Martin Amis (RIP) Explains Why American Populism Is a Con

in Literature, Politics, Writing | May 22nd, 2023

In the lat­er decades of his 50-year-long career as a nov­el­ist, the late Mar­tin Amis had a rep­u­ta­tion as some­thing of a con­tro­ver­sial­ist. This made more sense in his native Eng­land than in the Amer­i­ca to which he lat­er relo­cat­ed, and whose large­ly non-lit­er­ary provo­ca­teurs tend to an aggres­sive plain­spo­ken­ness bor­der­ing on — and more recent­ly, dri­ving well into the ter­ri­to­ry of — vul­gar­i­ty. “Intel­lec­tu­al snob­bery has been much neglect­ed,” says Amis in the Big Think inter­view clip above. His plea is for “more care about how peo­ple express them­selves and more rev­er­ence, not for peo­ple of high social stand­ing, but for peo­ple of decent edu­ca­tion and train­ing.”

This against pop­ulism, which “relies on a sen­ti­men­tal and very old-fash­ioned view that the une­d­u­cat­ed pop­u­la­tion knows bet­ter, in its instincts, than the over-refined elite, that leads to anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism, which is self-destruc­tive for every­one”: the lion­iza­tion, in oth­er words, of the kind of fig­ure giv­en to dec­la­ra­tions like “I go with my gut.”

In every oth­er land, as Amis sees it, “brain has won over gut, but in Amer­i­ca it still splits the nation.” It would be one thing if the vis­cera-trust­ing rab­ble-rousers actu­al­ly worked to fur­ther the inter­ests of the com­mon man, but in every real-world sce­nario it turns out to be quite anoth­er. “It’s an act, pop­ulism. It’s always an act.”

An admir­er of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy, Amis acknowl­edged the right to free speech as a vital ele­ment of that sys­tem. “You’ve got it or you haven’t,” he says in the clip just above, “and every diminu­tion of free­dom of speech dimin­ish­es every­one, and lessens the cur­ren­cy of free­dom of speech.” But he also lays down a caveat: “The con­tro­ver­sial state­ment has to be earned. It can’t just be tossed off. You have to be able to back it up.” He even describes him­self as “a fan of polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness” — of not “the out­er fringe P.C., but rais­ing the stan­dards about what can be said.” This process comes with its own chal­lenges, and “you have to sort of work round it a bit.” But since greater restric­tions demand, and reward, more skill­ful sub­tle­ty, an adept writer will always be of two minds about free speech. It will sure­ly be a while before we see anoth­er writer quite as adept as Mar­tin Amis.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Mar­tin Amis Explains His Method for Writ­ing Great Sen­tences

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

Mar­tin Amis Explains How to Use a The­saurus to Actu­al­ly Improve Your Writ­ing

Nor­man Mail­er & Mar­tin Amis, No Strangers to Con­tro­ver­sy, Talk in 1991

P. J. O’Rourke (RIP) Explains Why You Can Nev­er Win Over Your Polit­i­cal Adver­saries by Mock­ing Them

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How The Parthenon Marbles Ended Up In The British Museum

in Architecture, Art, History, Museums, Politics, Travel | February 3rd, 2023

Last month, we delved into a pro­pos­al to use dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy to clone the 2,500-year-old Parthenon Mar­bles cur­rent­ly housed in the British Muse­um.

The hope is that such uncan­ny fac­sim­i­les might final­ly con­vince muse­um Trustees and the British gov­ern­ment to return the orig­i­nals to Athens.

Today, we’ll take a clos­er look at just how these trea­sures of antiq­ui­ty, known to many as the Elgin mar­bles, wound up so far afield.

The most obvi­ous cul­prit is Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin, who ini­ti­at­ed the takeover while serv­ing as Britain’s ambas­sador to the Ottoman Empire from 1798–1803.

Pri­or to set­ting sail for this post­ing, he hatched a plan to assem­ble a doc­u­men­tary team who would sketch and cre­ate plas­ter molds of the Parthenon mar­bles for the even­tu­al edi­fi­ca­tion of artists and archi­tects back home. Bet­ter yet, he’d get the British gov­ern­ment to pay for it.

The British gov­ern­ment, eying the mas­sive price tag of such a pro­pos­al, passed.

So Elgin used some of his heiress wife’s for­tune to finance the project him­self, hir­ing land­scape painter Gio­van­ni Bat­tista Lusieri — described by Lord Byron as “an Ital­ian painter of the first emi­nence” —  to over­see a team of drafts­men, sculp­tors, and archi­tects.

