Cassandra Voices

Tag: from

  • Political Art – from Banksy to Weimar

    A reliable source, who happens to be representing him, now informs me that Banksy is to be prosecuted over his RCJ mural. This form of artistic censorship, leads me to consider the important role that art has played in terms of political commentary, and how some of the masterpieces in this genre resonate with contemporary events.

    Many of the atrocities of our time are today hidden from view, as computer game technology permits de-humanised genocide. War reporters are often banned from reporting on the ground, or if they do they are generally ’embedded,’ as tools of propaganda. There is no Robert Capa or Don McCullen visible in this age. As a result, death and barbarism are remote, with disinformation omnipresent. Thus we rely on an artist such as Banksy to redress the imbalance, and provoke a moral response.

    Today we can, at best, only partially bear witness to our reality. The news media offers up a version akin to a flame throwing shadows on the wall of a cave. Previously art engaged more closely with politics, but today few artists speak to our time.

    Many great artists throughout history have of course remained non-political and focused on the human condition. Moreover, political art often veers into dogmatism – recall socialist realism or Italian fascist art. One must carefully distinguish art from propaganda. Satire and caricature walk an uneasy path in this respect.

    The origins of European art lie in the depiction of mainly Biblical scenes, which yielded little of an overtly political nature, although the proton-surrealist work of Hieronymus Bosch especially ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ (1490) speak of a world of chaos and brutality. This is not dissimilar to our present universe. Depictions of hell provide a commentary on social entropy and evil.

    Among the pioneers in depicting ordinary human life was the Flemish master Peter Breughal the Elder. Scenes of social gatherings and festivities contain subtle and unobtrusive political messages. So, for example in the ‘Census at Bethlehem’ (1566) you have to look very closely to find Jesus and Mary arriving in on a donkey and trap amid representations of peasant life. His paintings provide hints into the nature of the institutions and practices of the time, and the plight of poor folk.

    In Renaissance Italy Titian and Raphael’s Cardinals often show cruelty or majestic temporal power. In those hardened faces one often gets a sense of that time. The demonic religious paintings of Caravaggio are almost a textbook exercise in conspiracy, murder and intrigue. How much fun would he have hid with the Jeffrey Epstein revelations!?

    Mary and Joseph are registered in the census at Bethlehem.

    Durer and Beyond

    The only Renaissance giant who is markedly different, and often avowedly political by way of mysterious and hidden social commentaries, is the great German painter Albrecht Dürer. It is the woodcuts and the lithographs where the apocalyptic commentary is most evident. The fourth woodcut of his Apocalypse cycle ‘The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’, (1497) depicts the first four of seven seals that must be opened for the Apocalypse to begin, These are Conquest, War, Famine, and Death. All are now evident internationally.

    In the famous engraving ‘Knight Death and Devil’ (1513) the knight seems resigned, and his facial features are downcast with the devil enveloping him. It is believed the portrayal is a literal, though pointed, celebration of the knight’s Christian faith, and of the ideals of humanism threatened or protected by the fox.

    The engraving Melancholia (1514) is a magus of ideas, clearly influenced by paganism, alchemy, and astrology – the dark demonological arts. It is also a cold mathematical work and exercise in numerology. It contains a brooding central figure, best represented as an allegory of the limits of reason, and a personal or collective descent into madness when reason no longer makes sense. To anyone scrolling through Twitter on a daily basis this may sound all-too-familiar.

    William Hogarth’s tremendous political engravings are also worth mentioning in respect of contemporary afflictions. His most famous print, Gin Lane (1751) graphically depicts infanticide, drunken oblivion, disinterment of corpses, starvation, beggary, poverty, impalement, suicide, debt, debauchery and the collapsing buildings of society. Also notable are his anti-corruption election cartoons such as An Election Entertainment (1757).

