Mediaboss Marketing

Neither the Mormons nor the Wobblies fit comfortably in narratives of Western development dominated by cowboys, railroad men, ranchers and other boomer archetypes. They are outliers in that heroic story, even as they seem to occupy opposite sides of the American political ledger. The I.W.W., to the extent that it is remembered at all, belongs to the annals of the homegrown left, while the Mormon Church, a far more enduring institution, has become nearly synonymous with American conservatism.

But to Stegner, in the years between the end of the Depression and the first peak of the Cold War, the gulf didnt seem so wide. A word that recurs in the pages of Mormon Country dealing with the social organization of Mormon towns and wards is solidarity, which is also the theme of the I.W.W. anthem and a keyword in the lexicon of labor radicalism. That shared value of communal participation and collective identity is what defines the Wobblies and the Latter-day Saints as dissident formations in the landscape of the West.

Its Stegners ability to perceive that common thread, and to hear the counter-individualist strains in other Western voices, that makes him hard to classify. His nonfiction writing on the West including the memoir Wolf Willow, the essay collection The Sound of Mountain Water and a biography of the Utah-bred historian and critic Bernard DeVoto bespeaks a passionate, lifelong environmentalism, a legacy that continues in the work of at least two of his erstwhile students, Wendell Berry and Edward Abbey. But Stegners contempt for the kind of boomer represented by Bo Mason reappeared as intolerance of another kind toward the baby boom hippies whose selfish hedonism soured his mood in the 1960s and after. All the Little Live Things features a counterculture villain who brings intellectual pretension, bad hygiene and free love into the peaceful California valley where Joe and Ruth Allston are trying to tend their garden. Later, in The Spectator Bird, Stegner will indulge Joe in a tirade about the age of infidelity, when casual coupling and wife-swapping and therapeutic prostitution are accepted forms of violence as normal as mugging and murder.

Joes distaste for this age, in which whinnyings and slobberings and outr sexual practices are celebrated in every novel you pick up, reflects Stegners disaffection with the literary culture of the time. As Mark McGurl explains it in The Program Era, his critical history of postwar fiction and the rise of creative writing, Stegner saw his ethic of integrity and group participation (modeled in the writing workshops he taught) displaced by an aesthetic of openness and liberation. Stegner himself became an avatar of the literary establishment. The daily New York Times reviewed Angle of Repose favorably, but the Sunday Book Review ran two columns attacking it, one by William DuBois condemning it as too well made and therefore irredeemably middlebrow, the other by John Leonard, after the novel won a Pulitzer Prize, decrying the jurys preference for a comfortable, tame, toothless and affectionate book over more challenging candidates.

The irony of The New York Times waving the anti-establishment flag is mirrored by Stegners sense of himself a prizewinning author with a Ph.D. in English, a professor at an elite university as an aggrieved outsider. This paradox is integral to his character, and his acute sense of it is one of the reasons hes worth reading now, when we spend so much time mapping the fault lines between privilege and resentment and fighting over who is part of the elite and who is entitled to victim status. He cant be enlisted as a partisan in the culture wars, but he isnt a pacifist either. Hes more like a one-man battlefield, whose dreams of peace the repose and safety promised in those titles express the longings of a tectonically divided civilization.

In an essay called Born a Square, Stegner imagines a young Western writer discovering himself to be at odds with both the dominant literary mores and the background that should provide material. The world he most feels and he feels it even while he repudiates it offers him only frontier heroics or the smugness of middle-class provincialism, while other regional, ethnic and social identities seem to provide richer subject matter to his peers. Why, Stegner wonders, havent Westerners been able to find in their own time, place and tradition the characters, situations, problems, quarrels, threats and injustices out of which literature is made?

This question has been answered, since Stegners death, both in tribute and in opposition to his example. His anti-mythological stance has been picked up, and sometimes turned against him, by writers attuned to histories and identities that his writing left out. In 1996 Elizabeth Cook-Lynn published a collection of essays bluntly titled Why I Cant Read Wallace Stegner, which pointed out the absence in his books of any serious engagement with the Indigenous history of the region. Any half-awake reader will notice that while Indians, Mexicans, African-Americans and Asian immigrants are not entirely missing from his fiction, they are at best marginal presences, sometimes servile, sometimes comical, but more features of the landscape than fully human actors within it.

