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thevividgreenmoss · 5 years

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Like much folk horror, The Wicker Man first appears to be a rural exploitation story in which an urbanite stumbles across a backwater burg where society’s standardized pieties aren’t observed. But it twists into a story about how useful a naive scapegoat—the “fool,” as Howie is positioned by Summerisle—can be in keeping the pitchforks pointed down at the land and never up at the landowner. Whether Lee’s character buys into his folksy, back-to-the-land heresy is irrelevant. For all his rituals and ceremonies, he remains gentry. This is what governs his actions, and what seals Howie’s fiery fate.

In Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019), a group of curious American millennials decamp to a remote Swedish hamlet for a highly Instagrammable solstice festival (think Maypoles, peasant dresses, flower crowns, and all the other summery, Coachella-chic accoutrements). In Wicker Man fashion, their arrival is more auspicious than it initially appears, as they end up embroiled in a conspiratorial pagan plot, unfolding against the ceaseless daylight of the Scandinavian mid-summer. Even before Midsommar, the ideas and imagery of The Wicker Man have sprouted up across the landscape of contemporary horror cinema, tapping into fears about manipulation, xenophobia, urban-rural divides, crowds gone mad, post-truth epistemology, and a lurking sense that personal agency is illusory, with the actions of the individual governed by forces that are (or are presented as being) beyond our ken.

In Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange, Adam Scovell identifies isolation, landscape, skewed morality, and a happening/summoning (often in the form of ritual sacrifice) as the four links in the “folk horror chain.” In Robert Eggers’s The Witch (2015), a family of seventeenth century Puritans banished from their New England village must carve out their place in a hostile, unforgiving landscape. Crops fail, family members disappear, livestock is unsettled, and adolescent girls fall prey to the hysterical throes of puberty. In Eggers’s film, it’s as if nature—that immortal “devil’s playground”—is avenging itself on the colonizers who came to tame it.

...In contrast to horror films that teach us to fear Satanists simply because they are Satanists (Rosemary’s Baby, The Mephisto Waltz, House of the Devil), The Wicker Man and its progeny force us to reckon with the deeper implications of the hooting-and-hollering heretic cabal. Folk horror may be best distinguished not by its mere depiction of Satanists, pagans, witches, buxom nudes wreathed in summer garlands, but by the manner in which they pose threats to our fundamental beliefs. Unlike most horror, in which an interloping monster is either destroyed (in order to purge a threat to an established order) or otherwise incorporated into that order, folk horror operates by implicating the viewer in the dissolution and destruction of that order.

...The first wave of folk horror crested during the waning of a vital counter-culture that had wholesale rejected long-held beliefs about social order, gender, sexuality, and imperialism. If 1968, the year Witchfinder General was released, marks the beginning of the folk horror cycle, it also marks the moment where utopian visions of social revolution were abandoning a politics of collective liberation and ceding to New Age philosophies of personal transformation. The genre’s development maps onto the what Scovell describes as “a backdrop of confident optimism disintegrating impossibly quickly into a nihilistic pessimism.” The films crack open the space between the promise of Paris 1968 and the repression of Kent State 1970, between the dream of Woodstock and the nightmare of Altamont, between The Beatles and Black Sabbath.

Folk horror’s original social context saw the energy animating the 1960s collectivist repudiation of traditional values fizzle and fade into the following decade’s interest in esotericism, astrology, and the occult. Some hippies who suspected that the existing social order could not be willed away with songs about peace and love reasoned that they could at least build their own Buckminster Fuller-style domes and settled into agricultural communes to experiment with pantheistic spiritualties.

...While The Wicker Man’s viewers are not exactly invited to cheer as Howie burns, the merry music and free love of the Summerislanders does seem more fun than the dour abstention of the film’s ostensible protagonist. Teenage daughter Tomasin’s entry into the forest at the end of The Witch is also treated with similar ambiguity. The witches’ coven is both a source of fear for the viewer and freedom for the character, who after accepting the enticing offer of a talking goat—“Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?”—gets to literally fly away from her overbearing, repressive family.

The overlapping intention here is not mere proselytizing, or preaching the ethical superiority of some alternative, some hippy-dippy, left-liberal, or openly Satanic worldview. Indeed, some read the end of The Wicker Man as a defense of Howie’s beliefs (a reading encouraged by the rictus grinning Summerislanders who gaze upon his burning body, joined together to sing some sinister folk shanty). But finding horror in the space between opposing belief systems, rather than in the content of belief systems themselves, allows these films to appeal both to the permaculture-curious anarchist sporting a “Cops for Crops” back patch and the Christian viewer scared of the Beltane-observing freaks who hate their un-freedom.

A 1998 reappraisal of The Wicker Man in a Scottish broadsheet identified the shifting appeal of a film that, since its release, was regarded as little more than a relatively obscure Brit-film cult classic:

Now, as demonstrated by the enthusiastic remarks of a group of New Age twenty-somethings with Celtic tattoos (that’s Celtic with a hard C, folks) and faces full of ironmongery, The Wicker Man has become keenly appreciated not only by mainstream film buffs and horror hounds but by people who find it a vindication of their own mystical beliefs. It is as though a movie of The Diary of Anne Frank were to become a hit with Nazis, who’d come along to cheer the feel-good ending when the storm troopers haul the Frank family out of the attic.

It’s a sarcastic quip that probably seemed absurd at the time, invoking a comparison so far outside the sphere of consensus that it’s easy to brush off as a harmless joke. But it seems, like so many historical absurdities, considerably less funny now, as white supremacist attacks on synagogues and racially motivated murders regularly dominate the fickle news cycle. The surge of blood-and-soil, volkish fascism in North America makes the counter-cultural embrace of folk horror antagonists seem more deeply uncomfortable, especially when groups like the Soldiers of Odin and the Wolves of Vinland incorporate runic symbols and pagan iconography that seems culled from some hard-bound Compendium of Folk Horror.

In Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism, Mattias Gardell argues that during the 1990s, Ariosophic occultism and Norse heathen religions like Asatru overtook Christian Identity as the spiritual dimension of the white supremacist movement. This might seem like a crude projection of the fears of the present onto the films of the past, demanding a revision of that old Mark Twain quote: “To a man with a Hammer film, every nail driven into the palms of a scapegoat looks like brigades of /pol/ cybernazis unleashing Pepes of pestilence to trigger the libs.” But the association between the appeals of paganism and fascism was not lost on The Wicker Man helmer Robin Hardy, who in a 1979 interview was quoted as saying: “It was no accident that Hitler brought back all those pagan feasts at the Nuremberg rallies. The ovens would be lit later.”

Such evaluations may be reasonably deemed a little suspect; like a variation of the internet-favorite Reductio ad Hitlerum fallacy, in which the themes of Hardy’s film gain consequence in their evocation of the world-historic cataclysm of the Holocaust. But they gain a renewed (and again, sinisterly absurd) significance in the present moment, where symbols of paganism and white nationalism are being revived not only in conspicuous tandem, but confused confluence. In place of a more conspicuous swastika, a more obscure runic symbol—a Celtic cross, Thor’s hammer, the German Wolfsangel—will suffice. Once again, the symbols and regalia of the past (be it the imagined distant past of pre-Christian heathenry or the more recent past of the Third Reich) are being revived. We live in an age where, ludicrous as it may seem, certain viewers may well cheer the Nazis hauling Anne Frank out of her annex.

...At its core, folk horror is speculative fiction about the failures of the Age of Enlightenment. In Tentacles Longer than the Night, Eugene Thacker explains how the universal maxims of Enlightenment thinkers are conditional. Kant’s categorical imperative requires one to act “as if” the values dictating their actions are universally valid. In supernatural horror, the conditions of this logic are violated by the appearance of some entity that threatens the anthropocentric view of the world, evoking terror from the knowledge that Enlightenment rationality is bumping up against its limit.

Folk horror, by contrast, inverts rather than negates Enlightenment philosophy: the mob sacrifices the individual, peasant superstitions supplant science and reason as the true source of knowledge, a holistic and animistic conception of the universe overtakes an atomistic and mechanistic one. The genre presents a return of these things that had to be repressed in the transition towards a rational, individualistic, and ultimately capitalist social order: witchcraft, female empowerment, sexuality, and an organismic, earth-based conception of the universe.

Here the idea is not so much that logic and reason have reached some natural limit, but rather that the promises of the Enlightenment are always provisional, subject to revocation following one too many bad harvests. Again, the ideological structure may seem warped and inverted, but it possesses an internal, contingent consistency. The death of Sergeant Howie turns the standard horror trope of sexuality and impropriety leading to death on its ear. Unlike the many slain corpses stacked elsewhere in the horror genre, Howie’s sin is precisely his dopey virginity and piousness.

For all its dabbling with the supernatural, the folk horror genre is ultimately one rooted in materialism. The landscape holds considerable power over its people, but not in a mystical way. Allan Brown argues that The Wicker Man specifically can be read as a sci-fi story about technological failure—without the barren fruit trees caused by the poor performance of Lord Summerisle’s experimental botany, no sacrifice would be needed. If the Enlightenment philosophy that provides the grounds for contemporary liberalism involves a faith in humanity’s ability to transcend material conditions, to behave as if laws were universal and human ingenuity had no natural limits, then The Wicker Man brings us back down to earth, and we are reminded of the material conditions that make modern society possible.

Chained up in the wooden structure, Howie attempts to reason with the Lord:

Your crops failed because your strains failed. Fruit is not meant to be grown on these islands. It’s against nature. Don’t you see that killing me is not going to bring back your apples? . . . Don’t you understand that if your crops fail this year, next year you’re going to have to have another blood sacrifice? And next year, no one less than the king of Summerisle himself will do.

In this moment, Adam Scovell argues, the film is “laying down the law/lore of folk horror; that fear supplanted into communities comes back to haunt those who sowed its first seeds.” Burning to death, Howie calls out to his Christian god; the villagers sing and dance as they offer him up to their pagan lords. The viewer may feel that Howie is right, the apples won’t come next year, but the horror comes from the realization that Summerisle is also right: the sacrifice will be accepted.

Like the detestable vogue in white nationalist movements, which cop their iconography and philosophy from the rubbish heap of some imagined pre-Christian, Aryanist past, the renewal of folk horror (particularly in the American context) speaks to an unsettling truth, festering in contemporary political and cultural life. The return to symbology of Neo-Paganism, or the back-to-the-land return to the supposed “realness” inherent in far-off solstice festivals (an attraction of authenticity alluring the lambs of Midsommar), suggests not so much an antidote to the cult of Enlightenment rationality as its uncanny complement. Think only of Julius Caesar himself, whose grisly imagery of human bodies crammed into a flaming wicker statue was utterly self-serving: casting Gauls and Celts as paranoid pagans in order to justify their slaughter and conquest at the tips of legionnaires’ spearheads.

The horror latent in folk horror, then as now, is not an abject fear of pagans or free-loving hippies or straight-up Satanists. It’s the unsettling knowledge that the people are often all too willing to trade one form of power and subjugation for an aesthetically different manifestation of those same conditions, if only to restore faith in power itself. Even if the crops continue to fail, and the heathens of Summerisle never again taste a locally sourced organic apple, it doesn’t matter: the sacrifice succeeds. Killing Howie need not bring back the damn apples themselves, so long as it restores faith in ritual, mysticism, heathen magick, and the other counter-Enlightenment energies that Lee’s Summerisle, in all his sinisterness and sartorial preposterousness, wields in a perverse seasonal pageant, all undertaken to consolidate his own power: as gentry and patriarch, one Lord substituted for another.