    Hogarth’s only contemporary competitor was James Gilroy and his famous ‘Plum Pudding in Danger’ (1805), which seems most apt for our present world, dividing into competing trading blocks. In this Napoleon and Pitt divide the world up and gorge themselves. Napoleon is cutting away a slice of land to the east of the British Isles marked ‘Europe’, but his piece of land is much smaller than Pitt’s portion of sea. The inscription reads: ‘state gourmets taking a little supper’. Greenland, Ukraine take your pick.

    Goya is the greatest political artist of them all in my view. In his oeuvre we encounter a treasure trove of commentary for our time. First and foremost, there is the incredible execution painting ‘The Third of May’ (1808), revisited by Manet, as well as lithographs of torture and brutality. His work curiously presages contemporary debauchery and cannibalism, societal and solipsistic that is.

    French Revolution

    In the same period there is the great portrait painter of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era Jacque-Louis David. Some might consider his Neo-Classicisal style a little austere, but it’s nonetheless worthwhile visiting the main gallery in Bruges just to see The Death of Marat (1793).

    David was a propagandist for the Jacobins. Marat, the Montagnard faction, was murdered by Charlotte Corday, who supported the opposing Girondins. She blamed Marat for his involvement in numerous executions that had taken place during the Terror quite correctly, but the painting strengthened support for the Montagnards as David successfully presented him as a tireless revolutionary betrayed by conniving forces. A martyr covered in a holy glow, taking his last breaths, with revolutionary pen in hand.

    Indeed, the Reign of Terror only heightened after this painting’s release and after the Revolution, Jacques-Louis David shifted allegiance to the Emperor Napoleon, for whom he produced fawning political art including The Coronation of Napoleon (1807). Admirers of the Marat painting should read Albert Camus’s The Rebel (1951) as to the true Marat and the extremist terror.

    A near contemporary of David, Delacroix of course creates the famous painting of the flag and revolution Liberty Leading the People (1830), but we should be cautious about that French notion in its unrestrained form, certainly at this juncture, although the argument for protest and change are greater than ever.

    Death of Marat by David

    Greatest Epoch

    The greatest epoch in my view for political art was just after World War I. Many artists experienced the devastation of the trenches, and used this to condemn bellicose militarism. In the Weimar Republic we find the apogee of political art and social commentary through caricaturists such as George Grosz, and Otto Dix. No wonder the Nazis considered this degenerate art.

    If you look at Grosz’s inelegantly titled Pillars of Society (1926) – with the superior subtitle Shit for Brains – you will see one of the paragons of virtue, with, well, shit for brains. It anticipates disaster as the economy collapses, while the Nazi judges and commissars worked hand-in-glove with their jackboot associates.

    The etchings and paintings of Otto Dix also perfectly capture the collapse, most obviously The Match Seller (1920), The War Triptych or the engraving Stormtroopers Advance Under Gas (1924). These are among the greatest anti-war works. He survived the Somme and intellectual pretentiousness to produce paintings of the calibre of Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden (1926).

    Close to the Prada hangs the most monumental work of political art. To see it in the flesh is extraordinary. That is Picasso’s fatal depiction of the massacre of the innocents during the Spanish Civil War Guernica (1937). It now hangs symbolically now over Gaza or The Ukraine as a rebuke, as is the core symbol the dove of peace.

    The Spanish Civil War produced many other great works of art particularly the photography of Robert Capa, which is disturbing in its brutality, as are the later pictures of Cartier Bresson after the liberation of Paris where collaborators were made examples of. Likewise, the extremism of our time cuts in all sorts of ways, as does the demonisation of those we disagree with.

    Other great war photographs show the aftermath of Hiroshima and the liberation of the Concentration Camps, documented in Resnais documentary Night and Fog (1945). Unforgettable also is the photography of the bullet to the head of the Viet Kong activist. Even in this de-sensitised social media age that still has the capacity to shock.

    Picasso’s Guernica.

    Animation and Cartoons

    Animation substantively begins with Walt Disney, and his films are at times wonderful and at other times an expression of crass American values. The figure of Cruella de Ville from The Dalmatians appears crucial to our time, conveying the theme of the murder of the innocent for personal self-aggrandisement. A few contemporary figures would appear well equipped for the role, Ghislaine Maxwell in particular.