As The Nerd­writer’s Evan Puschak notes above, polit­i­cal alliances and expan­sion­ist ambi­tion greased Lord Elgin’s wheels, as the Ottoman Empire and Great Britain found com­mon cause in their hatred of Napoleon.

British efforts to expel occu­py­ing French forces from Egypt gen­er­at­ed good will suf­fi­cient to secure the req­ui­site fir­man, a legal doc­u­ment with­out which Lusieri and the team would not have been giv­en access to the Acrop­o­lis.

The orig­i­nal fir­man has nev­er sur­faced, and the accu­ra­cy of what sur­vives — an Eng­lish trans­la­tion of an Ital­ian trans­la­tion — casts Elgin’s acqui­si­tion of the mar­bles in a very dubi­ous light.

Some schol­ars and legal experts have assert­ed that the doc­u­ment in ques­tion is a mere admin­is­tra­tive let­ter, since it appar­ent­ly lacked the sig­na­ture of Sul­tan Selim III, which would have giv­en it the con­trac­tu­al heft of a fir­man.

In addi­tion to giv­ing the team entry to Acrop­o­lis grounds to sketch and make plas­ter casts, erect scaf­fold­ing and expose foun­da­tions by dig­ging, the let­ter allowed for the removal of such sculp­tures or inscrip­tions as would not inter­fere with the work or walls of the Acrop­o­lis.

This implies that the team was to lim­it itself to wind­fall apples, the result of the heavy dam­age the Acrop­o­lis sus­tained dur­ing a 1687 mor­tar attack by Venet­ian forces.

Some of the dis­lodged mar­ble had been har­vest­ed for build­ing mate­ri­als or sou­venirs, but plen­ty of good­ies remained on the ground for Elgin and com­pa­ny to cart off.

In an arti­cle for Smith­son­ian Mag­a­zine, Hel­lenist author Bruce Clark details how Elgin’s per­son­al assis­tant, cler­gy­man Philip Hunt, lever­aged Britain’s sup­port of the Ottoman Empire and anti-France posi­tion to blur these bound­aries:

See­ing how high­ly the Ottomans val­ued their alliance with the British, Hunt spot­ted an oppor­tu­ni­ty for a fur­ther, deci­sive exten­sion of the Acrop­o­lis project. With a nod from the sultan’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Athens—who at the time would have been scared to deny a Briton anything—Hunt set about remov­ing the sculp­tures that still adorned the upper reach­es of the Parthenon. This went much fur­ther than any­one had imag­ined pos­si­ble a few weeks ear­li­er. On July 31, the first of the high-stand­ing sculp­tures was hauled down, inau­gu­rat­ing a pro­gram of sys­tem­at­ic strip­ping, with scores of locals work­ing under Lusieri’s enthu­si­as­tic super­vi­sion.

Lusieri, whose admir­er Lord Byron became a furi­ous crit­ic of Elgin’s removal of the Parthenon mar­bles, end­ed his days believ­ing that his com­mit­ment to Lord Elgin ulti­mate­ly cost him an illus­tri­ous career as a water­col­orist.

He also con­ced­ed that the team had been “oblig­ed to be a lit­tle bar­barous”, a gross under­state­ment when one con­sid­ers their van­dal­ism of the Parthenon dur­ing the ten years it took them to make off with half of its sur­viv­ing trea­sures — 21 fig­ures from East and West ped­i­ments, 15 metope pan­els, and 246 feet of what had been a con­tin­u­ous nar­ra­tive frieze.

Clark notes that although Elgin suc­ceed­ed in relo­cat­ing them to British soil, he “derived lit­tle per­son­al hap­pi­ness from his anti­quar­i­an acqui­si­tions.”

After numer­ous logis­ti­cal headaches involved in their trans­port, he found him­self beg­ging the British gov­ern­ment to take them off his hands when an acri­mo­nious divorce land­ed him in finan­cial straits.

This time the British gov­ern­ment agreed, acquir­ing the lot for £35,000 — less than half of what Lord Elgin claimed to have shelled out for the oper­a­tion.

The so-called Elgin Mar­bles became part of the British Museum’s col­lec­tion in 1816, five years before the Greek War of Inde­pen­dence’s start.

They have been on con­tin­u­al dis­play ever since.

