You can see this in the surviving episode when the Doctor realises just before they appear that the Daleks are involved.

It’s a shame that the superfluous padding significantly detracts from the rest.

6. The Magician’s Apprentice / The Witch’s Familiar

A story which is primarily about the relationship between the Doctor, Davros, Missy and Clara, but which also casually drops in several new concepts which get under the skin of the Daleks more successfully than anything since ‘Dalek’. The focus is on Davros, but as the Doctor observes ‘Everything you are, they are.’

Firstly, there’s an elegant piece of writing from Steve Moffat where Davros narrates the moments before a Dalek fires, explaining they are waiting for Clara to run. Not only does this explain the Daleks not immediately shooting people, it offers a glimpse into their sadism and malice (as exemplified by Davros). Similarly, the idea that the creature inside the Dalek clings on outside of their life-support system, as they cling onto their home planet, ties into what we’ve seen on screen before.

Finally, anything in a Dalek casing trying to express individuality will have those words and thoughts twisted into the opposite meaning. This returns to the idea that original voice artist Peter Hawkins had for the Daleks – that the creatures inside were trapped. It’s an insidiously nasty idea, perhaps explaining behaviour such as the Dalek that commits suicide in ‘Death to the Daleks’when it sees its prisoners have escaped.

5. The Dalek Invasion of Earth

This and ‘Genesis’ confirm that Terry Nation’s strengths were in war stories rather than the pulp science-fiction adventure story he relied on. ‘Dalek Invasion of Earth’ is a thriller full of post-war fears that forever intertwined the Daleks and The Doctor.The production team pull out all the stops to show a conquered Earth with harrowing matter-of-factness, but the Doctor takes delight in opposing them (Hartnell is great here, taking the edge off with a twinkle but playing Susan’s leaving scene with great pathos too). The last episode is little rushed but overall this is well balanced.

The Daleks here are more mobile and powerful, their regime oppressive, their plans for turning the Earth into a spaceship bizarre and ineffable. As Nation puts it ‘They dare to tamper with the forces of creation’, the sort of boldness that would seep out of his own storytelling in future stories.

4. Genesis of the Daleks

‘Genesis of the Daleks’is another war story realised extremely well. The production does not pull many punches, and is atypically grim for Doctor Who: The Doctor loses but clings on to the slim hope that he hasn’t.

This is clearly Terry Nation’s best script, and is still clearly a Terry Nation script: radiation poisoning, over-ambitious creature requests – I don’t think Doctor Who could ever do a giant clam well, even now – and the endearingly-crap naming conventions (the mutants in the wastelands are called ‘Mutos’ and their dialogue could slot effortlessly into The Mighty Boosh).

Outgoing producer Barry Letts called Nation on his bullshit when he attempted to hand in a similar script for the second time, and suggested an origin story. From here Nation developed the war of attrition, Nazi parallels and the character of Davros (created to have a Dalek-like character who could be given interesting dialogue). Nation commits to making the origins of the Daleks plausibly horrifying. Contrast the halfway stage of ‘The Chase’ – with its misplaced comedy episodes that sap the momentum of the story – with the halfway point here: Davros willingly destroys his entire race to ensure the survival of the Daleks.

Where it feels lesser in comparison is that it is neither connected to an everyday, material reality (unlike ‘Spare Parts’, the story exploring the Cybermen’s origins) and its famous scene where the Doctor asks if he has the right to commit genocide, which looms large in later stories.

And yet, this scene only works in isolation. In context it’s jarring. In surrounding stories, the Doctor kills a sentient robot, a Sontaran, and some Zygons; he will later poison someone with cyanide, all without any qualms. Here, though, he compares destroying Dalek mutants – which are already attacking people – to killing Hitler as a baby. The Doctor worries he’d be as bad as the Daleks if he wipes them out. A few scenes later he has changed his mind, trying and failing to kill them. If it was linked to Davros’ aspirations of godhood, fine, but it’s neither written nor played that way.

It’s not as if the Doctor hasn’t already instigated attacks that seem to wipe the Daleks out, but there other people did the dirty work. It’s this, going forward, that becomes the key aspect of the scene for future writers.

3. Remembrance of the Daleks

‘Remembrance’takes the brewing civil war situation of ‘Revelation’ and connects it simultaneously to Doctor Who and British history. The Doctor is trying to trick the Daleks into using a superweapon hidden in 1963 London, knowing it could result in people dying. The Doctor’s trap feels like a response to ‘Have I the right?’ – clearly he feels he has but doesn’t want to directly press the trigger. It’s both a significant change and logical development in the series and the character, with Sylvester McCoy wanting to play both the weight of the character’s years and actions.

The Daleks are here because it’s an anniversary series but also because if you want a demonstration of power then potentially defeating the Daleks is a clear statement. Writer Ben Aaronovitch doesn’t just involve Daleks with a view to blowing them up, but addresses the reasons for their civil war: the hatred for the unlike that has defined the Daleks but also been part of British culture the entire time Doctor Who has been on screen and beyond, explicitly linked to the most evil creatures in the universe. Not only that, he places that hatred in the supporting cast: the ostensible good guys, the UNIT precursor, the family home.

This has scale, depth and feels important on different levels. This is Doctor Who back to its playground-influencing best.

2. The Power of the Daleks

As Terry Nation was unavailable, David Whitaker wrote the initial scripts before Dennis Spooner’s uncredited rewrites. The Daleks are in this story to bring viewers back on board after the first regeneration, and they also legitimise the new Doctor in contrast to the Daleks. The Mercury swamps that bookend the story also evoke Terry Nation in terms of putting the characters into a hostile alien environment.

The action takes places on a human colony, Vulcan. The Daleks are introduced as a potential solution to their problems, with an insurrectionist faction interested in using them as weapons and the scientist restoring them obsessed with his discoveries. The Doctor’s lone voice of dissent comes across as lunatic ravings, but the audience know the Daleks are manipulating everyone else.

Daleks obviously have the power to kill, but ubiquity had already removed their uncanniness until this story. The suggestion of deeper thought and intelligence builds, and this story gives the lie to the notion that you can’t give the Daleks good dialogue: “Why do human beings kill other human beings?” is full of chilling curiosity, “Yes, you gave us life” a future echo of their capacity for destroying father figures, the almost mocking repetition of “I am your servant”, and the cacophony of “Daleks conquer and destroy” that becomes a disorientating swirl of hatred.

This culminates in a final episode of mass slaughter. The release of tension is colossal. The very end suggests this is not over. The Daleks will never be more unnerving.

1. Dalek/Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways

This isn’t a three-parter in the usual sense, but these episodes are inextricably linked, with Russell T. Davies using a series arc to delay and distract the audience from their connection.

What’s key to all three episodes is Christopher Eccleston. He sells the threat of the Daleks better than any other Doctor, elevating the already strong scripts. These are the best performances against the Daleks there will ever be.

If you’re reading this website there’s a strong chance you know that the Daleks were seen going upstairs in the 1980s, but for most viewers ‘Dalek’ was the one that took all the jokes and weaponised them (Indeed Rob Shearman asked his partner what she thought was silly about the Daleks before writing his script): they not only go upstairs but crack skulls with their sucker arm, with added revolving weaponry and force field.

The carnage is well-realised, with director Joe Ahearne letting the Dalek take its time to build the tension, Shearman’s script taps into Russell T. Davies’ new Time War mythology and companion dynamic to allow the Dalek more intelligence in terms of dialogue and emotional manipulation. This Dalek has the threat of those in ‘Genesis’and the intelligence of the ones in ‘Power of the Daleks’.

Their redesign is a microcosm of why ‘Dalek’ works so well: it doesn’t change much, rather it takes what already works and improves upon it. I can’t imagine the return of the Daleks being handled better, while stealthily setting up the stakes of the previously unimaginable series finale.

