FOLLOW US ON:
GET THE NEWSLETTER
CONTACT US
Gore Vidal and Roy Cohn debate McCarthyism, 1977
02.22.2018
09:59 am
Topics:
Tags:


 
In 1977, Gore Vidal went head-to-head with Roy Cohn, onetime mentor of the president*, on the NYC talk show Midday Live. Cohn was promoting his new book, which sported a cover blurb by, uh, Roy Cohn: an “answer to” the recent TV movie Tail Gunner Joe, in which Peter Boyle portrayed Joe McCarthy as a crapulous commie-baiter who lied about his military service. Roy was hopping mad. He published his book-length screed a month after NBC aired the movie, and he sued the network for libel, and fought all the way to the Supreme Court. (He lost.)

Cohn’s performance is a master class in demagoguery. He accuses everyone else of lying. McCarthy is the victim of a vicious smear campaign. If elites in New York and Washington, D.C. don’t like what McCarthy stands for, it’s because they’ve lost touch with the decent, vital, God-fearing people of the heartland, who understand the stakes in the fight against Communism. Most instructive is his fluid interpretation of the word “McCarthyism.” Vidal defines the term early in the broadcast and uses it consistently throughout; for Cohn, it means anything that confers a momentary rhetorical advantage. In the same breath, he casts doubt on the validity of the concept (the word first appeared in The Daily Worker!) and tries to use it like a curse (the real exponent of McCarthyism is… Gore Vidal!).

The real fun starts when Vidal brings up the topic of personal sexual habits, which is right in the wheelhouse of Jack Kerouac’s seducer, and a subject Cohn would rather avoid:

Vidal: To me, the nicest thing—let’s be affirmative. The nicest thing that I have ever heard about Joe McCarthy was told me by Senator Flanders of Vermont: that he was a full-time homosexual. Is this true?

Cohn: No, I’m sure you’d think that merited a badge of honor, but it is not true.

Vidal: Well, I’m getting to you in a minute, but what about Senator McCarthy?

Cohn: Oh, sure, that’s your favorite topic of conversation. I know that.

Vidal: I know; it’s aroused by the obvious.

Vidal later remembered telling Cohn on this broadcast, “We regarded [you and G. David Schine] as the Damon and Pythias of the homosexual movement,” and said Cohn responded by “shaking all over in a ghastly way.” This moment, alas, does not appear on the tape; I like to believe it occurred during a commercial break. But Cohn does appear shaken by all this talk of manly love, and eager to change the subject. Immediately, he produces a sheet of paper and reads some of Vidal’s cutting remarks about LBJ, Jimmy Carter, and General MacArthur, to prove that Vidal is the real McCarthyite. (As if “McCarthyism” just meant “saying unfavorable things about public figures.”)

Don’t worry; host Bill Boggs circles back to Joe McCarthy’s sex kicks—a hot topic since the early Fifties, when, as McCarthy ginned up the Lavender Scare, the Las Vegas Sun reported that the senator himself was “the queer that made Milwaukee famous”—and Vidal makes Cohn squirm some more.

Cohn: I hate to eliminate or eradicate the one plus you ever did give to Senator McCarthy, but the statement and the charge is totally untrue.

Vidal: You would know.

Cohn: Well, I don’t know, you’ve been around a man for a certain period of time, you know his wife, uh, you know his family, uh, you see him, I suppose you can know as well as anybody can know, and if I knew or didn’t know, I’d wanna have a little more proof before I start throwing it around the way you’ve done.

Vidal: But Senator Flanders did.

Cohn: Well, that’s McCarthy—Senator Flanders apologized for having made a statement which was not based on fact, but based on something somebody told him, which when he checked it out, felt was so unfounded that Senator McCarthy deserved and received an apology from Senator Flanders—

Vidal: I would be happy to see that.

Me too. When 67 senators voted to condemn McCarthy on December 2, 1954, the New York Times reported that Flanders apologized for one thing only: comparing McCarthy to Hitler.