The 21st-cen­tu­ry has wit­nessed a num­ber of world class muse­ums rethink­ing the prove­nance of their most sto­ried arti­facts. In many cas­es, they have elect­ed to return them to their land of ori­gin.

Greece has long called for the Parthenon mar­bles in the British Muse­um to be per­ma­nent­ly repa­tri­at­ed to Athens, but thus­far muse­um Trustees have refused.

In their opin­ion, it’s com­pli­cat­ed.

Is it though? Lord Elgin’s ulti­mate moti­va­tions might have been, and Bruce Clark, in a bril­liant nin­ja move, sug­gests that the return could be viewed as a pos­i­tive strip­ping away, atone­ment by way of get­ting back to basics:

Sup­pose that among his mix­ture of motives—personal aggran­dize­ment, rival­ry with the French and so on—the wel­fare of the sculp­tures actu­al­ly had been Elgin’s pri­ma­ry con­cern. How could that pur­pose best be served today? Per­haps by plac­ing the Acrop­o­lis sculp­tures in a place where they would be extreme­ly safe, extreme­ly well con­served and superbly dis­played for the enjoy­ment of all? The Acrop­o­lis Muse­um, which opened in 2009 at the foot of the Parthenon, is an ide­al can­di­date; it was built with the goal of even­tu­al­ly hous­ing all of the sur­viv­ing ele­ments of the Parthenon frieze…. If the earl real­ly cared about the mar­bles, and if he were with us today, he would want to see them in Athens now.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Restores the Orig­i­nal Col­ors to Ancient Stat­ues

Robots Are Carv­ing Repli­cas of the Parthenon Mar­bles: Could They Help the Real Ancient Sculp­tures Return to Greece?

John Oliver’s Show on World-Class Art Muse­ums & Their Loot­ed Art: Watch It Free Online

Take a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Tour of the World’s Stolen Art

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Why Recent Decades All Feel Culturally the Same, and Why Mark Fisher Thought Capitalism Was to Blame

in Politics | November 22nd, 2022

The nine­teen-sev­en­ties had its own dis­tinc­tive aes­thet­ics, ques­tion­able though that peri­od’s styles have often looked to sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions. So, in stark, jagged, neon con­trast, did the eight­ies. Those of us who came of age in the nineties have, in recent years, come to appre­ci­ate that look and feel of what then sur­round­ed us, which seemed both bland and exag­ger­at­ed at the time. But around the turn of the mil­len­ni­um, some­thing fun­da­men­tal seems to have changed. The brief “Y2K” era may now offi­cial­ly be retro, but how dif­fer­ent was the style of the two-thou­sands from that of the sub­se­quent decade, or indeed one after that — the one in which we find our­selves right now?

To put the ques­tion more blunt­ly, why don’t decades feel cul­tur­al­ly dis­tinct any­more? “The dimen­sion of the future has dis­ap­peared,” British the­o­rist Mark Fish­er once said in a lec­ture. “We’re marooned, we’re trapped in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, still.”

To be in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry is noth­ing more than “to have twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry cul­ture on high-def­i­n­i­tion screens.” Though Fish­er died five years ago, his obser­va­tions have only become more rel­e­vant to our cul­tur­al con­di­tion. We’re still expe­ri­enc­ing what he called “the slow can­cel­la­tion of the future,” a phe­nom­e­non explained in the Epoch Phi­los­o­phy video at the top of the post.

“The way we expe­ri­ence artis­tic time peri­ods is dying as we speak,” explains the video’s nar­ra­tor. “In our cur­rent state of this new post­mod­ern social exis­tence that we see in the West, his­toric­i­ty is gone. The way we inter­act and expe­ri­ence time is start­ing to fade away into a con­fused jum­bled mess of aes­thet­ic chaos.” The cul­prit, in Fish­er’s view? The tri­umph of cap­i­tal­ism, and more so the “cap­i­tal­ist real­ism” that clos­es off the pos­si­bil­i­ty of even imag­in­ing alter­na­tive social and eco­nom­ic orders. “Dur­ing the age of social democ­ra­cy, Britain fund­ed art pro­grams and film cen­ters,” result­ing in “exper­i­men­tal clas­sics” and “extreme­ly artis­tic British TV.” These and oth­er mech­a­nisms main­tained a “sub­lime val­ue around art” that pro­tect­ed it from “the whims of the mar­ket.”