Over this article I’ve talked about different aspects of the Daleks’ appeal. Children love them and fear them. They tap into adult fears of death, fascism and the uncanny (exemplified by the cacophonic chanting of ‘Exterminate’). That they can appear comical can be weaponised, as can the fact their hatred is not unique to them. Their reach extends into the mundane.

The reasons these episodes work so well is partly because they tap into these strengths, but also that they tell more than anything tell the story of the Ninth Doctor. He’s already committed a double-genocide, as far as he’s concerned, and is barely keeping it together without the prospect of having to commit another one. This is contrasted with the fact of one Dalek being demonstrably dangerous, and now there are hundreds of them. We know what they can, what they will do, and the only way to stop it is for the Doctor to kill Daleks and humans alike. It’s a much more effectively constructed and persuasive dilemma than the one the Doctor proposes in ‘Genesis’.

This story also puts in work with the supporting characters, and rather than being soldiers the staff of the satellite are office workers put into a desperate situation, or people who just wanted to be on telly. While ‘Bad Wolf’isn’t as Dalek-heavy, its satire is subtly devastating. If you look back at clips of The Weakest Link now you can see casual and sadistic cruelty meted out, so connecting this to the Daleks is a stroke of genius (especially with celebrity voices unwittingly joining in their own condemnation), bringing their evil to the everyday.

The Doctor’s closest friends here are merely the people who die last; he knows they’re going to die, and he hears it happen. It becomes increasingly personal, while also satiating that morbid fannish desire to see the Daleks kill someone. Here they seem sadistic, devious, and unstoppable. The need to stop them is obvious, as is the cost.

So rather than an unearned moment of moralising here we have a situation where the Doctor’s decision makes sense, is not abstract to him. This also, in the first series back, makes an important statement: Doctor Who can be dark, and nice people can die horribly, but it is not a series where the grimness becomes overwhelming. Here the Doctor’s decision not to kill is one he knows will also cost him his life, and then his ideals inspire his salvation: it is Rose, not Davros or the Doctor, who is set up among the gods, and her instinct is not – to paraphrase another franchise – to destroy what she hates.

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The reason I love this one is because it delivers on so many fronts: these stories define this Doctor. The story is epic but steeped in the everyday. The Daleks are terrified and terrifying, silent and shrieking, devious and brutal. They feel unstoppable here in a way they simply haven’t since. For a story to do this many things is impressive, but to do them all well is astonishing.

The post Doctor Who: Ranking the Dalek Stories – Which is the Best? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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architectnews · 4 years

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Philip Johnson's first building renamed amid protest over architect's "white supremacist views"

US architecture and design school Harvard GSD has removed Philip Johnson's name from a house he built while studying at the institution in response to a campaign calling for a rethink of the Nazi-supporting late architect's legacy.

Harvard Graduate School of Design announced this week it has renamed the house Johnson designed and built in the 1940s as his GSD thesis project.

Formerly known as Philip Johnson Thesis House, the single-storey dwelling is now named after its address, 9 Ash Street.

Philip Johnson is "an inappropriate namesake"

The move is a response to a campaign by activist organisation The Johnson Study Group that has also called on New York's Museum of Modern Art to remove Johnson's name from a curatorial post in light of the architect's "commitment to white supremacy".

MoMA employs a Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design to honour Johnson's involvement at the museum, where he funded the creation of its architecture department.

However, according to The Johnson Study Group, the architect's "significant and consequential" commitment to white supremacy meant he should no longer be celebrated by public institutions.

Portrait of Philip Johnson by B Pietro Filardo

"We call on the Museum of Modern Art, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and any other public-facing nonprofit in the United States to remove the name of Philip Johnson from every leadership title, public space and honorific of any form," the group wrote in an open letter to MoMA and Harvard GSD.

"Philip Johnson's widely documented white supremacist views and activities make him an inappropriate namesake within any educational or cultural institution that purports to serve a wide public".

Martino Stierli, the current holder of Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design post at MoMA, told Architectural Record that the museum was taking the "issue very seriously and extensively researching all available information".

Dezeen has contacted MoMA but is yet to receive a response.

"Strenuous support of white supremacy has absolutely no place in design"

Harvard GSD dean Sarah Whiting announced the renaming of the Cambridge house in a response to The Johnson Study Group, which is dedicated to "studying the legacy of a 20th-century white supremacist who founded the most significant modern architectural institutions in the United States".

In the letter, Whiting agreed that the architect's actions meant it was "inappropriate" for the house to bear his name.

"The power he wielded and continues to wield make it critical that not only his own work as an architect and curator continues to be reappraised, but also that the consequences and persistent legacy of his influence in shaping the field and canon of architecture continue to be scrutinised," Whiting wrote.

"His racism, his fascism, and his strenuous support of white supremacy have absolutely no place in design."

Johnson used "curatorial work as a pretense to collaborate with the German Nazi party"

Johnson was born in 1906 in Cleveland, Ohio and became one of the best-known architects of the 20th century. He was awarded the first-ever Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1979 and died in 2005.

His ties to fascism have previously been detailed in a book by American journalist Marc Wortman, which describes his growing support for the Nazis in the 1930s and efforts to import fascism to America.

Called 1941: Fighting the Shadow War, the book suggests Johnson's allegiance with the regime began when he attended a youth rally led by Adolf Hitler shortly after organising a 1932 show on the International Style at MoMA. The architect's pro-Nazi efforts soon garnered attention in the US, with Harper's Magazine listed him as a leading American Nazi in an article, and the FBI tracking his activities.

The house Johnson completed for his thesis was his first built project

"He used his office at MoMA and his curatorial work as a pretense to collaborate with the German Nazi party, including personally translating propaganda, disseminating Nazi publications, and forming an affiliated fascist part in Louisiana," The Johnson Study Group's letter said.

"He effectively segregated the architectural collection at MoMA, where under his leadership (1933-1988) not a single work by any Black architect or designer was included in the collection," it added.

"He not only acquiesced in but added to the persistent practice of racism in the field of architecture, a legacy that continues to do harm today."

Thesis house was his first built project

The house he completed in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1941 for his Masters of Architecture thesis was his first built project. He designed the house as a rectangular volume with a tall fence that wraps around a large outdoor courtyard. A door in the fence provides access from the street into the yard.

Johnson is said to have hosted a number of parties in the house before selling it after the Second World War. GSD purchased it in 2010 and completed a restoration project in 2016.

The call to remove the prominence of Johnson's name comes in the wake of wider calls to address systemic racism in the architecture and design industries. This followed racial unrest in the US triggered by the killing of African American George Floyd.

Protests come in wake of call to address racism in architecture

Whiting said that the removal of Johnson's name is just the start in bringing change to the "the entrenched, paradigmatic racism and white supremacy of architecture".

"We do not pretend to think our work, as a school, ends here," Whiting said. "At the GSD, we are committed to doing our part to bring much-needed, long-overdue change to the field, to a fundamental reorientation toward inclusion."

"Johnson's influence runs deep and wide, and across generations, and yet he is also just one figure among the entrenched, paradigmatic racism and white supremacy of architecture," she added.

"Undoing that legacy – of the field, not only of Johnson – is arduous and necessary, and as a school and community we are committed to seeing it through."

Read of for Whiting's full letter:

Dear Mitch and other members of the Johnson Study Group:

Thank you for this note, which I take very seriously – both as dean of the GSD and as a designer. Philip Johnson's global influence in architecture in the 20th century and his grip on the field even now, 15 years after his death, cannot be overstated.

And the power he wielded and continues to wield make it critical that not only his own work as an architect and curator continues to be reappraised, but also that the consequences and persistent legacy of his influence in shaping the field and canon of architecture continue to be scrutinized. His racism, his fascism, and his strenuous support of white supremacy have absolutely no place in design.

At Harvard, the GSD owns a private residence in Cambridge that Johnson designed and built for his thesis project at the GSD, when he attended the school in the 1940s. At the university, the house doesn't have an official name on record, although it is usually referred to as the Thesis House, or the Philip Johnson Thesis House, or some variation.

