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When Anna von Hausswolff, an acclaimed Swedish songwriter and organist, first heard that a conservative Roman Catholic website was calling her a satanist and demanding a concert boycott, she and her team laughed it off.

We thought it was hilarious, von Hausswolff, 35, recalled in a recent interview. The whole day we were laughing,

The site, Riposte Catholique, was firing its readers up ahead of a concert of von Hausswolffs epic pipe organ music at a church in Nantes, a city in the west of France. Some of her fans were goths, the site said, and her songs were more a black Mass than music for a church. A music blogger had called her the high priestess of satanic harmonies, the site noted, and conservative Roman Catholic groups noticed that, on the track Pills, she sings, I made love with the devil.

We said, This is such a great P.R. campaign, Von Hausswolff said. I mean, the High Priestess of satanic art. Wow!

But as soon as she arrived at the church in Nantes, the joking stopped. Outside were about 30 young men, most wearing black jackets and hoodies, protesting the show, Von Hausswolff said. The concerts promoter told her that some men had just broken into the venue, trying to find her.

Soon, there were 100 people blocking the churchs entrance. Von Hausswolff sat in the richly painted church, staring up at the organ that shed hoped to play, listening to protesters chanting and banging on the doors outside as her fans shouted back at them.

There was a primal part of me that told me I was not safe, she said. I wanted to get out. She canceled the show.

In recent years, disagreements between conservatives and liberals over issues like gay marriage and abortion have become increasingly heated in parts of Europe. Von Hausswolffs experience is an example of another tension point in the continents culture wars: In some countries, a small minority of Roman Catholics regularly protests art it considers blasphemous.

Cline Braud, an academic who studies the sociology of catholicism in France, said in a telephone interview that extremists had staged protests against artworks and plays in the country for the past 20 years. It comes from a well organized minority whore very good at getting attention in the media, Braud said.

One of their regular targets is Hellfest, a rock music festival held every year close to Nantes. In 2015, a group of protesters broke into the site and set fire to some of the festivals stage sets. Since then, protesters have regularly doused the festival sites fields with holy water. Hellfests communications manager, Eric Perrin, said in an email that staff members recently found 50 gold pendants depicting the Virgin Mary scattered around the site.

Since playing a real pipe organ in concert almost always means playing in church, von Hausswolffs tour problems didnt end when she left Nantes even though some French bishops had issued statements of support. In Paris, she was scheduled to play the grand organ at St.-Eustache, a church widely considered a jewel of the French Renaissance, but after its priest was deluged with complaints, she instead performed a secret show at a Protestant church near the Arc de Triomphe.

Later, in Brussels, about 100 people protested outside her show at a Dominican church, taking a more peaceful approach than their French counterparts and moving away from its doors when asked by police. At Nijmegen, the Netherlands, just two protesters appeared, standing quietly outside while holding signs with the message Satan is not welcome.

Von Hausswolff is not someone you would expect to cause such a stir. She grew up in Gothenburg, Sweden, and said her childhood was very creative. (Her father, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, is a composer and performance artist.)

As a teenager, she sang in a church choir, and dreamed of becoming a musician, but ended up training as an architect. Her music career only took off in 2009 when, age 23, she released a demo of piano songs called Singing from the Grave that quickly found a fan base in Sweden thanks to her soaring vocals. She was frequently compared to the English pop star Kate Bush.

After an organ builder told her she could make beautiful pipe organ music, she gave it a go, she recalled, trying out the organ in Gothenburgs vast Annedal Church. When I reached the lowest note, I couldnt believe my ears, Von Hausswolff said. I felt it through my whole body.

Shes since explored what the instrument can do across five albums, sometimes pairing it with a rock band and at other times performing solo. Her most recent, released this month, is a live album recorded at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.

Hans Davidsson, an organist who helps von Hausswolff probe the instruments capabilities, said that she explores the organ with open ears, eyes and senses, and had developed her own musical language. Her music was inspiring to many classical organists like him, he added. Its fortunate for us that she chose the organ, he said.