#I love this #like the end of the witch is thrilling and seemingly and maybe to an extent actually liberatory but also like tomasin's escaped one horrible #situation to now be in a seemingly better one but even there she'll be under the thrall/control of black philip or w/e so she isn't truly #free or in control of her own destiny #but all the ideological collisions and the inadequacy of colonial new england puritanical insanity #or modernity & the trappings of western/christian civilization as embodied by the wicker man guy #ie general bourgeois liberal enlightenment values being seen as the highest/most ideal form of living/thinking #in providing actual meaning/freedom for the people living under it makes them prone to being overtaken by like an insane death cult which #may have some aesthetic differences + some differences in lifestyle which are genuinely more appealing/fulfilling in certain ways but #ultimately still hold everyone under the domination of an unchallenged power structure #same with the impotence of contemporary liberal multiculturalism when it comes to actaully reckoning with the historical legacy/contemporary #impact of a racist society as seen in get out #and on and on #essays #*

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orcinusorca1617 · 5 years

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Favorite Star Wars Fics

REBELCAPTAIN

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whetstone shuofthewind

They're finished with their first mission. Now it's just the matter of downtime.

[Part of the floating, sinking universe. Mostly just fluff.]

Restless jenniferjun1per

Jyn needs to sleep, but she can't seem to get comfortable.

You Still Are leralynne

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slowly, and then all at once caramelle

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Cuddling for Warmth leralynne

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Bloody Little Worms Kobo

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A white hot grip on her lungs? This marks the first time she’s awoken to that.

Closer muggleindenial28

"They don’t speak on the way down.

They don’t acknowledge the distant shrill screams of TIE Fighters and X-Wings outside.

They don’t think about how they’re not going to get out in time."

They make it off Scarif, but not without scars.

like real people do mollivanders

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They need to be caught.

Beach House lyresandlasers

“Never say I don’t support you,” Jyn lifted his head into her lap, cradled in crossed legs.

cover me, i'll cover you mollivanders

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I hear the revolution rebsrising

The babble sounds through the baby monitor, soft and quiet, but enough to wake two well-trained soldiers still adjusting to the safety of peace.

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Fifteen Days clashofqueens

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Lay Down My Shields katsumi

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Run to Me in the Rising Dawn katsumi

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We Should laurie2000ann

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Let's Give 'Em Something to Talk About astoriamalfoys

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Han x Leia captainkitten

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REYLO

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Rey presses her lips together to keep from laughing. She plans her next words quickly and carefully, determining what will get her the best reaction. “Really? Looks like you ruined a bedsheet to me.”

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Parenthood (series) pontmercy44

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Black Gloves, Orange Soup Solia

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A Good Fall ohwise1ne

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No Ill Will Castiloar

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variations on a theme of you disasterisms

"Who knows?" Luke darted a faint smile at Ben and Rey as they stewed in silence and disbelief. "The two of you might even learn to get along. Right, Leia?"

"Like a house on fire," the General deadpanned. "Complete with screams, flames, and people running for safety."

"Indeed." Luke's blue eyes twinkled. "There may be no survivors."

As Hard As I Try... KKetura

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They have a tradition for nightmares.

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Quiet issueswithjedipedagogy

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Soft Things catmusing

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Aphelion ambiguously

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Vulnerability and Soft Hair smallenoughtofit

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Rey gets sick, and she isn't very good at letting people look after her.

Proper Sleep tearoomsaloon

Much to her frustration, Rey can no longer properly sleep unless she's snuggled between Ben's glorious pecs

ad infinitum hyperphonic

for the prompt: Rey and Kylo telling Leia, Rey is pregnant. Leia had no clue.

any way you want it thegoodlannister

rey helps ben begin to work through the process of making decisions - even really simple ones - for himself. rehabilitation is a slow process in the aftermath of the mess snoke has spent three decades making of ben's mind.

It Will Come Back ReyloTrashCompactor

“Honey, don’t feed it. It will come back”

A Series of Firsts Tandy

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A story told in firsts.

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A Few Small Repairs TourmalineGreen

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She would be alright, after this. She would find a way, find something…

what ails you thegoodlannister

or: three times ben solo was sick and one time kylo ren was. unabashed reylo and even more unabashed hurt/comfort.

100 Ways to Say I Love You AquaWolfGirl

Taken from a list on Tumblr of 100 Ways To Say I Love You, 100 little oneshots leading up to Valentine's Day.

I'm always in this twilight (in the shadow of your heart) disasterisms

Coded on a secondhand datapad in a run-down motel room in Mos Eisley, deleted and never sent: Everything about us was a whirlwind.

Written on a scrap of durasheet in a Tion Cluster outpost, the words fading after a while into air and ghosts: You shouldn't have forgiven me for any of it.

Scraped into the bark of an oak tree on the Argazdan homeworld: You won't believe the dreams I have about you.

the one with the lust writing-reylo

She has bigger things to worry about than that.

The most pressing of which is reclining in her bed, shirtless.

“Can you move?” She asks, unwinding her scarf and shrugging off her huge jacket.

Milking It thewayofthetrashcompactor

“Rey.”

The voice was deep and familiar, rough with exhaustion, and echoed across the gap closed by the Force.

She ignored it, hunched over on the edge of the cot she'd been sleeping on. She wanted nothing more than to lean back and curl up into an unconscious ball again, but another voice, this one much closer, called her name again.

morning in the burned house disasterisms

Leia's not really surprised at all, to be honest, but, for the sake of his pride, she should probably pretend to be.

find a thread to pull, and we can watch it unravel again_please

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Because You're There disasterisms

Three years ago, Rey had not yet climbed Everest.

Presenting the first half of my fic/art trade with the lovely lilithsaur, based on her trash triplets x 2 universe. The gist is that there are three Solo boys— Kylo, Ben, and Matt (the character from Adam Driver's SNL skit)— and three Kenobi girls— Kira (dark Rey), Rey, and Daisy (undercover Rey).

Sword of the Jedi (series) diasterisms

“What do you think?” Luke asks his nephew. “She has potential.”

“She bit me, Master,” is Ben’s stiff response. “Any opinion I give would be biased.”

Or: Everyone is connected, even if, sometimes, it's just by the skin of our teeth. Even in the midst of darkness, still, luminous beings are we.

Reign OptimisticBeth

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Political maneuvering is not Rey's forte. She must adjust to life as the First Order's first lady, making friends and enemies along the way and indulging in sweet awkward romance with her Ben.

Burgeoning Hope crossingwinter

#ShesPregnantAndHesDumbAndHasntLeftHisJobYet

miles from where you are mooncactus

After an argument over Star Wars fandom with a "gatekeeping, entitled monster" with the cryptic username of KyloRen, Rey finds herself stuck in a series of unavoidable video calls.

Prisoner orphan_account

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Hand of Fate sweetestcondition

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keep me in your clouded mind hi_raeth

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Except for the part where Ben has completely lost his verbal filter and keeps babbling about his feelings for her.

Exile Ernzo

The war is over and the First Order has fallen. Ben has returned home to face his consequences.

A story of Rey and Ben finding peace in the aftermath of war as Ben accepts his punishment.

made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter disasterisms

The First Order does not exist, what is dead stays dead, and they grow up together at Luke's Jedi Academy.

Or: The one where everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

(Then again, it's Ben and Rey, so maybe things hurt a little.)

A little ginger, a little honey Areah51

Rey is sick, and Ben shows up where he's not wanted, but in the end, we all need someone to take care of us when we're ill.

my wildest wind (come blow into my room) meritmut

“Would it have been so terrible?” he asks. “Staying?”

Could we have had this? she thinks, like she always does.

Non-consecutive ForceTime vignettes in the days, weeks and months after Crait.

Play to Win Enterprisingly

Ben Solo – aka KyloRen – is a professional gamer, playing the first-person-shooter StarKiller for the internationally ranked eSports team, The First Order. He’s made a name for himself as a ruthless competitor with a ferocious temper and top-notch skills that can’t be beat. That is, until a mystery player named ReyOfLight begins thoroughly trouncing him whenever they cross paths.

Unwell AquaWolfGirl

Jakku was cold, but nothing compared to Hoth. While staying at the old Rebel base, Rey catches a cold, and someone is a huge worry wart over the woman who denied his offer.

The One Where He Decides writing_reylo

He’s on the bridge and he’s alone.

The First Order are no more.

It only took him a year, carefully manipulating every weak mind he came across, emotionally manipulating the ones he couldn’t.

Embers sciosophia

All the myriad things he’d been—someone who made her laugh; the warmth on the other side of the bed; her best friend—those things, Rey had buried.

Rey left Ben two years, three months, and sixteen days ago. But who's counting?

Interstellar Transmissions LovelyThings, ricca_riot

Rey’s interrogation at the hands of Kylo Ren triggered an awakening in the Force, as well as an unwelcome bond that links them across the galaxy and grows stronger every day.

What Stays and What Fades Away astra_inclinant

Her feelings for Kylo Ren are quiet, not acknowledged, but deeply felt. She cannot make peace with them and send them from her mind.

Or, everyone is emotionally stunted and no one has healthy coping skills.

Our Heaven is Just Waiting FrostedFox

It's his turn to fall wounded before her, and her turn to decide where to go from there.

If only she could convince him to stay alive.

make it look just the way i planned TheJGatsby

Ben buys the painting on a brokenhearted impulse, and somehow it ends up being exactly the right choice.

(Based on the song Paint Me a Birmingham)

#reylo #rebelcaptain #star wars #sw tfa #sw tlj #kylo x rey #ben solo #cassian x jyn #rogue one

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zamancollective · 5 years

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Pan-What? / The Political Legacy of Defining Ethnicity in the Middle East

By Kyle Newman

For well over a millennium, southwestern Asia and North Africa have been regions characterized by ethnic diversity in every sense of the term. Centuries of cultural exchange between various empires that have ruled over Western Asia and the Iranian Plateau accompanied admixture between what once were isolated ethnic pockets in the region, creating a complex gene pool that is often difficult to categorize (as we explored in the last article of this two-part series on Middle Eastern ethnic identity). As tribalism was increasingly eclipsed by other sociological trends in the region, the concept of ethnic identity (although an extremely abstract one) has come to serve as a tool for rousing political or ideological fervor over time. The potential of such movements to foster unity is often just as strong as their potential to be weaponized, which is more than enough reason to analyze the effects of politicizing ethnic affiliations.

In modern history, one of the first attempts at establishing an ethnicity-based ideological current in the Middle East was the movement of Pan-Arabism. With Ottoman rule still presiding over much of the Levant, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Maghreb in the late 19th century, many prominent Arab intellectuals and scholars were concerned about the proliferation of Turkic language and culture throughout the region and its potential to overshadow Arab cultures and dialects in both religious and secular spheres of society. Two of the most prominent Pan-Arab thinkers were Jurji Zaydan and Sharif Hussein Ibn Ali. Zaydan advocated for the standardization of the Arabic language based on Quranic Arabic, seeking to unite Arab peoples who spoke regional dialects and encourage mutual intelligibility. Fuṣḥá (Modern Standard Arabic) was partially created in an effort to foster a sort of broader ethnic solidarity between Arab peoples from North Africa to the coast of the Persian Gulf, irrespective of more specific religious or tribal tensions. Ibn Ali, who was the Sharif of Mecca at the time, felt increasingly drawn to the idea of an Arab national consciousness that had been espoused by Zaydan and other thinkers, eventually making concrete efforts to create a unified Arab state encompassing most territories with Arab ethnic majorities in southwestern Asia and North Africa. At the height of World War I, Sharif formed an alliance with government officials in the United Kingdom at the height of World War I in order to ensure inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula that a unified Arab state could be created if there were to be a successful revolt against the Ottomans. Although the United Kingdom and the Allied Powers defeated the Ottoman Empire and Germany in World War I, Britain could not guarantee to Sharif the creation of a unified Arab state in the Arabian Peninsula due to land allocations outlined in the Sykes-Picot agreement.