More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Oliver Hall
|
02.22.2018
09:59 am
|
Send in the clowns: The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army wants you!
01.22.2018
11:31 am
Topics:
Tags:


 
Trigger Warning: if you are coulrophobic (suffer from a paralyzing fear of clowns), this article is probably not for you. Select another wonderful piece written by the great contributors here at Dangerous Minds, as you will not enjoy the information I am about to relay to you. If you have no fear of Ronald McDonald or Bozo and their ilk, you will be quite interested to find that beginning in the mid-2000s, a clown army was established in order to fight for our right to party.

Okay, so maybe they weren’t exactly fighting for our right to party as such, but CIRCA—the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army—was most certainly established in order to keep The Man from trying to keep us down in a variety of ways. To quote from their now-defunct-but-Internet-Archived-website, CIRCA’s aims were highly political but filtered through the theatrical. They state:

CIRCA is reclaiming the art of Rebel Clowning, it’s combatants don’t pretend to be clowns, they are clowns, real trained clowns. Clowns that have run away from the anaemic safety of the circus and escaped the banality of kids parties, Fools that have thrown away their sceptres and broken the chains that shackled them to the throne.
CIRCA aims to make clowning dangerous again, to bring it back to the street, restore its disobedience and give it back the social function it once had: its ability to disrupt, critique and heal society. Since the beginning of time tricksters (the mythological origin or all clowns) have embraced life’s paradoxes, creating coherence through confusion - adding disorder to the world in order to expose its lies and speak the truth.

Formed in the UK in 2003 by activists John Jordan, L.M. Bogad, Jen Verson and Matt Trevelyan, CIRCA’s creation was catalyzed by George Bush’s visit to London. The group’s practice of rebel clowning was intended to call into play ideas of the foolish, silly and ridiculous, all of which caught authority figures like policemen and the military completely off-guard (pun intended). Nothing like a massive crowd of clowns demonstrating to make a public official feel trivialized or have their dominance questioned. The CIRCA protests were designed to fulfill the group’s stated principles which, as John Jordan wrote, consisted of the following:

Use absurdity to undermine the aura of authority
Ridicule and absurdity are powerful tools against authority. To be effective, authority has to be perceived as such, otherwise people would never obey its commands. On the other hand, who ever takes a clown seriously? Rebel clowning used this slippery dichotomy to great effect, turning the tables on authority in the street by posing in mock-serious fashion next to lines of cops, as well as at the highest levels of power, by pointing out the clownish behavior of George W. Bush and other authority figures.

Get arrested in an intelligent way
Watching police handcuff and bundle clowns into police vans is always entertaining for passersby, begging the question: What did the clowns do wrong? What is this all about? An arrested clown also makes for very mediagenic images. By staying in character during the whole process of an arrest, including giving their clown army names (e.g., Private Joke) and addressees (e.g., the big top in the sky) as their real identity, rebel clowns caused much mirth and havoc in the police stations.

Reframe
Rebel clowning helped reframe the media images of protests during the big summit mobilizations of the mid 1990s. A colorful band of disobedient clowns could easily capture the limelight and shift the narrative away from “violent clashes” and smashed windows.

The kind of Bakhtinian splendor that CIRCA produced on the streets of the UK for Dubya didn’t stay there. The numerous “Operations” they conducted are listed here, along with some passionate communiques from clown leaders such as General Anesthetic, General Confusion and Colonel Oftruth. Operations like the Engagement with CRAP (Capitalism Represents Acceptable Policy) which took place in Leicester Square in 2004 or the various Scottish skirmishes, and the time they informed CIRCA members that they would be “giving hugs to the needy, playing games with all our friends, and other similarly militant activities. We request full cooperation from the public for this operation.”

This kind of thing doesn’t just remain in one place of course. What began in the UK spread. There was the Dutch Clown Armythe Belgian Clown Army, the US Clown Brigades and so forth. It went global, and CIRCA members appeared en force at political events like G8 and elsewhere. For some reason, it’s gotten a bit quiet recently. We’ve really been lacking in the clown army department, so hey—members of CIRCA—any division—if you’re reading this—we could really use a clown manifestation right about now. This time it really IS time to send in the clowns.
 