    The greatest cartoonist of all was the Belgian Hergé (George Prosper Remi), who has been accused, unfairly, of fascism for writing for Le Soir during wartime. This is an accusation almost as absurd as that levelled against P.G. Wodehouse, which is not to say that the character of the creator of the immortal Tintin is unimpeachable.

    Literary critic Jean-Marie Apostolidès identifies the character of Tintin as representing a personification of the ‘New Youth’ concept promoted by the European far-right. Indeed, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (1930) was a work of anti-socialist propaganda, but then, in fairness, Tintin in America was designed as a work of anti-Americanism, highly critical of capitalism, commercialism, and industrialisation.

    Many would counter that Hergé was far from right-wing, as exemplified by his condemnation of racism in the United States in the introduction to Tintin in America (1932), and that the wonderful The Blue Lotus (1936) took a distinctly anti-imperialist stance, unlike Tintin in The Congo (1931), which has shades of Colonel Kurz. During the fascist era he did not join the far-right Rexist Party, later asserting that he ‘had always had an aversion to it’ and that ‘to throw my heart and soul into an ideology is the opposite of who I am.’

    From his earliest years, Hergé was openly critical of racism. He lambasted the pervasive racism of U.S. society in the prelude to Tintin in America published in Le Petit Vingtième on 20 August 1931, and ridiculed racist attitudes toward the Chinese in The Blue Lotus.

    Whatever the ambiguity, the art is riveting as Vietnamese-American novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen observed: ‘Hergé’s work is deeply flawed, and yet riveting narratively and aesthetically. I have forgotten all the well-intentioned, moralistic children’s literature that I have read, but I haven’t forgotten Hergé.’

    Of moralism and cartoons Roald Dahls illustrated by Quentin Blakes books are less ambiguous and more unsettling as portrayals of human evil and the macabre. not least the character of Willie Wonka. His character anticipates the soma-induced greed of our age.

    Animation has of course transmogrified into manga and anime, where the master is Miyzaki. In My Neighbour Totora (1988) the forest is warding off the evil spirits. Gai regenerating as when the industrial demons are confronted and beaten in his ecological masterpiece Princess Mononoke (1997). A little spring blossoms.

    Preserve his Anonymity!

    The important role of art as a form of political commentary should be re-asserted, and the forthcoming prosecution (if my source is to be believed) of Banksy sets a very dangerous precedent. It sends out a clear message to other artists, and will have a chilling effect in all likelihood. At the very least Banksy’s anonymity should be preserved in the event of him being prosecuted. Very few comment in a visual form so presciently on our times. He is the greatest political muralist since Diego Riveria, and the world needs more, not less, political art as a way of vitalising people and as an antidote to propaganda.

    Feature Image: The Plumb-pudding in danger; – or – State Epicures taking un Petit Souper by James Gillray

  • Review: Displaced in Gaza: Stories from the Gaza Genocide

    Gaza’s history since the Nakba of 1948 is punctuated by waves of forced displacement. The enclave has been the epicentre of Palestinian refugees since 1948, having welcomed Palestinians from all over the colonised territories. Since Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza began in October 2023 its entire population of over two million, in a territory of just 151 km2, has been rendered internally displaced persons.

    Displaced in Gaza: Stories from the Gaza Genocide, Edited by Yousef M Aljamal, Norma Hashim, Noor Nabulsi, and Zoe Jannuzi (Haymarket Books, 2025) is a collection of twenty-seven testimonies of Palestinians living in Gaza enduring the genocide. An immediate response upon reading through the chapter titles is: to what extent have we become desensitised as spectators or activists? And, moreover, what is the link, or disconnect, between this wider perception of a genocide occurring and a person living through it?

    It begs the question, when reading through the testimonies, after more than two years how much can our mind take before the experiences themselves, narrated by survivors, merely become background noise? With the daily recounting of Israel’s kill toll being reduced to statistical data – a roll call similar to the reporting of Covid cases that gradually desensitised the listener – can our minds link back to the human tragedy?

