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clairebeauchampfan · 4 years ago

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NYT; wrongthink vs. groupthink

The resignation letter of Bari Weiss, an Op-Ed editor of the New York Times. My highlighting in bold.

“It is with sadness that I write to tell you that I am resigning from The New York Times.

I joined the paper with gratitude and optimism three years ago. I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives and others who would not naturally think of The Times as their home. The reason for this effort was clear: The paper's failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election meant that it didn't have a firm grasp of the country it covers. Dean Baquet and others have admitted as much on various occasions. The priority in Opinion was to help redress that critical shortcoming.

I was honored to be part of that effort, led by James Bennet. I am proud of my work as a writer and as an editor. Among those I helped bring to our pages: the Venezuelan dissident Wuilly Arteaga; the Iranian chess champion Dorsa Derakhshani; and the Hong Kong Christian democrat Derek Lam. Also: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Masih Alinejad, Zaina Arafat, Elna Baker, Rachael Denhollander, Matti Friedman, Nick Gillespie, Heather Heying, Randall Kennedy, Julius Krein, Monica Lewinsky, Glenn Loury, Jesse Singal, Ali Soufan, Chloe Valdary, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Wesley Yang, and many others.

But the lessons that ought to have followed the election—lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn't a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.

Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.

My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I'm 'writing about the Jews again.' Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly 'inclusive' one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.

There are terms for all of this: unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge. I'm no legal expert. But I know that this is wrong.

I do not understand how you have allowed this kind of behavior to go on inside your company in full view of the paper's entire staff and the public. And I certainly can't square how you and other Times leaders have stood by while simultaneously praising me in private for my courage. Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery.

Part of me wishes I could say that my experience was unique. But the truth is that intellectual curiosity—let alone risk-taking—is now a liability at The Times. Why edit something challenging to our readers, or write something bold only to go through the numbing process of making it ideologically kosher, when we can assure ourselves of job security (and clicks) by publishing our 4000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world? And so self-censorship has become the norm.

What rules that remain at The Times are applied with extreme selectivity. If a person's ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets.

Op-eds that would have easily been published just two years ago would now get an editor or a writer in serious trouble, if not fired. If a piece is perceived as likely to inspire backlash internally or on social media, the editor or writer avoids pitching it. If she feels strongly enough to suggest it, she is quickly steered to safer ground. And if, every now and then, she succeeds in getting a piece published that does not explicitly promote progressive causes, it happens only after every line is carefully massaged, negotiated and caveated.

It took the paper two days and two jobs to say that the Tom Cotton op-ed 'fell short of our standards.' We attached an editor's note on a travel story about Jaffa shortly after it was published because it 'failed to touch on important aspects of Jaffa's makeup and its history.' But there is still none appended to Cheryl Strayed's fawning interview with the writer Alice Walker, a proud anti-Semite who believes in lizard Illuminati.

The paper of record is, more and more, the record of those living in a distant galaxy, one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people. This is a galaxy in which, to choose just a few recent examples, the Soviet space program is lauded for its 'diversity'; the doxxing of teenagers in the name of justice is condoned; and the worst caste systems in human history includes the United States alongside Nazi Germany.

Even now, I am confident that most people at The Times do not hold these views. Yet they are cowed by those who do. Why? Perhaps because they believe the ultimate goal is righteous. Perhaps because they believe that they will be granted protection if they nod along as the coin of our realm—language—is degraded in service to an ever-shifting laundry list of right causes. Perhaps because there are millions of unemployed people in this country and they feel lucky to have a job in a contracting industry.

Or perhaps it is because they know that, nowadays, standing up for principle at the paper does not win plaudits. It puts a target on your back. Too wise to post on Slack, they write to me privately about the 'new McCarthyism' that has taken root at the paper of record.

All this bodes ill, especially for independent-minded young writers and editors paying close attention to what they'll have to do to advance in their careers. Rule One: Speak your mind at your own peril. Rule Two: Never risk commissioning a story that goes against the narrative. Rule Three: Never believe an editor or publisher who urges you to go against the grain. Eventually, the publisher will cave to the mob, the editor will get fired or reassigned, and you'll be hung out to dry.

For these young writers and editors, there is one consolation. As places like The Times and other once-great journalistic institutions betray their standards and lose sight of their principles, Americans still hunger for news that is accurate, opinions that are vital, and debate that is sincere. I hear from these people every day. 'An independent press is not a liberal ideal or a progressive ideal or a democratic ideal. It's an American ideal,' you said a few years ago. I couldn't agree more. America is a great country that deserves a great newspaper.

None of this means that some of the most talented journalists in the world don't still labor for this newspaper. They do, which is what makes the illiberal environment especially heartbreaking. I will be, as ever, a dedicated reader of their work. But I can no longer do the work that you brought me here to do—the work that Adolph Ochs described in that famous 1896 statement: 'to make of the columns of The New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.'

Ochs's idea is one of the best I've encountered. And I've always comforted myself with the notion that the best ideas win out. But ideas cannot win on their own. They need a voice. They need a hearing. Above all, they must be backed by people willing to live by them.

Sincerely,

Bari “

It’s all there; the Left’s engrained anti-semitism (so often now cloaked by ‘respectable’ anti-Zionism), the refusal to admit of other opinions, let alone to acknowledge the possibility of their validity, the narrowing of the mind, the cancel culture, the terror of the twitter storm and the mob in the street (”the people” as they like to call themselves) , the sheer spinelessness of the institutional ‘leadership’ unless it is in support of those people who have the ‘right’ opinions. Sadly, exactly the same process is going on at The Guardian, the BBC and our once great universities. Only Illiberal Groupthink is allowed, and former bastions of liberalism close down independent thought, the better to signal their virtue.

#new york times #groupthink

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didanawisgi · 4 years ago

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Bari Weiss Resignation Letter from New York Times

Dear A.G.,

It is with sadness that I write to tell you that I am resigning from The New York Times.

I joined the paper with gratitude and optimism three years ago. I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives and others who would not naturally think of The Times as their home. The reason for this effort was clear: The paper’s failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election meant that it didn’t have a firm grasp of the country it covers. Dean Baquet and others have admitted as much on various occasions. The priority in Opinion was to help redress that critical shortcoming.

But the lessons that ought to have followed the election—lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.

My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m “writing about the Jews again.” Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.

There are terms for all of this: unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge. I’m no legal expert. But I know that this is wrong.

I do not understand how you have allowed this kind of behavior to go on inside your company in full view of the paper’s entire staff and the public. And I certainly can’t square how you and other Times leaders have stood by while simultaneously praising me in private for my courage. Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery.

What rules that remain at The Times are applied with extreme selectivity. If a person’s ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets.

It took the paper two days and two jobs to say that the Tom Cotton op-ed “fell short of our standards.” We attached an editor’s note on a travel story about Jaffa shortly after it was published because it “failed to touch on important aspects of Jaffa’s makeup and its history.” But there is still none appended to Cheryl Strayed’s fawning interview with the writer Alice Walker, a proud anti-Semite who believes in lizard Illuminati.

The paper of record is, more and more, the record of those living in a distant galaxy, one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people. This is a galaxy in which, to choose just a few recent examples, the Soviet space program is lauded for its “diversity”; the doxxing of teenagers in the name of justice is condoned; and the worst caste systems in human history includes the United States alongside Nazi Germany.

Or perhaps it is because they know that, nowadays, standing up for principle at the paper does not win plaudits. It puts a target on your back. Too wise to post on Slack, they write to me privately about the “new McCarthyism” that has taken root at the paper of record.

All this bodes ill, especially for independent-minded young writers and editors paying close attention to what they’ll have to do to advance in their careers. Rule One: Speak your mind at your own peril. Rule Two: Never risk commissioning a story that goes against the narrative. Rule Three: Never believe an editor or publisher who urges you to go against the grain. Eventually, the publisher will cave to the mob, the editor will get fired or reassigned, and you’ll be hung out to dry.

For these young writers and editors, there is one consolation. As places like The Times and other once-great journalistic institutions betray their standards and lose sight of their principles, Americans still hunger for news that is accurate, opinions that are vital, and debate that is sincere. I hear from these people every day. “An independent press is not a liberal ideal or a progressive ideal or a democratic ideal. It’s an American ideal,” you said a few years ago. I couldn’t agree more. America is a great country that deserves a great newspaper.

None of this means that some of the most talented journalists in the world don’t still labor for this newspaper. They do, which is what makes the illiberal environment especially heartbreaking. I will be, as ever, a dedicated reader of their work. But I can no longer do the work that you brought me here to do—the work that Adolph Ochs described in that famous 1896 statement: “to make of the columns of The New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.”

Ochs’s idea is one of the best I’ve encountered. And I’ve always comforted myself with the notion that the best ideas win out. But ideas cannot win on their own. They need a voice. They need a hearing. Above all, they must be backed by people willing to live by them.

Sincerely,

Bari

Source: https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter

#Bari Weiss #new york times #journalism #politics #controversy #authoritarianism #first amendment #freedom of speech #liberalism #liberty #conservatism

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bountyofbeads · 5 years ago

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Russian Oligarchs Are Big Arts Patrons — in the U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/06/arts/russia-oligarchs-arts.html

Russian Oligarchs, as U.S. Arts Patrons, Present a Softer Image of Russia

Museums, the performing arts and historical sites like Fort Ross in California, where an old Russian company flag flies, have been the beneficiaries of their gifts.

By Graham Bowley | Published Oct. 6, 2019 Updated 6:02 PM ET | New York Times | Posted October 6, 2019 8:40 PM ET |

Vladimir O. Potanin, a Russian billionaire who made his fortune in banking and natural resources, has been a donor and board member of the Guggenheim Museum since 2002. More recently he gave $6.45 million to the Kennedy Center in Washington, which used some of the money to install the “Russian Lounge,” a meeting space, in the performing arts complex created, in part, by Congress. His name is now inscribed on a wall there.