But I fully agree with your strong point about the power of institutional naming, and the integrity and legitimacy it confers. And so we are taking steps to officially recognize the house within the university as simply "9 Ash Street" – the house's physical address.

As you put it, this is a minor but clarifying step in making room for other legacies to come. I agree about this, too. We do not pretend to think our work, as a school, ends here. At the GSD, we are committed to doing our part to bring much-needed, long-overdue change to the field, to a fundamental reorientation toward inclusion. Johnson's influence runs deep and wide, and across generations, and yet he is also just one figure among the entrenched, paradigmatic racism and white supremacy of architecture.

Undoing that legacy – of the field, not only of Johnson – is arduous and necessary, and as a school and community we are committed to seeing it through.

The post Philip Johnson's first building renamed amid protest over architect's "white supremacist views" appeared first on Dezeen.

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xtruss · 4 years

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Trump said he intends to declare antifa as a terrorist organization. Here's what we know about the decades-old, leaderless group.

The leaderless, non-hierarchial organization has existed for decades but has grown to greater prominence since Trump's election in 2016 and after the violent 2017 white supremacist rally and its counterprotests in Charlottesville, Virginia.

— By Michelle Mark and Connor Perrett | June 2, 2020 | Businesses Insider

Hundreds of protesters gather at Government Center including a protester with an antifa flag draped over his shoulders during a rally in support of the Black Lives Matter movement in Boston on May 31, 2020. Matthew J. Lee/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

President Donald Trump and other Republicans have blamed antifa, which stands for anti-fascist, for ongoing protests over the death of George Floyd.

The president said amid the protests that he intends to declare antifa as a terrorist organization.

The group has represented a boogeyman of sorts for Trump, who previously threatened to classify the group as a terrorist organization in July 2019 after a clash between members of antifa and far-right group the Proud Boys.

Members of the group are known for clashing with members of the far-right and decrying white supremacy, though the group has drawn criticism in the past for its willingness to use violence.

President Donald Trump on Sunday announced plans to designate a left-wing group known as antifa as a "terrorist organization," blaming the group and other unidentified "radical left-wing" organizations for ongoing civil unrest following the death of 46-year-old George Floyd.

Floyd, a black man, died while in police custody on May 25. Video of the incident showed that a white police officer held his knee to Floyd's neck for more than eight minutes, even after Floyd lost consciousness. That officer, Derek Chauvin, was fired and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.

Three other Minneapolis police officers present have been fired but have not been charged with a crime.

Floyd's death has sparked protest — many peaceful but some violent — in Minneapolis and other major cities throughout the US, including New York, DC, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Atlanta. Over the past week, some protests have resulted in the looting of business, destruction of property, and death.

"I am your president of law and order and an ally of all peaceful protesters, but in recent days our nation has been gripped by professional anarchists, violent mobs, arsonists, looters, criminals, rioters, antifa, and others," Trump said at a June 1 press briefing.

Other Republican leaders joined Trump in claiming that protests are the result of antifa, a leaderless, non-hierarchial organization that has existed for decades.

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton called ongoing protests the work of "antifa terrorists" in a June 1 tweet, echoing the president's rhetoric. Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz similarly equated antifa with terrorists and said the members should be "hunt them down like we do those in the Middle East."

The group has represented a boogeyman of sorts for Trump, who in July 2019 similarly threatened to classify the group as a terrorist organization after a clash between members of antifa and far-right group the Proud Boys in Portland led to the assault of a conservative journalist.

While the group has existed for decades, its name seems to have entered mainstream vernacular after a white supremacist rally and counterprotests clashed in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. Trump was most likely referring to antifa activists when he blamed "many sides" for the violence in his initial statement on the Charlottesville violence. At a press conference later that week, Trump criticized what he called the "alt-left" for "charging with clubs."

In and around Portland, Oregon, activists with the organization smashed windows and hurled smoke bombs during a series of riots following Trump's election. In August last year, 13 people were arrested in a clash between members of antifa and far-right groups.

It's not exactly clear how many demonstrators at ongoing protests are members of antifa.

"The radical left is much bigger than antifa, much, much bigger, and the number of people who are participating in the property destruction are much, much bigger than the radical left," Mark Bray, a historian at Rutgers University who authored "Antifa: The Anti-Facist Handbook," told the Associated Press.

Here's what you need to know about the activist movement:

What is antifa?

A counterprotester with an antifa sign outside the Boston Commons and the Boston Free Speech Rally in Boston in 2017. Reuters/Stephanie Keith

Antifa, short for "anti-fascist," describes a decentralized, leaderless movement dedicated to combatting right-wing authoritarianism and white supremacy. It has existed for decades but gained prominence after the election of President Donald Trump in 2016, and has continued to be associated with clashes and protests since.

Its members include a mixture of anarchists, socialists, communists, and other far-left activists. It's unclear how many people count themselves as members, but local, autonomous chapters or cells exist in major cities across the US, in many cases accompanied by sizable online followings.

The movement's adherents reject the notion that white supremacy can be quashed by any government apparatus and believe it instead must be eradicated through direct action.

Bray said the group lacks hierarchical structure or universal set of tactics that would make it recognizable. Its members often to espouse revolutionary and anti-authoritarian views, he said.

Sometimes their action consists of traditional community-organizing efforts like peacefully protesting or fundraising. In other cases, Antifa activists have staged doxxing campaigns to expose suspected white supremacists to their employer or landlord and have sometimes used violence to clash with those they view as fascist.

Antifa activists believe that legislative efforts or action from law enforcement are not only insufficient in expunging racist or fascist viewpoints but perpetuate them.

These beliefs were put on full display during the Charlottesville, Virginia, rally, when counterprotesters complained that the police had neglected to protect them from violence. It was antifa, instead, that had physically defended vulnerable counterprotesters and prevented further bloodshed, they argue.

"The police didn't do anything in terms of protecting the people of the community, the clergy," Cornel West, a prominent academic and activist, told The Washington Post. "If it hadn't been for the anti-fascists protecting us from the neo-fascists, we would have been crushed like cockroaches."

The origins of antifa lie in subcultures that emerged to counter fascism in the 1900s.

Antifa protesters at a rally on June 4 in Portland, Oregon. Getty Images/Natalie Behring

Antifa's origins are sometimes attributed to European movements in the 1930s against Nazis in Germany and Blackshirts in Italy, though a more direct and contemporary ancestor of the movement would be the far-left activists who opposed British neo-Nazis in the 1970s and 1980s during the height of the punk-rock subculture's popularity.

In the US and Canada, the Anti-Racist Action Network sprang up around the same time in the 1980s in a similarly loose and decentralized state that Antifa exists in today.

America's oldest antifa group that still operates is Rose City Antifa, which formed in 2007 in Portland, Oregon, according to Bray.

Bray previously wrote in The Washington Post that these early Antifa adherents typically faced outright animosity from the mainstream left for their attention to what was then seen as fringe, racist groups instead of tackling "more large-scale, systemic injustices."

"Years before the alt-right even had a name, antifascists were spending thankless hours scouring seedy message boards and researching clandestine neo-Nazi gatherings," Bray wrote. "They were tracking those who planted the seeds of the death that we all witnessed in Charlottesville."

'You need violence in order to protect nonviolence': Antifa, in its members' own words

Anti-fascist counterprotesters outside Emancipation Park on August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. Getty Images/Chip Somodevilla

Antifa members don't hesitate to describe their movement as one that uses any means necessary to oppose fascism.

A 2017 manual for organizing local antifa groups published on It's Going Down, an Antifa-supporting journal, advises prospective members to stay anonymous, track and document "white nationalist, Far Right, and fascist activity," and organize demonstrations to counter events held by white nationalists or members of the so-called alt-right.

The manual warns against accepting "people who just want to fight," adding that "physically confronting and defending against fascists is a necessary part of anti-fascist work, but is not the only or even necessarily the most important part."