    Of course we should. For the chapter titles speak of a shattered, mundane reality. Birthdays morph into atrocities. Education is ruptured by bombs. A woman is widowed by targeted assassination. A husband is killed while searching for food. Entire families are wiped out. The details are so mundane, so quotidian, yet genocide is an immense, unforgivable laceration in both its experience and the memory if it. That memory should, and must, extend to the rest of us. Narratives can combat desensitisation, as long as we know what to prioritise.

    In the foreword to the book, Ahmad Alnaouq writes:

    Everyone on Gaza is now a citizen journalist, determined more than ever to confront and challenge the Western media narrative – the demonising and dehumanising of the Palestinians, the lack of agency recognised, and the distortion of truth.

    This collection of testimonies directly challenges the Western hegemonic narrative which, even while reporting the official genocide kill toll, still finds ways of sanitising bloodshed and diminishing the humanity of Palestinian survivors. The kill toll is represented in two ways – as a statistic that either supports sporadic calls for accountability or offered in support of Israel “finishing the job.”

    Yousef Al-Jamal references the Palestinian poet and academic Refaat Alareer, who was killed by Israel in 2023, and for whom storytelling was an integral component of Palestinian history.

    A Poem for Refaat Alareer

    ‘For centuries,’ AL-Jamal writes, ‘Palestinians have tended the rich oral history of Palestine, preserving cultural heritage, including folktales and stories about the land.’ This collection of narratives from the Gaza genocide is a contribution to Palestine’s oral history, and one that, due to its international dissemination, cannot be destroyed by Israel.

    The personal narratives in this book speak of a disrupted simplicity, but not a disrupted normality. This includes death or killing, displacement, hunger, the tribulations of living and enduring life under a highly militarised genocide. We find the disruption of education and attempts to teach, as well as the full spectrum of forced displacement including of a Nakba survivor, along with attempts to rebuild a semblance of normality even as Israel destroys Gaza’s infrastructure. Even before the genocide, Palestinians in Gaza faced immense hardships and restrictions which were normalised into manageable deprivation, even by international institutions.

    For many Palestinians, as evidenced by several contributors to this anthology, the large scale killing meant that families were welcoming other relatives into their midst. At times it was orphaned children, as was the case with Aisha Osama Abu Ajwa, a mother of four children who began taking care of two children whose parents were killed when Israel bombed an entire residential block. In her description of forced displacement, Abu Ajwa writes, ‘The children witnessed dozens of martyrs’ bodies strewn on the ground. They cried intensely, while blood covered the streets.’

    ‘I hope war ends soon. Eight months of continuous killing exhausts us,’ writes Fidaa Fathi Abu Yousef, whose son was killed while riding a bike just 800m away from the family home.

    Another recurring horror is Palestinians fleeing to supposedly safe zones, while Israel bombs move in the direction the displaced are heading, leaving not only a trail of displacement but bloodshed. The killing of Palestinian children, as described by the narrators of this genocide, encompass all ages. The visibility of Israel killing children is magnified when the writers note the dead children’s ages. Thus removed from the general term, the children take on meaningful identities; allowing the reader to recognise how Israel has attempted to obliterate Palestinians through its killing of the younger generations. Children killed on their birthday, children killed while sleeping, the tragedy is portrayed through the eyes of the living, bereaved and those unable to process their loss due to a perpetual quest for survival.

    Their attempt to persist in living instead of perishing at times makes the writing of these recollections and experiences become slightly devoid of emotion. Emotion almost becomes a luxury when surviving a genocide, but the almost matter-of-fact narratives in this collection make grief all the more important, not only to grasp but experience. Israel has not only wiped entire families out and lacerated others beyond repair, it has also obliterated entire psychological processes that are necessary when experiencing traumatic events. In the midst of a genocide, Palestinians are unable to experience the grieving process.