In the interview, von Hausswolff, who was wearing Christmas leggings covered in cartoon reindeer in Santa hats, denied she was a satanist. Von Hausswolff declined to say what her 2009 track Pills in which she sings of satanic lovemaking was about, since songs should be left open to interpretation, she said. But, she added, If youre asking me if I literally had sex with the devil, the answer is, No.

As much as she was happy to joke about the accusations, the incidents last month had left a mark. She still felt scared by the French and Belgian protests, she said, and was also worried that churches might think twice about letting her play their organs, so as to avoid complaints.

Im not a good Christian and never will be, said von Hausswolff, adding that she saw herself as agnostic. But Im there to present my pipe organ art, so that it hopefully can invoke deeper thought in people.

She was already planning more church tours, she said. As long as she was welcome, she added, I will go there, and I will play my music.

Originally posted here:
A High Priestess of Satanic Art? This Organist Can Only Laugh. - The New York Times

Everybody knows that Percy French wrote The Mountains of Mourne, probably still his best-known song. But it tends to be forgotten that he wrote only the lyrics. As was often the case, those were set to a traditional air, arranged by his now much less remembered musical partner, Houston Collisson.

A Dublin-born Anglican priest, Collisson also scored the operettas they jointly produced in the early 1890s when, as Bernadette Lowry writes in the book mentioned here yesterday (about Frenchs role in Finnegans Wake), they promised to become an Irish Gilbert & Sullivan.

Each also performed solo on occasion and Collisson was once well known in his own right as an impresario. But poignantly, they were to be reunited in death. Both expired in the last week of January 1920: French on the 24th, Collisson on the 31st.

Despite their successes, singly and together, they had both sometimes suffered from the culture wars of the period, In the early 1890s, as Lowry points out, their brand of humour was at odds with the politics of the Parnell split, when Irelands stocks of humour in general were running low.

But a perception that their songs perpetuated stage-Irish stereotypes was also problematic for some.

That was the case in November 1906 when, during a solo tour of Ireland, Collisson endured a long, dark night of the artistic soul in Birr, Co Offaly.

I shall never forget Birr, he wrote afterwards in a memoir. The hall [] was well filled, and my entertainment was going gaily until a gentleman in the gallery, who had evidently been indulging in a little too much John Jameson began to talk.

The talker was eventually removed with the help of a police constable. Then Collisson launched into a song called Wait for a while now, Mary, with lyrics by French, to a traditional air. This triggered an outbreak of hissing from five or six occupants of the gallery, which persisted for the rest of the show.

Hissing seems to have been as bad as it got, but Dr Collisson was nonetheless shocked. He had been completely in sympathy with the revival of Irish music and literature then afoot, he afterwards insisted, and detested the Stage Irishman himself. But he did not accept that he and French were complicit. He wondered if what the Birr protesters had really objected to was his singing with a Dublin accent. To that he pleaded guilty: I was born there, and I cant help it. But he also quoted in full the epic hatchet job on the concert published later in a local paper, which supplied more detail of the charges.

The unnamed reviewer began by summarising the show as one of vulgar insipidity. Then he digressed to deliver a damning critique of the majority in the audience, which had aristocratically graced the hall in opera cloaks and demi-toilettes and clearly enjoyed itself.

If the entertainer had been engaged in the task of amusing children who had not reached a reasonable intellectual standard, then he might have succeeded in his efforts, lectured the critic. That he was successful in pleasing the Castle satellites and shoneens of Birr speaks volumes for their intellectual abilities.

From there the piece went on to lambaste the third-rate one-man shoddy performance itself; the performers sleepy address, interspersed with antediluvian jokes and atrocious attempts at punning; and even his skills on the instrument of torture (the piano).

Apart from one song the reviewer generously declared right enough, the events only saving grace was said to be the hissing of a small section of the audience (described as Irishmen) that disturbed the laughter of the rest (described as the garrison).