Today we have only “a hyper-com­mod­i­fied sphere of art, where the pri­ma­ry goal is now mak­ing a prof­it — not nec­es­sar­i­ly out of pure love of prof­it, but the real­iza­tion that your abil­i­ty to be an artist will die with­out tan­gi­ble sales.” Hence the “recy­cling of old art” in forms as var­i­ous as “music, TV, film, and even video games.” This absence of the tru­ly new, to Fish­er’s mind, implied the death of the very idea of the future, of improve­ment on or at least a break from the present. No mat­ter our polit­i­cal views — or our abil­i­ty to digest Fish­er’s use of Der­ridean terms like “hauntol­ogy” — we’ve all felt the truth of this in our cul­tur­al lives. As tech­nol­o­gy march­es on, we indulge ever more deeply in nos­tal­gia, pas­tiche, and retro-futur­ism. Per­haps we can break out of this cycle, but Fish­er, safe to say, was not opti­mistic.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Pre­vi­ous Decades Pre­dict­ed the Future: The 21st Cen­tu­ry as Imag­ined in the 1900s, 1950s, 1980s, and Oth­er Eras

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Theodor Adorno & His Cri­tique of Mod­ern Cap­i­tal­ism

Stephen Hawk­ing Won­ders Whether Cap­i­tal­ism or Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Will Doom the Human Race

How the Sovi­ets Imag­ined in 1960 What the World Would Look in 2017: A Gallery of Retro-Futur­is­tic Draw­ings

The Cri­sis of Cap­i­tal­ism Ani­mat­ed

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Banksy Spray Paints Murals in War-Torn Ukraine

in Art, Politics | November 21st, 2022

We may not know for sure the iden­ti­ty of Banksy, the Eng­lish street artist famous for his social-com­men­tary graf­fi­ti murals inspired and inte­grat­ed with their sur­round­ings. But giv­en his appar­ent inter­ests, we might have sus­pect­ed him to turn up in Ukraine soon­er or lat­er. Recent­ly post­ed by Banksy him­self, the video above shows him at work in the region of Kyiv, the Ukrain­ian cap­i­tal, each of which makes a visu­al com­ment on this year’s Russ­ian inva­sion and the for­ti­tude Ukraine’s peo­ple have shown against it. “As is typ­i­cal of Banksy’s work,” writes The Art News­pa­per’s Torey Akers, “the artist’s edits com­bine a satirist’s edge for wink­ing com­men­tary with a sin­cere invest­ment in polit­i­cal sol­i­dar­i­ty.”

Smithsonian.com’s Jacque­lyne Ger­main describes a few of Banksy’s new works in Ukraine, begin­ning with two in the near­ly aban­doned town of Borodyan­ka. “Paint­ed on the side of a crum­bling build­ing,” one piece “depicts a gym­nast doing a hand­stand on a pile of rub­ble.”

In anoth­er, “a young boy flips an old­er man onto his back in a judo match. Some spec­u­late that the old­er man is Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin, who is known to be a judo enthu­si­ast.” (Banksy has devel­oped a dis­tinc­tive sen­si­bil­i­ty in his decades of pub­lic art, but sub­tle­ty isn’t its fore­most ele­ment.) His images put up else­where “jux­ta­pose wartime imagery with snap­shots of civil­ian life: in one, chil­dren ride a met­al tank trap as a see­saw,” and in anoth­er “a woman in her dress­ing gown wears a gas mask.”

The con­flict in Ukraine now approach­es its tenth month, with no clear signs of an end to the vio­lence. Civil­ian life can’t go on, yet must go on, and it comes as no sur­prise that Banksy would find some­thing to draw upon in that har­row­ing and con­tra­dic­to­ry state of affairs. Nor could it have been lost on him what con­tex­tu­al pow­er the sham­bol­ic urban envi­ron­ments of Borodyan­ka, Hos­tomel, and Horen­ka — towns lit­er­al­ly torn apart by war — could grant even murals humor­ous­ly spray-paint­ed upon its sur­faces.