At the New Museum in Manhattan, another wealthy oligarch, Leonid Mikhelson, helped underwrite a 2011 exhibition through his foundation, which is dedicated to the appreciation of Russian contemporary art. Two years later, the museum named him a trustee, a position he held until last year — three years after the company he directs was placed under sanctions by the United States government.

Fort Ross, a California state historic park that commemorates a 19th-century Russian settlement in Sonoma County, was struggling in 2010 when Viktor F. Vekselberg, another oligarch, stepped in to help financially. His foundation continued as a patron until last year, when sanctions were imposed on him and his company, and the Justice Department told the park’s caretakers to stop taking his money.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, rich Russians have emerged as influential patrons of the arts and Western cultural organizations have often been the beneficiaries. Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Lincoln Center are among those who have received gifts from moneyed Russians or the companies they control over the past decade.

Though wealthy patrons have long used the arts to advance their individual tastes and social standing, much of the Russian giving is different. While the oligarchs also promote their personal preferences and support a wide range of cultural activities, they often employ philanthropy to celebrate their homeland, depicting it as an enlightened wellspring of masterworks in dance, painting, opera and the like.

These patrons have been quite public in their philanthropy, and there is little evidence that their donations have been directed or coordinated by Moscow. But they all enjoy good relations with the Kremlin — a prerequisite to flourish in business in Russia — and their giving fits seamlessly with President Vladimir V. Putin’s expanding efforts to use the “soft power” of cultural diplomacy as a tool of foreign policy.

The effect, however cultivated, helps burnish the image of a nation whose aggression in Ukraine and election meddling have led it to be viewed by many as a hostile power.

“When Western publics think about Russia, Putin wants them to think about Pushkin, Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky,” said Andrew Foxall, a Russia expert at the Henry Jackson Society in London. “What he does not want Western publics to think about is the actions of his regime that goes to war with its near neighbors.”

The Russian giving, and the strained relations between the countries, has created something of a minefield for American cultural organizations, many of which depend on philanthropic support and embrace shared aesthetic experiences as opportunities for bridge- building. It presents them with an ethical challenge: are they putting themselves at risk, however unwittingly, of helping to promote a one-sided view of a country that the United States is officially sparring with?

Two institutions accepted large donations from an oligarch whose company had been placed under sanctions by the American government. A third took money from a company that had been similarly penalized.

In two other cases, the cultural philanthropy was endorsed by the Russian Embassy, which for years has solicited oligarchs to help it promote Russia in America.

In other instances, from California to Brooklyn, American venues have hosted performances by Russian troupes whose operations are underwritten by companies or individuals under sanctions.

None of the transactions were illegal because the Russian donors were subject to limited sanctions that only restrict access to financial markets, not full blocking sanctions that generally freeze their American assets and bar doing business with a United States business or person. Still, experts said, accepting such donations runs counter to the spirit of United States policy designed to isolate some Russian interests.

“The whole point of sanctions is to prevent access,” said Alina Polyakova, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. Yet, because of their wealth, she said, individuals under government sanctions “are still allowed into these high echelons of cultural power.”

One Russian company employed culture to continue interacting with a high-powered American audience, even after it had been put under sanctions.

The company, VTB, a Russian-government-owned bank under limited sanctions since 2014, held two galas at the Kennedy Center. The first, in October 2016, a month before the American presidential election, featured a special performance by stars of the Bolshoi Ballet. The VTB logo decorated both the stage and the uniforms of the wait staff, and VTB’s president, Andrey Kostin, spoke.

Among the people invited were at least two State Department officials, including Daniel Fried, a senior official responsible for sanctions policy who had already been lobbied by representatives of the bank. Mr. Fried, as the Center for Public Integrity first reported, declined the invitation.

��I was not going to the Kennedy Center for a VTB thing and be photographed with them,” he said in an interview. “The optics were terrible. We are not their friends.”

Several of the American arts organizations declined to comment on whether they had given Russians a platform to spin public perception of their country. The Kennedy Center defended hosting the galas underwritten by VTB, describing its role as simply a landlord. “The Kennedy Center rents to all, while providing no judgment on the content or artistic quality of said events,” said a spokeswoman, Rachelle Roe.

But it also accepted a donation from VTB in 2017. The center said it had recently decided it would no longer accept money from the bank since its president, Mr. Kostin, was placed under full sanctions last year.

“The climate has changed since 2016,” said Ms. Roe.

Surprisingly little attention has been paid to these Russian efforts, even as the Kremlin is accused of using more insidious methods to sway American public opinion and elections. The United States, of course, also employs cultural diplomacy through a program run out of the State Department whose preachy use of the Voice of America during the Cold War is well established. But several experts said the Russian version is more coordinated, more baldly designed to muddy the discussion at a time when that country is perceived by many to be overly aggressive.

Michael R. Carpenter, a former National Security Council adviser to President Obama, said he had noticed years ago how the oligarchs were using cultural philanthropy to stay in contact with influential American political, diplomatic and business leaders.

“That access can be used to advance your business interests,” he said, “or the Kremlin’s interest.”

The cultural diplomacy of Communism

Russia’s rich traditions in ballet, fine art and orchestral music did not disappear during the days of the Soviet Union. But they became quite insular.

For decades, the production of art was tightly controlled by the state. Censorship was the norm. The Bolshoi toured, of course, but some of its excursions became threadbare affairs, its programming at times chained to ideological themes.

That all changed after the fall of Communism as the wealth concentrated in a powerful set of business leaders fueled an explosion of artistic interest and outreach.

Dmitry Rybolovlev spent $2 billion in a few short years capturing works by the likes of Picasso and Leonardo.

Mr. Vekselberg, an oligarch, and Mr. Kostin, a banker, joined the boards of the Mariinsky Theater and the Bolshoi, and helped, either personally or through their companies, to send them on polished world tours.

The spending evoked an era when 19th-century Russian czars and industrialists were among the world’s most extravagant arts patrons. Some of the newly rich, after forging fortunes in hardscrabble industries like natural resources, followed a patriotic impulse to recapture Russian cultural works smuggled abroad by nobles, sold by the Bolsheviks or otherwise lost after the revolution.

In 2005, Mr. Potanin’s foundation helped finance an 800-year survey of Russian art, from icons to 19th-century paintings, called simply “Russia!” at the Guggenheim. Mr. Putin spoke at the opening.

“Such events,” Mr. Putin said, “are the best and most eloquent way to understand a country that possesses huge humanistic and spiritual potential, a country such as Russia.”

More recently, Mr. Mikhelson, whose company, Novatek, is under limited sanctions, has staged exhibitions of contemporary art, often focusing on Russian artists, through his V-A-C Foundation.

Helen Weaver, a spokeswoman for Mr. Mikhelson’s foundation, said: “The foundation’s work is always about building bridges and fostering understanding through culture.”

Several experts on Russia said that the spending by oligarchs can resemble bouquets to Mr. Putin who is known to smile on efforts to project the national interest abroad.

“That is what you do if you don’t want to do something dirtier,” said Anders Aslund, an analyst at the Atlantic Council. “You are a patron of culture if you are trying to escape tougher demands from the Kremlin.”

A spokeswoman for VTB, the bank under limited sanctions, said in a statement “that the state or its representatives do not influence VTB’s decisions to sponsor museums, theaters, artistic groups. If we get any requests from state representatives, we review them according to standard procedure.”

But the Russian government has made clear, as it said in a 2016 statement of principles, that “‘soft power’ has become an integral part of efforts to achieve foreign policy objectives.” The following year, the Foreign Ministry created a working group of advisers, including government officials and corporate executives, “to coordinate steps to strengthen Russian-American cultural ties, preserve and develop Russian-associated memorial sites and heritage sites in the United States, and implement relevant future projects,” according to a document provided to The New York Times by the Russian government.

Its efforts include the commemoration of a Russian site, Fort Elizabeth, on the island of Kauai, to mark the 200th anniversary of a Russian presence in Hawaii.

Some of the philanthropy was driven by the former Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey I. Kislyak. A master networker in Washington, Mr. Kislyak helped arrange Mr. Potanin’s gift to the Kennedy Center, solicited help for Fort Ross and spurred an American philanthropist, Susan Carmel, to create an institute at American University that promotes Russian culture and history.

The ambassador later became entangled in the controversy over Russian meddling in American affairs. He returned to Moscow in 2017. The embassy he left behind declined to comment further on questions The New York Times posed about Russia’s pursuit of cultural diplomacy.

“If the purpose of your article is ‘to investigate,’ rather than to promote Russian-American cultural ties, I’m afraid we cannot provide you further assistance,” said Nikolay Lakhonin, the embassy spokesman.

Michael McFaul, the American ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, recalled how Mr. Kislyak once told him that he had employed Russian culture as a tool to “get deeper into the fabric of society” in the United States. Mr. McFaul said he made limited efforts to do the same in Russia, once helping to bring through the Chicago Symphony, but never with the kind of resources the oligarchs offered.

“I remember joking with Kislyak when I saw him in Washington that he was able to convince these major business people to make serious investments,” he said.

Several oligarchs, or the companies they control, help underwrite the operations of the Mariinsky Theater, which coordinates cultural activities for several troupes that regularly tour in the West, including the world famous Mariinsky Orchestra. The organization is led by Valery Gergiev, the master conductor and ally of Mr. Putin, who, as head of state, has met regularly with the Mariinsky board.

The oligarchs resist the idea that their spending advances a national agenda.

Petr Aven, for example, leads one of Russia’s largest banks and has contributed financially to exhibitions on Russian art at the Tate Modern and Royal Academy of Arts in London, where he is also a trustee. The companies he helps direct have also helped underwrite exhibitions at museums like the Guggenheim.

But a spokesman for Mr. Aven said “he has not funded or contributed art to any exhibition at the behest of or in coordination with the government of Russia.”

One oligarch’s efforts in the United States

Along the Pacific Coast, a two-hour drive north of San Francisco, visitors to Fort Ross find a 3,400-acre California state park that was once the southernmost Russian settlement in North America.

The park recreates the 19th-century lifestyle of the Russians who scratched out an existence by farming and fur-trading long before California became a state. Visitors tour the stockade, the Russian Orthodox chapel and a windmill like the one used by the settlers. The signs are in English and Russian, and overhead the flag of the Russian company that once ran the settlement often flies.