This proved that Birr was not entirely shoneen. Summing up for the hissers, the review concluded: The day is gone when we pay our money to go and hear our nationality insulted, and our method of speaking the tongue of the alien ridiculed.

A night later, in Nenagh, Collisson was accosted outside concert by Irish-speaking youths who also hissed and hooted and called him Sassenach. Presumably they could not afford to attend the show, however. The audience there was entirely appreciative.

That Collisson recovered well from his midlands trauma is evidenced by an entry in his diary from two months later, when he attended the Abbey Theatre in Dublin to see a controversial new play.

The culture wars were still raging. And beforehand, he had assumed the audience protests at earlier performances of the Playboy of the Western World to be unfair. But he changed his mind mid-show: Before the second act had terminated I found myself joining loudly in the [] shouts of disapproval.

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Houston, we have a problem Frank McNally on Percy French's forgotten collaborator Houston Collisson - The Irish Times

Good afternoon,

Earlier in the month, a social media comment about the installation of speed cameras along an accident-prone section of the I-95 construction zone in Wilmington came with a couple of culture wars references.

Attn snowflakes HOW will this prevent accidents? Will it WOKE me?, he wrote.

Politics aside, there are ample reasons for using the cameras, which were briefly taken out of commission by vandals this month.

The number of accidents has skyrocketed in the construction zone and cleaning up the mishaps is difficult. Enforcement is dangerous for police, and more than one motorist has been stranded in pile-ups.

Granted, speed cameras may have been brought in as money-raising tools in some states. Their use has been confined to school and construction zones in our region.

Delaware tip-toed into speed cameras with last years General Assembly approving their use in the I-95 construction zone with fines are on the modest side (under $100).

In Virginia, motorists speeding through a construction zone can be slapped with a penalty of up to $500.

A strong case can be made for cameras in other Delaware construction zones and highways where speeding is a big problem (sections of Route 1 and I-495 come to mind).

For those tooling along at 90 miles an hour and menacing other motorists, a hefty fine via speed camera would be more than justified. If thats woke, Im OK with that description.

After all, more than one survey has listed the states roads as some of the most dangerous around.

A lapse in heat function

Finally, a note from the motor vehicle site in Georgetown announced on Friday a lapse in heat function. As the issue is being addressed, interior temperatures may be colder than usual. Ill toss that phrase around the next time the heat pump acts up.

Heres hoping you see no lapse in heat or other functions this weekend. Doug Rainey, chief content officer.

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'Woke' speed cameras and heat functions - delawarebusinessnow.com

As long as America fails to safeguard democracy, authoritarians will continue to undermine western liberalism and grow their influence.

Dr. Chamila Liyanage is a Policy and Practitioner Fellow at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR) and a Researcher/Content Developer at Radical-R: Radicalisation Research, UK. She holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the School of Advanced Study, University of London.

What makes Western liberal democracy weak? This question must have been considered by its geopolitical adversaries: the authoritarian regimes in their effort to unlock Pandoras box: the weapons that can play havoc on the national and global security preparations of the West. Both the strength and weakness of Western democracy lie in its core value: freedom. Threats against values are contested at socio-cultural and political levels, not on traditional battlefields. The metaphorical battlefields are all around us now, targeting socio-cultural and political awareness, and their weapons are highly unusual.

We get fixated on the radical right, not considering the bigger picture, interconnected phenomena, and the underlying dynamics, which work to raise the radical right. The rise of the radical right is inevitably a result of broader system-wide dynamics at national, regional, and global levels. Endurance of the radical right, its encroachment to the mainstream, and its ability to challenge democracy through considerable electoral marginsnone of these would have been possible without robust underlying dynamics, keeping the edge of the radical right.

Acknowledging the incendiary role of the radical right, this article analyzes the interconnected phenomena that enable the radical right to ascend in a context of rapid geopolitical changes. How are the Wests grassroots politics being manipulated to incubate radical right narratives, ensuring the edge of authoritarian ideals against the core values of Western liberal democracy?

Moments like these require unrelenting truthtelling. We take pride in being reader-funded. If you like our work, support our journalism.