At the end of the video, Akers notes, “a heat­ed local man points to an image the artist paint­ed on a graf­fi­tied wall so that a pre-exist­ing tag of a penis became a war­head atop an armored truck and declares, ‘For this, I would kick out all his teeth and break his legs.’ ” Even in a war zone, every­body’s a crit­ic.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Mak­ing of Mod­ern Ukraine: A Free Online Course from Yale Pro­fes­sor Tim­o­thy Sny­der

Banksy’s Great British Spray­ca­tion: The Artist Spray Paints England’s Favorite Sum­mer-Hol­i­day Des­ti­na­tions

Banksy Debuts His COVID-19 Art Project: Good to See That He Has TP at Home

The Joy of Paint­ing with Bob Ross & Banksy: Watch Banksy Paint a Mur­al on the Jail That Once Housed Oscar Wilde

Banksy Paints a Grim Hol­i­day Mur­al: Season’s Greet­ings to All

How Ukraine’s Works of Art Are Being Saved in Wartime — Using the Lessons of World War II

Why Rus­sia Invad­ed Ukraine: A Use­ful Primer

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Internet Archive Launches Democracy’s Library, a Free Online Library of 500,000 Documents Supporting Democracy

in Archives, Politics | October 24th, 2022

“Democ­ra­cy is the worst form of gov­ern­ment except all those oth­er forms that have been tried from time to time.” So said Win­ston Churchill, per­haps not sus­pect­ing how fre­quent­ly the remark would be quot­ed in the decades there­after. Time and expe­ri­ence con­tin­ue to reveal to us democ­ra­cy’s lia­bil­i­ties, but also — at least in cer­tain soci­eties — the nature of its sur­pris­ing stay­ing pow­er. Since well before Churchill’s time, democ­ra­cy and its work­ings have been objects of fas­ci­na­tion the world over. So have its cen­tral ques­tions, not least the one of just how to main­tain the “informed cit­i­zen­ry” on which its oper­a­tion sup­pos­ed­ly depends.

The Inter­net Archive has just launched its own kind of answer in the form of Democ­ra­cy’s Library. “A free, open, online com­pendi­um of gov­ern­ment research and pub­li­ca­tions from around the world,” the site offers cit­i­zens a way to “lever­age use­ful research, learn about the work­ings of their gov­ern­ment, hold offi­cials account­able, and be more informed vot­ers.”

Col­lect­ed from a vari­ety of gov­ern­men­tal bod­ies like the Unit­ed States’ Nation­al Agri­cul­tur­al Library, For­eign Broad­cast Infor­ma­tion Ser­vice, and Nation­al Insti­tute of Stan­dards and Tech­nol­o­gy Research Library — as well as Sta­tis­tics Cana­da and Pub­lic Accounts of Cana­da — its mate­ri­als were osten­si­bly pro­duced for the pub­lic, but haven’t always been easy to find. It total, there are more than 500,000 doc­u­ments in the col­lec­tion.

“Gov­ern­ments have cre­at­ed an abun­dance of infor­ma­tion and put it in the pub­lic domain, but it turns out the pub­lic can’t eas­i­ly access it,” says Brew­ster Kahle, founder of the Inter­net Archive. He gives one of the series of talks that com­prise “Build­ing Democ­ra­cy’s Library,” the launch cel­e­bra­tion that took place last week and that you can still watch in the video above. Its pro­ceed­ings go into quite a bit of detail about the efforts of acqui­si­tion and orga­ni­za­tion that went into this project, as well as the nature of its mis­sion. For this isn’t just an effort to doc­u­ment democ­ra­cy, but to strength­en it by mak­ing the infor­ma­tion it pro­duces avail­able as con­ve­nient­ly as pos­si­ble to as many cit­i­zens as pos­si­ble. And no mat­ter the coun­try of which you count your­self a cit­i­zen, you can start brows­ing Democ­ra­cy’s Library here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

His­to­ri­an Tim­o­thy Sny­der Presents 20 Lessons for Defend­ing Democ­ra­cy Against Tyran­ny in a New Video Series

Why Socrates Hat­ed Democ­ra­cies: An Ani­mat­ed Case for Why Self-Gov­ern­ment Requires Wis­dom & Edu­ca­tion

Han­nah Arendt Explains Why Democ­ra­cies Need to Safe­guard the Free Press & Truth … to Defend Them­selves Against Dic­ta­tors and Their Lies

Does Democ­ra­cy Demand the Tol­er­ance of the Intol­er­ant? Karl Popper’s Para­dox

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Historian Timothy Snyder Presents 20 Lessons for Defending Democracy Against Tyranny in a New Video Series

in Politics | September 20th, 2022

Yale pro­fes­sor and his­to­ri­an Tim­o­thy Sny­der has sound­ed alarm bells about autoc­ra­cy and fas­cism for sev­er­al years now, in both his schol­ar­ly and pop­u­lar books about Russ­ian and Ger­man his­to­ry. Whether you’ve fol­lowed his warn­ings or just start­ed pay­ing atten­tion, it’s not too late to get caught up on the lessons he brings from his rig­or­ous stud­ies of 20th cen­tu­ry total­i­tar­i­an­ism. To make his rel­e­vant points more acces­si­ble, Sny­der has dis­tilled them over the years, aim­ing at the widest pop­u­lar audi­ence.