The Arab state envisioned by Sharif and Pan-Arab intellectuals never came into fruition, but the nationalistic fervor they espoused among Arabs based on shared ethnic and linguistic ties helped fuel resentment against the Ottomans, whom Arab rebels eventually defeated. Pan-Arabism went on to be a core tenant of anti-imperialist movements that helped foster autonomy and independence across the region. Unfortunately, however, movements like the Ba’athist party in Syria and Egypt or Rashid Al-Gaylani’s National Brotherhood Party were responsible for the persecution of ethnoreligious minorities like Jews and Kurds under the guise of Pan-Arabism. For instance, anti-imperialist Arab nationalist sentiments were weaponized as a rallying cry against Mizrahi Jews, who were eventually expelled from their homes Iraq, Syria, and surrounding nations in the years framing Israel’s War of Independence.

It is not surprising that Southwest Asia, being a region with such complicated notions of ethnic identity due to its genetic and cultural diversity, saw the development of multiple nationalist movements and efforts to create ethnic solidarity among non-Arab peoples. In fact, the Pan-Turkic movement, a movement whose beginnings much resembled those of Pan-Arab thought, was arguably the first modern form of ethnonationalism to appear in Southwest Asia. In the mid 19th century, Islamic Tatar theologians and intellectuals living in the Russian empire established the Jadid movement. The name Jadid, meaning “new” in Arabic, very well reflects the ethos behind the nation that these Turkic intellectuals sought to create: a state unifying all of the ethnically Turkic pockets of Eurasia which would observe a semi-secularized version of the Islamic faith and embrace cultural Westernization. As nationalistic fervor grew in Europe throughout the late 19th century, the Ottoman Empire followed this trend, as well. The Young Turks, a political reform movement in Turkey that sought to overthrow Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II and bring constitutional governance to Turkey, succeeded in its efforts and popularized the idea of Pan-Turkism among the Ottoman public through the Committee of Union and Progress. Turkic peoples living outside of the Ottoman empire started immigrating in modest numbers to the Ottoman empire with the hope of being accepted by a government that strongly advocated ethnic Turkish unity. Despite the seemingly positive connotations of ideas like self-determination and unification in the name of common lineage, Pan-Turkism is a testament to the ever-present danger of pursuing such an endeavor without a sense of inclusivity and tolerance for ethnic variation within a state. The Pan-Turkic movement, engendering a limitless rise in Turkish nationalism in the early 20th century, led almost directly to the horrors of the Armenian genocide, which were undertaken in the name of “purifying” the state of non-Turkic inhabitants. This fact begs us to more carefully contemplate the further implications and moral dangers of calls for ethnic unity and solidarity, and where to draw the line between peaceful unification and violently exclusionary hatred for the other.

The last prominent ethnonationalist movement to arise in the Middle East was the Pan-Iranist movement. After the collapse of the Qajar dynasty in 1925 in Persia, Iranian intellectuals, socialists, and nationalists all wished for the creation of a democratic state in present-day Iran. Reza Shah Pahlavi’s subsequent seizure of power added fuel to the fire of resentment among teachers and intellectuals who hoped for democracy with territorial integrity. During the British and Soviet invasions of Iran during World War II, student demonstrations decrying the Shah’s tolerance of foreign interference and advocating for unity among Iran’s indigenous inhabitants increased. At first, nationalistic fervor of those involved in the grass-roots pan-Iranist movement saw a different trajectory than Pan-Turkism; people who wished to see an Iranian nation that encompassed all of the Iranian plateau and its surrounding plains often included a wider roster of Iranic peoples in their political advocacy, blurring the lines of absolutist ethnicity-based unification. Of course, a degree of ethnically Persian hegemony and simplification persisted, but earlier Pan-Iranist protests were much less characterized by the violent hatred of minority groups like Assyrians or Armenians in comparison to the sentiments found at nationalist rallies in Turkey. Eventually, the movement for ethnic solidarity among Iranian peoples in a single large nation led to the establishment of the Pan-Iranist party in Iranian parliament during the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, with the party being led by Mohsen Pezeshkpour and Dariush Forouhar. Although efforts to cooperate with the Pahlavi dynasty to bring Pan-Iranist ambitions to fruition never succeeded, this movement is yet another example of how an increasing sense of awareness for ethnic identity in the Middle East had a notable impact on national consciousness.

However, the most observable legacy of Pan-Iranism did take on a more exclusionary character than the aforementioned protests- and this legacy is found in the word “Iran,” the modern name for the country. Reza Shah Pahlavi, being a Nazi sympathizer at the height of World War II, replaced the name “Persia” with the name “Iran” as suggested by the Nazi pseudoscientist Hans F.K. Günther. Günther claimed that the people of Iran were supposedly “pure-blooded Aryans,” being descendants of the ancient Aryan tribes from the Russian Steppes region - believing (quite reductively, to say the least) that the name “Iran,” literally translating to “Land of the Aryans” in Persian, would be appropriate for the country. Pahlavi’s decision foreshadowed the persecution of Iranian minority groups, such as Jews, that became increasingly violent in the years leading up to the Islamic revolution.

When examining the details of such controversial and large scale movements as Middle Eastern ethnonationalisms, it is always appropriate to investigate their overall purpose and credibility. Digging deeper into this issue and drawing upon the history of ethnic distinction as a phenomenon in southwestern Asia, it is important to ask ourselves what ethnic solidarity in the Middle East even is to begin with, when the entire region is a vibrant, dynamic tapestry of intersecting histories, tribal affiliations, religious ideologies, and cross-cultural interactions. The complex reality of Middle-Eastern demographics greatly contrasts the homogeneity bastioned by any ethnonationalist movement. Of course, in contemplating the idea of ethnic solidarity we cannot forget the post World War I Wilsonian doctrine of Self-Determination that brought independence and joy to many ethnic minorities previously living under the rule of larger umbrella empires. Thus, despite the belligerence of nationalism, the question of ethnically unifying movements’ mutual exclusivity (or possible compatibility) with tolerance is at times difficult to answer. What is certain, however, is that the nuances inherently embedded in the discussion of ethnic identity will only increase as globalization intensifies the pace of diversification around the world.

References

Electricpulp.com. “Encyclopædia Iranica.” RSS, www.iranicaonline.org/articles/fars-iv.

Electricpulp.com. “Encyclopædia Iranica.” RSS, www.iranicaonline.org/articles/iranian-identity-iv-19th-20th-centuries.

"Pan-Turkism.". “Pan-Turkism.” New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Encyclopedia.com, 2019, www.encyclopedia.com/history/asia-and-africa/middle-eastern-history/pan-turkism.

Reiser, Stewart. “Pan-Arabism Revisited.” Vol. 37, no. 2, 1983, pp. 218–233. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4326563. Accessed 20 June 2019.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/iran-during-world-war-ii.

#kyle newman #nonfiction & opinion

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hatofmischief · 5 years

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Svtfoe is interesting to me (mostly bc of eclipsa) but also because I don’t see many cartoons back up and start reflecting on the nature of good vs evil as it relates to humanoids [1] vs monsters.

Monster of the Week style shows, think sailor moon/dbz/ppg, usually have the monster representing some kind of generic malevolent force that preys on innocent people. It’s the main characters job rise up and stop them. This generic, malevolent force, typically is seeking power, unjustified revenge, world destruction, or immortality.

Svtfoe deconstructs/subverts “Monster of the Week” as a trope by asking:

How did this feud really start? [2]

What are the consequences of always defeating the “monster of the week”?

Who are the “monsters”?

Why is it uniquely monsters who threaten to humanoid-kind?

And they respond by answering:

Their land was stolen. They were subjugated for thousands of years afterwards.

Continued subjugation of monster kind, no real progress between peaceful relations

They are people, with families, virtues and vices [3], **who want and deserve a better life**

Monsters *as a group* are not out to get humanoids.

The ones that are have *varying motivations,* from a desire to survive, or to reclaim what once was theirs, or are seeking vengeance for a crime against their kind.

There is also little to no distinction between who qualifies as a monster and who doesn’t, meaning who is a threat to who is completely arbitrary.

Instead of painting monsters as a one dimensional personification of evil, who exist to menace the main characters + innocent people as the **source of conflict**, the writers shift the conflict from the menacing to the motivation [4] of the menacing. The monsters have fair justifications for their actions rooted in concrete events. The monsters have agency to make decisions independent of their “faction”. Agency is especially important, because it breaks away from the amalgamation of monsters as an active hive-mind of evil. They’re not. They can’t be painted with the same brushstroke. They shouldn’t be painted with the same brushstroke. They’re all varied. [5] Monster-kind are interested in survival and reclaiming power. Monster-kind are allowed to choose who they ally with, how invested they are in their leader, what goals they’d rather focus on achieving, and how they want to solve the conflict between themselves and humanoids.

Summarized:

Svtfoe deconstructs/subverts the monster of the week trope by giving monsters variation, agency, and JUSTIFIED motivation.

It also places most of the blame with humanoids as the source of the conflict, highlights the lack of true distinction between what qualifies as monstrous or not monstrous.

And it repeatedly upends humanoids perception of monsters by making monsters so multi faceted, they as a group, can’t be reduced to a single concept.

I’ve said this in other posts, but I have to say it here: they’re not doing it perfect. These are difficult concepts being attempted by a children's cartoon show, you know, for children. I am appreciating their attempt, that doesn’t mean I’m going to act like I haven’t personally noticed a few Uh-Oh’s . I’d rather leave that to someone more articulate and informed than me [6].

[1] Calling them “humanoid” because in Svtfoe, they’re called “Mewmin” instead of “human”. They’re human shaped, don’t @ me. [2] “really start” as in, “what motivation we can give them that’s not jealousy, narcissism, or misanthropy, that won’t conform to the trope?” [3] monsters aren’t perfect flawless beings, and they don’t have to be. [4] the real evil: how do we solve thousands of years of pain when one side (the mewin) continuously antagonize their victims? How do we fix what has passed? [5] Please don’t @ me about the handful of villains in every monster of the week story that betray the Big Bad. That’s not what I mean by variation. There’s a difference between “hm actually, fuck this” and characters deciding they’d rather seek peace treaties while others would prefer a complete revolution [7] [6] I’m not equipped to analyzing any of these (what I am going to politely call) ~whoopsies~, and so I’m not going to. Don’t ask me about them bc I don’t have enough information to answer you with. [7] No I don’t stan Toffee

#ooc #~blog meta~

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bountyofbeads · 6 years

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Germany's third gender law is celebrated as a revolution. But some say it's just the first step

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/29/health/third-gender-law-germany-grm-intl/index.html

Germany's third gender law is celebrated as a revolution. But some say it's just the first step

By Nadine Schmidt and Kara Fox, CNN | Dec 29, 2018 | Posted December 29, 2018 |

Berlin (CNN) - By the time Lynn D. turned 2, he had already undergone seven surgeries. His childhood memories -- in the German states of Bavaria and Hesse -- were shaped by monthly visits to the doctor, where he says up to 50 researchers would observe examinations of his naked body.

When he reached puberty, Lynn was given growth blockers and high doses of hormones; as a teenager, he started self-harming, developed post-traumatic stress disorder and became suicidal.

Lynn, 34 -- who has asked CNN to identify him by his preferred name -- was born with both male and female sex organs. His doctors and parents decided shortly after he was born that his sex would be female, so his penis and testicles were surgically removed. His ovaries were also removed.