A wider scholarly debate is currently taking place on the decline of democracy. The concept also points at an existential crisis in Western liberal democracy, beleaguered at home with the rise of populism, extreme right, and extreme left. However, can we consider the crisis of democracy devoid of contemporary geopolitics?

History teaches us that geopolitical rivalries tend to keep a firm hold on conflicts to maintain their global influence. For example, the Cold War created conflicts worldwide from the Malayan emergency (1948) to Indo-China War (1946). The uprising in East Germany (1953), the Cuban revolution (1953), and the Afghan war (1978) were shaped by the proxy wars of the Cold War. At the end of the Cold War, these conflicts lost their magnetic north, giving way to archaic ethnic and religious rivalries.

While the liberal world was battling religious fanatics in the post-9/11 world, another geopolitical rivalry was brewing as rising China and resurgent Russia advanced their authoritarian partnerships worldwide. The battle lines are drawn already between authoritarianism and the Western liberal democracy. The West received a rude awakening when Russia invaded Crimea, was militarily involved in Syria, and deployed a fully-fledged hybrid war against the West. Examples are the Russian disinformation operations during the 2019 European elections, Russias attempts to forge ties with the European radical right, and the interference in the 2016 US election.

The populist wave in the West, anti-establishment sentiments, weaponized conspiracy theories, the barrage of fake news and disinformationnone of these could have been possible without a geopolitical rivalry between authoritarianism and Western liberal democracy. Like it or not, the crisis in the West and the world is now under a tight gridlock of geopolitical rivalry. The autocratic regimes so far have the upper hand in their onslaught against Western liberal democracy. How does authoritarianism create conditions for the rise of illiberalism in the West? The next section examines evidence on how Western democracies are being beleaguered within.

When hybrid warfare targets the core values of liberal democracy, the indicators can be misguiding; they may not indicate any war in the literal sense. Three key factors shape the authoritarian onslaught. First, it is an ideological battle aimed at overthrowing the pre-eminence of liberal democracy. Second, it exclusively targets the core values of Western liberal democracy. Third, it takes place at socio-cultural and political levels of society, creating conditions detrimental to Western liberal democracy. Authoritarian hybrid warfare and its culture wars create socio-political tension in Western societies. How exactly does this happen, and what is the evidence for such phenomena at work?

It is essential to understand the real-world authoritarianism rising as a geopolitical adversary to answer this question. Russia, China, and their allies vie for geopolitical influence rooted in authoritarian values. Categorized as a Consolidated Authoritarian Regime, Russia receives a Democracy percentage of 7 out of 100 in the Nations in Transit 2021 report. In 2021, Freedom House ranked China among the worst countries in terms of political rights and civil liberties. China and Russia forge partnerships, connecting with similar authoritarian instincts of the countries around the world. However, freedom and democracy indicators alone do not show the threat of authoritarianism since it is impossible to measure something which is not democratic by using the democracy indicators. This is where many aspects of the current authoritarian challenge slip out of the radar.

Authoritarianism exclusively targets freedom in a cultural battle, aiming to turn Western freedom in its head. The value of freedom erodes with racial tension and fear of the other, induced into social consciousness. This creates the high wind that glides the radical right and other violent illiberal movements. How do they do it? As the Mueller Investigation and the US Senate Intelligence Select Committee September 2019 report already revealed, authoritarian regimes such as Russia target equality, stirring up racial tension and dividing Western societies. Then it is the most crucial aspect of criminality. Authoritarianism weaponizes organized crime and lawlessness against the rule of law to unsettle democracies. Criminality underneath authoritarianism is a maze, which makes any researcher feel lost in its sheer magnitude.

Why organized crime has anything to do with the rise of authoritarianism? Authoritarianism is criminal, shaping the parameters of its battles. A decade ago, researchers found evidence to synthesize the crime-terror nexus, which explains a critical aspect of modern conflicts. Crime-Terror nexus is being transformed in the context of current geopolitical rivalry. It is not possible to analyze the crime-terror nexus now without phenomena such as authoritarianism, Mafia State, transnational organized crime, and illicit global economy.