First, he pub­lished On Tyran­ny in 2017, draw­ing 20 lessons about unfree­dom from the lives of those under the Nazi, Sovi­et, and oth­er fas­cist and total­i­tar­i­an regimes. With­out argu­ing that his­to­ry repeats, exact­ly, Sny­der not­ed sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences to past events, and adapt­ed gen­er­al prin­ci­ples to the geopol­i­tics of the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry. These lessons get reit­er­at­ed and dis­tilled even fur­ther in an edi­tion of the best-sell­ing On Tyran­ny illus­trat­ed by artist Nora Krug.

Pub­lished in 2021 and reflect­ing four years of Trump­ism, the illus­trat­ed edi­tion con­tin­ues what we might call Sny­der’s Chom­skyan com­mit­ment to pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al­ism. Trump may be out of pow­er, but the threats to democ­ra­cy are wired in — in one judi­cial action after anoth­er, and in states like North Car­oli­na, where an ille­gal, racial­ly-ger­ry­man­dered state leg­is­la­ture has held pow­er for years, and now seeks to nul­li­fy fed­er­al elec­tions at state lev­el, with many oth­er states threat­en­ing to fol­low suit.

This kind of polit­i­cal seces­sion­ism impos­es the per­ma­nent will of a minor­i­ty on a rapid­ly chang­ing nation, ensur­ing that his­to­ry nev­er catch­es up with the elites, a cat­e­go­ry that includes lead­ers on both sides of the euphemistic “aisle.” For increas­ing num­bers of Amer­i­cans, polit­i­cal divi­sions are more apt­ly char­ac­ter­ized by bar­ri­cades, prison walls, or indi­vis­i­ble codes of silence(ing), repres­sion, and com­plic­i­ty. Sny­der meets this time of creep­ing (lop­ing?) fas­cism  with a YouTube series in which he speaks direct­ly to the cam­era.

He isn’t giv­ing up on more peo­ple pay­ing atten­tion to the big­ger pic­ture, and he’s nev­er giv­en up on effec­tive respons­es to 21st cen­tu­ry tyran­ny. Vot­ing alone has nev­er been enough, and it could be ren­dered mean­ing­less in the near future. The lessons — “Do not obey in advance”; “Defend insti­tu­tions”; “Beware the one-par­ty state” — may be famil­iar to us now, or they may not. But if they bear repeat­ing, it’s worth hear­ing them from Sny­der him­self, who clos­es some of the dis­tance between the intel­lec­tu­al and the pub­lic by step­ping away from print alto­geth­er — a medi­um per­haps unsuit­ed to the mal­leable demands of the online present.

How does the media affect, or become, Sny­der’s mes­sage, espe­cial­ly when it’s effec­tive­ly one-sid­ed­ly tele­vi­su­al, the medi­um of the 20th cen­tu­ry of fas­cism par excel­lence? Sny­der does not address these the­o­ret­i­cal ques­tions, except indi­rect­ly by way of a gener­ic book talk aes­thet­ic com­plete with rum­pled shirt, rustling lapel mic, and req­ui­site back­ground shelves of books you’ll find your­self try­ing to iden­ti­fy as you learn to “be wary of para­mil­i­taries.”

Being wary is one thing, but to what does Sny­der’s hyper vig­i­lance add up with­out the pow­er to make change where we are? Ah, but in ask­ing such a ques­tion, maybe we find we are already in the trap, obey­ing in advance by assum­ing pow­er­less­ness and freely giv­ing up con­trol. It’s our job as indi­vid­u­als to apply the rel­e­vant lessons where we can in our own lives, and to read (or watch) Sny­der crit­i­cal­ly, in rela­tion to oth­er trust­wor­thy voic­es with­in, and far out­side of, Ivy League aca­d­e­m­ic depart­ments.