Doctors had told Lynn's parents the surgeries were preventative, citing concerns that he could develop cancer, but Lynn says there was no medical reason for him to be operated on and that the surgeries were carried out with a "dubious motivation."

"The doctors advised my parents not to tell me about my sex and simply raise me as a girl," Lynn told CNN. "And of course, it didn't work -- because I'm not a girl."

Lynn is intersex, an umbrella term used to describe a variety of conditions in which a person is born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that does not fit into binary definitions of female or male.

"I was labeled a girl; I wanted to be a girl and fit in -- but it did not work. I got along better with boys so I thought, 'I'm a boy'. But then I realized that I'm not a boy either ... boys also started to marginalize me. I did not have a good connection with my body and nobody helped me to establish a good connection with my body," Lynn said.

Lynn only learned that he was intersex during a therapy session at the age of 20. It was a revelation for Lynn, who had struggled to fit in with his peers for so many years.

While it helped him to move forward with his relationship with his own body, Lynn says it damaged his relationship with his parents.

"My body was changed so much to fit in -- whether it happened consciously or unconsciously. The whole experience broke my relationship with my parents. We still have not gotten over this yet," Lynn said.

When he first learned he was intersex, Lynn said, "it felt like as if someone said I am an alien, you are from someplace else. You are a mutant."

"It took me a while to come to terms with my diagnosis and for me to (come to) grips with it. But then I understood -- everything made sense to me. I no longer felt restless. Suddenly I understood who I was."

More than a decade later, Lynn said he has evolved into an "enormously happy" person, someone who is in a loving relationship with a woman, and who is fulfilled by a career in engineering and gigging in a punk band.

While Lynn said he accepts being called "him" for now, he wishes that there was a specific German pronoun to describe intersex people, and hopes that society will one day understand what it means to live outside of binary definitions of sex and gender -- and to accept intersex people for who they are.

A change to the German constitution could be the first step toward that recognition.

On January 1, Germany will become the first country in the European Union to offer a "third gender" option on birth certificates.

Intersex people -- and parents of intersex babies -- will be able to register as "divers," or miscellaneous, on birth certificates, instead of having to choose between male or female.

The law, passed in Germany's Bundestag earlier this month, was hailed as a "small revolution" by some intersex activists. It came after a 2017 constitutional court ruled in favor of an intersex person's right to change their birth certificate from female to "divers."

The court ruled that Vanja -- an intersex person who goes by a one-name pseudonym and uses the gender-neutral pronouns "they" and "them" -- had their "right to positive gender recognition" violated and found that the current law was unconstitutional.

Vanja, whose case was supported by advocacy group, "Dritte Option" or, the Third Option, told CNN that having to decide between being a woman or a man on official documents left them feeling "left out and overlooked."

While Vanja's official identification documents said they were female, this led to "a lot of irritations with people" because they presented -- or physically appeared in society -- as male.

Vanja initially considered changing their documents to male, but eventually decided that decision would devalue their identity, which is intersex.

"I thought to myself, if I am going at lengths to change something within the red tape system in Germany, I want to have something that suits me," they said.

Vanja plans to celebrate the new law by changing their birth certificate category to "divers" in the new year, calling it both a personal and a practical step.

"I asked myself so many times what it means to be intersex; I often was upset when I had to decide which box to tick -- male or female. I felt (like I was) being pushed into the corner, that I had to adjust non-voluntarily. I think it will give me a new feeling of peace," Vanja said, adding that they hope other countries in Europe will follow suit.

But, like many in the intersex community, Vanja believes the law is just a stepping stone.

"Societal acceptance cannot be mandated by a court ruling, but it is a step in the right direction," Vanja said.

Lynn agrees. While he also plans to register as intersex -- and to officially change his name to Lynn -- he said there are still many steps that need to be taken for intersex people to be "fully integrated into society."

Still, he is hopeful the new law will help to bring attention to the medical treatment of intersex people and open conversations for change.

'RITUALIZED , SEXUALIZED VIOLENCE '

Infants born with visible variations in their sexual characteristics, like Lynn, often undergo painful and irreversible surgery to give them the appearance of a conventional male or female gender, according to an Amnesty International report published last year.

The surgeries stem from a theory popularized in the United States in the 1960s by the psychologist John Money, who believed that an intersex person's make-up was a product of abnormal processes. Money believed that intersex people ought to become either male or female and as a result, were in need of medical treatment.

Although that theory is no longer widely accepted in the medical community, its "echoes can still be found within the medical establishment today," according to the Amnesty report, citing interviews with medical professionals across Denmark, Germany and the UK.

Those surgeries stripped Lynn of his bodily autonomy and left him with painful scars.

"When they (doctors and parents) talked about my body, I had to go out and leave the room. In hindsight, it was a practice I would now compare with a ritualized, sexualized violence. It was massively traumatizing," Lynn says of his childhood visits to the doctor.

A group of United Nations and international human rights experts called for "an urgent end to human rights violations against intersex children and adults" in 2016, calling on governments to ban harmful medical practices and protect intersex people from discrimination.

Between 0.5% and 1.7% of the global population are born with intersex traits, and are at risk of human rights violations that include surgery, discrimination and torture, according to the UN.

In July, a group of European medical experts published a set of new guidelines that urge doctors to defer medically unnecessary surgeries on intersex children until they are old enough to consent. The European consensus said: "For sensitive and/or irreversible procedures, such as genital surgery, we advise that the intervention be postponed until the individual is old enough to be actively involved in the decision whenever possible."

Grietje Baars, a senior lecturer at The City Law School in London, told CNN that while the new law demonstrates a "greater recognition of life beyond the binary," the "third gender" option doesn't go far enough to fully recognize gender diversity.

Under the new law, people wanting to change their birth certificate to read "divers" will only be able to do so with a medical certificate to prove it.

Baars -- who also goes by the gender-neutral pronouns, "they" and "them" -- says that requirement could subject intersex people, who often have a history of "traumatic medical interference with their genitalia" to additional trauma. Plus, Baars says, the medical requirement reinforces an antiquated definition of gender based solely on biology.

"You can not simply decide gender by looking at people's genitalia," they said, adding that it might be time to remove gender from official documents altogether. While Baars understands that this might sound radical, they argue that "abolishing gender registration does not mean abolishing gender as such."

"It's like abolishing registering your religion or race on your ID or documents -- it does not mean you can no longer be Catholic or black ... those things are not the same. I am just saying that it is no business of the state to register and categorize people in that manner," they said.

CHALLENGING SOCIAL NORMS

Although German law has allowed parents to leave the gender box blank on birth certificates since 2013 -- and this will still be an option under the new legislation -- some experts say parents will still be inclined to choose a more traditional approach, noting that in the two years after the blank box option came into effect, only 12 children were registered without a sex marker in the birth registry.

Anike Krämer, a Ph.D. candidate in gender studies at Germany's Ruhr-University Bochum, told CNN that she believes that parents of intersex children will have "difficulties" with the choices presented with the new law.

#donald trump #u.s. news #politics #international news #legal issues #lgbtq #lgbt #lgbtpride #Gender #gender based violence

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contes-de-rheio · 6 years

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20 Facts about

“20 Facts about” is a series of posts which presents various aspects of Tales of Rheio, such as characters and worldbuilding elements.

Aqualos

Aqualos is one the biggest countries in the southern hemisphere. When Ketal's empire dislocated, it was one of the smallest.

The capital of Aqualos is Aqualyre, it was first situated in Bourg-Les-Rois.

Other prominent cities are Aigue-La-Morte, Le Val, Roue-Champêtre, Tourbillon, Sentinelle, Beulieu, Pondarmé. Most of them are situated along the defensive wall.

King Conrad, who reigned from 809 to 868 (equivalent to Renaissance times), built a defensive wall around the frontiers of Aqualos. The wall is now called Wall of Conrad, but the country has grown beyond. For administrative needs, the regions inside the unachieved wall are called Center, while the one outside are the Marches: Wood March, Hill March, Frozen March, River March.

The Frozen March get its name from the chilly relationship between Aqualos and the Throahènes.

Aqualos is lead by a monarchy. The eldest child is named Crowned Prince (or Princess) and inherit the throne automatically upon the death of the previous monarch.

Over the years of expansion, Aqualos has acquired a few territories, including a few crowns gained through marital alliances. Though the king’s (or queen’s) title is generally abridged to King of Aqualos, they are also King of Valène and King of Roue-Champêtre’s Kingdom. This three titles legitimize the ownership of over 50% of the territories of the Center.

When Rising Queens starts, the political situation is anything but simple. There are mainly 4 groups trying to influence the future of the country: absolutists, populists (also called anarchists by some), democrats and sorcerers. The absolutists want to maintain the statue quo, with the monarch in power and a council composed of noble men and women. The populists want a revolution to give the power to the people. The democrats want a parliament which would work with the monarch. The sorcerers (actually a small group of sorcerers who are part of the nobility) want the power for themselves, to go back to a time most societies were headed and controlled by sorcerers.

Lorn Ist was the first king of Aqualos. It is said he came with his people from north-east region, running away from invading barbarians. They settled in the Aunette Valley, which was infested with chimeras. Lorn, with the help of two sorcerers cleansed the valley, and was then crowned.

The chimera is the emblem of Aqualos. It has a ram head, a snake body and eagle wings. The country’s colors are light blue and grey.

The god protector of Aqualos is Llyro, god of sea and violent phenomena. He came to replace Gjoran (god of the mountains) when the country was joined with the Kingdom of Roue-Champêtre, as the use of rivers and sea for trade became more and more prominent. The Aqualians are mostly polytheists.

“Do not curse Wudja, without cursing Marka”. Wudja is the goddess of woods and fields (she is associated with spring too), while Marka is the goddess of drought. You should always curse both their names to guaranty good harvests. Note that Marka is originally the sole goddess adored by Niensherians, but has been included in the polytheistic faith of Aqualians. Niensherians find it extremely insulting and reductive of the true nature of their goddess.

To make a wish, you should throw a crown of flowers in fountains or rivers. You’re supposed to repeat your wish over and over while you make the crown.

Iseult is the most infamous queen of the country. She fought a war against the Coriant Empire to regain the Valène’s Crown for her husband, and with that precipitated the fall of the empire.

Much later on, when Coriandre was reduced to the size of a small country, Aqualos agreed to sign a peace treaty known as the Debt’s Treaty. In it, Aqualos agrees to pardon the debts of Coriandre, as long as Coriandre provides troops.

The last two queens consort, before the beginning of Rising Queens, have come from South-Darah as a mean to guaranty peace between both countries, allying the Crown of Aqualos, with the most powerful dahran noble families. But, because of a political slide in South-Darah which put power back in the hands of its king, this alliance is now seen a bad investment.

The South-Darah views about sorcerers has degraded the way they are perceive in Aqualos too. Some sorcerers also think the abdication of Feid and Joy Familier added to that new vision.

Inheritance law makes it so that the eldest legitimate child, regardless of their gender, inherit the biggest share. They can desist themselves from it, in case they have no interest in the family business. The best example of this system is the Ménard family. Their business is ship trade, but the eldest son became a lawyer. The cadet son, Jon, became the heir. Since he is homosexual, and blood ties are seen as better than adoptive ones, his own main heir is the youngest daughter of the family, Ariane. the three other daughters and the youngest son have all desisted themselves though they were higher in the line of succession than Ariane.

The most frequent family name is Fontaine, or its variations such as Defontaine, Fonteney...

As for first names, often boys names include a part of their father’s name. This is also occasionally done between mothers and daughters. The fact that Trélyse name contains part of her father’s (Trevin) is seen as a little weird, but was still welcomed as it favored her aqualian heritage.