Some exhibits note the contributions of the Alaskans who joined the settlement as well as the indigenous Kashaya. But when schoolchildren visit, they sometimes dress as Russian settlers, marching with muskets across the park, shouting in Russian, “Levoy. Levoy. Levoy.”

Left. Left. Left.

“We are working hard not to focus just on the Russian era,” said Sarah Sweedler, who runs the Fort Ross Conservancy, a nonprofit that helps operate the site, “but Russia is the reason for the park, after all.”

It’s certainly the reason Mr. Vekselberg, the oligarch, stepped up at Mr. Kislyak’s request to create a private foundation, funded by his company, to help the park. The Russian president at the time, Dmitri Medvedev, attended the signing of the funding agreement with Mr. Vekselberg and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in California.

Over the next eight years, the foundation donated more than $1.5 million to the park, paying for projects like the hiring of a bilingual tour guide.

“The contribution is modest,” said Ms. Sweedler, “and the influence they wield on the program is nonexistent.”

Last year, though, Ms. Sweedler said the Justice Department told the conservancy to stop taking the money. Mr. Vekselberg and his company, Renova Group, had been among the entities slapped with sanctions by the United States Treasury, which cited “a key role in advancing Russia’s malign activities,” including its occupation of Crimea, aggression in eastern Ukraine, support of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, “attempting to subvert Western democracies, and malicious cyber activities.”

Some sanctions are based on behavior, but many companies or individuals, like Mr. Vekselberg, were punished largely because they are viewed as influential supporters of Mr. Putin who benefit from the actions of his regime.

Mr. Vekselberg, who is fighting the sanctions, declined to be interviewed.

Ms. Sweedler views the Russian investment in Fort Ross as a harmless cultural interaction, an important counterpoint to saber-rattling. Others see something more deliberate.

“For me it did raise alarm bells,” said Mr. Carpenter, the Russian specialist in the Obama administration. “Fort Ross was part of a soft power operation.”

Mr. Carpenter said the outpost was important enough to Russia that Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, urged the Americans to turn it into a national park.

Anatoly I. Antonov, the current Russian ambassador to the United States, was exuberant in his appreciation of Fort Ross after a tour last year. “It feels like in some Washington buildings, the air is spoiled with anti-Russian sentiment,” he said. “The air is different here. And people are different, too.”

It is far from the only cultural initiative that Mr. Vekselberg, 62, launched after making his fortune during the rough and tumble privatization of Russia’s aluminum and oil industries in the 1990s.

In 2004, he spent about $100 million to secure the return of a collection of imperial Fabergé eggs and created a museum to showcase them. Though Russia experts do not see Mr. Vekselberg as personally close to Mr. Putin, the effort synced with the president’s mission to bring Russian cultural artifacts back to Russia.

Later, with other oligarchs, he helped build a Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow, saying it would help paint Russia in a different light.

“The average American has developed this stereotype. They have a very wary approach to Russia, with the story of the evil empire and so forth,” he said at the time. “Americans who come here to work or visit, often for business, and come to this museum will assess what is going on in Russia in a different way.”

Mr. McFaul, the former ambassador, said he views Mr. Vekselberg, whose family owns homes in New York and Connecticut, as one of the more Western-oriented oligarchs. “I do think he considers himself a bridge-builder between the U.S. and Russia,” Mr. McFaul said.

But there have been rough spots.

Last year, agents for the special counsel Robert Mueller stopped Mr. Vekselberg at an airport, checked his electronic devices and sought to question him. Mr. Mueller’s team was interested in Mr. Vekselberg’s contact with Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer. The two men had had a meeting at Trump Tower in January 2017, just before President Trump’s inauguration. Mr. Vekselberg attended the inauguration with his cousin, Andrew Intrater, an American citizen and major donor to the event.

Prosecutors say Mr. Vekselberg is affiliated with Mr. Intrater’s firm, Columbus Nova, and were intrigued by $500,000 in payments the company made to Mr. Cohen for what was described as consulting work.

Mr. Vekselberg has denied being involved in the payments, and said he is only a client of his cousin’s firm. The investigators have not accused either man of wrongdoing.

Among the organizations that have received financial support from Mr. Vekselberg or his company are Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Museum of Modern Art and the Tate Modern in London. In a 2017 accounting, a Renova official said the company had spent $13.5 million on “arts and culture” in the nine years ending in 2016.

In many of these settings, the culture being promoted is Russian. Before Renova was hit with sanctions, for example, it helped fund a series of ballets and an opera in 2015 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music by the Mariinsky Theater, which the academy described as “the beating heart of Russian culture.”

Mr. Vekselberg’s company was not the venue’s only Russian patron. A few years earlier, the Mikhail Prokhorov Fund, named after the billionaire who then owned the Brooklyn Nets, announced a gift of $1 million to help underwrite an exchange program with the arts organization: “TransCultural Express: American and Russian Arts Today.”

In announcing the gift, Mr. Prokhorov said he was happy to “share some of the contemporary culture of Russia, the place I am proud to call home.”

Catherine Cheney contributed reporting from California and Michael Kolomatsky from New York. Susan Beachy contributed research.

Six Russians Whose Money Has Made Art and Friends in the West

Published Oct. 6, 2019 Updated 2:21 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted October 6, 2019 8:35 PM ET |

These men, personally or through foundations or companies they control, have given to arts organizations in the West and sponsored events that celebrate Russian culture abroad.

Leonid Mikhelson

Chairman and major shareholder of Novatek

GIFTS: Mr. Mikhelson’s V-A-C Foundation has the goal of promoting Russian contemporary art internationally. He has given to the New Museum, and the Tate Modern in Britain. His foundation helped to finance a 2017 show on Soviet art at the Art Institute of Chicago, which the museum says its own curators developed.

WEALTH: Novatek, which has been under limited sanctions since 2014, is Russia’s largest nongovernment-owned natural gas supplier. He also owns a large stake in Sibur, a petrochemicals company.

Viktor Vekselberg

Founder and principal owner of Renova Group

GIFTS: Mr. Vekselberg, either personally or through his company or foundation, has donated to Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern in London and Fort Ross in California.

WEALTH: Mr. Vekselberg, a billionaire, made his fortune when Russia’s oil and aluminum industries were privatized. He and his company have been under sanctions since 2018.

Vladimir Potanin

Founder and president of Interros

GIFTS: He has been a donor to the Guggenheim Museum since 2002. More recently he gave $6.45 million to the Kennedy Center in Washington.

WEALTH: He made his fortune in Russian banking and natural resources, including a major stake in one of the world’s largest nickel producers.

Petr Aven

Chairman and a principal owner of Alfa Bank and co-founder of LetterOne

GIFTS: He and his companies have sponsored exhibitions of Russian art at the Tate Modern and the Guggenheim. Mr. Aven, a trustee at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, also lent paintings from his collection of Russian art for a show at New York’s Neue Galerie in 2015.

WEALTH: His fortune is derived in part from Alfa Bank, one of Russia’s largest, and LetterOne, which invests in energy and telecoms, among other sectors.

Andrey Kostin

President and chairman of VTB Bank

GIFTS: The bank he leads has been a major financial supporter of Russia’s Mariinsky Theater, the Bolshoi Ballet and the Eifman Ballet, which have performed at venues across the United States. VTB has also given directly to the Kennedy Center.

WEALTH: Mr. Kostin is wealthy but his power stems from his role with Russia’s second largest bank, VTB, which is state-controlled and has been under limited sanctions since 2014. Mr. Kostin, who has been under personal sanctions since last year, serves on the Bolshoi and Mariinsky boards.

Mikhail D. Prokhorov

Founder of the investment company Onexim Group

GIFTS: He gave $1 million to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2012 for a three-year program of cultural exchanges between the United States and Russia.

WEALTH: A billionaire, he derives his fortune from Russian natural resources and banking. Until recently, he was the majority owner of the Brooklyn Nets basketball team.

#russia #oligarchy #vladimir putin #putin #trump putin #election interference #international news #nationalsecurity #national news #national security #arts and entertainment #world news #worldpolitics

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scifigeneration · 6 years ago

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Renewed space rivalry between nations ignores a tradition of cooperation

by Scott Shackelford

A composite image of a satellite firing an energy weapon at a target on Earth. Marc Ward/Shutterstock.com

The annals of science fiction are full of visions of the future. Some are techno-utopian like “Star Trek” in which humanity has joined together in peace to explore the cosmos. Others are dystopian, like the World State in “Brave New World.” But many of these stories share one thing in common – they envision a time in which humanity has moved past narrow ideas of tribe and nationalism. That assumption might be wrong.

This can be seen in Trump’s calls for a unified U.S. Space Command. Or, in China’s expansive view of sovereignty and increasingly active space program as seen in its recent lunar landing. These examples suggest that the notion of outer space as a final frontier free from national appropriation is questionable. Active debate is ongoing as of this writing as to the consistency of the 2015 Space Act with international space law, which permitted private firms to own natural resources mined from asteroids. Some factions in Congress would like to go further still with one bill, the American Space Commerce Free Enterprise Act. This states, “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, outer space shall not be considered a global commons.” This trend, especially among the space powers, is important since it not only will create precedents that could resonate for decades to come, but also because it hinders our ability to address common challenges – like removing the debris orbiting the planet.

End of the golden age

In 1959, then-Sen. Lyndon Johnson stated, “Men who have worked together to reach the stars are not likely to descend together into the depths of war and desolation.” In this spirit, between 1962 and 1979 the United States and the former Soviet Union worked together and through the U.N. Committee for the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space to enact five major international treaties and numerous bilateral and multilateral agreements concerning outer space.

These accords covered everything from the return of rescued astronauts and liability for damage from space objects to the peaceful use of outer space. They did not, though, address space weaponization outside of the weapons of mass destruction context, or put into place mechanisms for managing an increasingly crowded final frontier.