We do not lack the infor­ma­tion we need to under­stand our moment through a his­tor­i­cal lens. But we often lack the knowl­edge to make sense of things at world-his­tor­i­cal scale. His­to­ri­ans like Sny­der can bridge the gap, and it’s good to take advan­tage of the freely-offered pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ence of skilled read­ers, researchers, and edu­ca­tors. In this instance, Sny­der’s approach seems well-tai­lored to counter innu­mer­able pre­sen­ta­tions that triv­i­al­ize WWII his­to­ry into over­fa­mil­iar­i­ty and per­verse spec­ta­cle… or what anoth­er anti-fas­cist pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al, Wal­ter Ben­jamin, iden­ti­fied as the aes­theti­ciza­tion of pol­i­tics — fas­cism-by-pas­sive-con­sumerism that leads us down the path to hor­rors we’d nev­er con­tem­plate out­right.…

Watch all 20 lessons above, or find them here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Explains the Best Way for Ordi­nary Peo­ple to Make Change in the World, Even When It Seems Daunt­ing

20 Lessons from the 20th Cen­tu­ry About How to Defend Democ­ra­cy from Author­i­tar­i­an­ism, Accord­ing to Yale His­to­ri­an Tim­o­thy Sny­der

A Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed Edi­tion of On Tyran­ny: Twen­ty Lessons from the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry, the Best­selling Book by His­to­ri­an Tim­o­thy Sny­der

The Mak­ing of Mod­ern Ukraine: A Free Online Course from Yale Pro­fes­sor Tim­o­thy Sny­der

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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When Mikhail Gorbachev, the Last Soviet Leader, Starred in a Pizza Hut Commercial (1998)

in History, Politics, Television | September 8th, 2022

Mikhail Gor­bachev, the 8th and final leader of the Sovi­et Union, died last month at age 91, a news event that trig­gered respons­es rang­ing from “Who?” to “Wow, was he still alive?” The first response reflects poor­ly on the teach­ing of his­to­ry: jour­nal­ists report­ing on Gorbachev’s death have been oblig­ed to explain his sig­nif­i­cance to many Amer­i­can read­ers just a few decades after his name filled U.S. head­lines. But it’s also true that Gor­bachev left a thor­ough­ly ambigu­ous lega­cy that seems to grow only more mud­dled with time.

As his­to­ri­an Richard Sak­wa wrote on the 20th anniver­sary of the short-lived Sovi­et empire’s col­lapse, Gor­bachev is remem­bered in the U.S. — depend­ing on who’s remem­ber­ing — as either a “mag­nif­i­cent fail­ure” or a “trag­ic suc­cess.” Some for­mer Sovi­ets, espe­cial­ly those more par­tial to the author­i­tar­i­an­ism of a Stal­in or Putin, omit any pos­i­tive descrip­tions of Gorbachev’s major achieve­ment – to wit, reform­ing the U.S.S.R. out of exis­tence in the late 1980s with lit­tle need, real­ly, for Rea­gan’s extrav­a­gant nuclear pos­tur­ing.

Putin him­self calls the fall of the U.S.S.R. “the great­est geopo­lit­i­cal cat­a­stro­phe” of the pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry, an assess­ment shared by many who agree with him on noth­ing else. At the end of the 80s, how­ev­er, an emerg­ing gen­er­a­tion of Rus­sians had no clear sense of what was hap­pen­ing as their coun­try fell apart. “I was 6 when the Sovi­et Union broke up,” Ana­toly Kur­manaev writes at The New York Times. “I had no idea at the time that the per­son most respon­si­ble for the over­whelm­ing changes trans­form­ing my home­town in Siberia was a man called Mikhail Gor­bachev. I remem­ber stand­ing in line for bread in the dying days of Com­mu­nism, but I don’t remem­ber much dis­cus­sion of his ‘per­e­stroi­ka.’ ”

Mixed admi­ra­tion and con­tempt for Gor­bachev trick­led down to a younger gen­er­a­tion a few years lat­er. “The snatch­es of con­ver­sa­tion I could hear were about peo­ple being fed up,” writes Kur­manaev, “not about the man with a dis­tinc­tive birth­mark sit­ting in the Krem­lin…. Iron­i­cal­ly, my first dis­tinct, inde­pen­dent mem­o­ry of Mr. Gor­bachev, as per­haps for many of my gen­er­a­tion, dates to a 1998 com­mer­cial for Piz­za Hut,” an ad made by the U.S. fast-food com­pa­ny to cel­e­brate the open­ing of a restau­rant near Red Square, and made by Gor­bachev because… well, also iron­ic, giv­en the ad’s premise… he need­ed the mon­ey.