"No, I did not behave peacefully when I saw a thousand Nazis occupy a sizable American city," one activist wrote in a letter published on It's Going Down. "I fought them with the most persuasive instruments at hand, the way both my grandfathers did. I was maced, punched, kicked, and beaten with sticks, but I gave as good as I got, and usually better. Donald Trump says that 'there was violence on both sides.' Of course there was."

The necessity of violence in the face of what they perceive as a growing fascist threat is a sentiment expressed by many antifa adherents, who emphasize that white nationalists often cannot be reasoned with or otherwise opposed.

"You need violence in order to protect nonviolence," Emily Rose Nauert, an antifa member best known for being punched in the face by a white nationalist during a clash at Berkeley in April 2017, told The New York Times. "That's what's very obviously necessary right now. It's full-on war, basically."

Antifa's critics on the right have pushed back on the group's use of force

President Donald Trump makes a statement to the press in the Rose Garden about restoring "law and order" on June 1, 2020 in Washington, DC. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Right-wing critics of antifa have long expressed concerns about the chilling effect the group has on their First Amendment rights. Conservatives have also decried the groups sometimes violent and confrontational tactics.

Conservatives have long complained of censorship and infringement on their freedom of speech — particularly on college campuses, where predominantly left-wing student bodies and faculties have often succeeded at shutting or shouting down controversial right-wing speakers and events.

Among the most prominent of such instances was Berkeley's cancellation of Ann Coulter's campus speech in 2017 out of fear that far-left activists and antifa members would respond with violence. The American Civil Liberties Union denounced the cancellation as a "heckler's veto," a legal term in which the government suppresses speech out of fear it will prompt a violent reaction.

In 2019, clashes between antifa members and far-right groups turned violent, leading to 13 arrests in August. In July, conservatives targeted the group after right-wing blogger Andy Ngo said he had been attacked by antifa members.

The GOP's yearslong calls for antifa to be labeled a terrorist organization have been amplified amid the ongoing protests surround Floyd's death and police brutality.

In statements about protests over Floyd's death , Attorney General William Barr described "antifa-like tactics" by out-of-state agitators and said antifa was instigating violence and engaging in "domestic terrorism."

The right-wing media has also fixated on the antifa movement, portraying it as an example of violence inherent in left-wing ideology. Fox News' Jesse Watters even attempted to confront a purported antifa member on the air — a stint that backfired when it emerged that the purported antifa member was really an 18-year-old YouTuber apparently pulling a prank.

Trump and his supporters have reacted to antifa violence with zeal, drawing parallels between the movement and the neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members who antifa oppose.

Trump was possibly referring to antifa when he gave his now-infamous press conference at Trump Tower, during which he slammed what he called the alt-left — a term created by white nationalists that no actual left-wing group self-identifies under — as being equally to blame for violence in Charlottesville.

"What about the 'alt-left' that came charging at the, as you say, the 'alt-right'?" Trump said in 2017. "You had, you had a group on one side that was bad. And you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody wants to say that, but I'll say it right now."

The movement has sparked criticism, amusement, and discussion among the left.

A counterdemonstrator using a lighted spray can against a white nationalist demonstrator at the entrance to Lee Park in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12, 2017. Associated Press/Steve Helber

Liberals have generally been slow to acknowledge antifa. While some have lamented the violence at recent protests, others have reacted with amusement at certain antifa antics.

"Their presence at a protest is intended to intimidate and dissuade racists, but the use of violent measures by some antifa against their adversaries can create a vicious, self-defeating cycle of attacks, counter-attacks and blame," the Anti-Defamation League said of antifa. "This is why most established civil rights organizations criticize antifa tactics as dangerous and counterproductive."

One of the most-witnessed instances of antifa violence came on Trump's January 2017 Inauguration Day, when an activist punched avowed white nationalist Richard Spencer in the face as he was giving an interview. A video clip of the encounter immediately went viral, to the cheers of prominent mainstream liberals.

The incident and its viral response prompted a debate over whether it's moral to "punch a Nazi" and whether broad acceptance of that behavior could increase ambiguity over which people can be accurately described as Nazis and who has the right to decide.

"No, it's not OK to punch a Nazi," Brian Levin, the directer of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University at San Bernardino, told CNN. "If white nationalists are sophisticated at anything, it's the ability to try to grasp some kind of moral high ground when they have no other opportunity, and that's provided when they appear to be violently victimized."

Levin continued: "That's the only moral thread that they can hang their hats on. And we're stupid if we give them that opportunity."

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cometsweepandleonidsfly · 5 years

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When Game of Thrones ended its eight-year run on Sunday, the series finale, titled “The Iron Throne,” received a largely negative critical response. Many writers pointed out that the show’s last season had given up on the careful character-building of Thrones’ early days—a problem that, in truth, had started a few years back. The result was a seemingly rushed conclusion where multiple characters made poorly justified decisions and important story lines felt only halfway developed.

The show made plenty of mistakes in its final episode, but among the most significant was Thrones’ abrupt and uncharacteristic turn to moralizing—and its use of heavy-handed allusions to 20th-century history to do so. Characters who were once morally complicated, whose actions fit within well-developed personal motivations and fueled the show’s gripping political drama, became mechanisms to bring the story to a hasty, unearned conclusion. Characters like Daenerys Targaryen and Tyrion Lannister—previously complex and fully formed—became, in “The Iron Throne,” mere tools in the service of a plodding message about the dangers of totalitarianism.

The reliance on contemporary historical allegory pervades the entire first half of the final episode, but the most glaring instance comes about 10 minutes in, after characters have walked through rubble-strewn streets and debated the ethics of summarily executing prisoners of war. Daenerys enters the scene upon her dragon, descending from the darkened sky. It’s a visceral case study in dramatizing evil as authority, which is to say it’s cribbed from Triumph of the Will. Daenerys’s appearance mimics Adolf Hitler’s entry in Leni Riefenstahl’s 1935 propaganda film. The queen arrives on dragonback, he on an airplane. Both come from above, seemingly higher and mightier than the mortals watching. Daenerys dismounts and walks through the blasted hulk of the Red Keep’s gates, directly toward the camera. When the wings of her last living dragon spread out behind her as if they were her own, the message is clear: The dragon has awoken. Dany gazes upon serried ranks of soldiers, fires still burning over miles of city and ash falling from the sky. Somewhere on the way to becoming the dragon, she has left behind the medieval machinations of earlier seasons and adopted the manicured totalitarianism of 20th-century dictators as her own.

The dragon queen begins to speak of liberation and renewal and bloodshed in front of a cheering crowd of uniformed soldiers, standing at attention, the blood of innocents still on their spears. Her zealous defense of war crimes in the name of ideology could be a Nazi’s speech, or perhaps a leftist authoritarian’s. There’s certainly something of Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin in her idea that people ought to be liberated, by force if necessary, even if it means death for thousands. “Women, men, and children have suffered too long beneath the wheel,” Daenerys proclaims. Over the heads of her soldiers, viewers see what liberation means: the wreck of King’s Landing, Daenerys with her dragon sigil on one side and the flesh-and-blood reptile on the other. Hitler’s banners were the same red and black with a circle in the center, containing an odd, swirled insignia. The sieg heils are replaced by the thudding of spears, the brownshirts by men in helmets and leather, but the effect is identical.

The parallels are in some ways fitting. Daenerys’s rhetoric has always had a brutal streak—she’s had no problem promising the death of enemies to her followers. But her guarantees of violent revolution had previously been couched in the character’s personal kindness and her repeated efforts not to become a reborn version of her pyromaniacal father. Perhaps unable to make her sudden moral downfall in Season 8 seem wholly organic, Game of Thronesopted to lean on dramatic visual cues. If the show could not sell viewers on Daenerys’s embrace of unambiguous villainy, it could at least tie her directly to Hitler, to Stalin, to dictators whose reigns are within living memory.