Progress ground to a halt when it came time to decide on the legal status of the moon. The Reagan administration objected to the Moon Treaty, which stated that the moon was the “common heritage of mankind” like the deep seabed, in part because of lobbying from groups opposed to the treaty’s provisions. Because no organized effort arose in support of the treaty, it died in the U.S. Senate, and with it the golden age of space law. Today, nearly 30 years after it was first proposed, only 18 nations have ratified the accord.

Rise of collective action problems

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union space governance has only gotten more complicated due to an increasing number of space powers, both public and private. National and commercial interests are increasingly tied to space in political, economic and military arenas. Beyond fanciful notions of solar energy satellites, fusion energy and orbiting hotels, contemporary political issues such as nuclear nonproliferation, economic development, cybersecurity and human rights are also intimately tied to outer space.

The list of leading space powers has expanded beyond the U.S. and Russia to include China, India, Japan and members of the European Space Agency – especially France, Germany and Italy. Each regularly spends over US$1 billion on their space programs, with estimates of China’s space spending surpassing $8 billion in 2017, though the U.S. continues to spend more than all other nations combined on space related efforts. But space has become important to every nation that relies on everything from weather forecasting to satellite telecommunications. By 2015, the global space industry was worth more than $320 billion, a figure that is expected to grow to $1.1 trillion by 2040.

Private companies, such as SpaceX, are working to dramatically lower the cost of launching payloads into low Earth orbit, which has long stood at approximately $10,000 per pound. Such innovation holds the promise of opening up space to new development. It also raises concerns over the sustainability of space operations.

At the same time, the Trump administration’s public desire to launch a Space Force has fueled concerns over a new arms race, which, if created, could exacerbate both the issues of space weapons and debris. The two issues are related since the use of weapons in space can increase the amount of debris through fragments from destroyed satellites. For example, China performed a successful anti-satellite test in 2007 that destroyed an aging weather satellite at an altitude of some 500 miles. This single event contributed more than 35,000 pieces of orbital debris boosting the amount of space junk by approximately 25 percent.

Without concerted action, Marshall Kaplan, an orbital debris expert within the Space Policy Department at Johns Hopkins University, argues, “There is a good chance that we may have to eventually abandon all active satellites in currently used orbits” due to the growing problem of space junk.

Astronaut Thomas P. Stafford and cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov shake hands in space on July 17, 1975 to ease Cold War tensions. NASA/Wikimedia Commons

Avoiding a tragedy of the space commons

The tragedy of the commons scenario refers to the “unconstrained consumption of a shared resource — a pasture, a highway, a server — by individuals acting in rational pursuit of their self-interest,” according to commons governance expert Brett Frischmann. This can and often does lead to destruction of the resource. Given that space is largely an open-access system, the predictions of the tragedy of the commons are self-evident. Space law expert Robert Bird, has argued that nations treat orbital space as a kind of communal pasture that may be over-exploited and polluted through debris. It’s a scenario captured in the movie “Wall-E.”

But luckily, there is a way out of this scenario besides either nationalization or privatization. Scholars led by the political economist and Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom modified the tragedy of the commons by showing that, in some cases, groups can and do self-organize and cooperate to avoid tragic over exploitation.

I explore this literature on “polycentric” governance – complex governance systems made up of multiple scales, sectors and stakeholders – in my forthcoming book, “Governing New Frontiers in the Information Age: Toward Cyber Peace.” Already, we are seeing some evidence of the benefits of such a polycentric approach in an increasingly multipolar era in which there are more and more power centers emerging around the world. One example is a code of conduct for space-faring nations. That code includes the need to reduce orbital debris. Further progress could be made by building on the success of the international coalition that built the International Space Station such as by deepening partnerships with firms like SpaceX and Blue Origin.

This is not a “keep it simple, stupid” response to the challenges in space governance. But it does recognize the reality of continued national control over space operations for the foreseeable future, and indeed there are some benefits to such an outcome, including accountability. But we should think long and hard before moving away from a tried and tested model like the International Space Station and toward a future of vying national research stations and even military outposts in space.

Coordination between sovereign nations is possible, as was shown in the golden age of space law. By finding common ground, including the importance of sustainable development, we earthlings can ensure that humanity’s development of space is less a race than a peaceful march – not a flags and footprints mission for one nation, but a destination serving the development of science, the economy and the betterment of international relations.

About The Author:

Scott Shackelford is Associate Professor of Business Law and Ethics and Director, Ostrom Workshop Program on Cybersecurity and Internet Governance. He is also Cybersecurity Program Chair at IU-Bloomington, Indiana University.

This article is republished from our content partners at The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

#science #space #technopolitics #science fiction #space force #SpaceX #Space Junk #space debris #space commons #space race

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autgrad503-leahwilton · 3 years ago

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MY DESIGNER

EL LISSITZKY

INTRODUCTION TO EL LISSITZKY

Born 23rd November in Pochinok, Russia 1890 Lazar Markovich Lissitzky, known as El Lissitzky is an artist, designer, photographer, typographer, polemicist (Polemicist: ‘A person who engages in controversial debate’), and architect. Lissitzky’s stylistic characteristics and experimentation with production techniques in the 1920s and 1930s have been an influence on graphic designers since. El liked to embrace the use of abstract concepts to communicate social ethics. This had a deep influence on future movements such as the Dutch group De Stijl.

Earlier on in his career he developed a style of painting where he used abstract geometric shapes. He referred to them as "prouns" to define the spatial relationships of his compositions. The shapes he created were often developed in a three-dimensional space, that often contained different perspectives, which was a direct contrast to the ideas of suprematist theories which opposed the simplicity of shapes and the use of 2D space only.

During the 1920s El spent his time in both Germany, Switzerland and Russia after he was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis. This never stopped him working as he continued to produce propaganda posters, books, buildings and exhibitions for the Soviet Union.

HIS STUDIES AND CAREER - 1903-1941

In a small Jewish town Belorussia, he took art lessons in 1903 from Russian painter Iurii (Yehuda) Moiseevich Pen. In 1909, after being turned down by the St. Petersburg Academy of Art, Lissitzky left Russia for the first time to enroll at the Technische Hochschule in Darmstadt, Germany, where he studied architectural engineering. During his studies, in 1912 he traveled in Germany and also to France and Italy but was forced to return to Russia during the summer of 1914, after the outbreak of World War I. He enrolled as a student of engineering and architecture at the Riga Polytechnical Institute and received his diploma on 3 June 1918 with the degree of engineer-architect. In 1915-16 he worked in various architectural offices in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

In 1916 Lissitzky became deeply involved in a Russian national movement to create a revival of Yiddish culture for modern Russian Jews. Following the February Revolution of 1917, El moved from Moscow to Kiev where he devoted himself to the illustration of Yiddish books, especially for children, and organised and submitted work for exhibitions of Jewish art in Moscow. In early 1919, he helped found the publishing house Kultur-Lige, which became a leading force in the dissemination of Yiddish culture in Ukraine. Toward the end of his stay in Kiev, Lissitzky worked for the art section of the local branch of IZO Narkompros.

July 1919 he moves from the city of Kiev back to Vitebsk with a switched focus from Yiddish culture to architecture and book design. He took up an invitation from Marc Chagall, (DIRECTOR OF REVOLUTIONARY PEOPLE’S ART SCHOOL) Lissitzky began a new position teaching architecture, graphic arts, and printing at the Vitebsk Popular Art Institute. In September, he was joined by Kazimir Malevich, whose system of nonobjective art, suprematism, inspired Lissitzky to take up painting and to invent his own form of abstract art, which he named Proun in 1920. Propaganda also became a part of Lissitzky's artistic mission at this time; during the civil war, he worked in the suprematist collective UNOVIS [Affirmers of the New Art] as a designer of agitational posters meant to incite workers back to the factory benches and to rally Jews around Bolshevism.

In 1921, Lissitzky returned to Moscow to teach architecture at the newly established VKhUTEMAS (Higher Art and Technical Studios). In September 1921, Lissitzky put forth his own program in an important lecture, outlining the connections between suprematist painting and the principles of space and construction in his Proun works.

SOME OF HIS PROUN WORK FOR REFERENCE

In 1922 he met the typographer Jan Tschichold who became his life-long friend. In May 1922 Lissitzky participated in the Congress of International Progressive Artists in Düsseldorf; followed by the Congress of the Constructivists and Dadaists in Weimar in September. He had a minor role in setting up the First Russian Art Exhibition in Berlin in October. In 1923, Lissitzky became a member of the De Stijl group; and joined ASNOVA (Association of the New Architects), an organization founded in Moscow by Nikolai Ladovsky, Nikolai Dokuchaev and Vladimir Krinsky, developing connections with foreign architects.

In January 1926 he became head of the Department of Furniture and Interior Design for the wood and metal workshop at VKhUTEMAS. Later in June, in Germany, he was commissioned by the directorate of the International Art Exhibition in Dresden to design the Raum für konstruktive Kunst [Room for Constructivist Art] (1926), to design for the Provinzialmuseum (Sprengel Museum) in Hanover .

1927, with the success of his design for the All-Union Printing Trades Exhibition in Moscow, Lissitzky had became a much sought-after propagandist.

In 1932 Lissitzky signed his first contract with the editors of USSR, a Soviet propaganda publication intended for Western audiences and published in Russian, English, German, and French and became one of the principal artists for the journal. He designed seventeen issues, ten of them in collaboration with Sophie Küppers.

In 1934 he was appointed chief artist for the Agricultural Exhibition of the Soviet Union in Moscow.

During 1935-36 Lissitzky was frequently hospitalized after being diagnosed with Tuberculosis.

In 1940 he was appointed chief artist for the Soviet Pavilion at the Belgrade International Exhibition, a project left unfinished due to the outbreak of World War II.

In 1941 he worked on anti-Nazi posters and other war-related projects until his death in Moscow on 30 December.

Information sourced from: https://monoskop.org/El_Lissitzky

El in 1912

El in his studio, Vitebsk, 1919.

El in Weimar

Lissitzky with his wife Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers and their child

January 1927 Lissitzky married Sophie Küppers; his son, Jen, was born on 12 October 1930 and the next year Sophie’s older sons come to Russia to live with her and Lissitzky in the village of Khodnya, thirty miles from Moscow.