 

 

 
Much more after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Ariel Schudson
|
01.22.2018
11:31 am
|
‘I replaced Donald Trump with his Disney animatronic figure and honestly, it’s an improvement’
01.02.2018
09:25 am
Topics:
Tags:


 
There’s not really much to say here except that Born Miserable replaced the real Donald Trump in photos with the Disney animatronic Donald Trump, posted it all on Twitter and the results are pretty funny.

There’s been some speculation that the robot Trump was hastily refashioned from a Hillary Clinton one they’d been working on, assuming she’d win. Take a close look at the face. Fake news? Who honestly cares?

Born Miserable touts that his Trump images seem to be an “improvement” over the reality of the actiual Trump. I have to agree. The Disney technicians and artists really did nice work with his neck wattle, didn’t they?


 

 

 
More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Tara McGinley
|
01.02.2018
09:25 am
|
Chilling images of Hitler celebrating Christmas & decorations inspired by the Nazis
12.15.2017
08:50 am
Topics:
Tags:


Christmas ornaments produced in Germany during the rise and rule of Adolf Hitler.
 
In the 1930s as Hitler and his Nazis were coming to power in Germany, they began a war on Christmas, a quest to dismantle age-old Christmas traditions and replace them with Nordic/pagan practices and folklore. The Nazis wanted everyone to follow their lead when it came to their image of the holiday—which at some point included displaying swastikas on Christmas trees. In Germany, Christmas is called “Weihnachten” which the Nazis also took it upon themselves to rename Rauhnacht, which translates in English to “the rough night.”

The Nazis’ changes to Christmas included anti-Semitic activities such as actively avoiding doing business at Jewish-owned establishments during the holiday so that their celebrations would be “free of Jews.” Christmas carols were modified to reflect socialist Nazi beliefs and ideology including replacing references to the “Savior” with a nod to Hitler himself, “Savior Führer.” While many of the Reich’s changes to Christmas took hold, there was one aspect of the holiday that they could not do away with—the image the jolly old fat man, Santa Claus—even in Hitler’s Germany, Santa remained a fixture of the newly Nazified celebration.

Other changes inflicted by the Nazis during the period before their eventual fall in the mid-1940s was the use of Christmas decorations. If you were not already aware, the tradition of decorating a tree at Christmas time got its start in Germany in the 16th century. The most problematic issue for the Nazis was the gleaming star on the top of the tree—a six-pointed star signified Judaism and the Jewish community. A five-pointed star was associated with communism which was less than appealing to the Nazis as well. Instead, Germans were encouraged to replace tree-topping stars with, you guessed it, a swastika or the symbol for the SS (the “Schutzstaffel” or “Protection Squadron” formed under Hitler). Ornaments were transformed to contain Nazi images, slogans like “Sieg Heil!,” and glass-blown baubles in the image of their beloved leader Adolf Hitler. The metamorphosis took approximately six years to complete, though it would all come to an end in 1944 which marked the very last Nazified Christmas. Hitler would meet his maker four months later on April 30th, 1945.

The images that follow are haunting historical documents of how the Nazis tried to change Christmas (and the world) and failed. 
 

 

 

 
More chilling Nazi Christmas images after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Cherrybomb
|
12.15.2017
08:50 am
|
The Internet wants Reese’s to do something about net neutrality murderer Ajit Pai
12.15.2017
08:21 am
Topics:
Tags:



 
Ajit Pai, who is on the fast track to becoming this season’s Martin Shkreli, has gotten major press the past few days as the FCC Chairman blamed for “murdering net neutrality.” In most of the press photos, Pai is pictured drinking from a ridiculous novelty mug, as large as his head, emblazoned with the Reese’s candy logo.

This mug is so absurdly stupid that John Oliver made fun of it last May in a “Last Week Tonight” segment in which he asked viewers to flood the FCC with calls and comments to urge the agency to retain net neutrality. Oliver drank from a bucket-sized replica of the Reese’s mug. Pai’s response was to film a segment drinking from an even larger mug than Oliver, garbage-can sized.
 