Writ­ten by Tom Dar­byshire of ad agency BBDO, the com­mer­cial stages a debate between patrons at the restau­rant before Gor­bachev’s arrival calms things down. “Meant to be tongue-in-cheek,” Maria Luisa Paul writes at The Wash­ing­ton Post, the ad intend­ed to show that “piz­za is one of those foods that brings peo­ple togeth­er and bridges their dif­fer­ences,” says Dar­byshire. In yet anoth­er irony, Gor­bachev him­self — who nego­ti­at­ed for a year before agree­ing to the spot — refused to eat piz­za on cam­era, allow­ing his grand­daugh­ter the hon­or instead.

Though he would­n’t touch the stuff, Gor­bachev defend­ed him­self against crit­ics, includ­ing his own wife, Raisa, by say­ing “piz­za is for every­one. It’s not only con­sump­tion. It’s also social­iz­ing.” What was the talk at Gor­bachev’s local Piz­za Hut on the day he popped in with his grand­child to social­ize? Why, it was talk of Gor­bachev.

“Because of him, we have eco­nom­ic con­fu­sion!” one din­er alleges.

“Because of him, we have oppor­tu­ni­ty!” retorts anoth­er.

“Because of him, we have polit­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty,” the first responds.

An old­er woman breaks the impasse by stat­ing their obvi­ous mutu­al affini­ties for piz­za, to which all reply, “Hail to Gor­bachev!”

Try as they might, not even Piz­za Hut could heal the wounds caused by the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic con­fu­sion and polit­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty.

The ad has cir­cu­lat­ed on social media, and in his­to­ry class­es, before and after Gor­bachev’s death as an exam­ple of mass media that “still reflects his lega­cy,” writes Paul. Gor­bachev may be large­ly for­got­ten — at least in the U.S. — decades after the Piz­za Hut ad aired, but it would­n’t be his last attempt to leave his mark in adver­tis­ing, as we see in the 2007 Louis Vuit­ton ad above, fea­tur­ing a prod­uct much less acces­si­ble than piz­za to the aver­age Russ­ian.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Sovi­et Rock: From the 70s Under­ground Rock Scene, to Sovi­et Punk & New Wave in the 1980s

The Sovi­et Union Cre­ates a List of 38 Dan­ger­ous Rock Bands: Kiss, Pink Floyd, Talk­ing Heads, Vil­lage Peo­ple & More (1985)

Long Before Pho­to­shop, the Sovi­ets Mas­tered the Art of Eras­ing Peo­ple from Pho­tographs — and His­to­ry Too

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Texas School Board Bans Illustrated Edition of The Diary of Anne Frank

in Books, Politics | August 18th, 2022

Accord­ing to a recent sur­vey con­duct­ed by the Texas State Teach­ers Asso­ci­a­tion, 70% of sur­veyed teach­ers said they were seri­ous­ly think­ing about leav­ing the teach­ing pro­fes­sion. “Lin­ger­ing stress from the pan­dem­ic is a fac­tor, but it isn’t the only one. Inad­e­quate pay, polit­i­cal attacks on edu­ca­tors and the fail­ure of state lead­ers to pro­tect the health and safe­ty of stu­dents and school employ­ees also have com­bined to dri­ve down the morale of teach­ers to the low­est lev­el in recent mem­o­ry and endan­ger our pub­lic school sys­tem,” TSTA Pres­i­dent Ovidia Moli­na said.

We recent­ly saw how Texas’ edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem has become a vast polit­i­cal mine­field, with con­ser­v­a­tive leg­is­la­tors attempt­ing to ban 800+ books from school libraries–pri­mar­i­ly because the books make stu­dents feel “uncom­fort­able.” This week, the Keller Inde­pen­dent School Dis­trict in Fort Worth, Texas decid­ed to can­cel an acclaimed illus­trat­ed adap­ta­tion of The Diary of Anne Frank, echo­ing the recent deci­sion by a Ten­nessee School board to ban Maus, the Pulitzer-Prize win­ning graph­ic nov­el on the Holo­caust. The ban of The Diary of Anne Frank was trig­gered by a par­ent com­plaint, which the right-lean­ing school board decid­ed to hon­or. Why would think­ing peo­ple want to opt out of teach­ing in the Texas edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem? It’s not hard to imag­ine.

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Relat­ed Con­tent 

Ten­nessee School Board Bans Maus, the Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning Graph­ic Nov­el on the Holo­caust; the Book Becomes #1 Best­seller on Ama­zon

The 850 Books a Texas Law­mak­er Wants to Ban Because They Could Make Stu­dents Feel Uncom­fort­able

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

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