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soshenko33 · 4 years ago

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vostok 7

reenactment / radiofilm 2020 project of Anton Kats

Vostok 7 is a reenactment of the spaceship that has not been built yet. The radiofilm is an artistic study of the Vostok Program of Soviet Space Travel that began with Yuri Gagarin's first manned space flight, Vostok 1 in 1961, and ended with Vostok 6 in 1963 with the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkowa. The semi-fictional narrative is introduced from the perspective of the first radio frequency between humans in space: established between the Vostok 5 and Vostok 6 spaceships. Remembering its three human incarnations in Kherson, South Ukraine, the radio frequency addresses the relationship between eco-logical and ego-logical concerns reflected within a human experience.

Suggesting radio, sound, and listening as dynamic methods of self-enquiry, politics and processes of inner and outer-space exploration, the colonization of space is taken into consideration, in order to reflect and to critique contemporary colonial forces of separation and marginalising segregation processes on earth. The first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkowa, is an anti-hero and protagonist of the play giving voice to the current political developments in Post-Soviet Russia, such as radical constitutional amendments: including allowance of two more six-year presidential terms for Vladimir Putin and introducing a constitutional ban of same-sex marriage and patriotic education in schools, among others.

Proposing a diversity of strategies to overcome unsustainable, separative, and exploitative tendencies of the ego – in light of intense collective and individual struggle and near-death experiences – the piece is a listening manual anchored in the politics of war, dementia and love ethics; transmigration, gasoline and music. The point of departure for the video is a radio play accompanied by seven illustrations rooted in artistic research at the Russian State Archive of Scientific-Technical Documentation in Moscow. Together with the illustrations, the radio play acts as a dynamic score for the performance of a single-shot video-choreography embracing elements of an interactive installation, sculpture and a performance lecture. Remotely directed during the current pandemic, the work unfolds in response to the increase of isolationist policies in (Eastern) Europe and addresses the core question: how can the synthesis of fine art and sound art respond to site-specific problems in the everyday?

The work is developed as a contribution to the RAUPENIMMERSATTISM exhibition at SAVVY Contemporary. The exhibition confronts the endless consumption of our societies and the affluence many hold at the expense of others’ poverty, a collective exhibition is composed as a result of ten months of research, grapplings, and reasonings together. The show unfolds as a choral questioning to challenge structural inequalities and stand alongside positions of vulnerability.

Radiofilm credits: Anna Sorokovaya - artist, Soshenko 33 Anton Kats - film directing, concept and narrative Eugene Filatov - focus puller/1st AC Jared Meier-Klodt - voice recording Igor Kritskiy - light Igor Pavlovic Pointet - VFX ILYICH - sound, composition Louis Becket - sound mixing and mastering Maria Korovkina - project management Marcus Bow Badow, color grading Marcus Eich - VFX Nikita Znak - 2nd AC Shelley Pellegrin - voice Simone Legner - voice fairy Taras Kovach - artist, Soshenko 33 Viktor Ruban - choreography Yarema Malashchuk - camera

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geopolicraticus · 5 years ago

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From Nationalism to Scientific Civilization to Spacefaring Civilization

A Plausible Pathway from Nation-States to Interstellar Civilization

In Space Exploration Escalation I considered the counterfactual of the Apollo moon landings being a spur to Soviet space efforts, so that an American achievement in space was followed a Soviet achievement in space (as was more-or-less the case during the Founding Era of 1957-1972), in a tit-for-tat escalation that led to growing spacefaring capacity on the part of the two nation-states. Such a counterfactual would have represented an idealized form of non-violent conflict. This ideal is not merely speculative, but has some basis in history.

In my Bound in Shallows I quoted Eleni Panagiotarakou to the effect that:

“The US and USSR utilized the space fight and planetary exploration programs as an assertion of superiority. What made this conflict extraordinary was the fact that it was a nonviolent war.” (Eleni Panagiotarakou, “Agonal Conflict and Space Exploration,” chapter 47 in The Ethics of Space Exploration, edited by James S.J. Schwartz and Tony Milligan, London: Springer International Publishing, 2016)

In another paper by Panagiotarakou, she elaborated the same theme, and made the connection between non-violent conflict and the Greek agon:

“Insofar as the Cold War was nonviolent, and insofar as it prompted the two main political and military protagonists to engage in a competitive endeavour of superiority (e.g., Space Race), it resembled the ancient Greek spirit of agon whereby the objective was not to annihilate one’s opponent but to surpass them in a struggle for excellence.” (Eleni Panagiotarakou, “War—What Is It Good For? Nonviolent War as an Impetus for Space Exploration”)

Panagiotarakou, in drawing upon Homer’s agon (ἀγών) is drawing from an ancient tradition that had also interested Nietzsche, who, in his short essay, “Homer’s Contest,” spelled out the nature of Greek competition:

“Every talent must unfold itself in fighting: that is the command of Hellenic popular pedagogy, whereas modern educators dread nothing more than the unleashing of so-called ambition… And just as the youths were educated through contests, their educators were also engaged in contests with each other. The great musical masters, Pindar and Simonides, stood side by side, mistrustful and jealous; in the spirit of contest, the sophist, the advanced teacher of antiquity, meets another sophist; even the most universal type of instruction, through the drama, was meted out to the people only in the form of a tremendous wrestling among the great musical and dramatic artists.”

The agonal conflict of Homer’s Greece was often violent and brutal; the quest for excellence (which, for the Greeks, was the same as virtue—areté) did not come without a price. There is an inscription from the island of Thera that graphically illustrates the reality of Greeks vying to prove their excellence:

“A boxer’s victory is gained in blood” (Kaibel, G. 1878. Epigrammata Graeca. Berlin, no. 942)

Of Greece during its Golden Age Alfred North Whitehead wrote:

“Even if you take a tiny oasis of peculiar excellence, the type of modern man who would have most chance of happiness in ancient Greece at its best period is probably (as now) an average professional heavyweight boxer, and not an average Greek scholar from Oxford or Germany. Indeed, the main use of the Oxford scholar would have been his capability of writing an ode in glorification of the boxer.” (Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, Chap. XIII, “Requisites for Social Progress”)

Still, “games” like boxing were better than outright warfare (cf. “Ancient Combat Sports: Combat at the ancient Olympics,” by Michael B. Poliakoff and “Boxing Gloves of the Ancient World,” by Steven Ross Murray), though games and warfare were not mutually exclusive. We recall that, in The Iliad, the Trojan War was temporarily halted in order to celebrate the funeral games in honor of Patroclus:

The hero’s words the willing chiefs obey, From their tired bodies wipe the dust away, And, clothed anew, the following games survey.

And now succeed the gifts ordain’d to grace The youths contending in the rapid race: A silver urn that full six measures held, By none in weight or workmanship excell’d: Sidonian artists taught the frame to shine, Elaborate, with artifice divine; Whence Tyrian sailors did the prize transport, And gave to Thoas at the Lemnian port: From him descended, good Eunaeus heir’d The glorious gift; and, for Lycaon spared, To brave Patroclus gave the rich reward: Now, the same hero’s funeral rites to grace, It stands the prize of swiftness in the race. A well-fed ox was for the second placed; And half a talent must content the last. Achilles rising then bespoke the train: “Who hope the palm of swiftness to obtain, Stand forth, and bear these prizes from the plain.”

Thus the most brilliant civilization in the western tradition, and the point of origin of most of the distinctive concepts of western civilization, was driven by competition that was often violent, and this violence often took the form of wars between Greek city-states (the polis) and alliances of Greek city-states. Agonal conflict in the ancient world was not a substitute for warfare, but rather an accoutrement of war.

The same could be said of agonal conflict in the modern world, that is, that it has been an accoutrement of war and not a substitute for war, but we have at least glimpsed the possibility of some kind of surrogate form of warfare, and have acted upon this to a limited extent. The Cold War revealed a spectrum of forms of conflict, from the non-violent competition of the Space Race to brutal proxy wars in third world nation-states. At its best, this superpower agonal conflict was inspiring and offered hope to all the world; at its worst, it was as brutal and sordid as any conflict in human history, ancient, medieval, or modern.

And the same could be said again today of hybrid warfare, which has taken over from the Cold War and postulated a spectrum of conflict across many theaters of war and many modalities of conflict. Today we are better at avoiding open conflict, and limiting open conflict when it does occur, so that the vision of a purely non-violent agonal conflict seems near to being within our grasp.

Elsewhere in his “Homer’s Contest” essay Nietzsche says of Hesiod’s praise for the goddess Eris (strife):

“She urges even the unskilled man to work, and if one who lacks property beholds another who is rich, then he hastens to sow in similar fashion and to plant and to put his house in order; the neighbour vies with the neighbour who strives after fortune. Good is this Eris to men. The potter also has a grudge against the potter, and the carpenter against the carpenter; the beggar envies the beggar, and the singer the singer.”

In this way there is not only competition within societies, but entire societies enter into competition with rival societies, and during the Cold War we saw such a planetary-scale rivalry as two geographically consolidated powers—NATO and the Warsaw Pact—vied with each other for control of our homeworld. As with the Greeks, who eventually ruined their civilization through the Peloponnesian War, at times this Cold War rivalry was aspirational, and at times it was contemptible. Despite our many contemptible failures, the Cold War was defused without recourse to a great war between the rival powers engaged in that struggle; the outcome could have been far worse.

Today the rivalry that entertains the geostrategic community is that between the US and China (less so that between the US and Russia), and there is, in some quarters, a certain sense of inevitability about a future great conflict between the US and China as the Chinese economy grows to eventually take its place as the largest in the world, and these two largest economies in the world face each other down over the Pacific Ocean. But there is nothing inevitable about a great war between the US and China, but while it would be utopian to suppose that these rival powers could simply forget their rivalry, it would be eminently reasonable to suppose that the rivalry could be sublimated into non-violent conflict.