TAG LIST (let me know if you’d like to be added or removed!)

@fukusigma @elaynab-writing @cjjameswriting @leo-november @kainablue

#cdr writes #writing #writeblr #fantasy writer #fantasy #high fantasy #tor rising queens #aqualos #worldbuilding #20 facts about

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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The Matrix 4 Trailer Teasers Reveal a Big Morpheus Mystery

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

What the hell is going on with Morpheus? That’s the question on fans’ minds after spending the last day trying to decipher all of the new Matrix Resurrections teasers released by Warner Bros. If you go to WhatIsTheMatrix.com right now, you’ll be asked to make a choice: the red pill or the blue pill. Choosing the red pill freed Neo from the simulation in 1999, and if you make the same choice on the fan site, you’ll be treated to one of a several teasers depending on the time of the day. According to EW, there are 180,000 variations of the video.

While the full trailer will hit the internet on Thursday at 9 am ET, the teasers contain snippets of footage from the new movie, including our first looks at Neo and Trinity as well as Jessica Henwick and Jonathan Groff’s characters. But most importantly, the teasers introduce Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s mystery man, a character who looks and sounds a lot like Morpheus…

“This is the moment for you to show us what is real. Right now you believe it’s…” says Abdul-Mateen in the teaser, reciting the time at which you’re watching the video. “…but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Could be this is the first day of the rest of your life, but if you want it, you gotta fight for it.”

The teasers are accompanied by a few shots of Abdul-Mateen’s character, who looks every bit like Morpheus, but there are also several scenes that suggest…well, that this couldn’t be further from the truth. But before we jump into some of the images, you might be wondering why it’s Abdul-Mateen who seems to be filling the Morpheus role and not Laurence Fishburne. As revealed by Fishburne himself last year, he wasn’t invited back to reprise his iconic role despite Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss being tapped to return, along with Jada Pinkett Smith as Niobe, Lambert Wilson as The Merovingian, and Daniel Bernhardt as Agent Johnson.

Since Abdul-Mateen was cast, rumors have persisted that he’s playing a younger Morpheus, which seems to be confirmed by the teasers, but, again, things might not be as they seem. Follow me down the rabbit hole…

The first shot we see in the teaser for the Abdul-Mateen character shows him staring himself in a mirror, condensation on the glass made to resemble code (“digital rain”) over mystery man’s face. He looks intently into the mirror, as if examining himself, perhaps a little surprised at this appearance? In other teasers, we watch Neo take blue pills in front of a mirror but his reflection isn’t right at all — looking back at Reeves is a much older man. In yet other snippets, we watch hands reaching through mirrors, like when Neo touched the liquid glass in the first movie just before waking up in the real world.

So what’s going on here? The green hue of the scene confirms this is Abdul-Mateen inside of the simulation, so why does he look slightly surprised by his residual self-image? Is this movie somehow a continuation of Neo and Trinity’s story but also a Morpheus origin story? Is this the face of a man only just starting to learn the truth?

Well, that doesn’t really seem to be the case, either.

When this movie is set may not be as important as what version of the Matrix this movie takes place in. I theorized in an earlier article that The Matrix Resurrections could be covering a different version of the simulation altogether, one where some events happen as they did in the original trilogy but where there are big alterations, too. As the Architect once told Neo in The Matrix Reloaded, the Machines have created several versions of the simulation, tweaking things as needed to improve the program and make humanity more subservient. It’s an endless loop that has seen the heroes try to save Zion from the Machines several times before.

We learned from the Architect that the One’s role isn’t just a prophecy, an event foretold by the Oracle, but a role designed by the program itself to solve an anomaly. In essence, the One’s role is to reset the Matrix and start the clock again until the next “final battle.” But as we know from The Matrix Revolutions, Neo and his friends found a way to change things, to save Zion from being destroyed and give other plugged-in humans the chance to leave the simulation if they chose to. Most importantly, there was finally peace.

But just how long did that peace last? “Resurrections” could suggest that a new version of the Matrix has been brought online, which would explain why events from the first movie are happening again but in slightly different ways.

For example, in the picture above, an older Neo is back in the sparring program with “Morpheus,” undoubtedly practicing their kung fu and jiu-jitsu. The dojo looks familiar but this time Neo wears black while Adbul-Mateen is clad in a red gi. This shot also happens to be the best evidence that, yes, Abdul-Mateen plays Morpheus and that he will guide Neo on this new adventure.

Things get more complicated, though…

Later in the teasers, you see what looks like an Agent chasing our heroes down hallways that look kind of similar to the ones Neo ran through in the original film, just before his death and resurrection in the third act. But this time, it’s Henwick’s blue-haired badass dodging bullets while Abdul-Mateen can be seen running ahead, wearing sunglasses that don’t really look anything like the ones worn by Fisburne’s Morpheus in the original trilogy. (It does almost look like he’s wearing a second pair of glasses over his more traditional rimless pince-nez glasses, but that could just be the quality of the screengrab.)

Most importantly, “Morpheus” is sort of dressed like an Agent himself. What the hell is going on?

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

I don’t have the answers. And this last image only complicated things further. Here we see “Morpheus” being formed from thousands of little particles expelled by some sort of machine. Are those supposed to be tiny nano bots, sort of like more advanced versions of the tiny insect droids that formed Deus Ex Machina’s face in The Matrix Revolutions? Is “Morpheus” acting so weird because he’s actually a machine?

That certainly would be quite the twist if true. What if Morpheus was a machine sleeper cell, just another system of control all along — a “true believer” designed to rally Zion around the One in order for the Machines to more easily lead humanity through the loop that would eventually lead to the city’s destruction.

Yeah, that sounds a little far-fetched even for a Matrix movie. Maybe it’s just this version of “Morpheus” that’s a machine, created to jump start Neo’s journey after another faction has kept him hooked on the blue pill. What if this is a version of the Matrix where Thomas Anderson never got to make a choice in 1999 and has lived his life ignorant of his true purpose? In this scenario, maybe it would be the Machines themselves trying to wake up Neo. After all, without him completing his journey, the program can’t survive.

We’ll finally find out what the hell is really going on when The Matrix Resurrections hits theaters and HBO Max on Dec. 22.

The post The Matrix 4 Trailer Teasers Reveal a Big Morpheus Mystery appeared first on Den of Geek.

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creatorofclay · 4 years

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Tag dump 2020(improved): verses

v://there is something at work in my soul which I do not understand//past

c://teen!elijah

v://the world to me was a secret which I desired to discover//CyberLife

v://what can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man?//present

v://life although it may only be an accumulation of anguish is dear to me//post game

variation://post peaceful revolution variation://post violent revolution

v://some men just like to watch the world burn//worst ending

v://and suddenly you know: it's time to start something new//alt post peaceful

v://false face must hide what the false heart doth know//android au

variation://pre-android c://android!elijah

v://that meek darkness be thy mirror and thy whole remembrance//reverse au

c://rt600!elijah

v://let every man be master of his time//god au

c://god!elijah

v://always hungry; never satisfied//demon au

c://half demon!elijah

v://life's only obligation after all was to be interesting//killer au

v://morality doesn't exist. only morale//alt killer au

c://killer!elijah

v://you are the night and the night alone understands you//vampire au

v://outcast in the court//supernatural event

v://give me my robe put in my crown; i have immortal longing in me//alt vampire au

c://vampire!elijah c://dhampir!chloe

v://i can't espresso how much you bean to me//cafe au

v://standin on the edge face up cause you're a natural//singer au

c://singer!elijah

v://fate it seems is not without a sense of irony//watch dogs au

v://when does a personality simulation become the bitter mote of a soul?//i robot au

#tag dump #v://there is something at work in my soul which I do not understand//past #v://the world to me was a secret which I desired to discover//CyberLife #v://what can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man?//present #v://life although it may only be an accumulation of anguish is dear to me//post game #v://some men just like to watch the world burn//worst ending #v://and suddenly you know: it's time to start something new//alt post peaceful #v://false face must hide what the false heart doth know//android au #v://that meek darkness be thy mirror and thy whole remembrance//reverse au #v://let every man be master of his time//god au #v://always hungry; never satisfied//demon au #v://life's only obligation after all was to be interesting//killer au #v://morality doesn't exist. only morale//alt killer au #v://you are the night and the night alone understands you//vampire au #v://outcast in the court//supernatural event #v://give me my robe put in my crown; i have immortal longing in me//alt vampire au #v://i can't espresso how much you bean to me//cafe au #v://standin on the edge face up cause you're a natural//singer au #v://fate it seems is not without a sense of irony//watch dogs au #v://when does a personality simulation become the bitter mote of a soul?//i robot au #v://he believed it was his destiny to discover and create life//alt main #v://few sons are like their fathers//star wars au

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encephalonfatigue · 4 years

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hybrid warfare and leftist alliances

this was originally written as a goodreads reflection on Masha Gessen’s book “The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia”, but turned into a sprawling mess.

I breezed through all six seasons of The Americans not long ago — another product of my podcast listening habits involving the Magnificast, hosted by two Christian communists. The Americans certainly stoked a smouldering interest in Soviet history for me. I only recently found out that Gessen did the Russian translations for many of the seasons.

This book was recommended to me by a pen pal who did her Master’s thesis on Soviet hockey propaganda, and will soon be starting a PhD on Russian democratic activism (and lesbians). So she certainly knows her stuff, and am glad I took the time to read this.

As a qualifier, before I begin this review, I have seen Gessen use she/her pronouns and other places that say Gessen uses they/them. I will use she/her because that is the most recent source I have found. And also the pronouns Gessen uses in reference to herself in the book. I will correct this review if I find my use of pronouns incorrect. With that out of the way, I’ll proceed onto the book.

I thought it was an absorbing read, well-structured, entertaining, and full of stuff I was completely ignorant of. There was a fascinating section on the practice of sociology under the Soviet Union, a really interesting section on Freudo-Marxism and its interaction with the Soviet state, and this later comes up in Gessen’s use of Erich Fromm for her stuff on totalitarianism. I think Fromm has helped me a lot better understand the dynamics of fascism. Gessen’s meeting with Putin was very fun to read. The difficulties I had (at times) keeping up with the history, dates, names, etc were some indication that I likely need to brush up on my Russian history. Once in a while I would recognize something, like when Gessen mentions Gorky in her typically humorous style:

“The city was named Gorky, after the Russian writer Alexei Peshkov, who, as was the Revolutionary fashion, had taken a tearjerker pen name: it meant “bitter.” When Zhanna was first becoming aware of her surroundings, she had no idea that a writer named Gorky had ever existed: she thought the name was a literal description of her town. The Soviet government seemed to agree: four years before Zhanna’s birth, it had chosen Gorky as the place of exile for the physicist Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov, the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and the country’s best-known dissident.”

I encountered Gorky a couple years ago by way of the Indonesian anti-colonial writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer (a political prisoner in Indonesia for decades, wasting away in various penal colonies, perpetually accused of being a communist, though always denying that label) who was an enthusiastic translator of Gorky’s writing. Translating Gorky’s novel “Mother” into Indonesian was one of Pram’s first sources of income after his wedding, as I read in his memoir “The Mute’s Soliloquy”. He did the Indonesian translation working off from an English translation, and later found out sections were missing after going through a Dutch translation. He humorously wrote that he had to put up with pointed and critical queries about his translation when visiting the University of Leningrad.