 
Pai recently drew Internet ire all over again by releasing what AV Club called “a dumb new video” which openly mocks net neutrality supporters, culminating in a collective public head-explosion when the Federal Communications Commission voted on Thursday to ultimately dismantle rules regulating Internet service providers, effectively “murdering net neutrality” in the public’s view.

An interesting aside to net neutrality supporters hatred of Pai has been numerous demands on the Reese’s Facebook page to “do something” about him. Though certainly most of these posts are misguided anger, one must wonder what a company might have to do to protect their brand from the negative association with one of the most-hated men in the country. Pai’s mugging with the mug is product placement of the worst possible order. Perhaps these protester’s pleas to the candy company are simply a misguided hope that someone, ANYONE will listen to their frustration. Clearly, the FCC wasn’t listening to the estimated 83% of Americans who support net neutrality. The angry masses await word from Reese’s.
 

 

 
Many more pieces of Pai after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Christopher Bickel
|
12.15.2017
08:21 am
|
Monsters, Demons, Devils, and Donald Trump: The art of Dave Lebow
12.14.2017
11:56 am
Topics:
Tags:

010lebowsatansmuses.jpg
Satan’s Muses
 
Don’t know much about art history. Don’t know much about graphology. Don’t know much about comic books. Don’t know much about the way things look. But what I do know is what I like and what I currently like are these big, colorful, classical, fantasy, pulp fiction-type canvases by artist Dave Lebow.

Lebow’s paintings mix pop culture with fairy tales and horror fiction. His byline sez he’s “old school” with “a wickedly contemporary retro style that recalls the pulp magazines of long ago.” That’s probably why his work hits the spot and fits snugly like a blue suede shoe on my size ten feet.

You may have seen his specially commissioned paintings (giant biblical canvases) on the cult TV series Dexter or maybe his paintings on ABC’s October Road or the History Channel’s Strange Rituals. His artworks look like gorgeous illustrations from old classic storybooks by the Brothers Grimm, H. P. Lovecraft, or even Stephen King. They impart a scene from a dream-like narrative which you the viewer are invited to make up as you go along, as Lebow has said:

I want my images to grab you and drag you, if not willingly, then kicking and screaming into my picture. I’m inspired and interested in imaginative storytelling pictures that evoke an emotional response.

Originally from Oklahoma, Lebow graduated in Painting from Boston University and has an MFA in Experimental Animation from Cal Arts. Now based in California, he creates his pictures by first sketching out his idea before blocking out a version in oils then painting the full image in all its fabulous technicolor glory.

More recently, Lebow’s paintings have included some pointedly political/satirical portraits of President Trump—one as a member of the KKK another as a Nazi—which don’t seem out of place beside his more fantastical work of demons and devils and two-headed monsters. In fact, he looks right at home.

Lebow certainly gets my vote and you can see more of his work here or maybe buy a print here.
 
01lebowallthatglitters.jpg
‘All That Glitters.’
 
Many more of Lebow’s wondrous artworks, after the jump…...
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
12.14.2017
11:56 am
|
Get your own festive shitting Trump figurine in time for Christmas!
12.08.2017
09:15 am
Topics:
Tags:


 

“We’re gonna start saying Merry Shitmas again.”*

—Donald Trump

*Or at least that is what I think he said


A couple of years ago I wrote here about the turd-related Christmas traditions of the Catalans.

Each December 8th, on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, families in the Catalonian region of Spain bring out Tió de Nadal or Caga Tió  (which means “shitting log”). The log is painted with a smiling face and stands on two tiny stick legs.
 

 
Every night until the 24th, as tradition dictates, the children are instructed to give the Tió a little bite to “eat” and cover him with a blanket to keep him warm and cozy. On Christmas Eve, the Tió is placed partly under his blanket and the children order it to defecate. The children beat the log with sticks, while singing the Tió de Nadal song, in order to make it shit presents.

Parents place presents under the log’s blanket while the children close their eyes and pray for the really good shit.