    Incessant worry about family members displaced in different locations around Gaza is another hardship Palestinians must endure. Without means of communication for the most part, relatives receive no news of each other. ‘Gaza is small, yet we have not seen each other since the war began. We have not reunited. I know nothing of my sons. My life’s dream is to reunite with them in one home before my death,’ Yusra Salem Abu Awad states in her narrative.

    The script flips to a twelve-year-old boy, Youssef Qawash, writing about how he has lost his father and uncle in a bombing and not knowing whether his father’s remains will ever be discovered. ‘My uncles have searched in Deir al-Balah and Maghazi, but no one knows where my father is buried,’ Qawash ponders, noting that his father might still be buried under the rubble of destroyed houses.

    Ireland and Palestine: A Crucial Vote Awaits

    The ramifications of starvation are reflected in Najlaa Al-Kafarna’s story. Her husband was killed while searching for food for the family on the third day of the genocide, which was their second day of forced displacement. Six other relatives were also massacred in their search for food. Her special needs son, Muhammad, is malnourished and lacks medication and physical therapy sessions.

    Throughout most of the narratives in the book, the cry for food recurs. So does the lack of basic necessities, and the wearing of the same clothes through different seasons. We find the rationing of flour, and the shelling of a school while forcibly displaced Palestinians are baking bread. The deprivation is exacerbated by employment being almost non-existent during the genocide. Profound mental health issues as a result of ongoing trauma (Palestinians cannot speak of post-traumatic stress disorder) are also a common experience.

    ‘This war is larger than the 1948 Nakba. I am 91 years old,’ Mohammed Abdul Jabbar Abu Seif says. Aged fifteen, he experienced the first Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine and he notes the differences between the specific targeting of Zionist paramilitaries in 1948, and the widespread destruction of the current genocide in Gaza. One of the few remaining survivors of the Nakba, he narrates his experience of displacement in 1948 and how his family settled in Gaza in the Nuseirat camp. ‘My testament to my children and grandchildren is to never leave Gaza. We cannot leave Gaza, and we cannot migrate again,’ Abu Seif asserts, noting the miscalculation in 1948 of an eventual return and of leaving to save their lives.

    Narrating the Israeli colonial aggressions he has experienced throughout his life, he describes the genocide as ‘a war of extermination and destruction of humans and nature.’ The description is far more tangible than the word genocide will ever be, particularly now that the international community has diluted its meaning to preserve Israel’s impunity. A destruction of humans and nature is something that anyone anywhere in the world can easily envisage. This narrative brings the consequences of destruction, as well as fear, to the reader’s mind.

    The entirety of this anthology also serves to highlight what a vibrant society Palestinians in Gaza had created before the genocide. Education stands out in particular as one of their achievements. Indeed the tenacity to attempt to study and teach throughout the genocide is remarkable. Ambitions are currently stilted, but dreams are still cherished, An awareness of the many hurdles to overcome in order to create a healthy society post-genocide is also to the fore in many narratives in this collection. As the UNSC hands over the rebuilding of Gaza to the U.S. administration, thus prolonging the genocide, these testimonies will stand in opposition to the U.S.-Israeli narrative. More importantly, they are a sliver of testimony from Palestinians that neither the U.S. nor Israel, have the power to annihilate.

    Feature Image: Ahsanul Haque Z

  • Banksy and Protest Rights: The View from The Robing Room

    As I sauntered from the Old Bailey past the RCJ the Banksy painting caricaturing a judge attacking a protester was no longer even a ghostly shadow, but it very much remains in the public domain, after reports emerged that it had been reported as criminal damage.

    On September 25, on Old Brompton Road, a comprehensive exhibition of Banksy’s work opened, which brazenly included the mural stencilled onto a different surface. This raised all sorts of issues about the commercialization of art and the edge of protest, not to mention whether or not he should be prosecuted.

    Based on Fiat Justicia, Mr Bansky faces prosecution for the recent RCJ Mural as criminal damage. I also hear he may be charged with being in contempt of court, leading to his long anonymity being exposed. Being named and shamed is another feature of our hysterical times.