I think my affinity for anti-colonial politics and its attendant resistance and revolutionary movements have created a certain (though limited) sympathy for the Soviet Union at times, although I know that when people like Pram were invited to the Soviet Union or Mao’s PRC — or for that matter when African Americans like W. E. B. DuBois, various members of the Black Panthers (like Angela Davis and Huey P. Newton), or Paul Robeson were also — they were shown a very curated view of those countries (as any diplomatic visitor to the West would be shown also), and these were concerted initiatives to project particular images of Communism into the so-called Third World (and Fourth World as ghettoized areas of the ‘First World’ are sometimes called). These are basic tactics to be expected of modern statecraft. My dad’s friend is Nigerian, and while politically and socially conservative (e.g. homophobic), he has a very high view of the Soviet Union as his father was invited to tour Soviet Russia and was very impressed with the place. This positive view of Russia has extended into the post-Soviet Putin years, and this is a theme in Gessen’s book. I will get into these issues a bit later, but first a word about Arendt.

I think the book’s main thesis and orientation draws substantially on Hannah Arendt’s writings on totalitarianism. Arendt is a figure I have been meaning to read for a while. Her work was very important for leftist philosophers engaged in theology like Giorgio Agamben who elaborated on the notion of ‘bare life’ from Arendt’s writing on Aristotelian distinctions of ‘bios’ and ‘zoe’. I do believe in the value of political life and political engagement, and I think those notions come through in Gessen’s focus on how Soviet repression of political engagement carried on into post-Soviet years. Arendt is not a leftist though (in my view), and while I haven’t read much of her work, I get the sense she would not have identified herself as such (nor would have even accepted the political spectrum birthed forth from the French Revolution). And so I think where I depart from agreement with Gessen’s work is where Arendt’s work on totalitarianism comes into view, and I think part of it also involves disagreements I have with Arendt’s views on Marx and leftist politics more broadly that she elaborates on in “On Revolution”. First I will make some remarks on Arendt’s book “The Origins of Totalitarianism”.

So I think the ‘milieu’ (lol) of literature and essays I spend most of my time thumbing through makes certain distinctions between authoritarian fascism and authoritarian communism. Many anarchists will emphasize similarities, yet I don’t think they would consider Hitler and Stalin as equivalents. Even libertarian communists who are against authoritarian tactics of communist ends, still generally hold similar goals as Marxist-Leninists, e.g. the abolition of class, but differ on how to get there. Now of course there are some Leninists who still use the word ‘liquidation’ and are vague about what they mean — likely some variation ranging from ‘the wall’ to ‘re-education camps’. The problem of realizing a classless society without violent coercion and force is an issue, I’d admit, but there are other mechanisms that disincentive acts of domination without the need for terror. The question of their efficacy is another matter. That being said, even though I think Nazism/fascism did have certain overlaps with Stalinism, I don’t think fascism and communism (even Soviet communism) are inherently two manifestations of the same underlying essence. This is Gessen’s summary of Arendt’s notion of totalitarianism:

“Whatever premise formed the basis of the ideology, be it the superiority of a particular race or of a particular class, was used to derive imagined laws of history: only a certain race or a certain class was destined to survive. The “laws of history” justified the terror ostensibly required for this survival. Arendt wrote about the subjugation of public space—in effect the disappearance of public space, which, by depriving a person of boundaries and agency, rendered him profoundly lonely. ”

In my mind, I don’t see eliminating a race and class as the same thing, although I do agree that many authoritarian communist regimes ended up empowering people who treated ‘ruling classes’ as almost metaphysical entities and one’s ‘class’ could almost be inherited genetically, e.g. if one’s ancestors were landowners, one could some how be held accountable for that (Gessen brings this up). I think many people who identified as communists in those regimes didn’t think that way, but it only takes a portion of people (who do) to cause irreparable trauma and terror, especially when they have power. I of course find that very troubling, but if one treats classes as relationally constituted, which is exactly the whole point of Marx’s body of work, then abolishing class might involve expropriating already expropriated wealth to return it to the people who produced it and need it more, trying to better distribute all the things produced by society such that no one is lacking hygienic housing, proper health care, healthy food, leisure time to enjoy the fruits of one’s labour etc… and fostering a world where people don’t feel superior to other people and have their identity based around having inordinately more than other human beings. I mean that is another way of abolishing class, and I see no problem with ‘eliminating’ class by such means. It’s an ‘elimination’ of a relation not a person. That is, working towards removing relations of domination between people. How that happens in practice is a whole other issue, if it’s at all possible. Authoritarian impulses not only go back to Marx and Engels, but back to utopian socialists, and even show up in Thomas More’s Utopia. So Arendt’s accusations cannot be so easily dismissed.

So this issue of violence is important to Arendt, and she will work though how Marx is connecting it with issues of scarcity and necessity. Arendt accuses Marx of turning issues of scarcity into accusations of exploitation, saying:

“Marx's transformation of the social question into a political force is contained in the term 'exploitation', that is, in the notion that poverty is the result of exploitation through a 'ruling class' which is in the possession of the means of violence… If Marx helped in liberating the poor, then it was not by telling them that they were the living embodiments of some historical or other necessity, but by persuading them that poverty itself is a political, not a natural phenomenon, the result of violence and violation rather than of scarcity.”

Arendt said something similar, but more forthcoming, in a footnote contained in her 1972 book “Crises of the Republic”:

"Behind it, however, stands the illusion of Marx's society of free producers, the liberation of the productive forces of society, which in fact has been accomplished not by the revolution but by science and technology. This liberation, furthermore, is not accelerated, but seriously retarded, in all countries that have gone through a revolution. In other words, behind their denunciation of consumption stands the idealization of production, and with it the old idolization of productivity and creativity"

This is an argument that Jordan Peterson perpetually peddles. I actually agree that capitalism is a far more productive and dynamic economic system than communism in most situations. I think Marx saw that too, and that’s why he believed capitalism was the stage that must precede socialism and then communism. Now you can debate the morality of whether we should accept such terms, but it’s merely a practical assertion on Marx’s part. That’s the grounds on which China’s liberalization occurred, and I think Soviet industrialization found similar justifications under Marx. I haven’t read enough Arendt, but from what I’ve read, I think Arendt’s focus on technology (especially in the American development case) as the answer to scarcity fails to recognize how organizations engaged in technological development under capitalism are in fact very political. Chomsky has called corporations some of the most totalitarian institutions on the face of the planet. I can say that engineering firms are even worse than other corporations. They are often very toxic work environments, deeply connected to the military industrial complex and resource extraction industries. The fact that military-fuelled corporations are behind so much of the innovation and increased productivity that exists today raises questions if it’s worth it. With all the technology that exists in 2020, how much more innovation is worth the continued exploitation and highly authoritarian working conditions that such increased productivity demands. The ‘falling rate of profit’ as the Marxian economists call it is some indication that ‘value-adding’ innovation can only increase by so much more. We have garnered enough productive capacity to meet all basic human needs. Is it time for something new?

Of course Arendt recognizes Marx’s typically Hegelian reversal from [violent expropriation causes poverty] to [scarcity and poverty necessarily causes revolutionary violence] which she strongly finds objectionable throughout the European tradition, including in Robespierre and Hegel. But in this Hegelian move, Marx is suggesting that only by assuring abundance and meeting material needs can one avoid violence. I agree with Marx in his assertion that poverty produces violence, because poverty is a form of structural violence which poor people are reacting too. Arendt later jokes even Lenin saw the technical basis of abundance as true, though I don’t think it’s that far off Marxist dogma as she asserts:

“…when asked to state in one sentence the essence and the aims of the October Revolution, [Lenin] gave the curious and long-forgotten formula: 'Electrification plus soviets.' This answer is remarkable first for what it omits: the role of the party, on one side, the building socialism on the other. In their stead, we are given an entirely un-Marxist separation of economics and politics, a differentiation between electrification as the solution of Russia's social question, and the soviet system as her new body politic that had emerged during the revolution outside all parties. What is perhaps even more surprising in a Marxist is the suggestion that the problem of poverty is not to be solved through socialization and socialism, but through technical means; for technology, in contrast to socialization, is of course politically neutral; it neither prescribes nor precludes any specific form of government.”

Arendt’s characterization of technology as neutral is maybe somewhat similar to the Saint Simonian vision of the neutral ‘administration of things’ reiterated by Engels.

I think maybe a few decades ago, the problem of productivity and scarcity were still central issues, or as Deng Xiaoping put it: the ‘principal contradiction’. But the so-called ‘principal contradiction’ today for China under Xi Jinping is ‘uneven development’. Haha, I’m quoting CCP Central Committee brass now, and I’m not even a Marxist, lol. So this issue is most often rendered as ’inequality’, but I think ‘uneven development’ is actually a good way of putting it. It’s an inequality of both (1) consumption: the distribution of all that we produce collectively as a species within a larger ecosystem of species, and (2) production: the focusing of labour onto producing things primarily for the interests of richest 10% of the global population (although the rationale here is that this stuff eventually trickles down — now 60% of the global population have access to the internet and 20% have been able to enjoy a plane ride).

Now to take a few steps back again, the question of how much violence is acceptable and justified to pursue a particular iteration of a ‘just society’ does pose a problem, which might be glossed over by simply stating violence is inevitable. This is what Arendt writes about in her work “On Revolution”, where she thinks ‘pity’, which undergirds revolutionary politics, quickly turns to cruelty and justifies almost any degree of violence or vice. In this sense I can see how Aristotle’s virtue ethics has really laid claim to Arendt’s arguments here. She has a certain disdain for the ‘by any means necessary’ folks. I never take that phrase literally. I think it is meant to be an assertion of political force more than anything. I don’t know any radical who uses the phrase ‘by any means necessary’ to literally mean that. They would never justify racial genocide if it led to a classless society. Their values are informed by their goals, and ultimately do constrain their means, but maybe less so than Aristoteleans like Arendt who writes:

“Robespierre's pity-inspired virtue, from the beginning of his rule, played havoc with justice and made light of laws. Measured against the immense sufferings of the immense majority of the people, the impartiality of justice and law, the application of the same rules to those who sleep in palaces and those who sleep under the bridges of Paris, was like a mockery to the foundation,of freedom and the establishment of lasting institutions, and to those who acted in this direction nothing was permitted that would have been outside the range of civil law. The direction of the French Revolution was deflected almost from its beginning from this course of foundation through the immediacy of suffering; it. was determined by the exigencies of liberation not from tyranny but from necessity, and it was actuated by -the limitless immensity of both the people's misery and the pity this misery inspired. The boundlessness of the 'all is permitted' sprang here still from the sentiments of the heart whose very boundlessness helped in the unleashing of a stream of boundless violence.”