The children’s song to Caga Tió is absolutely adorable:

“Caga tió,
caga torró,
avellanes i mató,
si no cagues bé
et daré un cop de bastó.
caga tió!”

Translated:

shit, log,
shit nougats,
hazelnuts and mató cheese,
if you don’t shit well,
I’ll hit you with a stick,
shit, log!

Coaxing turds from Caga Tió is a wonderful Christmas custom, but not the only scatalogical Catalonian tradition. Even more popular and beloved is the Caganer, whose name literally translates to “the crapper” or “the shitter”. The Caganer is a figurine, traditionally in peasant garb, who is bent over and taking a dump. This figurine is placed among the other figures in the Nativity Scene. The figure is hidden away in the Nativity and the children are instructed to try and find the Caganer.
 

Traditional Caganer
 
It’s not known for certain why the pooping character has been added to the Nativity, but it seems to have been around since at least the 18th Century. Some claim that the character represents fertilization of the Earth and others believe the Caganer represents “the spoil-sport we all have within us.” No one is really sure, but the character maintains a massive popularity despite some governmental attempts to ban the public display.

The Caganer statuettes are sometimes fashioned in the likeness of well-known figures from pop culture or politics, including what is certain to be this year’s hottest selling nativity-shitter, Donald J. Trump.
 

 
The Trump Caganer is available HERE for $24.97.
 

 
More after the dump... er, jump

READ ON
Posted by Christopher Bickel
|
12.08.2017
09:15 am
|
POPaganda: New work by pop-art provocateur Ron English
11.29.2017
11:16 am
Topics:
Tags:


King Combrat

Pop-surrealist Ron English gained fame through billboard liberation and other Situationist-style pranks like his amazing cereal-box détournement project. He’s waged war against Camel cigarettes for overtly marketing to children, and against Apple for appropriating crucial 20th-Century social justice figures who were too dead to object to their commercial exploitation. But his broad critique of consumer culture has, like the work of his fellow street-art godhead Banksy, long since found its way into the gallery world, and in contrast with his billboard hijackings, his paintings are slick, highly-polished satires of corporate America’s propaganda campaigns (“…like if Walt Disney was a left-wing propagandist,” he once said in a Hypebeast interview).

English’s newest body of work goes on display this week at DTLA’s Corey Helford Gallery, in a solo exhibit titled “TOYBOX: America in the Visuals.” 36 new paintings will be included, as will installation pieces and sculpture, plus a musical performance by English’s alter-ego DJ POPaganda—the name being derived from a term he coined for his work, and which has served as the title for a book and a documentary, as well. The collected work seeks to examine self-creation and the development of identity as an act of the imagination, a process that starts in childhood through play—particularly play with toys, which can serve as proxy identities—but which continues throughout one’s life. We reached out to English for a comment, and he was kind enough to respond:

It seems these days everyone has an opinion, no one has a clue. Opinions and beliefs have become the currency of modern civilization, and we are in the midst of creating the new mythologies that will define us in the future. This show is a visual and musical intervention into that process.

Here’s a small sampling of the new paintings. A few of them were provided exclusively to Dangerous Minds, and we’re grateful to the Corey Helford Gallery for that extremely cool consideration. Click an image to spawn an enlargement.
 

The Ascension of deadmau5
 

Stroke of Genius
 

D. Menace and Richie T Grin
 
More Ron English after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Ron Kretsch
|
11.29.2017
11:16 am
|
Donald Trump takes a fatal shit on ‘Too Dumb For Suicide: Tim Heidecker’s Trump Songs’
11.16.2017
09:02 am
Topics:
Tags:


 
A year to the day in the making, Tim Heidecker’s Donald Trump protest numbers have been collected together as a new album Too Dumb For Suicide: Tim Heidecker’s Trump Songs.

While some people find themselves sapped of the will to live by Donald Trump, Heidecker clearly finds him creatively inspiring, albeit in a bitter/rancorous sense. Steadily rolled out since that dark day the most horrible human being of all time managed to squeak into the White House and get handed the nuclear football, Heidecker says “Most of these songs were written and recorded quickly, with the blood still boiling from whatever indignity or absurdity had popped up on my newsfeed that day.”