The state backers of these phenomena naturally select organized crime such as human smuggling as a weapon against the West. Freedom and democracy indicators alone do not show how the world is plunging into authoritarianism. The Global Crime Index is also necessary to understand the bigger picture of the authoritarian onslaught.

With her remarkable contribution to understanding transnational organized crime (TOC) as a form of new authoritarianism, Louise Shelley concluded in 1999: transnational organized crime is not currently as dangerous as that of traditional authoritarian states. What is happening now? As per the evidence, transnational organized crime is being weaponized against the West. In this context, Turkeys strongman leader threatened to flood Europe with migrants, creating a migrant crisis in the frontiers of Greece in March 2020. Things became much clearer when the strongman leader of Belarus aided human smugglers, organizing arduous journeys of human misery, which boiled over in the frontiers of Poland in July 2021.

As BBC revealed in November 2021, the Taliban regime already works with human smugglers, organizing illegal human cargo out of Afghanistan. In her acclaimed study, Greenhill analyzed how unusual weapons work. Evidence shows that autocrats have no remorse for resorting to organized crime such as human smuggling, endangering peoples lives for their advantage.

Global Crime Index takes the lid off organized criminality, rapidly becoming a weapon against the post-World War II rules-based world order and the rule of law in the West. Alarmingly, Global Crime Index 2021 highlights the state involvement in criminality, insisting that state officials and clientelist networks [] are now the most dominant brokers of organised crime. In 2021 Index, 57 countries are identified with high criminality. The rising global organized crime shows the dysfunction of law and order, thriving criminal markets, and criminal networks across the world.

Both Authoritarianism and crime drive people away. Together, these two can trigger mass human displacement across borders: the best example is Afghanistan under the Taliban. This happens in a context where not only authoritarianism and crime but many factors of global instability come to converge, creating mass population displacements. Evidence points to the fact that a moment will arise with the pandemic, hyperinflation, energy crisis, and climate change, more countries will plunge into instability, creating a human surge at the borders of the developed nations. This will happen irrespective of the deteriorating situation in the West as it faces the same set of global insecurities. However, the case elsewhere can always be direr.

In a time of global instability, authoritarianism finds it in the right place at the right time. It only has to organize movements to stir racial tension and aid organized criminality to unsettle the West. Who will benefit from this? The illiberal elements in the West. This choice of weapon seems to work well. It destabilizes the West. At the same time, it creates the conditions for the radical right and other illiberal elements to rise. As authoritarianism is settling into the beleaguered hinterlands of Western liberal democracy, do we have any hope?

Authoritarianism backs lawlessness against the rule of law, fear against freedom, racial tension against equality, and criminality against justice. Western liberal democracy and the post-World War II rules-based world order only have two options, which indicate how critical this existential challenge they just started to comprehend. First, the West must understand the mechanisms of the authoritarian onslaught coming from its geopolitical adversaries: it is not war as we know it. Second, they must fight against authoritarian contagion, which rapidly infects the core values of Western liberal democracy. When the values of freedom, equality, and justice are undermined, authoritarianism wins naturally, creating an existential crisis in Western liberal democracy.

This article is brought to you by the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR). Through their research, CARR intends to lead discussions on the development of radical right extremism around the world. Rantt has been partnered with CARR for 3 years. Weve published over 150 articles from CARRs network of PhDs, historians, professors, and experts analyzing extremism and combating disinformation.

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Authoritarians Are Winning Their War On Western Democracy - Rantt Media

(Rick Bowmer | AP photo)The Utah State Capitol is shown during the Utah Legislature's virtual special session Thursday, April 16, 2020, in Salt Lake City.

By The Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Board

| Jan. 16, 2022, 3:04 p.m.

Members of the Utah Legislature, who are to begin their 2022 regular session Tuesday, may well assemble nagged by the feeling that they are, in the words of possum-philosopher Pogo, confronted with insurmountable opportunities.