This is why Arendt prefers the American Revolution to the French Revolution, because it was not concerned with ‘compassion’ or ‘pity’ for the poor, but because it was solely about freedom, yet she recognizes the glaring problem of her example, which is American slavery:

“Yet we deal here with men of the eighteenth century, when this age-old indifference was about to disappear, and when, in the words of Rousseau, an 'innate repugnance at seeing a fellow creature suffer' had become common in certain strata of European society and precisely among those who made the French Revolution. Since then, the passion of compassion has haunted and driven the best men of all revolutions, and the only revolution in which compassion played no role in the motivation of the actors was the American Revolution. If it were not for the presence of Negro slavery on the American scene, one would be tempted to explain this striking aspect exclusively by American prosperity,'by Jefferson's 'lovely equality', or by the fact that America was indeed, in William Penn's words, 'a good poor Man's country'. As it is, we are tempted to ask ourselves if the goodness of the poor white man's country did not depend to a considerable degree upon black labour and black misery - there lived roughly 400,000 Negroes along with approximately 1,850,000 white men in America in the middle of the eighteenth century, and even in the absence of reliable statistical" data we may be sure that the percentage of complete destitution and misery was considerably lower in the countries of the Old World. From this, we can only conclude that the institution of slavery carries an obscurity even blacker than the obscurity of poverty;”

Often historians will call the American Civil War America’s real revolution. The French Revolution brought about movements to liberate slaves in the colonies (though slaves themselves of course were the initiators, by way of revolts and uprisings), even if not well sustained. The political impetus behind the American Revolution differed from the French Revolution in that its disregard for liberation by ‘political means’ and its disregard for the suffering of slaves cannot be divorced from this exact ideology enabling slavery. (A particularly scathing critique of the American Revolution is given in J. Sakai’s “Settlers”, which criticizes white communists who lionize the American Revolution.) I think Arendt’s whole view on the matter is succinctly summarized in these couple sentences:

“All rulership has its original and its most legItimate source in man's wish to emancipate himself from life's necessity, and men achieved such liberation by means of violence, by forcing others to bear the burden of life for them. This was the core of slavery, and it is only the rise of technology, and not the rise of modern political ideas as such, which has refuted the old and terrible truth that only violence and rule over others could make some men free. Nothing, we might say today, could be more obsolete than to attempt to liberate mankind from poverty by political means; nothing could be more futile and more dangerous.”

I have been thoroughly propagandized by theorists of the left (Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Althusser) to see things somewhat differently than Arendt, though I still have a lot to think through and I think Arendt’s critiques of the left and revolutionary politics more broadly must be taken seriously. They are carefully thought out and worth sitting with. But I think one should be cautious about how Arendt’s writings on totalitarianism are weaponized by certain centrist interests. This critique Gessen made of Bernie Sanders with respect to Cuba and Chomsky’s discussion with Arendt maybe reflects this divergence of opinion (although I agree with her critique of Castro’s homophobic purges must always be foregrounded). This is an excerpt from an article in Monthly Review by Reuven Kaminer on ‘totalitarianism’:

“The concept serves as the basis for a specific historical narrative built around the struggle of good (liberal democracy) against evil (totalitarian) dictatorship. According to this narrative, we are at the present enjoying the fruits of great victories in the battle against totalitarianism which stem directly from the comparatively recent demise of the Soviet Union. This, of course, makes it all the more easier to promote the concept of totalitarianism.

One of the ‘magical’ aspects of the concept of totalitarianism is that it appears to be “fair,” “even-handed,” and really above day to day politics. It seems completely objective because it warns that the dangers to freedom emanate from both the Right and the Left. Thus, the concept of totalitarianism is (almost) universally accepted and admired at all levels of political and intellectual life. All participants in current prevailing ideological and political discourse are assumed to be opponents of totalitarianism. The hegemonic rules of discourse are such that dissenting views may be disqualified if their proponents exhibit any lack of militancy against totalitarianism in thought and in practice. The final Part Three, on Totalitarianism, is devoted to the presentation of both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany as a new and unique form of government. The point of the author’s argument is clear and direct. Arendt sees a common basis to the two regimes in that they both are embodiments of radical, absolute evil. The content is clear, and so is the context. Never, for a moment, can the reader escape the clear and insistent message that Arendt is writing on behalf of the “Free World” against the looming evil of Soviet Russia.”

He goes on to do a sort of guilt by association thing with Arendt and various neocons. I will get into this a little later (especially how different leftists do this to each other) when discussing so-called red-brown alliances, which is somewhat similar to Arendt’s totalitarian thesis, and which I think is a threat the left should take very seriously. Anyway, Kaminer writes about a similar dynamic of a Trotskyist to neo-conservative pipeline (though I would argue this is not exclusive to Trotskyists: Bayard Rustin was a democratic socialist, Eugene Genovese an orthodox ML in the CPUSA):

“The fact that former leftists, and especially “graduates” of the revolutionary Marxist anti-Stalinist (Trotskyist) movement during the thirties and the forties, became leading ideologues of US reaction from the fifties onwards is well documented. The path of development among this particular section of US intellectuals would have been impossible without the Trotskyist stage. The “family,” as they were known by many, moved step by step from revolutionary, communist, Marxist anti-Stalinism during the thirties to just plain anti-Stalinism. From there the path was short to fervent, militant anti-Communism (minus Trotsky, minus revolution) and on to passionate support of the United States as the bastion of the Free World during the Cold War. Those who began their political life as convinced revolutionary Marxists moved via their core position of “anti-Stalinism” to condemnation of the Soviet dictatorship and on to identification with official US policies, as the only reliable bulwark against the tide of Bolshevik aggression. Current experience with the neo-conservative movement in the United States will help the reader to understand how a relatively small intellectual group can indeed become a vital factor in the ruling circles. It is not pure chance that one can even trace personal and family connections of the present influential grouping back to the anti-Stalinist Left.

This fascinating collection of intellectuals, which attracted Arendt and Bluecher, has been dubbed the New York intellectuals in a book with the same title. Even a partial list of some of the main representatives of the group is studded with highly influential and even famous names such as, inter alia, Irving Kristol, Sydney Hook, Lionel Trilling, Clement Greenberg, Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin, Daniel Bell, and Nathan Glazer. In New York, Arendt and her husband became a prestigious social, cultural, and political addition to the New Yorkers. During the war, she had already made a name for herself with articles in various magazines, including Partisan Review and Commentary. She certainly made a strong impression on the local colleagues as someone who spoke on the basis of intimate acquaintance with the broader horizons of European culture. It soon became clear that Arendt knew everything that her new colleagues knew and more.”

I find this very interesting, but it’s worth pointing out that Arendt was very critical of neo-Conservativism. I think Corey Robin, who is in fact a great admirer of Arendt’s work, makes a more compelling case that her writings on totalitarianism, though popular in western discourse, are in fact not the most important parts of her oeuvre. Robin writes, in the London Review of Books:

“This last section [on the Soviet Union as ‘totalitarian’] is the least representative – and, as historians of Nazism and Stalinism have pointed out, least instructive – part of the book. But it has always attracted the most attention. Young-Bruehl claims that the section on imperialism is of ‘equal importance’ to the one on totalitarianism, yet she devotes a mere seven scattered paragraphs to it. Samantha Power uses the last section to examine recent genocides, despite Arendt’s insistence that totalitarianism seeks not the elimination of a people but the liquidation of the person. And when Power tries to explain al-Qaida or Hamas, she also looks to the last section, even though Arendt’s analysis of imperialism would seem more pertinent…

If Arendt matters today, it is because of her writings on imperialism, Zionism and careerism. Composed during the 1940s and early 1960s, they not only challenge facile and fashionable applications of the totalitarianism thesis; they also eerily describe the dangers that the world now faces. By refusing to reckon with these writings, the journalists, intellectuals and academics who make up the Arendt industry betray her on two counts: they ignore an entire area of her work and fail to engage with the unsettling realities of their own time. The latter would not have surprised Arendt: empires tend to have selective memories. The history of ‘imperialist rule’, she wrote at the height of the Vietnam War, ‘seems half-forgotten’, even though ‘its relevance for contemporary events has become rather obvious in recent years.’ America was so transfixed by ‘analogies with Munich’ and the idea of totalitarianism that it did not realise ‘that we are back, on an enormously enlarged scale . . . in the imperialist era.’”

The issue of imperialism is one of the most pressing matters in global politics and I think it’s one of the pivotal factors behind these red-brown alliances that Gessen mentions. Gessen’s elaborations on the National Bolshevik Party and Aleksandr Dugin were likely some of the most important aspects of the book for me. They helped me understand a whole dimension of leftist infighting that I had previously not fully grasped. This is Gessen’s explanation of the red-brown alliances that her grandfather was very taken with:

“He now spent his days reading the emergent ultranationalist press, newly known as the red-brown part of the political spectrum for its combination of Communist and brownshirt fervor. Boris Mikhailovich took to reading antisemitic passages out loud. Tatiana diagnosed this as senility and told her daughter that such was the tragedy of old age: Boris Mikhailovich, who had been an articulate, if generally quiet, opponent of the Communists his entire life, was now aligning himself with people who were not only brown but also red. More to the point, after his brief love affair with politics, Boris Mikhailovich was angry and disillusioned, and the “red-brown” press was the vehicle most immediately available for the expression of his disgust with politics.”

One of Russia’s most prominent figures fusing far-right fascism with certain communist ideas was Aleksander Dugin, one of the pioneers of National Bolshevism which combines Soviet nostalgia with ethno-nationalist and fascist ideas. Gessen actually spends a lot of time sketching out Dugin’s intellectual formation during Soviet years and his emergence into popular Russian attention, and he is mentioned throughout the book. This is one of the places she describes his fascination with fascism:

“Dugin made his own pilgrimages to Western Europe. In 1990 he went to Paris, where he met Belgian New Right thinker Robert Steuckers… He… suggested to Dugin that his ideas might combine into something called National Bolshevism. Within a year, Dugin met a number of other Western European New Right intellectuals, was welcomed to the conferences of the ethno-nationalist think tank Groupement de Recherche et d’Études pour la Civilisation Européenne in Paris, and was published by an Italian New Right house… If Evgenia and Boris Mikhailovich were merely listening to people who were flirting with ultranationalist and fascist rhetoric, then Dugin was going to the source. He had grown fascinated with Hitler’s philosophy and system of governance.”

The extent to which Dugin has had an influence on Putin has been debated. Gessen seems to think Dugin had Putin’s ear. Whatever is the case people saw strong parallels between Dugin’s ideas and Putin’s geopolitics. This is where the red-brown issues come into focus. Putin is not a communist, and most western communists do not like Putin as far as I know. He is a conservative and reactionary, who has actively stifled celebration of the Bolshevik Revolution and Lenin within Russia, because he is ultimately an anti-revolutionary. Yet he has remained somewhat esteemed among Latin American leftists, especially within the domain of the Pink Tide, like Castro and Chavez, and even to an extent Lula and Morales. In part, this is part of Putin’s geopolitics which favours the weakening of American hegemony for Russian advantage; Latin American countries despise American hegemony for slightly different reasons. But also these countries, especially Venezuela, are often great sources of market demand for Russian military goods, which is good for the Russian economy. And ceaseless American intervention in the region, which Washington continually refers to as America’s ‘backyard’, is the principle driver (in my view) of their demand for military technology.

So I first encountered Max Blumenthal by way of a video on the Palestine-Israel conflict shared with me by a Libyan friend who is very into Palestinian politics. I have followed the work of Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton over the past while, their podcast Moderate Rebels and their website The Grayzone. I find their analysis of Latin American politics and parts of the Middle East the most useful, but I’m a little more skeptical about their coverage on China and Ukraine, and a lot more skeptical about their coverage on Syria.

They are Marxist-Leninists involved with the PSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation) — a communist party in the U.S., whose members are often accused of being ‘tankies’, although interestingly enough PSL has its origins in the American Trotskyist movement lead by Sam Marcy. As commented on libcom.org this Trotskyist connection is often carefully written out of their history. Norton has connections with the Communist Party of Canada (speaking at one of their events for a candidate in the Danforth riding) and PSL (like the CPC) is very supportive of ‘really-existing’ Socialist countries, especially in Latin America, so I can see how that might colour their views on Russia. But Ben Norton has very clearly stated he thinks Putin is a “right-wing nationalist” and “anti-communist”.