See the rest here:
Wallace Stegner and the Conflicted Soul of the West - The New York Times

Getty Images

The killing of George Floyd last month in Minneapolis has sparked protests across the US and around the world over racial injustice. Demonstrators have taken to the streets -- and to social media -- to voice their outrage at long-standing issues like police brutality and systemic racism and oppression.

People are also sharing resources to help others better understand the issues at hand and to learn how to be better allies to black Americans. Dozens of books, novels, films and TV series addressing the discrimination that people of color face have been circulating online. Some have been recommended by libraries like the Chicago Public Library and the Oakland Public Library. One Twitter thread of antiracist children's books, shared by teacher Brittany Smith, wentviral. And a Google doc compiled by Sarah Sophie Flicker and Alyssa Klein also shares several recommendations of what to watch and read.

Here are some recommendations pulled from those lists and crowdsourced from CNET staff.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander: This book challenges the idea that President Barack Obama's election welcomed a new age of colorblindness.

Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminismby bell hooks: This work explores issues such as the impact of sexism on black women during slavery and racism among feminists.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates: Framed as a letter to his son, Coates pursues the question of how to live free within a black body in a country built on the idea of race, a falsehood most damaging to the bodies of black women and men.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X: In this classic text, Muslim leader Malcolm X shares his life story and talks about the growth of the Black Muslim movement.

White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo: This book explores how white people uphold racial inequality when they react a certain way to their assumptions about race being challenged.

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde: Black lesbian poet and feminist writer Lorde shares a collection of essays and speeches exploring sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia and class.

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Y. Davis: The activist and scholar shows the link between several movements fighting oppression and state violence.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou: The author's debut memoir explores themes like loneliness, bigotry and love.

Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans From the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon: This text explores the period following the Emancipation Proclamation in which convicts were brought back into involuntary servitude.

Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi: The historian chronicles how racist ideas have shaped US history and provides tools to expose them.

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson: This book tells the story of the migration of black Americans who left the South seeking better lives.

The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, From Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation by Daina Ramey Berry: This text explores how in early America, slaves were commodities in every phase of life.

White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson: The historian addresses the forces opposing black progress in America throughout history.

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi: The founding director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center uses history, science, class, gender and his own journey to examine racism and what to do to fight it in all forms.

Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman Jr.: The author explores the war on crime starting in the 1970s and why it had the support of several African American leaders in urban areas.

Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Brittney Cooper: In a world where black women's anger is portrayed as negative and threatening, Cooper shares that anger can be a source of strength to keep fighting.

Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon: This memoir explores the impact that lies, secrets and deception have on a black body and family, as well as a nation.

Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad: This book asks readers to address their own biases, and helps white people tackle their privilege so they can stop harming people of color, even unconsciously.

The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit From Identity Politics by George Lipsitz: This text looks at white supremacy and explores how the concept of "whiteness" has been used to define, bludgeon and control the racialized "other."

Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts: This book illustrates how America systemically abuses Black women's bodies.

Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing by Dr. Joy DeGruy: This book explores the impact that repeated traumas endured across generations have on African Americans today.

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois: In this influential collection of essays, Du Bois, who played a critical role in shaping early 20th-century black protest strategy, argues that begging for rights that belong to all people is beneath a human's dignity, and accommodating to white supremacy would only maintain black oppression.

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo: The author provides a blueprint for everyone on how to honestly and productively discuss race and shares ways to bring about change.

The Underground Railroadby Colson Whitehead: This novel follows a young slave's desperate journey toward freedom.

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead: Two boys are sentenced to reform school in Florida during the Jim Crow era.

Passing by Nella Larsen: This novel explores the fluidity of racial identity through the story of a light-skinned woman who's married to a racist white man who doesn't know about her African American heritage.

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi: The book tells the story of two half sisters born in different villages in 18th-century Ghana and their descendants, with one sister later living in comfort and the other sold into slavery.