In earlier seasons, tyranny did not always look like tyranny. Few moments capture how elegantly Game of Thrones used to work like the ones in Season 2when Tywin Lannister, one of television’s great villains, interacts with Arya Stark, who’s disguised as a servant. Tywin comes off as human, as a man concerned with his family and his legacy. He shows generosity, asks about his servant’s family, and treats her more gently than many of the series’s purported heroes might have. Such nuance extended to other characters, too: The often ruthless Stannis Baratheon practices a harsh but evenhanded form of justice. His late brother Robert, a drunkard and philanderer, still strove to act as a king and friend should, despite his constant failures. Even the murderous Roose Bolton’s and Walder Frey’s behavior was motivated by fundamentally human desires to improve their families’ lots. Viewers didn’t need fascist or Stalinist symbols to know when an action was vile, even if it came from a character who didn’t seem fully evil.

Things are simpler when viewers do not have to think about the people behind the evil. Game of Thrones used to ask its audience to think about those people, though. One episode in the show’s second season began with a seemingly random conversation between two soldiers guarding the Lannister army’s horses. They aren’t significant to the plot, but they get almost two minutes of screen time. They’re normal people who joke around—farting is involved—and laugh. And then they’re killed. The show often forced viewers to question its heroes not through cruelty and violence but through peace and humor. It was not the sudden death of the Lannister men that gave the scene its emotional heft but the ordinariness of what came before it.

That sort of nuance disappeared in later seasons. Even when the opposing side became sympathetic victims, they were not fleshed out with the same care as the Lannister soldiers were in the second season. The unsubtle imagery in Game of Thrones’ later seasons was aided by the show’s use of the Unsullied, Daenerys’s army of erstwhile slaves. Though they never really took on individual identities, the Unsullied had a story, and their very presence on the show made a point about who Daenerys was. But in Season 8, the Unsullied became an entity to be neatly organized and casually discarded. Their lack of individuality served the show’s thudding metaphors in “The Iron Throne.” The Unsullied’s faceless helms display no emotion but suggest total loyalty. The men slam their spears into the dirt in unison when Daenerys speaks. They are an authoritarian’s dream.

“The Iron Throne” doesn’t stop with the imagery of totalitarianism. Apparently concerned that some viewers might miss the parallels to 20th-century dictators, the show has Jon Snow, its morally upstanding and politically inept co-lead, join the now-imprisoned adviser Tyrion Lannister in his cell to fully explicate Daenerys’s transition to fascism. Tyrion asks Jon: “When you heard her talking to her soldiers, did she sound like someone who is done fighting?” Of course she didn’t, because dictators always need enemies. But in the past, Game of Thrones didn’t need to explain to viewers exactly what was happening. It presented well-shaded characters and morally unclear choices, then asked the audience to come to its own conclusions.

Tyrion continues: “When she murdered the slavers of Astapor, I’m sure no one but the slavers complained. After all, they were evil men. When she crucified hundreds of Meereenese nobles, who could argue? They were evil men. The Dothraki khals she burned alive? They would have done worse to her.” It’s impressive, really, that a character in a premodern fantasy reality is so well versed in postwar German confessional poetry: Tyrion’s words echo the Lutheran minister Martin Niemöller’s “First they came …” almost exactly. “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— / Because I was not a socialist,” Niemöller said. First she came for the slavers of Astapor.

Niemöller’s words are famous for good reason; they tell simply and concisely how evil results from inaction. But Game of Thrones viewers were watching a 73-episode television series that had the luxury of showing exactly how horrifying bloodshed can result from the intention to make society better. Thrones once had faith that its depiction of a kingdom torn apart by petty squabbles and the indifference of wealthy autocrats resonated with viewers. Until the last season, the show didn’t feel the need to tell viewers how it resonated.

Of course, since its inception, Game of Thrones has referenced real-life history. The central conflict is inspired by the Wars of the Roses, the notorious Red Wedding was based on a 15th-century event called the “Black Dinner”—the list goes on. But such references have usually been to things outside of living memory. They’ve been to medieval or ancient events, and usually they were mined more for plot points or invented history, not to set up obvious ethical comparisons.

The show’s final act didn’t trust viewers the way the early seasons did. The audience didn’t need a fable about power to be wrapped in a bow and delivered in the form of 20th-century historical analogies. (Or maybe we did—maybe some of us have “become inured to the shoddy writing and plotting.”) In its first half, and perhaps even for a season or two after leaving Martin’s books behind, the show trusted its audience enough to avoid allegory and the simplistic morality that comes with it. It trusted that the audience knew right from wrong, and knew that both could coexist within a character. It asked viewers to find their own messages in a series about a faux-medieval world of dragons and ice zombies—and take them or leave them as they saw fit. It would have been better if the show had ended that way.

#game of thrones #got8 #spoilers #but the real spoilers are how the show spoiled itself

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teachanarchy · 7 years

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Political parties on the far right are today enjoying a surge of support and access to government power that they have not experienced since their heyday in the 1930s.

This phenomenon is particularly striking in Europe, where massive migration, sluggish economic growth, and terrorism have stirred up zealous nationalism and Islamophobia, but it resonates through large areas of the world including the Asia-Pacific. In France, the National Front―founded in 1972 by former Nazi collaborators and other rightists employing anti-Semitic and racist appeals―has tried to soften its image somewhat under the recent leadership of Marine Le Pen. Nevertheless, Le Pen’s current campaign for the French presidency, in which she is one of two leading candidates facing a runoff, includes speeches delivered against a screen filled with immigrants committing crimes, jihadists plotting savage attacks, and European Union (EU) bureaucrats destroying French jobs, while she assails multiculturalism and promises to “restore order.” In Germany, the Alternative for Germany party, established three years ago, won up to 25 percent of the vote in state elections in March 2016. Led by Frauke Petry, the party calls for sealing the EU’s borders (by shooting migrants, if necessary), forcing the migrants who remain to adopt traditional German culture, and thoroughly rejecting Islam, including a ban on constructing mosques. According to the party platform, “Islam does not belong in Germany.”

Elsewhere in Europe, the story is much the same. In Britain, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), led until recently by Nigel Farage, arose from obscurity to become the nation’s third largest party. Focused on drastically reducing immigration and championing nationalism (including pulling Britain out of the EU), UKIP absorbed the constituency of neo-fascist groups and successfully led the struggle for Brexit. In the Netherlands, a hotly-contested parliamentary election in March 2017 saw the far right Party for Freedom emerge as the nation’s second largest political party. Calling for recording the ethnicity of all Dutch citizens and closing all Islamic schools, the party is headed by Geert Wilders, who has been tried twice in that country for inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims. In Italy, the Northern League (so-named because it originally pledged to liberate industrious Italian workers in the north from subsidizing lazy Italians in the south), demands drastic curbs on immigration and removal of Italy from the Eurozone. Its leader, Matteo Salvini, contends that Islam is “incompatible” with Western society.

Other European parties of the far right include Hungary’s Jobbik (the country’s third-largest party, which is vehemently hostile to immigration, the EU, and homosexuality), the Sweden Democrats (now vying for second place among Sweden’s parties, with roots in the white supremacist movement and a platform of heavily restricting immigration and opposing the EU), Austria’s Freedom Party (which, founded decades ago by Nazis, nearly won two recent 2016 presidential elections, vigorously opposes immigration, and proclaims “yes to families rather than gender madness”), and the People’s Party-Our Slovakia (which supports leaving the EU and the Eurozone and whose leader has argued that “even one immigrant is one too many”).

Only one of these rising parties is usually referred to as fascist: Greece’s Golden Dawn. Exploiting Greece’s economic crisis and, especially, hatred of refugees and other migrants, Golden Dawn has promoted virulent nationalism emphasizing the supposed racial superiority of Greeks to emerge as Greece’s third-largest party. Golden Dawn spokesman, Elias Kasidiaris, is known for sporting a swastika on his shoulder and for reading passages in parliament from the anti-Semitic hoax, the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” The party also employs a swastika-like flag, as well as gangs of black-shirted thugs who beat up immigrants. Party leaders, in fact, are on trial for numerous crimes, including violent attacks upon migrants.