What could take the place of a violent conflict, with its attendant destruction of life, treasure, and infrastructure? We can hope that some heroic agon will be preferred to military conflict, as was most constructively the case during the Cold War with the Space Race. If the rival energies of China and the US could be directed into some form of sublimated conflict in which destruction played no part, or a very small part, the entire world could benefit from the resulting escalation of two rival societies attempting to best each other.

For example, the US has been the leader in science and technology, as well as in the educational institutions that produce science and technology, but China is catching up to the US and potentially threatens its scientific preeminence. (Cf. “Western Academia’s Activism Gridlock Threatens Its Global Status” by Wael Taji) China has a particle accelerator under construction that will be larger than the LHC (cf. China’s Planning to Build The World’s Largest Particle Collider, Twice The Size of The LHC). Given the failure of the US to fund the SSC, once China has completed its construction of the largest particle accelerator in the world, China will become the preeminent venue of experimental particle physics. China has already constructed FAST (Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope), one of the largest radio-telescopes in the world.

The willingness of China to fund major scientific projects such as these points to their desire to compete in science on a planetary scale. Does the Chinese leadership understand that contemporary Chinese civilization is driven forward by science no less than western civilization? Do national governments more generally invest in research for their future viability, or for reasons of prestige and the ability to build better weapons systems? Does it matter? Should it matter? If civilization advances, politicians enjoy prestige, and military contractors get rich, can rivalry over scientific achievement serve as a form of agonal conflict?

National competition over science—e.g., my particle accelerator is bigger than your particle accelerator—could be another form of non-violent competition with constructive rather than destructive consequences, as I described in “Space Exploration Escalation,” Deng Xiaoping, who presided over China’s transition to a market economy, pragmatically said, “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.” If science could serve as a focus of competition, it could catch mice by serving the purposes both of humanity and of nationalism. If scientific competition were to become the accepted form of rivalry and currency of national prestige, rather than more conventional forms of rivalry, from such a rivalry a properly scientific civilization—a civilization that takes science as its central project—could emerge as an epiphenomenal byproduct of national competition. This would benefit every human being on the planet.

One could easily imagine scenarios in which scientific competition among nation-states for national prestige could take on a darker tone, and reveal itself to be a brutal as Greek boxers; we would have to accept this darker side of science in exchange for the end of destructive conventional conflict, but it would be a deal worth making. To give a concrete instance of what I mean, Pakistani leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto once said that if India built a nuclear weapon, “…we will eat grass, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own.” Could we rally this kind of national competition to the support of scientific preeminence? Would people be willing to eat grass or go hungry in order that an ambitious nation-state might build a bigger radio-telescope or a bigger particle accelerator than its neighbor? It would be this level of commitment that would be necessary in order to shift conflict from a destructive form to a constructive form.

In the film Rollerball, violent sports competition had come to replace war, though the sports teams in the film represented brands and industries, not nation-states. Even this would be better than the destructiveness of war, and we can see a limited form of this in contemporary spectator sports culture, in which sports teams serve as surrogates for group identity and interests, focusing the emotional energy of large swathes of the public. It can be done if the motivation is there—if the stakes are sufficiently high, any demand for sacrifice will be met as long as it is understood that this sacrifice will contribute to ultimate success, or even a reasonable chance for success. As Nietzsche once wrote, he who has a why can bear any how. Thus if the population of a nation-state has to eat grass in order to fund ever larger particle accelerators to fulfill the megalomaniac ambitions of the political class, the struggle and the sacrifice would be worth it; this is better by far than that nation-states should bomb each other.

If the transformation of big science into gigantic science is perceived as a danger to Earth, or even if we merely want to construct experiments that would be too large to perform on the surface of Earth, we can put these experiments in space. With gargantuan particle accelerators in space we would get two-for-one existential risk mitigation: removing a potential danger on Earth, and building infrastructure in space, which could lead to human redundancy through an off-world population—again, epiphenomenally. Another gargantuan scientific project that could only be built in space and would have the same space infrastructure knock-on effects would be this: “An infinitely expandable space radiotelescope” by V. I. Buyakas, et al. Gigantic particle accelerators or radio-telescopes in space could mean the epiphenomenal emergence of a properly spacefaring civilization from the epiphenomenal emergence of properly scientific civilization, originally driven by national competition.

This is how we must learn to think about history: our future history will of necessity be a human, all-too-human affair, but it does not need to be a destructive affair. We can harness the energies of human, all-too-human rivalry and conflict, even of nationalism, national pride, and indeed jingoism, and use it to better ourselves if only we can disillusion ourselves of the utopian dream, which turns out, upon closer inspection, to be a dead end.

#agon #competition #friedrich nietzsche #Alfred North Whitehead #Eleni Panagiotarakou #nationalism #Homer #Cold War #Space Race

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lamingtonladies · 7 years ago

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Ur-Fascism – Umberto Eco

Printable pamphlet here

In 1942, at the age of ten, I received the First Provincial Award of Ludi Juveniles (a voluntary, compulsory competition for young Italian Fascists—that is, for every young Italian). I elaborated with rhetorical skill on the subject “Should we die for the glory of Mussolini and the immortal destiny of Italy?” My answer was positive. I was a smart boy.

I spent two of my early years among the SS, Fascists, Republicans, and partisans shooting at one another, and I learned how to dodge bullets. It was good exercise.

In April 1945, the partisans took over in Milan. Two days later they arrived in the small town where I was living at the time. It was a moment of joy. The main square was crowded with people singing and waving flags, calling in loud voices for Mimo, the partisan leader of that area. A former maresciallo of the Carabinieri, Mimo joined the supporters of General Badoglio, Mussolini’s successor, and lost a leg during one of the first clashes with Mussolini’s remaining forces. Mimo showed up on the balcony of the city hall, pale, leaning on his crutch, and with one hand tried to calm the crowd. I was waiting for his speech because my whole childhood had been marked by the great historic speeches of Mussolini, whose most significant passages we memorized in school. Silence. Mimo spoke in a hoarse voice, barely audible. He said: “Citizens, friends. After so many painful sacrifices … here we are. Glory to those who have fallen for freedom.” And that was it. He went back inside. The crowd yelled, the partisans raised their guns and fired festive volleys. We kids hurried to pick up the shells, precious items, but I had also learned that freedom of speech means freedom from rhetoric.

A few days later I saw the first American soldiers. They were African Americans. The first Yankee I met was a black man, Joseph, who introduced me to the marvels of Dick Tracy and Li’l Abner. His comic books were brightly colored and smelled good.

One of the officers (Major or Captain Muddy) was a guest in the villa of a family whose two daughters were my schoolmates. I met him in their garden where some ladies, surrounding Captain Muddy, talked in tentative French. Captain Muddy knew some French, too. My first image of American liberators was thus—after so many palefaces in black shirts—that of a cultivated black man in a yellow-green uniform saying: “Oui, merci beaucoup, Madame, moi aussi j’aime le champagne…” Unfortunately there was no champagne, but Captain Muddy gave me my first piece of Wrigley’s Spearmint and I started chewing all day long. At night I put my wad in a water glass, so it would be fresh for the next day.

In May we heard that the war was over. Peace gave me a curious sensation. I had been told that permanent warfare was the normal condition for a young Italian. In the following months I discovered that the Resistance was not only a local phenomenon but a European one. I learned new, exciting words like réseau, maquis, armée secrète, Rote Kapelle, Warsaw ghetto. I saw the first photographs of the Holocaust, thus understanding the meaning before knowing the word. I realized what we were liberated from.

In my country today there are people who are wondering if the Resistance had a real military impact on the course of the war. For my generation this question is irrelevant: we immediately understood the moral and psychological meaning of the Resistance. For us it was a point of pride to know that we Europeans did not wait passively for liberation. And for the young Americans who were paying with their blood for our restored freedom it meant something to know that behind the firing lines there were Europeans paying their own debt in advance.

In my country today there are those who are saying that the myth of the Resistance was a Communist lie. It is true that the Communists exploited the Resistance as if it were their personal property, since they played a prime role in it; but I remember partisans with kerchiefs of different colors. Sticking close to the radio, I spent my nights—the windows closed, the blackout making the small space around the set a lone luminous halo—listening to the messages sent by the Voice of London to the partisans. They were cryptic and poetic at the same time (The sun also rises, The roses will bloom) and most of them were “messaggi per la Franchi.” Somebody whispered to me that Franchi was the leader of the most powerful clandestine network in northwestern Italy, a man of legendary courage. Franchi became my hero. Franchi (whose real name was Edgardo Sogno) was a monarchist, so strongly anti-Communist that after the war he joined very right-wing groups, and was charged with collaborating in a project for a reactionary coup d’état. Who cares? Sogno still remains the dream hero of my childhood. Liberation was a common deed for people of different colors.

In my country today there are some who say that the War of Liberation was a tragic period of division, and that all we need is national reconciliation. The memory of those terrible years should be repressed, refoulée, verdrängt. But Verdrängung causes neurosis. If reconciliation means compassion and respect for all those who fought their own war in good faith, to forgive does not mean to forget. I can even admit that Eichmann sincerely believed in his mission, but I cannot say, “OK, come back and do it again.” We are here to remember what happened and solemnly say that “They” must not do it again.

But who are They?

If we still think of the totalitarian governments that ruled Europe before the Second World War we can easily say that it would be difficult for them to reappear in the same form in different historical circumstances. If Mussolini’s fascism was based upon the idea of a charismatic ruler, on corporatism, on the utopia of the Imperial Fate of Rome, on an imperialistic will to conquer new territories, on an exacerbated nationalism, on the ideal of an entire nation regimented in black shirts, on the rejection of parliamentary democracy, on anti-Semitism, then I have no difficulty in acknowledging that today the Italian Alleanza Nazionale, born from the postwar Fascist Party, MSI, and certainly a right-wing party, has by now very little to do with the old fascism. In the same vein, even though I am much concerned about the various Nazi-like movements that have arisen here and there in Europe, including Russia, I do not think that Nazism, in its original form, is about to reappear as a nationwide movement.