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: A young couple leaves Nigeria for the West, each following a different path: She confronts what it means to be black in the US, while he lives undocumented in Britain. They reunite 15 years later in Nigeria.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston: The 1937 classic follows the journey of an independent black woman, Janie Mae Crawford, in her search for identity.

Roots: The Saga of an American Familyby Alex Haley: This novel is based on Haley's family history, and tells the story of Kunta Kinte, who is sold into slavery in the US.

On Beauty by Zadie Smith: This novel tells the story of an interracial family impacted by culture wars.

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison: A nameless narrator describes growing up in the south, going to and being expelled from a Negro college, moving to New York and, amid violence and confusion, ultimately going to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he sees as himself.

The Sellout by Paul Beatty: This satire follows a man who tries to reinstate slavery and segregate the local high school, leading to a Supreme Court case.

13th (Netflix): Filmmaker Ava DuVernay explores racial inequality in the US, with a focus on prisons.

When They See Us (Netflix): Ava DuVernay's gut-wrenching -- and essential -- miniseries is based on the true story of the falsely accused young teens known as the Central Park Five.

Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement (BET): This documentary explores the evolution of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Dear White People (Netflix): Based on a film of the same name, this series shows the biases and injustices that a group of students of color face at Winchester University, a predominantly white Ivy League college.

American Son (Netflix): An estranged couple meet at a police station in Florida to try to find their teenage son.

If Beale Street Could Talk (Hulu): Based on the James Baldwin novel, this Barry Jenkins film centers on the love between an African American couple whose lives are torn apart when the man is falsely accused of a crime.

Blindspotting (Hulu with Cinemax): Collin needs to make it through three more days of probation, and his relationship with his best friend is tested after he sees a cop shoot a suspect during a chase.

The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Available to rent): A young black man dreams of reclaiming his childhood home in a now-gentrified neighborhood in San Francisco.

Fruitvale Station (Available to rent): Written and directed by Ryan Coogler, the biographical film tells the story of Oscar Grant III, who was killed by a white police officer in 2009.

Selma (Available to rent): Directed by Ava Duvernay, the historical drama follows civil rights demonstrators in 1965 as they marched from Selma to Montgomery.

The Hate U Give (Hulu with Cinemax) -- Based on the young adult novel by Angie Thomas: The story follows Starr Carter's struggle to balance the poor, mostly black neighborhood she lives in and the wealthy, mostly white school she attends. Things become more complicated after she witnesses a police officer killing her childhood best friend.

16 Shots (Showtime): This documentary investigates the 2014 shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in Chicago.

Rest In Power: The Trayvon Martin Story (Paramount): This six-episode series follows the life and legacy of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was fatally shot in 2012 in Sanford, Florida.

America to Me (Starz): The documentary series provides a look into a year at Chicago's Oak Park and River Forest High School, one of the nation's top performing and diverse public schools.

Wyatt Cenac's Problem Areas (HBO): Comic and writer Wyatt Cenac explores the police's excessive use of force in black communities and discusses solutions with experts in this late-night talk/comedy series. The show is currentlyfree to watch on YouTube.

Do the Right Thing (Available to rent): Salvatore "Sal" Fragione, an Italian owner of a pizzeria in Brooklyn, and neighborhood local Buggin' Out butt heads after Buggin' Out becomes upset that the restaurant's Wall of Fame only shows Italian actors. Tensions flare up as the wall becomes a symbol of racism and hate to others in the neighborhood.

BlacKkKlansman (HBO Max): Ron Stallworth, the first African-American detective to work in the Colorado Springs Police Department, sets out to infiltrate and expose the Ku Klux Klan.

The Wire (HBO): This show explores Baltimore's narcotics scene from the perspectives of both law enforcement and drug dealers and users.

(Disclosure: CNET is owned by CBS Interactive, a division of ViacomCBS, which also owns Paramount and Showtime.)

It's Okay to Be Different by Todd Parr: This book shares the importance of acceptance, understanding and confidence.

Malcolm Little: The Boy Who Grew Up to Become Malcolm X by Ilyasah Shabazz: Written by Malcolm X's daughter, this book tells the story of the boy who became one of the most influential leaders.