Greece’s Golden Dawn

Other far right parties in Europe, although striving for greater respectability, also provide reminders of 1920s- and 1930s-style fascism. Addressing a Northern League rally, Italy’s bombastic Salvini wore a black shirt while supporters waved neo-Nazi symbols and photos of Benito Mussolini. In Hungary, Jobbik’s platform includes a call to “stop hushing up such taboo issues” as “Zionist Israel’s efforts to dominate Hungary and the world.” Meanwhile, the leaders of Alternative for Germany have revived words once employed by the Nazis. In January 2017, one leader created a scandal when, addressing a party youth gathering, he criticized Germany’s commemoration of Holocaust crimes. That same month, speaking at a rightwing gathering in Germany, Wilders used the occasion to lament that “blonde” Europeans were becoming “strangers in their own countries.”

Asian politicians similarly play on popular fears and hatreds in their successful efforts to move their countries rightward. In India, the BJP, a Hindu nationalist party with a past that included violent attacks upon the nation’s Muslim minority, grew substantially and captured control of parliament. Led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP opposes Muslim immigration, supports a program of social and economic conservatism, and trumpets the slogan “India First.” In the Philippines, where the government had long fought Muslim separatists on the island of Mindanao, Rodrigo Duterte, who gained fame and popularity for his ruthless “war on drugs,” was elected president in May 2016. By the following January, the death toll from his extrajudicial killings reached 6,200 people. Responding to EU criticism of his human rights record, Duterte replied in his characteristic “strongman” style: “Fuck you!” In Japan, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, leading the misnamed Liberal Democratic Party, strengthened the party’s grip on power by repeatedly transmitting rightwing nationalist signals, which appealed to people who rejected criticism of Japan’s role in World War II and possessed an image of a traditional, pure, authoritarian nation, uncontaminated by Western liberalism. Abe has sought to eliminate Article 9, the peace provision of Japan’s Constitution while expanding the role of the Japanese military in support of US campaigns throughout the Asia-Pacific.

Around the globe, the same trend is in evidence. In the United States, of course, Donald Trump won a startling victory in his run for the presidency, employing attacks on Mexican migrants, Islamophobia, calls for law and order, and promises to “make America great again.” The Republican Party, moving rightward for years before Trump captured the party nomination, quickly embraced this agenda. In Russia, Vladimir Putin and his United Russia party solidified their grip upon power, with Putin telling parliament that social and religious conservatism provided the only ways to keep Russia and the world from slipping into “chaotic darkness.” Defending “traditional values,” Putin attacked multiculturalism, aligned himself with the Orthodox Church, promoted a mystical, authoritarian nationalism, and fostered a government crackdown on Russia’s Muslims.

Although these parties and leaders of the far right have some differences, they also share some key characteristics. Uninterested in challenging economic and social inequality, they develop their popular appeal by flaunting extreme nationalism, hostility to immigrants and minorities, a disdain for multiculturalism, and, in most cases, a call to return to “traditional values.”

Not surprisingly, then, they usually get on very well. Responding to Donald Trump’s election, a spokesman for Golden Dawn praised it as a victory for “clean ethnic states.” He added: “A great global change is starting, which will continue with nationalists prevailing.” In January 2017, three of the top stars of the rising far right―Le Pen, Petry, and Wilders―shared the platform at a rightwing conference in Germany, at which they promised a new day for Europe. That same month, Abe paid a very friendly visit to Duterte, spending a weekend at his Philippines home.

Europe’s far right parties have been particularly enthusiastic about Putin. Unlike most other European political groupings, they applauded his war against Georgia and military meddling in Ukraine. When Putin invited representatives of their parties to observe the referendum to have Russia annex Crimea, they dutifully attended the event, after which France’s National Front, Britain’s UKIP, Austria’s Freedom Party, and Italy’s Northern League endorsed its legitimacy. Hailing Russia’s president as a true patriot, Le Pen lauded him as a defender of “the Christian heritage of European civilization.” Farage, asked which world leader he most admired, responded without hesitation: Putin! The leader of Austria’s Freedom Party, Heinz-Christian Strache, praised Putin as a “pure democrat.” Indeed, Europe’s far right parties blame the EU and NATO for the crisis in the Ukraine, support lifting EU sanctions on Russia, and back Russia’s military intervention in Syria. In the European parliament, their representatives vote in favor of Russian interests nearly all the time.

In turn, Russia’s president has assisted these parties in their struggle for power. In 2014, the National Front received an 11 million euro loan from a Russian bank to help finance its successful municipal election campaign. During the current French presidential campaign, the National Front applied for a substantially larger Russian bank loan, Russian media outlets are working hard for Le Pen, and Putin has received her in Moscow with the kind of buildup usually accorded a head of state. In Germany, Russian media and social networks played up a false story of an alleged gang rape of a 13-year old girl by migrants, prompting tens of thousands of Germans to take to the streets in protest and generating startling electoral gains by Alternative for Germany. That party has denied allegations that Russia is providing it with funding, but not the possibility that Russia is behind the mysterious appearance of millions of copies of its campaign newspaper and thousands of its election signs. Meanwhile, the youth group of Alternative for Germany has forged an alliance with Putin’s United Russia party.

The story is much the same in other nations. In Austria, the Freedom Party appears to be receiving Russian financial assistance through a thinly veiled intermediary, a prominent Russian oligarch. Russian cooperation with Austria’s far right became official in December 2016, when the United Russia party signed a cooperation agreement with the Freedom Party. In Britain, the Russian government, despite formal statements of neutrality, clearly sided with UKIP’s Brexit campaign. Enamored of Farage, it provided him with frequent guest appearances on Russia Today and, following passage of the Brexit referendum, even offered him his own show on that state-funded network. In the Netherlands, Russia’s disinformation and propaganda arms have worked to assist Wilders and his Party for Freedom by trumpeting false news stories.

The relationship between Duterte and Putin seems to be exceptionally warm. The two world leaders met for the first time at a November 2016 international conference in Lima, Peru, and Duterte was reportedly “starstruck” by the Russian leader. In conversations with reporters, the Filipino president went on at length about Putin’s smiles and laughter. “It’s something that you feel,” he said, “because his laugh is big.” According to Duterte, the Russian president repeatedly invited him to visit Russia, and Duterte finally promised to do so after Putin promised to present him, when he visited, with a gun. “I like Putin,” Duterte told the press. “We have similarities.” Feeling “like we’ve known each other for so long,” they had immediately become “fast friends.” This instant camaraderie with Putin contrasted sharply with Duterte’s relationship with U.S. President Barack Obama, whom he referred to on numerous occasions as the “son of a whore.”

Putin, in turn, was quick to offer Russian support for the Duterte regime. In early January, after a four-day visit to the Philippines, a senior Russian naval officer announced in a media interview that the Russian Navy stood ready to help the island nation fight terrorism. “The problem here is terrorism,” he said, “and we will show you what we can do.” Reiterating Moscow’s backing, the Russian ambassador stated that Russia was willing to provide sophisticated arms to Duterte’s government, including light weapons, submarines, and helicopters. According to Filipino government officials, their nation was “open to cooperating with the Russian Ministry of Defense through education and training exchanges on counter-terrorism operations.”

No one, however, has inspired the rising far right more than Donald Trump. As early as March 2016, Salvini was enthusiastic about the U.S. business magnate, and in late April he traveled to Pennsylvania to participate in a Trump rally. Here he held a “Trump: Make America Great Again” sign and afterward had a 20-minute meeting with the Republican presidential front-runner that consummated their alliance. Farage took part in Trump’s presidential campaign that August in Mississippi, where he shared the rally platform with him and lauded him before the cheering crowd. In October 2016, Golden Dawn endorsed Trump on the floor of the Greek parliament, hailing the “patriotic wind” sweeping through Europe and North America. Furthermore, if U.S. intelligence agencies are correct, Vladimir Putin set Russian covert operations in motion to help secure Trump’s political triumph.