Norton’s and Blumenthal’s news platform ‘Grayzone’ is (I believe) a reference to what is called ‘hybrid warfare’ in U.S. military discourse. Francis G. Hoffman offered this definition of the ‘gray zone’ in a paper published in PRISM (a journal of the U.S. National Defense University) called “Examining Complex Forms of Conflict Gray Zone and Hybrid Challenges”:

“A formal definition of gray zone tactics is offered: Those covert or illegal activities of nontraditional statecraft that are below the threshold of armed organized violence; including disruption of order, political subversion of government or non-governmental organizations, psychological operations, abuse of legal processes, and financial corruption as part of an integrated design to achieve strategic advantage. This definition emphasizes the actual activities over intent. Placing this to the far left of the proposed continuum of conflict, short of violent military force or war, represented by the thick red line, positions it clearly along the continuum of challenges that our security policy must address.”

Hoffman later writes:

“Numerous foreign sources describe President Vladimir Putin’s preferred method as “hybrid warfare,” a blend of hard and soft power. A combination of instruments, some military and some non-military, choreographed to surprise, confuse and wear down an opponent, hybrid warfare is ambiguous in both source and intent, making it hard for multinational bodies such as NATO and the EU to craft a response.”

I think titling their platform The Grayzone, Blumenthal, Norton, and company are making a self-conscious admission, or maybe a sarcastic non-concession, that the journalistic work they do is inevitably caught up in the complex web of hybrid warfare between superpowers. They primarily see themselves as anti-imperialists, and Empire for them is American Empire. So anti-American sentiment is their common terrain with Russian nationalists. Numerous PSL members like Brian Becker and Eugene Puryear host podcasts/radio shows on Sputnik Radio, and many leftists internationally have RT shows. This acceptance of support of the Russian state by leftists has often generated accusations of red-brown alliances. Numerous articles on libcom and IWW sites go into this phenomenon, often using guilt-by-association tactics, but I don’t mean to say that pejoratively. One example I recently saw on The Grayzone itself was an interview Anya Parampil did with Mark Sleboda who is a Eurasionist (Gessen discusses this movement) who was one of Dugin’s main translators, though he’s since distanced himself from Dugin. But I wonder why even give Third Positionists like him a platform? This is more so the case with other PSL-affiliated media on Sputnik like Brian Becker’s show “Loud & Clear”.

The Grayzone itself is independently funded (at least it claims to be), but some of its PSL comrades in journalism are not. They have support of Russian state-media. I don’t want to be too judgemental here, but I think it’s fascinating when The Grayzone starts harping on anarchists in Rojava accepting indirect American military aid or Hong Kong protestors accepting funding from US state-funded ‘democracy’ NGOs. The issue is about agency, alliances of convenience, and I think it is a complex matter, yet I think the polemical nature of the Grayzone yields to a double standard they feel no shame about asserting. Even anti-colonial leftists like Wilfred Chan (who founded Lausan) have been continually criticized by Grayzone journalists like Ajit Singh. I read Singh’s work, appreciate it, and I think it’s important, but I really don’t get why he spends so much time criticizing leftists in the Hong Kong protest movement. I am personally critical of many dimensions of the Hong Kong protests, but I think it’s absurd for Singh to smear leftist HK protestors by showing how “Ukrainian neo-Nazis and US white nationalists” support the ‘pro-democracy’ protests in Hong Kong, especially in light of the support PSL receives from Russian state-media. I think it is worth contemplating why so many American conservatives and reactionaries support the Hong Kong protests, but it’s also worth considering why reactionary right-wing forces in Russian state-media support communist journalists in the U.S.. It is part of the “hybrid warfare” that the people at the Grayzone know perfectly well about, as it’s enshrined in their platform’s name. U.S. conservatives don’t care about Hong Kong citizens themselves or the actual socio-economic demands of protestors, as long as it destabilizes China and poses new legitimacy problems to the Communist government there. It’s a geopolitical game for them. “Democracy” has always been cover for US intervention that is primarily about economic market interests. The US is one of the most flawed democracies of the West so of course it’s absurd. In a leaked US Army publication, Field Manual 3-05.130 “Army Special Operations Forces Unconventional Warfare”, US interests and its military goals are made perfectly clear:

“If the United States is to ensure that countries are set on a sustainable path toward peace, democracy, and a market economy, it needs new, institutionalized foreign-policy tools—tools that can influence the choices countries and people make about the nature of their economies, their political systems, their security, and in some cases, the very social fabric of a nation. In July 2004, Congress created the State Department’s Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (S/CRS). The mission of the S/CRS is to integrate military expertise and best practices into the civilian world…”

One of the approaches they state is to: “Work with international and multilateral organizations, individual states, and NGOs…”

U.S. Unconventional Warfare (UW) tactics involving the support of ‘resistance movements’ are plainly stated in the document (and this is not actually surprising at all, nor even really controversial, I think):

“Operations conducted by, with, or through irregular forces in support of a resistance movement, an insurgency, or conventional military operations.

This definition reflects two essential criteria: UW must be conducted by, with, or through surrogates; and such surrogates must be irregular forces. Moreover, this definition is consistent with the historical reasons that the United States has conducted UW. UW has been conducted in support of both an insurgency, such as the Contras in 1980s Nicaragua, and resistance movements to defeat an occupying power, such as the Mujahideen in 1980s Afghanistan.”

And again, often times ARSOF (Army Special Operations Forces) is seeking out what it considers as “democratic” elements to achieve these objectives:

“Perseverance in pursuit of U.S. objectives is fundamental to the conduct of ARSOF UW. If the seeking out and support of democratic elements in every nation and culture as outlined in the NSS is “the work of generations” and ARSOF UW is a central tool to achieve this policy, ARSOF UW requires a persistence of USG effort far beyond most other enterprises of government.”

So I understand anti-imperialist critiques of Hong Kong protests in light of all the meddling the U.S. is involved in, but again this is a question of agency. Does communist journalism funded by Russian state-media affect its legitimacy also? Granted Joshua Wong wishing Marco Rubio happy birthday and photo-ops with Tom Cotton are all bad form. I can’t imagine PSL cadre wishing Putin a happy birthday. But leftists Wilfred Chan and Lausan have been actively trying to convince fellow protestors to stop accepting funding from State Department-backed groups like the National Endowment for Democracy because it is delegitimizing their cause. But he is perpetually criticized for giving left cover for Hong Kong protests by MLs. I think the Chinese Communist government has accomplished a number of positive things, but that’s no reason to remain in denial about the terrifying way it’s treating Uyghurs, or the fact that many billionaires are members of the Chinese Communist Party but no one who publicly practices a religious faith can join. I recognize a new cold war with Russia, but especially China is at stake. Biden mentions Uyghar concentration camps in the same breath as moving 60% of American sea power to China. By ‘sea power’ I presume he means naval ships or submarines, some of which I imagine must be armed with nuclear weapons. Can you imagine China doing that to the US over the concentration camps it has for undocumented migrants?

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And yes, it is extremely ironic that NATO makes YouTube videos about Russian information warfare, when the US is one of the world’s greatest meddlers. All this being said, I don’t automatically think anything the U.S. supports is wrong. Chomsky always brings up the example of Trotsky’s criticism of Stalin was agreement with fascists but that didn’t automatically make Trotsky wrong about Stalin. This is also the case with the U.S.. Even still, I’m almost certain what the U.S. does is for U.S. interests alone and it would stop as soon as it no longer benefitted U.S. interests enough.

Gessen goes into a section on the severe crackdowns on Russian NGOs receiving foreign funding, legislation requiring labels like “foreign agent” for such organizations, the removal of USAID from Russia, and mentions Kremlin attempts to shift blame on protests to US intervention:

““They are just doing their jobs,” said Putin, meaning that protesters were working for money—state television channels had by this time aired a series of reports claiming that the protests were bankrolled by the U.S. State Department.”

Now of course the U.S. State Department is constantly meddling in Russia and many other countries. In my view the U.S. was also responsible for Putin’s crackdown. They provide easy justification for gangsters like Putin to crush dissent. Yet the anti-semitism and terrifying homophobia that undergirds so many aspects of the Russian state, including many of its media platforms on RT and Sputnik raises deep concerns about leftist alliances with them, especially when it comes to how dissident journalists sometimes cover terrifying Russian intervention in places like Syria.

In a few episodes of Moderate Rebels, Blumenthal and Norton go off on the anarchist writer Alexander Reid Ross, his ‘red-brown smears’ of them, and his book Against the Fascist Creep. The book is an exhaustive look at red-brown alliances. I’ve actually listened to a talk he gave on it and found it fairly useful for understanding how individuals can cross into radically diametrically opposed poles of the political spectrum. A few months ago I discovered Mussolini was actually a socialist, before eventually becoming a fascist. Ross remarks that Lenin actually liked Mussolini. I looked it up and what Lenin said was: "What a waste that we lost Mussolini. He is a first-rate man who would have led our party to power in Italy." Yet these red-brown alliances are not restricted to MLs, but actually came to Ross’s attention when he saw reactionary ideology entering the ecological green and anarchist movements he was a part of. I haven’t read Ross’s book and I’m not sure if he mentions this, but that fascism, communism and anarchism have common roots in Romanticism is likely part of why people can cross extremes of the spectrum so easily, or at least find common cause. As Cornel West points out that Romanticism was a secularization of the Christian gospel, it’s unsurprising that, almost all leftists are pretty good at calling other people either fascists (at the other end of the spectrum) or liberals (the common enemy of the center):

One of the most important aspects of Gessen’s book was her elaboration on LGBTQ activism in Russia. Definitely the parts on Pussy Riot were very interesting. But the vigilante violence against gay people in Russia is at an unimaginable level. Many have basically been lynched for lack of a better word. They are frequently beat up. Some murdered. It’s not illegal to be gay in Russia as it is in authoritarian countries like Singapore, but in places like Chechnya the vigilante violence is extreme. I really think it’s at the detriment of the left to ignore this. If one uses Russian state media as a platform, one has a responsibility to denounce violence against LGBTQ communities in Russia. Leftists often shrug off the horrible homophobia that has latently possessed so many of their movements. Clara Sorrenti, a trans-woman who ran for the Communist Party of Canada in London, Ontario left the party over the Central Committee’s refusal to adapt notions of indigenous sovereignty. In her reflections after leaving, she points out that communist refusals to accept the violence revolutionaries like Che Guevara enacted on gay people was especially wounding to her. The left cannot remain in denial about the homophobia of people like Castro and Chavez. Ignatz, the pen name of an orthodox christian, trans lesbian, communist wrote a piece called “Communism, Catholicism, and Sexuality” in response to an article Dean Dettloff wrote in the Jesuit journal America (Dettloff is one of the hosts of the Magnificast, the podcast I mentioned at the beginning of this reflection). In this piece she writes:

“If the relationship between Catholics and communists has sometimes been more positive than some might assume, we should also address those places where this positive relationship is objectively a form of reaction and a failure of compassion that ought to be inimical to communists, Catholics, and any combination thereof. The Argentine theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid tells the story of how when the Argentine Junta cracked down on homosexuals and other sexual ‘deviants’, a letter was written to a number of major Latin American Catholic liberation theologians asking them to sign a statement of solidarity. All refused, claiming sexual issues were not their concern.

Yet, as Althaus-Reid argues, this is to neglect the role of Christianity in creating the political system of heterosexuality that now dominates the globe. Christians created heterosexuality; it is now Christians’ responsibility to help overthrow it… whilst there are severe problems with homophobia and transphobia in both the Catholic Church and the secular left, there are people in both or either movement who are committed to resisting that and finding new ways of practicing these traditions.”

While I might disagree with some aspects of Gessen’s book, I think she offers very important critiques of the left, especially where they have made common cause with right-wing forces. I believe the left must take seriously these issues of violence, terror, and neglect of social issues, especially where racial, religious and LGBTQ persecution are concerned. I did not even go into the anti-Semitism that Gessen takes time to explore in the book. So much to think about; I think it’s a book worth reading.

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