Nevertheless, even though political regimes can be overthrown, and ideologies can be criticized and disowned, behind a regime and its ideology there is always a way of thinking and feeling, a group of cultural habits, of obscure instincts and unfathomable drives. Is there still another ghost stalking Europe (not to speak of other parts of the world)?

Ionesco once said that “only words count and the rest is mere chattering.” Linguistic habits are frequently important symptoms of underlying feelings. Thus it is worth asking why not only the Resistance but the Second World War was generally defined throughout the world as a struggle against fascism. If you reread Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls you will discover that Robert Jordan identifies his enemies with Fascists, even when he thinks of the Spanish Falangists. And for FDR, “The victory of the American people and their allies will be a victory against fascism and the dead hand of despotism it represents.”

During World War II, the Americans who took part in the Spanish war were called “premature anti-fascists”—meaning that fighting against Hitler in the Forties was a moral duty for every good American, but fighting against Franco too early, in the Thirties, smelled sour because it was mainly done by Communists and other leftists. … Why was an expression like fascist pig used by American radicals thirty years later to refer to a cop who did not approve of their smoking habits? Why didn’t they say: Cagoulard pig, Falangist pig, Ustashe pig, Quisling pig, Nazi pig?

Mein Kampf is a manifesto of a complete political program. Nazism had a theory of racism and of the Aryan chosen people, a precise notion of degenerate art, entartete Kunst, a philosophy of the will to power and of the Ubermensch. Nazism was decidedly anti-Christian and neo-pagan, while Stalin’s Diamat (the official version of Soviet Marxism) was blatantly materialistic and atheistic. If by totalitarianism one means a regime that subordinates every act of the individual to the state and to its ideology, then both Nazism and Stalinism were true totalitarian regimes.

Italian fascism was certainly a dictatorship, but it was not totally totalitarian, not because of its mildness but rather because of the philosophical weakness of its ideology. Contrary to common opinion, fascism in Italy had no special philosophy. The article on fascism signed by Mussolini in the Treccani Encyclopedia was written or basically inspired by Giovanni Gentile, but it reflected a late-Hegelian notion of the Absolute and Ethical State which was never fully realized by Mussolini. Mussolini did not have any philosophy: he had only rhetoric. He was a militant atheist at the beginning and later signed the Convention with the Church and welcomed the bishops who blessed the Fascist pennants. In his early anticlerical years, according to a likely legend, he once asked God, in order to prove His existence, to strike him down on the spot. Later, Mussolini always cited the name of God in his speeches, and did not mind being called the Man of Providence.

Italian fascism was the first right-wing dictatorship that took over a European country, and all similar movements later found a sort of archetype in Mussolini’s regime. Italian fascism was the first to establish a military liturgy, a folklore, even a way of dressing—far more influential, with its black shirts, than Armani, Benetton, or Versace would ever be. It was only in the Thirties that fascist movements appeared, with Mosley, in Great Britain, and in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Yugoslavia, Spain, Portugal, Norway, and even in South America. It was Italian fascism that convinced many European liberal leaders that the new regime was carrying out interesting social reform, and that it was providing a mildly revolutionary alternative to the Communist threat.

Nevertheless, historical priority does not seem to me a sufficient reason to explain why the word fascism became a synecdoche, that is, a word that could be used for different totalitarian movements. This is not because fascism contained in itself, so to speak in their quintessential state, all the elements of any later form of totalitarianism. On the contrary, fascism had no quintessence. Fascism was a fuzzy totalitarianism, a collage of different philosophical and political ideas, a beehive of contradictions. Can one conceive of a truly totalitarian movement that was able to combine monarchy with revolution, the Royal Army with Mussolini’s personal milizia, the grant of privileges to the Church with state education extolling violence, absolute state control with a free market? The Fascist Party was born boasting that it brought a revolutionary new order; but it was financed by the most conservative among the landowners who expected from it a counter-revolution. At its beginning fascism was republican. Yet it survived for twenty years proclaiming its loyalty to the royal family, while the Duce (the unchallenged Maximal Leader) was arm-in-arm with the King, to whom he also offered the title of Emperor. But when the King fired Mussolini in 1943, the party reappeared two months later, with German support, under the standard of a “social” republic, recycling its old revolutionary script, now enriched with almost Jacobin overtones.

There was only a single Nazi architecture and a single Nazi art. If the Nazi architect was Albert Speer, there was no more room for Mies van der Rohe. Similarly, under Stalin’s rule, if Lamarck was right there was no room for Darwin. In Italy there were certainly fascist architects but close to their pseudo-Coliseums were many new buildings inspired by the modern rationalism of Gropius.

There was no fascist Zhdanov setting a strictly cultural line. In Italy there were two important art awards. The Premio Cremona was controlled by a fanatical and uncultivated Fascist, Roberto Farinacci, who encouraged art as propaganda. (I can remember paintings with such titles as Listening by Radio to the Duce’s Speech or States of Mind Created by Fascism.) The Premio Bergamo was sponsored by the cultivated and reasonably tolerant Fascist Giuseppe Bottai, who protected both the concept of art for art’s sake and the many kinds of avant-garde art that had been banned as corrupt and crypto-Communist in Germany.

The national poet was D’Annunzio, a dandy who in Germany or in Russia would have been sent to the firing squad. He was appointed as the bard of the regime because of his nationalism and his cult of heroism—which were in fact abundantly mixed up with influences of French fin de siècle decadence.

Take Futurism. One might think it would have been considered an instance of entartete Kunst, along with Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism. But the early Italian Futurists were nationalist; they favored Italian participation in the First World War for aesthetic reasons; they celebrated speed, violence, and risk, all of which somehow seemed to connect with the fascist cult of youth. While fascism identified itself with the Roman Empire and rediscovered rural traditions, Marinetti (who proclaimed that a car was more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace, and wanted to kill even the moonlight) was nevertheless appointed as a member of the Italian Academy, which treated moonlight with great respect.

Many of the future partisans and of the future intellectuals of the Communist Party were educated by the GUF, the fascist university students’ association, which was supposed to be the cradle of the new fascist culture. These clubs became a sort of intellectual melting pot where new ideas circulated without any real ideological control. It was not that the men of the party were tolerant of radical thinking, but few of them had the intellectual equipment to control it.

During those twenty years, the poetry of Montale and other writers associated with the group called the Ermetici was a reaction to the bombastic style of the regime, and these poets were allowed to develop their literary protest from within what was seen as their ivory tower. The mood of the Ermetici poets was exactly the reverse of the fascist cult of optimism and heroism. The regime tolerated their blatant, even though socially imperceptible, dissent because the Fascists simply did not pay attention to such arcane language.

All this does not mean that Italian fascism was tolerant. Gramsci was put in prison until his death; the opposition leaders Giacomo Matteotti and the brothers Rosselli were assassinated; the free press was abolished, the labor unions were dismantled, and political dissenters were confined on remote islands. Legislative power became a mere fiction and the executive power (which controlled the judiciary as well as the mass media) directly issued new laws, among them laws calling for preservation of the race (the formal Italian gesture of support for what became the Holocaust).

The contradictory picture I describe was not the result of tolerance but of political and ideological discombobulation. But it was a rigid discombobulation, a structured confusion. Fascism was philosophically out of joint, but emotionally it was firmly fastened to some archetypal foundations.

So we come to my second point. There was only one Nazism. We cannot label Franco’s hyper-Catholic Falangism as Nazism, since Nazism is fundamentally pagan, polytheistic, and anti-Christian. But the fascist game can be played in many forms, and the name of the game does not change. The notion of fascism is not unlike Wittgenstein’s notion of a game. A game can be either competitive or not, it can require some special skill or none, it can or cannot involve money. Games are different activities that display only some “family resemblance,” as Wittgenstein put it. Consider the following sequence:

1 2 3 4 abc bcd cde def

Suppose there is a series of political groups in which group one is characterized by the features abc, group two by the features bcd, and so on. Group two is similar to group one since they have two features in common; for the same reasons three is similar to two and four is similar to three. Notice that three is also similar to one (they have in common the feature c). The most curious case is presented by four, obviously similar to three and two, but with no feature in common with one. However, owing to the uninterrupted series of decreasing similarities between one and four, there remains, by a sort of illusory transitivity, a family resemblance between four and one.

Fascism became an all-purpose term because one can eliminate from a fascist regime one or more features, and it will still be recognizable as fascist. Take away imperialism from fascism and you still have Franco and Salazar. Take away colonialism and you still have the Balkan fascism of the Ustashes. Add to the Italian fascism a radical anti-capitalism (which never much fascinated Mussolini) and you have Ezra Pound. Add a cult of Celtic mythology and the Grail mysticism (completely alien to official fascism) and you have one of the most respected fascist gurus, Julius Evola.

But in spite of this fuzziness, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.

The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition. Traditionalism is of course much older than fascism. Not only was it typical of counter-revolutionary Catholic thought after the French revolution, but it was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to classical Greek rationalism. In the Mediterranean basin, people of different religions (most of them indulgently accepted by the Roman Pantheon) started dreaming of a revelation received at the dawn of human history. This revelation, according to the traditionalist mystique, had remained for a long time concealed under the veil of forgotten languages—in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the Celtic runes, in the scrolls of the little known religions of Asia. This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, “the combination of different forms of belief or practice”; such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom, and whenever they seem to say different or incompatible things it is only because all are alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth. As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth has been already spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message. One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements. The most influential theoretical source of the theories of the new Italian right, Julius Evola, merged the Holy Grail with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, alchemy with the Holy Roman and Germanic Empire. The very fact that the Italian right, in order to show its open-mindedness, recently broadened its syllabus to include works by De Maistre, Guenon, and Gramsci, is a blatant proof of syncretism. If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled as New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge—that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism.

Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism. Both Fascists and Nazis worshiped technology, while traditionalist thinkers usually reject it as a negation of traditional spiritual values. However, even though Nazism was proud of its industrial achievements, its praise of modernism was only the surface of an ideology based upon Blood and Earth (Blut und Boden). The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life, but it mainly concerned the rejection of the Spirit of 1789 (and of 1776, of course). The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.

Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action’s sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering’s alleged statement (“When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun”) to the frequent use of such expressions as “degenerate intellectuals,” “eggheads,” “effete snobs,” “universities are a nest of reds.” The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.

No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.

Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity. Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.

Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old “proletarians” are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.

To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country. This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside. In the US, a prominent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson’s The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others.

The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.

For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle. Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world. But such a “final solution” implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament.

Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak. Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people of the world, the members of the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians. In fact, the Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler. Since the group is hierarchically organized (according to a military model), every subordinate leader despises his own underlings, and each of them despises his inferiors. This reinforces the sense of mass elitism.

In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero. In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the Falangists was Viva la Muerte (in English it should be translated as “Long Live Death!”). In non-fascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.

Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters. This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons—doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.

Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say. In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view—one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. To have a good instance of qualitative populism we no longer need the Piazza Venezia in Rome or the Nuremberg Stadium. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People. Because of its qualitative populism Ur-Fascism must be against “rotten” parliamentary governments. One of the first sentences uttered by Mussolini in the Italian parliament was “I could have transformed this deaf and gloomy place into a bivouac for my maniples”—“maniples” being a subdivision of the traditional Roman legion. As a matter of fact, he immediately found better housing for his maniples, but a little later he liquidated the parliament. Wherever a politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament because it no longer represents the Voice of the People, we can smell Ur-Fascism.

Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in 1984, as the official language of Ingsoc, English Socialism. But elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning. But we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show.

On the morning of July 27, 1943, I was told that, according to radio reports, fascism had collapsed and Mussolini was under arrest. When my mother sent me out to buy the newspaper, I saw that the papers at the nearest newsstand had different titles. Moreover, after seeing the headlines, I realized that each newspaper said different things. I bought one of them, blindly, and read a message on the first page signed by five or six political parties—among them the Democrazia Cristiana, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the Partito d’Azione, and the Liberal Party.

Until then, I had believed that there was a single party in every country and that in Italy it was the Partito Nazionale Fascista. Now I was discovering that in my country several parties could exist at the same time. Since I was a clever boy, I immediately realized that so many parties could not have been born overnight, and they must have existed for some time as clandestine organizations.

The message on the front celebrated the end of the dictatorship and the return of freedom: freedom of speech, of press, of political association. These words, “freedom,” “dictatorship,” “liberty,”—I now read them for the first time in my life. I was reborn as a free Western man by virtue of these new words.

We must keep alert, so that the sense of these words will not be forgotten again. Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier, for us, if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, “I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Black Shirts to parade again in the Italian squares.” Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances—every day, in every part of the world. Franklin Roosevelt’s words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling: “I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.” Freedom and liberation are an unending task.

Let me finish with a poem by Franco Fortini:

Sulla spalletta del ponte Le teste degli impiccati Nell’acqua della fonte La bava degli impiccati.

Sul lastrico del mercato Le unghie dei fucilati Sull’erba secca del prato I denti dei fucilati.

Mordere l’aria mordere i sassi La nostra carne non è più d’uomini Mordere l’aria mordere i sassi Il nostro cuore non è più d’uomini.

Ma noi s’è letto negli occhi dei morti E sulla terra faremo libertà Ma l’hanno stretta i pugni dei morti La giustizia che si farà.

On the cobbles in the market- places The fingernails of those lined up and shot On the dry grass in the open spaces The broken teeth of those lined up and shot.

Biting the air, biting the stones Our flesh is no longer human Biting the air, biting the stones Our hearts are no longer human.

But we have read into the eyes of the dead And shall bring freedom on the earth But clenched tight in the fists of the dead Lies the justice to be served.) —poem translated by Stephen Sartarelli

#pamphlet #this is the first one i ever made so there are some sig errors in the setting #but w/e #umberto eco #ur fascism #ur-fascism #fascism

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‘We are being outspent. We are being outpaced’: Is America ceding the future of AI to China?

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‘We are being outspent. We are being outpaced’: Is America ceding the future of AI to China?

President Donald Trump (left) with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a meeting of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. Jinping’s emphasis on AI as part of his “China Dream” has a military aspect to it as well. | Susan Walsh/AP Photo

global translations

POLITICO’s latest Global Translations podcast examines the economic, military and ethical stakes in the geopolitical rivalry over AI.

The last time a rival power tried to out-innovate the U.S. and marshaled a whole-of-government approach to doing it, the Soviet Union startled Americans by deploying the first man-made satellite into orbit. The Sputnik surprise in 1957 shook American confidence, galvanized its government and set off a space race culminating with the creation of NASA and the moon landing 50 years ago this month.

Two years since announcing a national plan to become the world leader in artificial intelligence by 2030, China is making progress toward its goal on an unprecedented scale, raising the question of whether America’s laissez-faire approach to technology is enough and whether another Sputnik moment is around the corner, according to interviews for the latest episode of POLITICO’s Global Translations podcast.

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President Donald Trump in 2018 declared AI a national priority, and Lynne Parker, the White House coordinator on artificial intelligence policy, said America “is a very strong leader” in AI.

“If you look at industry output, if you look at the leading academic institutions that are leading the way and advancing the state of the art and AI, they’re American industries and they’re American academics,” Parker said. “We’re clearly producing the most impactful commercial products. And certainly that’s not to say that the rest of the world isn’t waking up to the great opportunities of AI — but clearly, the United States is in the lead.”

Meanwhile, Beijing has been pumping billions of dollars into research, supporting startups and retooling its education system from elementary schools to universities — all with an explicit goal of outpacing the U.S.

Governments around the world are taking notice.

“Over the last 10 years, there’s been a big effort in China to become a world leader in research and in many areas — but one of them being computing — and I’ve seen computer science departments grow and grow until they are now on a par with departments in the West in terms of what the academics do and where they publish,” Dame Wendy Hall, professor of computer science at the University of Southampton and co-author of the U.K. government’s AI strategy, told the podcast.

The Chinese effort extends to regional and local governments, too. “The city of Tianjin alone plans to spend $16 billion on AI — and the U.S. government investment still totals several billion and counting. That’s still lower by an order of magnitude,” said Elsa Kania, an adjunct fellow with the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.

By her count, some 26 AI plans and policies have cropped up across 19 provinces and regions in China. “These tens of billions in local government spending far outshadows anything any city or state government in the U.S. is doing,” she said.

Like the Soviet Sputnik, President Xi Jinping’s emphasis on AI as part of his “China Dream” has a military aspect to it as well.

“It’s clear that AI has become an element of U.S.-China military competition and that the Chinese military sees this pursuit of intelligentization — or trying to leverage AI to enhance its military capabilities — as critical to achieving an advantage, perhaps even surpassing the U.S.,” said Kania, who studies Chinese military innovation.

Under pressure to compete on the AI front, the Trump administration last May issued an executive order that calls on the U.S. to improve research and development and come up with plans to maintain supremacy in innovation. “It’s a multi-pronged approach that addresses a lot of areas such as AI R&D, making data more available, making computational resources more available, looking at education and workforce issues, AI governance issues, issues of technical standards and also issues of international engagement,” Parker said.

But critics worry it’s not nearly enough.

“We are being outspent. We are being out-researched. We are being outpaced. We are being out-staffed,” said Amy Webb, a professor at the NYU Stern School of Business who specializes in future forecasting. “We have failed and are continuing to fail to see China as a militaristic, economic, and diplomatic pacing threat when it comes to AI.”

Xi “sees artificial intelligence as an integral point in shifting geopolitics and geo-economics,” Webb said. China is spending 9 percent of its government budget on R&D — three times the U.S. level, she said. Meanwhile, in Washington, “there is a small group of people, they are having meetings and I have been to some of those meetings. And there is just no sense of urgency,” she said.

The rivalry is unfolding in tandem with Trump’s trade war with Beijing — which is itself, in part, an effort to force China to end forced technology transfers that have helped accelerate Chinese technological progress. And at stake are not only technological bragging rights, but military supremacy and control of technologies that can be used for authoritarian social control, according to interviews in the Global Translations podcast.

For example, AI-enabled facial recognition and voice recognition technology are part of an intensive surveillance system used to control China’s Muslim Uighur minority in the Xinjiang province — and that technology is being exported to other authoritarian regimes.

Such concerns have led to attempts at global governance. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has put forth principles for standards and ethics to guide its development and deployment embraced by 41 countries, including the U.S.

The administration is continuing to work on a regulatory framework through Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Parker said. “We always want to use AI in a way that’s consistent with civil liberties and privacy and American values. So clearly we don’t want to become a surveillance state like China,” she said. “On the other hand, the opposite extreme is to over-regulate to the point where we can’t use it at all.”

Critics like Webb say the U.S. market-based approach depends too much on the private sector.

“The problem with relying on the private sector and specifically companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, IBM and Microsoft is that these are publicly traded companies. They have to turn a profit. So we’ve really put ourselves in kind of a preventable and also dangerous situation,” she said.

But the sheer scale of China’s brute-force effort should not be confused with results, cautions Parker. “The downside to having a centralized focused approach is that you get very quickly to an end goal that may be the wrong goal. The advantage of the American innovation ecosystem is that we allow many good ideas to be explored in depth and we can see which ones are going to be fruitful,” she said.

When the Soviets launched Sputnik, Washington vowed to never be surprised again — and the following year stood up DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The new agency was focused on long-term, game-changing research and funded projects that led to breakthroughs such as the internet, GPS, early self-driving cars and the beginnings of AI.

In 2018, the agency announced it was investing $2 billion on AI-related research over five years. While that’s a fraction of Chinese investment, John Everett, deputy director of the Information Innovation Office at DARPA, told the podcast he is not worried about another Sputnik-style surprise.

“Within this $2 billion that we’re spending, it’s across a very wide range of projects — no two of which are alike — and so we’re placing a lot of strategic bets on technologies that may emerge in the future,” Everett said. “A lot of the money that‘s going into the research in China seems to be going into pattern recognition. So they will be able to do incrementally better pattern recognition by spending an enormous amount of money on it. But there’s a declining return to incremental expenditures.”

#China #Foreign #future #Politics

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