Let's Talk About Race by Julius Lester: Lester tells his story and discusses what makes us all special.

The Undefeated by Kwame Alexander: The award-winning picture book, based on a poem by Alexander and with illustrations by Kadir Nelson, chronicles the struggles and triumphs of black Americans.

Let it Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters by Andrea Davis Pinkney: This book tells the stories of courageous black women who fought against oppression, including Rosa Parks, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman.

The Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Coles: This tells the story of the first African American child to integrate a school in New Orleans.

Something Happened in Our Town: A Child's Story About Racial Injustice by Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins and Ann Hazzard: The story follows a white family and a black family discussing a police shooting of a black man in their town, and aims to answer children's questions about these kinds of events and to inspire them to challenge racial injustice.

My Hair is a Garden by Cozbi A. Cabrera: When a girl named Mackenzie is taunted by classmates about her hair, a neighbor shows her the true beauty of natural black hair.

Separate is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family's Fight for Desegregation by Duncan Tonatiuh: Nearly 10 years before Brown vs. Board of Education, an American citizen of Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage was denied entry into a "whites only" school, which led her parents to organize the Hispanic community and file a lawsuit. This ultimately ended segregated education in California.

Blended by Sharon Draper: This story about 11-year-old Isabella's blended family explores themes like divorce and racial identity.

Young Water Protectors: A Story About Standing Rock by Aslan Tudor, Kelly Tudor and Jason EagleSpeaker: A few months after 8-year-old Aslan came to North Dakota to try and stop a pipeline, he returned to find the world was now watching.

My Family Divided: One Girl's Journey of Home, Loss, and Hope by Diane Guerrero and Erica Moroz: Actress Diane Guerrero tells the story of her undocumented immigrant parents being taken from their home, detained and deported when she was a child in Boston.

The Other Side by Jacqueline Woodson: Two girls form a friendship atop a fence that separates the segregated African American side of town from the white side. The book is illustrated by E.B. Lewis.

We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga by Traci Sorell: A citizen of the Cherokee Nation tells the story of modern Native American life.

Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library by Carole Boston Weatherford: This book tells the story of Arturo Schomburg, who loved to collect books, letters, music and art from Africa and the African diaspora and to shed light on the achievements of people of African descent. His collection ultimately made it to the New York Public Library, and is now known as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Lailah's Lunchbox: A Ramadan Story by Reem Faruqi: When Lailah is enrolled in a new school in a new country, she's worried her classmates won't understand why she isn't joining them in the lunchroom during Ramadan.

The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson: The book, with art by Rafael Lpez, is about how to be brave and find connection with others, even when you feel alone and scared.

Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis: This classic tells the story of a boy's journey to find his father.

IntersectionAllies: We Make Room for All by Chelsea Johnson, LaToya Council and Carolyn Choi: Nine characters share their stories and backgrounds in this book celebrating allyship and community.

CNET's Anne Dujmovic contributed to this report.

Read the rest here:
Books and films to help people of all ages learn about systemic racism and violence - CNET

Spaniards are getting really worked up about Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. At one point last month, the defaced image of the photogenic Socialist was plastered across a giant red banner hung in downtown Madrid.

The trigger has been his widely-criticized handling of the coronavirus pandemic that has seen Spain suffer among the highest death tolls in Europe. But as the worst of the trauma starts to fade, the vitriol has only gotten worse.The opposition is stirringlegitimate criticism with paranoia, crackpot conspiracy theories and ancient resentments into a toxic brew.

The country is emergingfrom itsthree-month lockdown now. Butthe backlash in the capitalis growing one penthouse has been raining down anti-government leaflets on protesters gathered in the street below.

The anger is palpable on social media feeds and in parliament, where 48-year-old Sanchez scraped together enough votes to extend his state-of-emergency powers this week with the furious opposition dredging up his coalition partners ties to Venezuela to paint the prime minister as a wannabe authoritarian.

Were fighting for Spain, said Jose Luis Marin as he led a few dozen pan-banging marchers through one of the capitals swankiest neighborhoods. He was brandishing a 3-meter long Spanish flag with the word Libertad freedom scrawled across it.