Some of those will be opportunities to meddle, pose and posture on culture-war wedge issues that shouldnt concern them or anyone else. There are other matters, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, on which state officials have long since reached their level of incompetence and should leave to others.

There are, however, issues that cannot and should not be dodged, avoided or kicked down the road. And some in the legislative body have shown glimmers of understanding what they are and what needs to be done about them.

The most obvious matter before the state is so because it is literally visible from space. Though not quite as clearly as it once was.

House Speaker Brad Wilson is leading a growing awareness that the Great Salt Lake is in trouble and needs our help. Losing the shrinking body of brine, which has lent its name to the states largest city, county, baseball team and news organization, would be more than awkward. And it would affect more than the lakes native species and extractive industries.

Exposing the lake bed to the westerly winds would stir up generations of waste, including toxic metals and decayed brine shrimp, that would blow across the Wasatch Front and beyond, into the skies and the lungs of a community that already has more than its share of bad air days including, a couple of times last summer, the worst in the world.

The situation also demonstrates how everything in our natural and human environments are intertwined. Shrinkage of the lake is clearly tied to the states wasteful uses of its limited supply of water, bad habits that should not be made worse by building dams on the Bear River or anything else that would further reduce the flow of water.

The dusty lake is not the only threat to our air quality. Everything from the growing number of autos to construction standards that are not fully up-to-date, along with the states irrational devotion to the fossil fuel industry, conspires to threaten the very quality of life that has attracted so many to come or stay here.

It is well past time for studies. It is time for action. Water conservation rather than development. Active air quality monitoring and regulations. Most of all, a simple recognition that, not only are fossil fuels on their way out, but also that Utah just happens to be perfectly situated to be a global leader in sustainable energy technologies including wind, solar and geothermal, a boon to not only our lungs but also our bank accounts.

The Legislature has proven that it has no competence in dealing with the pandemic, absurdly declaring an end date and giving itself the power to stop people who really know what they are doing from doing it. But lawmakers can be about the business of cleaning up the mess, most importantly by helping the part of our culture that was already in the most need.

Our system of public education traditional and charter, colleges but particularly K-12 has been hard hit by coronavirus. Even when whole schools havent had to close as a precaution, individual classrooms and students have been denied their full, and irreplaceable, opportunity to receive the education that is necessary to their healthy academic and emotional growth.

A state that is as flush as ours is with state and federal revenue should make strengthening the schools its top priority, doing many of the things that should have been done anyway. Smaller class sizes. Modern classrooms with better ventilation. Nurses, counselors and other professional support personnel in every building.

That good fiscal situation has, of course, tempted many in Utahs political class to reflexively call for a cut to the states already regressive income tax rate. But thats the wrong tool for the job. Such tax cuts make some sense when an economy is sluggish, but Utahs is booming and its growing pains as noted above include water shortages, bad air and slammed schools, solutions to each of which will cost money.

If lawmakers really insist on labeling themselves as tax-cutters, more appropriate channels include a removal of the sales tax on groceries and adding an earned income tax credit for low-income working families. Both would put money into the hands of those most in need of it.

To concentrate on the important stuff, legislative leaders should make it clear that they have no time for fiddling around with wedge issues that create more heat than light. No symbolic or hurtful message bills or resolutions attacking critical race theory, censoring library books, attacking transgender Utahns, attempting to seize federal lands or narrowing the opportunity to vote.

We urge the Legislature to take advantage of the states historically strong financial position and make investments of lasting value for the people of Utah.

The Utah Legislature is not always known for its responsiveness to the people, and too much of the real decision-making takes place behind closed doors. But it has created a robust online presence that anyone with internet access can use to follow bills, listen in on committee hearings, watch debates and votes on the Senate and House floors, figure out who is representing you and send them your thoughts.

The first door for all of that is le.utah.gov.

These lawmakers work for you. Keep an eye on them. And tell them what you think.

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Lawmakers should focus on environment, education and taxes and leave divisive culture wars issues alone. - Salt Lake Tribune