    Recently, a bit like the opening to a P.J. Wodehouse novel, an erudite discussion was held among learned friends in the robing room of Hove Crown Court, steered by the most venerable member, as to whether the t-shirts, now selling fast, of this auspicious work should be deemed the proceeds of crime. The consensus was that in the U.K., post-conviction, the seller is responsible. Perhaps that is fanciful, but you never know.

    Policy considerations were also broached, such as whether in prosecuting him would you create a martyr that would lead to more t-shirts being sold? Would the state then be complicit in facilitating crime not least by increasing his revenues.

    Charles Dickens, his work the subject of many copyright violations and thieving particularly by Americans in his lifetime, expressed the view in Bleak House that it was far, far better to have nothing to do with the law. Well, it is certainly far better for the law to have nothing to do with Banksy, or is it?

    The consensus in the robing room was that given he is profiting from the mural, there was a strong argument for a significant fine, with the trial perhaps being conducted through in camera proceedings, preserving his anonymity, with any receipts being diverted back into the criminal justice system.

    Further, the venerable member concluded that he was inciting protest. The discussion took place over an entire lunch, and if any of us were briefed it would have occupied many days of court time, but should it occupy any court time at all is the real question?

    Mr Banksy, I am reliably informed, arrived at around 4-5am masquerading as a delivery truck driver. There was just enough light to use his meticulously prepared stencil. It is not now simply guerilla art, but increasingly reflective on worrying times. Many people are in on the act.

    The recreated version of the mural by Diiego Rivera, known as Man, Controller of the Universe.

    Diego Rivera

    Among the greatest painters of murals was Diego Rivera. His famous mural in the Rockefeller Center in New York was taken down because of his cheeky insertion of Lenin contrary to the edicts of one of the citadels of world capitalism. They destroyed it in violation of copyright law. An integrity right protects a work from being destroyed, mutilated or defaced or put it in an inappropriate setting.

    Examples of violations include colorizing a black and white film such as The Maltese Falcon (1941), or including ad breaks during the Monty Python parrot sketch, or inserting cover ups of nudity, such as even in the Sistine Chapel, but outright destruction is rare. Indeed, there was uproar in Berlin when some of the murals on the Berlin wall were destroyed.

    The Banksy mural was an insertion of overtly political content in a work of art, and the destruction or censorship of protest art has always been a feature of oppressive regimes. So, was the reaction disproportionate or ill-thought out?

    Mr Banksy is a national treasure, and frankly as great an artists as any in England since Lucien Freud. I suspect any prosecution will backfire or has, revealing institutional incompetence and hubris.

    The Banksy mural has significant political implications and presents authoritarian judges and the state cracking down on protest, not least in response to legitimate public outrage over Gaza, but what’s good for the goose is also for the gander. It is legitimate political art, but the regulation of protest as opposed to protest art is more complex now.

    Jasper Johns’s ‘Flag’, Encaustic, oil and collage on fabric mounted on plywood,1954-55.

    Protest Rights.

    The flag of St George is also copyright protected, and very similar to the flag of Switzerland and indeed the Red Cross, but it has been traduced by maniacs spreading hatred and division. The visibility of the flag has increased significantly across England.

    It is now the case that English, Irish and indeed American national identity is as fragile as the American flag fractured and loose as in the Jasper Johns painting. The Irish tricolour is also a symbol of unity of green and orange, but is now potentially divisive. Extreme nationalism, along with racism, is one of the scourges of our time. It is a reversion in my view to the 1930’s – symptomatic of a new dark age.

    There is, of course, a marked distinction between genuine patriotism and the revival of tribalistic, exclusionary and racist nationalism. Not all patriotism to reference Jeremy Bentham is the refuge of the scoundrel.

    But racism and chauvinistic nationalism go hand in hand and generally morph into fascism. The target is the excluded other, now the immigrant. Nigel Farage is now proposing to remove those without a settled status.

    Timothy Snyder recently came off the fence in On Freedom (2024) labelling the alt-right fascists, after considering the etymology of the term. But is he also an enabler given some of the neoconservative views he has expressed?