In truth, tensions were always bubbling under the surface and the virus has simply turned up the temperature in Spains long-running culture wars. Broad swathes of the population questioned Sanchezs legitimacy from the moment he took office.

Im fascinated by the absolute hatred for Pedro Sanchez in certain parts of the right, Roger Senserrich, a political scientist based in New Haven, Connecticut, observed on Twitter. Hes a pretty normal politician, mediocre in almost everything, just as ambitious as any other leader of a national party and probably just as (in)competent. But my god, the hatred. Its brutal.

A spokesman for the prime minister declined to comment.

Spain is a young democracy that emerged from a military dictatorship in late 1970s to become one of Europes most thriving and socially liberal economies and yet its politics remain fiercely partisan with sharp ideological fault lines reminiscent of the US under Donald Trump or Boris Johnsons Brexit Britain.

Sanchez is just as polarizing. That makes it almost impossible to imagine how its politicians will find common cause as it seeks a path out of a devastating recession.

The right always tends to be very personal in its attacks, saidIgnacio Urquizu, a sociologist and former Socialist lawmaker. It focuses on the leader.

The images from the US over the past week show how quickly order can break down when you put together longstanding divisions, acute economic hardship and a burning sense of injustice. To be sure, Spain has seen nothing like the Black Lives Matter protests as yet, but it has some of the same ingredients. And a few of its own.

For many of the conservative voters who make up about a third of the Spanish electorate, Sanchezs original sin was to forge an alliance with the radical left group Podemos and the separatists of Catalonia and the Basque Country.

Those groups came together in a 2018 no-confidence vote to oust the center-right Peoples Party, which had been limping along since losing its majority three years earlier.

Conservatives objected, with some justification, that Sanchez was lining up with lawmakers that wanted to undermine Spains constitutional order or, in the case of the Catalans, had actually tried to break up the country. They say his willingness to cut deals with those groups now to keep his minority coalition in power betrays his lack of scruples.

Theyve watched too many TV shows like Game of Thrones and House of Cards, says PP official Javier Fernandez-Lasquetty, economy chief for the Madrid region. Thats not how politics works in real life.

Parliamentary rules require any no-confidence motion to propose an alternative premier, so itshighly unlikely the PP can force Sanchez out.

All the same, at the start of the pandemic there was a moment of national unity. When Sanchez declared the state of emergency in March, not even the far-right group Vox voted against him.

It didnt last.

Spain has been in the grip of a slow-motion constitutional crisis since 2015. Four general elections in that period have failed to produce even one stable executive, stirring up memories and grudges from the Civil War almost a century ago. The virus eventually made all that worse.

With the PP controling Madrid, which has been at the epicenter of the outbreak, the tensions have been focused in the capital.

When Sanchez started to lift restrictions in the rest of the country, Madrid and Barcelona were kept under lockdown and resentments started to build. Regional leaders saidthat the governments criteria were neither transparent nor objective.

It was a pure show of force, Lasquetty said in an interview. Madridfelt mistreated. That explains what happened in May.

As relations unraveled, Madrid President Isabel Diaz Ayuso turned up an hour and a half late for one appointment with Sanchez and walked out of another. When the state of emergency expires on June 21, she will have much more control over the next phase of the capitals reopening.

Sanchez is losing his special powers at a moment when hes struggling for control on various fronts.

On top of the backlash on the streets, the prime minister has found himself embroiled in a fight with the Civil Guard, the countrys biggest police force. One of the forces most senior officerswas fired after it emerged that his officers had prepared a report critical of the governments handling of the coronavirus, prompting cries of interference.

Meanwhile protesters have been openly defying the terms of the lockdown. Those actions that have led to tens of thousands of fines in the rest of the country. But police in Madrid have on the whole turned a blind eye, perhaps wary of inflaming the situation.

If the economic situation gets worse, there is a chance that it may all expand beyond Madrid, says Urquizu.