Too Dumb For Suicide features a credible Elvis Costello pastiche about POTUS squeezing out a toxic and painful black KFC turd and ultimately dying whilst taking a shit on his gilded toilet; an inspiring number about beating neo-Nazi goofball Richard Spencer about the face and neck; an explication in jaunty song about what exactly it will take to make America great again and a beautifully-backhanded Randy Newman-esque “tribute” to Trump’s weasel-like Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. There’s even a cover version “bonus track” of Heidecker’s “Trump’s Private Pilot” by Josh Tillman doing his very best Father John Misty impression as a pilot ready to sacrifice himself for the good of the human race and asking everyone to support a Kickstarter for his kids.

Too Dumb For Suicide is all this and more, although noted weenie Paul Simon refused to allow “I Am A Cuck” (an alt-right take-off on his “I Am A Rock”) to be included. I asked Heidecker a few questions via email.

Dangerous Minds: Is it safe to assume that you don’t really like Donald Trump all that much?

Tim Heidecker: What’s to like? He’s everything we’re taught not to be.  But he’s also totally absurd and very funny to me. So I reflect those two sides; some funny stuff, but also some very dark stuff.

Tell me how you really feel…

Tim Heidecker: It’s all broken and pointless and folks should start thinking about living in the woods again.

Continues after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
|
11.16.2017
09:02 am
|
‘Freedom for the Wolf’: Essential new documentary traces the rise of fake democracy
11.14.2017
08:55 am
Topics:
Tags:

01freedomforthewolfposter.jpg
 
Last year, I was very fortunate to see an early cut of Rupert Russell’s documentary on the rise of fake democracy Freedom of the Wolf, which will be on release soon and is currently screening at the International Documentary Festival (IDFA) over the next two weeks. The title of the film comes from the renowned philosopher Isaiah Berlin who once said, “Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep.” This quote provides a starting-point for Russell who goes in search of the world’s most dangerous idea Freedom.

The end result is an excellent and indispensable documentary which provides one helluva ride across continents to meet the people battling on the frontline like the demonstrators occupying the streets of Hong Kong against the Chinese government’s removal of their democratic rights; or the youngsters in Tunisia who are left frustrated and isolated after the failure of the Arab Spring where telling a joke now can land them in jail; and to death on the streets of America, #BlackLivesMatter, and the game-changing election of Donald Trump in 2016. Freedom of the Wolf is the essential documentary to go and see if you want to get a handle on what is happening to freedom and democracy in the world right now .

I caught-up with Russell who has been screening Freedom of the Wolf at film festivals across the world to great acclaim. I started by asking him what had the response to his film been like at film the festivals?

Rupert Russell: The screenings have been fantastic; with a few cultural differences. In the UK, people have been responding to the dark humor – there’s a low-level absurdity that runs through the whole film, which the Brits pick up on pretty quickly. In Poland, the audiences were anxious to discuss how to mount successful protests; which, for them, is understandable!

DM: Was it what you expected?

Russell: To be honest, I think it’s wise to have no expectations. Sure, you screen the film to your friends and family who are supportive and tell you it’s great. I’m sure even Ed Wood had words of encouragement when he played a cut of Plan 9 From Outer Space or Tommy Wiseau with The Room. So I’ve been very pleasantly surprised by the reaction.

DM: What do you think Trump will do? Where do you think he’s going as President?

Russell: After the Republicans take a pummeling in the 2018 elections, Trump will be rattled. He’ll provoke a foreign war to consolidate his base and divide the Democrats. Where? Who knows. Australia and Canada appear as villains in Trump’s twitter feed as much as North Korea. I’m guessing that Trump is going to surprise us by invading a U.S. territory. Remember in 2015 how the InfoWars crowd was stoking a heated conspiracy for months that Obama was going to “invade” Texas? It may sound insane, but Trump’s favorite website reported that this kind of action is a normal response to a “hostile” enemy – even if it is already under the control of the Pentagon. Puerto Rico would be the obvious contender for a self-invasion. But Trump is never predictable, so I’m putting my money on California.