Naturally, Trump’s election victory sent a surge of euphoria through the far right. From France, Le Pen lauded it as “a sign of hope,” showing “that people are taking their future back.” Farage, addressing a victory party near the White House, declared: “Brexit was great, but Trump becoming the president of the USA is Brexit plus, plus, plus.” Farage, in fact, was the first British politician to meet with Trump after the latter’s election. He posed for photographs with the president-elect in the gold-plated elevator of Trump Tower. Exhilarated by Trump’s election, the leaders of Alternative for Germany immediately dispatched a congratulatory telegram to him. At a celebration in Munich, a party leader told the cheering crowd that what Trump had done in the United States, their party would do in Germany. “America First is coming to Deutschland,” he boomed, with the crowd erupting in thunderous applause.

French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen

As might be expected, Trump’s executive orders banning refugees and other immigrants from predominantly Muslim nations sent parties of the far right into ecstasy. In Greece, thousands of Golden Dawn supporters surged into the streets, carrying torches and waving their Nazi-like flags. “Well done,” President Trump, exulted Wilders; “it’s the only way to stay safe and free.” In a National Front rally brimming with nationalist fervor, Le Pen declared that Americans had “kept faith with their national interest,” while National Front supporters shouted joyously: “This is our country!” Trump’s action was also lauded by the Northern League, Alternative for Germany, and the whole panoply of ultra-right parties. Although government officials of most nations condemned Trump’s immigrant ban, India’s prime minister conspicuously refrained from any criticism, while India’s foreign secretary argued that the world should not “demonize” Trump.

Viewing Trump as a kindred spirit, as well as the leader of the world’s most powerful nation, the parties of the far right are keen on cementing an alliance with him. Upon Trump’s election, Alternative for Germany informed him that it was a “natural ally” at his side. Farage was so eager to court Trump that he met with him three times during the first weeks of Trump’s presidency. Salvini told the rightwing Breitbart News that his party shared many of the policies of the new administration and was a logical ally. “On many issues,” the Italian leader said, “we see eye-to-eye with President Trump and we look forward to partnering with his administration.” Arguing that “a direct channel with the new American president is crucial,” Salvini promised to quickly establish “direct, serious, non-mediated contact” with the Trump administration.

Asia’s rightwing politicians are just as anxious to become collaborators with Trump. Only a week after Trump’s election victory, Abe flew to the United States to have a personal meeting with the president-elect at Trump Tower. Japan’s prime minister thereby became the only world leader to meet with Trump in the months before his inauguration. In late March 2017, Duterte told a meeting of Filipinos in Myanmar that, although he had previously told Obama to “go to hell,” “President Trump and I are okay,” and “I can assure him also of our friendship and cooperation.” Although Duterte said he was not yet ready for a formal military alliance with the United States, he was prepared to “give all, whatever it is,” to be allied with the Trump administration.

But what is the attitude of Trump and his circle toward these leaders of the far right? Apparently, it is quite favorable. When Trump, during his campaign for the presidency, first spoke with Salvini, he told him: “Matteo, I hope you become prime minister of Italy soon.” Moreover, Trump, as a fan of Farage and keen supporter of Brexit, has not only met with Farage on numerous occasions, but has publicly declared that the rightwing leader would make a good British ambassador to the United States. Only two days before the first round of the French presidential election, Trump offered a tacit endorsement of Le Pen, stating that, when it came to “what’s been going on in France,” she was the “strongest” candidate.

Trump has also displayed a remarkable affection for rightwing politicians in power. Political observers have been struck by Trump’s consistent admiration for Vladimir Putin, whom Trump

has praised for his “strong control” over Russia. “He’s been a leader,” said Trump, “far more than our president has been.” So intertwined have Trump and his associates been with Russian officialdom that the FBI is conducting a criminal investigation of collusion between Trump campaign officials and the Russian government during the U.S. presidential election campaign.

Similarly, Trump has been a strong fan of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. During his presidential campaign, the U.S. corporate tycoon told a Hindu-American gathering that, if he was elected, “we would be best friends.” Praising Modi as a very energetic leader with whom he hoped to work, he predicted that they were “going to have a phenomenal future together.” Modi was one of the first national leaders that Trump phoned upon becoming president. According to a White House statement, Trump said that he considered India a “true friend and partner in addressing challenges around the world,” and was looking forward to welcoming Modi to the United States later in the year. In turn, Modi said that he had had a “warm conversation” with Trump, and that the pair had “agreed to work closely in the coming days.”

Trump has also been remarkably cozy with other rightwing Asian leaders. According to Duterte, Trump―during a December 2016 phone conversation with him―endorsed the Filipino president’s murderous campaign against drug users and dealers, telling Duterte that he was handling it the “right way.” In February 2017, Abe flew to the United States for another meeting with Trump, this time at the White House, where he was greeted by America’s president with a hug. Then they and their families flew off to Florida, where Trump and Abe played golf at one of his lavish resorts while their wives toured the area. Trump announced that the two men had a “great time” together, topping it off with a “high-five.”

Some of Trump’s aides have been even more outspoken in praising parties and leaders of the far right. For years, Steve Bannon―who managed the final portion of Trump’s election campaign and who is now the president’s top political strategist―ran Breitbart, a far right news service that he described as “the platform for the alt-right.” Under his leadership, Breitbart worked assiduously to provide favorable publicity for UKIP, Alternative for Germany, the Party for Freedom, and other rightwing parties. Farage recalled that “when Bannon opened up the Breitbart office in London and began to give the arguments that I was making . . . a very, very big audience,” this turned the tide for Brexit. Consequently, Farage publicly offered “a personal thank you and tribute to Steve Bannon for having the foresightedness of doing that with Breitbart,” for which he was “extremely grateful.”

And the project continues. In November 2016, after Breitbart announced plans to expand to Berlin and Paris, Reuters―citing sources “close to Bannon”―reported that “the aim is to help elect right-wing politicians in the two countries.”

Bannon’s alliance with the far right is not merely a marriage of convenience, but is based on a deep-seated nationalist ideology and love of power that he shares with it. “I think strong countries and strong nationalist movements in countries make strong neighbors,” Bannon told an audience of conservative religious activists in 2014. These were “the building blocks that built Western Europe and the United States, and I think it’s what can see us forward.”

Sometimes, the Trump administration’s intense nationalism seems built on a very unsavory past. Bannon, who wrote Trump’s “America First” inaugural address, is an admirer of a nationalist rightwinger, Charles Maurras, a vicious anti-Semite and supporter of France’s World War II Nazi-dominated regime who, after the war, was sentenced to life imprisonment as a collaborator. Sebastian Gorka, a Hungarian immigrant who worked for Bannon at Breitbart and, like Bannon, is now a White House advisor, was recently named by officers of a quasi-Nazi Hungarian nationalist group as a sworn member of their organization. Although Gorka denied this allegation, he did wear its medal to a Trump inaugural ball and did add a “v” middle initial to his name, a practice that comports with the group’s traditions.

Other Republican officeholders have also displayed an affinity with Europe’s far right politics. In March 2017, U.S. Representative Steve King publicly praised Geert Wilders, who, in his latest anti-immigrant tirade, had referred to Moroccans as “scum.” “Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny,” King declared, with admiration. “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” In September 2016, he posted online a photo of Wilders and himself, warning of “cultural suicide by demographic transformation.”

Although numerous public officials condemned King’s latest racist broadside, White House press secretary Sean Spicer refused to comment on it. Trump was also silent on King’s remarks. But, back in 2014, when Trump had campaigned for the Iowa congressman’s election, he called King a “special guy, a smart person, with really the right views on almost everything.” With their ideologies so in sync, said Trump, “we don’t have to compare notes.”