The opposition is doing all it can to fan the flames and Pablo Iglesias, deputy prime minister and Podemoss leader, is a lightning rod. The scruffy former academic, nicknamed derisively the Ponytail in reference to his trademark long hair, spent time in Caracas advising the Hugo Chavez government before setting up his party.

When the 41-year-old first took his seat in parliament, he provocatively planted a kiss full on the mouth of a male colleague right in front of the conservative economy chief Luis de Guindos, to roars of approval from his party.

In a heated debate in parliament last week, the PPs main spokeswoman Cayetana Alvarez de Toledo dredged up Iglesiass links to the left-wing government that has ravaged Venezuela for a generation. Alvarez de Toledo, an Oxford-educated aristocrat with an exotic-sounding Argentinian accent in Spanish, said the government is seeking to undermine independent state-institutions by appointing cronies and labeled Iglesias the son of a terrorist a reference to his fathers activism during the dictatorship.

You have a plan, its true, its a plan against democracy, Alvarez de Toledo, 45, said. You want to create an authoritarian left-wing regime.

Those arguments mutate as they filter through the protests on the streets of the capital where angry, confused people are trying to process the events of the past few months.

They have done it badly on purpose, said Carmen Corbera, at one protest, a Spanish flag stitched onto the side of her face mask and another pinned to her shoulders like a cape. It was convenient for them to establish the communist regime that Pedro and Pablo want for Spain.

To be clear, there is zero evidence either that the pandemic was deliberately mishandled, or that the government is plotting to set up a communist regime.

A Chavista takeover is not the real threatfor Spain.

The danger is that the countrys entrenched political factions are increasingly inhabiting parallel realities and leaving the country unable to face its mounting challenges. The lines at food banks are growing and in the weeks to come more and more people are likely to be sitting at home, out of work, and looking for someone to blame.

Spain needs a prime minister to revive the battered economy, to stabilize the public finances and then get to work on the difficult process of fixing the democratic system.

But like millions of his countrys people, Sanchez is just trying to get to the end of the month.

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Continued here:
Rage against Spain PM Pedro Sanchez is tearing the nation apart - Hindustan Times

It is advisable to tread lightly when wandering around the minefields of todays culture wars.

Nonetheless, I felt on solid ground in mocking the attempt by Donald Trumps callow press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, to compare her boss to Winston Churchill.

She suggested that Trumps photo op on the steps of St. Johns Episcopal Church, across from the White House, was a leadership moment that ranked with the British prime minister visiting the East End of London during the Blitz in the Second World War.

A moments reflection might have spotted the flaws in her logic.

Trumps trip to the church was only possible after Lafayette Square was cleared of peaceful protesters by security forces using rubber bullets and smoke canisters.

That showed a message of resilience and determination, said McEnany. Like Churchill, we saw him inspecting the bomb damage and that sent a powerful message to the British people.

Proof, if any were required, Trumps self-image is 10 per cent vanity and 90 per cent delusion.

In thought and language, the two men are in different universes.

The president could only dream of a put-down as devastating as Churchills description of obdurate U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles as Dull, Duller, Dulles.

When Churchill visited the East End of London in September 1940, he was followed by large crowds but they were adoring, not belligerent.

I suggested on social media that the comparison was ludicrous; that where Churchill brought encouragement and hope, Trump brings fear, mistrust and hate.

It seemed incontrovertible, like the flow rate of the Ottawa River or the irrelevance of the federal NDP.

But I had innocently roamed into an overlapping Venn diagram of political outrage, only to find my mild indignation at Trump surpassed by the fury of the Churchill-haters.

Journalist Murad Hemmadi said Churchill advocated gassing Indians rebelling against the British Raj in 1919. He was backed by a number of others, one of whom pointed out Churchill signed off on terms at Yalta that consigned tens of millions to Soviet rule.

We were quickly back into the debate that erupted three years ago when the Ontario elementary teachers federation wanted to remove Sir John A. Macdonalds name from public schools.

The comparisons with Churchill are apt.

There are schools bearing his name in at least 10 Canadian cities, as well as dozens of statues. Are we on the brink of an anti-Churchill backlash and demands to see his name stripped from public places?