DM: Do you think revolutionary acts “keep the status in the quo”?—as a character in one of Derek Jarman’s films once ironically pointed out?

Russell: If your bar for success is the elimination of inequality, sexism, racism and other forms of oppression in their entirety, then yes, every act – revolutionary or not – is unlikely to eliminate them. There’s something ingrained in us to create distinctions and hierarchies. Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s Travels captured this flaw in human nature elegantly in the sectarian conflict between Big-Endians and the Little-Endians; that is, between those who crack open an egg on the big or little end. If we can’t find a real reason to divide ourselves, we’ll find one: no matter how arbitrary or absurd.

But if you lower the bar, to say, improvement, then I think even small – let alone revolutionary – acts can make a big difference. If you thought the global women’s marches on January 21 were going to lead to the removal of Donald Trump or the overthrow of patriarchy, then yes, you will have been disappointed. But the current pushback against famous men who have sexually assaulted, harassed, and demeaned women, then I think you have the Women’s March to thank for it. It generated grassroots organizations - in both real life and online - that gave women spaces, opportunities, and platforms to articulate and understand what, until then, had been largely private interactions.

And if you take the two most successful civil disobedient campaigns in history – the civil rights struggle in the US and campaign for independence in India – the striking thing is how long they took. Change takes decades. Sometimes a protest resulted in a step backward with more oppression; other times they moved things forward. But the individuals knew that their struggle was historic and may even take multiple generations to complete. That’s why the arc of history is “long” – and not conveniently contained within a 24-hour news cycle.

DM: What do you think will happen in Hong Kong? And in Tunisia?

Russell: In Hong Kong, the short term looks very bleak. Young leaders are in prison, and pro-democracy legislators have been banned from the legislature. In the long term, I’m optimistic. There’s a body of research in psychology that has found that the events that happen in your early adult life – from 18 to 22 – have an incredible impact on the rest of your life. So in Hong Kong, you have an entire generation who has teargassed by the police and slept under highways for democracy; they’re not going to forget that. And in twenty, thirty years, these will be the people who will be running the banks, the civil service, and even the police in Hong Kong.

Tunisia is sadly predictable. The President, Beji Essebsi, has used the police to drive motorcycles in protests and kept laws that prohibit the criticizing of public officials on the books (inherited from the dictatorship, which he served in). He has made some important reforms on women’s issues, freeing Muslim women from the necessity of having to marry another Muslim. This shouldn’t surprise us though. He was the Minister of the Interior – the heart of the police state – under the secular dictator Ben Ali. So a mixture of authoritarianism and anti-Islamism was to be expected. The unfortunate thing is that while progress on women’s issue is reported in the Western press, his illiberal actions are not. Perhaps this is because we want to keep in our (Western) minds the notion that Tunisia is a “success” and “progress” is being made. It’s a narcissistic reflection of our own ideals; our values flourishing outside of our immediate cultural orbit. And if we look too closely, we may not like what we see.

DM: What next for you? What are you making?

Russell: I have just completed an animated web-series for the online streaming platform, Yaddo. It’s called How the World Went Mad and it uses a mixture of satire and science to try to explain the rise of Trump. Each episode takes a lesson from social science to explain a different aspect of this “disease” – diagnosis, symptoms, transmission, epidemic, and cure. It’s been a lot of fun and I can’t wait to put them out there. Not sure how the episode on suicide bombing is going to be received. But I’m ready for the trolls (the episode might be the one thing that will unite ISIS and the Alt-Right).

Rupert Russell’s film ‘Freedom for the Wolf’ is being screened at the International Documentary Festival (IDFA) over the next two weeks. Details here..
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds
 
‘Freedom for the Wolf’: The Rise of Illiberal Democracy
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
11.14.2017
08:55 am
|
Page 5 of 164 ‹ First  < 3 4 5 6 7 >  Last ›