In this fashion, then, political forces around the world have been drawing together in recent years into a far right international. Although its future remains uncertain, especially if Putin and Trump come to a parting of the ways, it certainly has plenty of political momentum at present. “Long live Trump, long live Putin, long live Le Pen, and long live the League,” exulted the Northern League’s Salvini in early 2017. “Finally, we have an international alliance.”

This is an expanded version of an article that was originally published by the History News Network.

#politics #fascism #world history #WW2

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ask-the-crimson-king · 3 years

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((This was FAR too big for an ask, put a read more cut where you see fit))

Ok, so the accusing anon mentioned it was the Progress Flag they saw and the way they worded their explanation kinda went in a few directions, which I'll try to sort through:

"Nazi and Nazbol [Nazi-Bolshevik] Groups": Yes, that is a thing that exists, but on a smaller scale online and not nearly as prominent in the living world as other supremacist ideologies. Yes, there are people who actually looked at the darkest days of both German and Soviet History and decided "This could work well together", but they are dunked-on HARD by both pro-fascists and pro-communists by their very nature. Do not ask me how neo-Nazis and Tankies got together in such an unholy union or what they stand for because none of it makes sense to my Bachelor's education degree with social science emphasis OR my regrettable experience from both groups in my soon-to-be 29 years of life

"Eth Nat [Ethnic Nationalist] desires": Yes, those unfortunately exist around the world. Racism and ethnic cleansing isn't a solely White practice, but it's definitely been done by Whites throughout US history and its affects (and believers) still exist to this very day. Only non-White supremacist American group I can recall is the very loose online Hotep community (remember the "We were kings" memes?) that's legitimately Black supremacist and also incredibly anti-Semitic, homophobic and misogynistic---so taking a rainbow flag wouldn't be their work || [Don't forget the ethno-nationalist cleansing of Armenians that is still happening right now, and the settler-colonialism happening with the Palestinians.]

"Representing clear racial politics": Well, I guess if you loosely define Black Lives Matter and its main message of "stop profiling us as criminals and even if we are criminals, treat us humanely as you do White criminals", then it would count as "racial/identity politics". So would the "Stop Asian Hate" movement in response to COVID fearmongering, but if we're really defining any political movement (for good or for ill) as "racial" if it affects a given race, then practically everything is racial politics---by nature of people of different races experiencing things, even within the same country or social class

___ [I think they were trying to say Nazi and Nazi-adjacent groups were seeing the flag as depicting "clear racial politics". I have seen fascists use this talking point, but against non-white minorities. Never for them.] ___

"Protected by a strong border": That definitely is a policy point put forward by ethnic nationalists, pro-fascists, etc. and groups have tried to parrot or "steal" progressive groups' rhetoric to then apply to border security (remember that map of America made into a cartoon woman, gripping her skirt as a hand from the South reaches up, all with the caption "My borders, my choice"?). As for how black and brown are "stronger" colors than pink and white, that's entirely a cultural bias in associating light or warm colors with femininity or "weakness"---which is why Hitler rotated the original Hindu swastika 45 degrees to resemble an X rather than a cross and painted it black rather than the usual pink or light purple, as well as why the upside-down pink triangle was used to mark LGBT+ citizens

"The fact that four in rotation makes a swastika": I mean, if you were to completely disfigure any 4 stripes in such a way, it could resemble an X or a cross, but the swastika itself has 4 more "legs" that stick out from the base. But with how much the human mind needs to warp any given lines into a new symbol, you may as well just slap the graven image itself on the thing and be forthright with it

[And they do! Homofascists/4Chan or generally right-wing trolls in the past have, indeed, simply slapped it on the standard 6-color pride flag.

More info on fascism/it's supporters/how it gains traction under the cut.]

As for whether so-called progressive people do parrot fascist rhetoric and support fascist policy? That is also unfortunately true. Don't ask me how I know this or how this even could happen, but there were a few Trans Fascists I came across and I found two of their flags: one being just the swastika slapped onto the Trans Pride flag, the other being the Lesbian Labrys in the place of the axe in the fasces symbol (that ancient Roman symbol of a magistrate's power over life and death, the origin of the term "fascist/fascism") on the Trans Pride Flag

___ [People who try to be progressive but fall into the pit-falls of Nazi or fascist ideology are why we have NazBols. It's why we see groups trying to "take the land back" and basically create woke ethno-states for marginalized people. I am not saying this referring to indigenous peoples who are fighting to keep their land (which I do indeed support), I have also heard weird Tankie-esque stuff about Black people feeling so much safer away from whites, and other people of color who may feel the same. Thus creating a separatist divide and creating "woke" ethno-states -- "It's for the good of the minorities so they can feel safer!" Or we could talk about and tackle the systemic problems leading to people feeling this way? How about that instead? "But it'll never work!" It won't if you never try.

Don't fall for Black separatism, kids. You are not only feeding into the interests of white supremacists, but you're also becoming a reactionary in the process. Just because you are white, it does not mean you are an inherent threat to your nonwhite comrades. Diversity is strength. Remember that.] ___

My own hot take? We should remember that at the very core of Nazi ideology---no matter how many self-proclaimed LGBT+ individuals also proclaim to be Nazis, no matter how many non-Whites or women march beside them, no matter how many Nazis claim otherwise---is Nazism is straight White male supremacy and those undoubtedly deluded into being their "allies" are simply a means to gaining government office democratically

But once that purpose is served, they too will be slaughtered. Anyone PoC, LGBT, non-Christian or otherwise not fitting the mold of "the Supreme Master RaceTM" who is utterly duped into supporting their agenda (and cause them to succeed) would merely buy themselves a stay of execution at the cost of their neighbors' lives---before their blood also becomes the oil on the gears and their bodies also become the coal in the furnaces of the fascist war-machine

Populism, the Nazis' preferred tactic and a pillar of fascist ideology, is dependent upon democratic majority. It would be incredibly stupid (though these ARE Nazis and fascists we're talking about, so the bar is well beneath the floor as it is) to instantly demonize everyone who doesn't fit their tight mold the moment they set foot on the streets. They will deny being homophobic. They will deny being racist. They will pay lip-service to feminists. They will force a smile on their faces and hold back their gag reflex in the company of "lesser beings" just long enough to get some votes

Hitler did not seize power overnight. Hitler did not seize power, period. Hitler was elected by the desperate, the foolish and the ambitious in equal measures. The Nazi Party did not run door-to-door to viciously murder every Jew the second Hitler was inaugurated. Every Jew was not immediately sent to the death camps. The Jews were not Hitler's only victims. The Jews were not even Hitler's first victims, though the Jewish casualty count is the still highest that we can confirm

In order to both remove the "undesirables" from Germany and to control the German populace, Hitler and the Nazis went down a very long list. Every potential political opponent, every ethnicity, every possible demographic and label besides "Aryan Nazi supporter" was scheduled to be systematically demonized, discriminated, disappeared and destroyed when it was most convenient for the Nazi Party to do so

When it was ultimately the Jewish people's turn, the removal of their humanity was a long and gradual process of public indoctrination and supported legislation that lasted several years. Once the Jews were stripped of rights and thought of as nothing more than vermin by the German masses, the Nazis simply played their willing role as exterminators. Whether the Germans thought it would go so far or would go so bloodily is an afterthought that came far too late

Remember well the words of regretful Hitler supporter and Holocaust survivor, Martin Niemoller:

"First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me."

To all those who those who look upon their far-right reactionary movement and think "They will always stand by me and the power I give them will never be used against me": You could not be any more wrong, yet you already believe their lies

----

[Good and informative post for those not already familiar with any of these terms, which is why I put the cut where I did. I also added a bit of my own commentary here and there to try and provide examples along with an explanation of the terms I was using.]

#fascism cw #nazi cw #genocide cw #genocide mention #good shit #submission

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