When the Macdonald controversy was in full swing, Hemmadi wrote an article for Macleans that claimed challenges to the present version of the past were not attempts to erase it, but to make it more complete.

The mission is not to exclude certain people but to more accurately remember them and to re-write peoples who have been purposely excluded from that story into it, he said.

He called Churchill a lionized villain and said marginalized groups are not intent on throwing great men down George Orwells memory hole, but rather on pulling the misdeeds and crimes of those leaders up out of it.

But has any leader been more closely scrutinized, and found more wanting at various stages of his 55-year career in public life than Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill?

He has been roundly criticized for his views on racial hierarchies and eugenics. He did call for gas to be used against uncivilized tribes, though it was closer to tear gas than mustard gas. He was prime minister at the time of the Bengal famine in 1943, when an estimated three million people died and the sub-continent was still exporting rice to the rest of the British Empire. His only possible defence was that he was pre-occupied by the war in Europe.

Churchill considered Gandhi a bad man and an enemy of the Empire and was unperturbed by the prospect of his death. He was widely blamed for the Dardanelles disaster in the First World War, which saw him demoted as First Lord of the Admiralty and consigned to the trenches on the Western Front.

It doesnt need marginalized groups to dig up Churchills misdeeds and mistakes generations of historians have already done their work.

His idiosyncrasies mean he is hard to pin down. As a Conservative, he has been demonized by the left but as biographer Roy Jenkins, the former British Labour minister, noted, he held a lively sympathy for the underdog, particularly against the middle dog, provided, and it was quite a big proviso, that his own position as top dog was unchallenged. He came from the aristocracy but as a Liberal minister, he had a substantial record as a social reformer, particularly on penal reform.

Societys values are changing, in many ways for the better. So does this mean those who are commemorated should change too?

A committee at Yale University created a framework to examine calls to rename public buildings and landmarks, after an outcry at a college named after an architect of Southern secession.

The committee concluded re-naming depended on the name-sakes legacy and whether his or her views were exceptional for the era.

Churchills legacy is apparent.

The historical record should not be re-written to suit political ends

As the plaque on his likeness at Toronto City Hall proclaims: His faith and leadership inspired free men to fight in every quarter of the globe for the triumph of justice and liberty. My father recalled sitting around the radio with his family in Scotland listening to Churchills wireless addresses, and well remembered their power.

As for Churchills views, he was born a Victorian aristocrat and his attitudes on race, class and Empire were entirely typical of the era.

The times are changing and some people would like to promote an alternative version of history that portrays the values and events they hold dear.

But the historical record should not be re-written to suit political ends.

We have not always been at war with Eastasia.

Churchill was the necessary hero at the most troubled moment in modern history.

And Donald Trump is no Winston Churchill.

Email: jivison@postmedia.com | Twitter:

See the rest here:
John Ivison: Donald Trump is no Winston Churchill, and the comparison is ludicrous - National Post

A doctor speaks about events they think will put public health at risk. Instead of responding with gratitude, political officials seek to silence and discredit the doctor. Is this in China, the United States, Canada or a small Norwegian town in Henrik Ibsens 1882 play An Enemy of the People?

These are extraordinary times that require us to come up with new ways to understand and tackle social, economic and health crises. But we can also look to literary texts to help us engage critically with complex social challenges and guide our thinking.

Ibsens play is a telling example of how revisiting classic literature can offer timely, prescient and compelling insights of enduring value. In the play, the character Dr. Stockmann goes public after he discovers that lucrative baths are polluted with a dangerous bacterium. The wrath of town officials and businessmen is swift and fierce.

In December 2019, Chinas Dr. Li Wenliang and his colleagues were among the first to recognize a dangerous new virus. Li was detained and interrogated by local officials for sharing news of the virus through social media and tragically died from the coronavirus on Feb. 7.

Li became a global symbol for how inconvenient expertise may be silenced, although he was posthumously exonerated. National authorities designated him as a martyr the highest official title that can be assigned to a citizen in China who gives their life in the service of the country.

Recently, on this side of the Pacific Ocean, similar patterns have emerged, minus the martyrdom.

In the U.S., Dr. Rick Bright, director of the Biomedical Advanced Research Development Authority (BARDA), had been presiding over the development of a COVID-19 vaccine and was re-assigned.

Bright filed a whistleblower complaint against the Trump administration, alleging that leaders at the Department of Health and Human Services ignored his COVID-19 early warnings. He also said he was fired because he resisted promoting hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as cures.

Brights description of a political culture that favours politics and cronyism over science is the latest evidence that American experts and authorities are not insulated from the vulgar and avaricious reach of the Trump administration. And its here that Ibsens classic presents the clearest analogue to this historical moment.

Bright is a respected, mid-career medical authority who held wide influence over U.S. public health policy, in a similar way as Stockmann does in Ibsens fictional Norwegian town. Brights soft-spoken demeanour differs from Stockmanns more abrasive tone, but the two share a commitment to professional integrity, accountability and the public good that put them at odds with political leaders who prioritize profits over human health and safety.

In the play, Stockmann writes an article for the towns newspaper revealing the state of the baths to the public. When the towns mayor gets word of the forthcoming public disclosure, he immediately confronts Stockmann and implores him to reconsider. The mayor promptly informs the doctor that repairs to the baths would have crippling costs, take two years to complete and destroy the towns economy. The mayor desperately offers that perhaps the situation is not as bad as you represent

Stockmann has a disquieting response:

I tell you it is even worse or at all events it will be in summer, when the warm weather comes.

The mayor ultimately uses his connections and influence to stop the articles publication. In the plays climax, Stockmann opts to reveal the truth at a town hall. His message is received poorly by the audience and he is promptly fired and labelled an enemy of the people.

Similarly, Brights recent congressional testimony warned that America faces the darkest winter in recent human history. One key difference is that Brights voice was not silenced by the media. And while Bright lost his job, his testimony has been positively received by the American public.

At the same time, the politicization of the pandemic has rendered him a target of the rights culture wars, as the debate over economic closures, death counts and now mask-wearing intensifies.

Similarly, the right has recently repudiated Dr. Anthony Fauci as an agent of economic destruction. Faucis implicit and explicit rebukes of Trumps erratic reopening plans have attracted the ire of the reactionary right and of the president himself.

Crucially, Trump has repeatedly used the phrase enemy of the people to attack critical journalism; now the same phrase has been heard at an anti-lockdown protest.

Right-wing networks and advocacy groups are also supporting open the economy protests. Some protestors have accused government or hospital authorities of fabricating the crisis and health-care workers of being stand-in actors. Such tactics are akin to excoriating people in public service as enemies of the people.

In Canada, Conservative MP Derek Sloans racist attack on Dr. Theresa Tam, Canadas Chief Public Health Officer, provides another example of the political subversion of expertise that is at the fulcrum of Ibsens play.

Racialized challenges to experts and reopening-the-economy protests dominated by white people who wield guns and hold racist symbols are about re-affirming white supremacy and defending an inequitable and unjust status quo.

Read more: Inquiry into coronavirus nursing home deaths needs to include discussion of workers and race

So, what then can we learn from this 19th-century play about how to move forward?

At the end of the play, Stockmann rededicates himself to education in the hopes of winning future battles for the public good. He announces to his family hell start a progressive school at the site of his public debasement the town hall to teach the next generation to reject the towns petty thinking and corruption.

This is noteworthy. Li, Bright, Fauci and Tam have educated the public through their public commentary, testimony or actions, in addition to providing scientific expertise. Fauci, for instance, has publicly committed to wearing a face mask to model responsible behaviour and Tam has patiently explained evolving guidelines in Canada on wearing masks.

In turn, we all ought to recommit ourselves to formal and informal education that emphasizes responsible citizenship, the value of inclusive but rigorous knowledge and the importance of collaboration and, at times, personal sacrifice in the interest of the common good.

Such steps are essential to resisting the plague of neoliberal economic expediency and competitive individualism that endangers so many aspects of our social and environmental life. And perhaps now is also an ideal time to be reading and teaching more Ibsen.

View post:
It's easy to become an enemy of the people when speaking truth in historic drama, and today - The Conversation CA