    Let us cease bandying about anodyne terms like crypto-fascism and use language with precision and exactitude. There are now fascists and a gathering mob, but this has been engineered by, and is under the control of, others. Who then are the enablers is the crucial question?

    Is Banksy an enabler? I am not so sure

    Source: BBC.

    London Protests

    On the streets of central London recently I was reminded of three things: John Reed and Ten Days That Shook the World (1919), his blow-by-blow account of the Russian Revolution; the scene in Cabaret (1972) where, semi-fictitiously, Christopher Isherwood decides to leave Berlin after hearing a version of Horst Wessel being sung. Finally, surveying the hate-filled eyes I was also reminded of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935).

    I would argue that a similar species of Irish hatred is more vicious but far less powerful in electoral terms, bu there is now a real danger of the extreme right winning power in the U.K..

    Dozens of police officers were injured at the protests, yet only twenty-five arrests were made.  The counter demonstrators, understandably smaller in number, were non-violent, and let us be clear that a right to protest is intrinsic to democracy. Peaceful protest that is, an idea as old as Gandhi or Martin Luther King. Yet there were 500 arrests made at the peaceful Gaza protests in early October.

    This casts the right to protest into doubt, or at the very least demonstrates a need for greater regulation and proportionality. The insurrectionist riots and arson attacks on accommodation related to asylum seekers in Ireland in recent times is also a case in point, demonstrating the necessity of regulating (violent) protest.

    The Just Oil protesters, with others to come, were convicted under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 (PCA) of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance, in response to the M25 motorway disruption in November 2022. Judge Hehir dismissed the defence of mere political opinion and belief as excluded from the present English legislation.

    That decision undoubtedly opens a dangerous vista, but the crucial question is that of whether a demonstration potentially causes harm, and that one clearly could have caused harm, and it certainly caused a significant furore and inconvenience.

    “Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.”

    Orange lily

    In the famous common law prosecution orange lily case Humphries v O’ Connor (1864) plucking an orange order lily from a woman in the nationalist area of Belfast was deemed a justifiable police act and regulation of protest, as the offending lily had the potential to cause a breach of the peace. This occurs when an individual causes harm, or if it is likely that they will cause harm to another individual or property, or if it puts another person in fear of being harmed.

    As Shakespeare put it in Sonnet 94:

    For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
    Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

    But what harm or public nuisance has Banksy caused? He has frankly adorned RCJ with better artwork outside than there is inside. Is it really an incitement to protest in contravention of the law or a protest to survive?

    Ronald Dworkin, towards the end of his career, wrote an article on the Right to Ridicule peculiarly appropriate to Banksy. There are, for sure, limits, such as Enoch Burke silently or not so silently protesting outside his school. He is not an artist and most decidedly frankly a nuisance, disturbing children being educated. So perhaps certain forms of protest should be consigned to Mountjoy. But there are also demonstrators from Stop Oil, Gaza Extinction Rebellion residing, perhaps excessively, in custody in the U.K.. Now, perhaps a great artist in will be in there next. But that mural was created before 150,000 people turned up in central London.

    The great political artist of our time, a private and ostensibly decent man, should not be publicly prosecuted for making legitimate points of criticism, with a drawing that Goya Picasso, Schiele or indeed Hergé would have been proud of. Hergé’s TIN TIN books were about the Manichean divide between good and evil. So who is the demon today, the contemporary Captain Haddock?

    Banksy deserves an anonymous knighthood not public humiliation. He should be known by his self-designation and not outed by a magistrate’s court.

    Whether he should pay a fine for profiting commercially from the mural is a different question. After all, would he not approve of charges being pressed against the fascist mob that attacked the police?  Perhaps any proceeds should go to police wellness programmes?

    In the film Cabaret the Isherwood character says: “do you really think you can control them?” Well, Banksy do you? And are you encouraging them or inciting the mob, the robbing room sagely discussed.

    It is crucial to realize that the Populist alt-right and indeed at times the extreme left have served to reduce speech and protest rights in an increasingly vigilante age, and now use protest to destroy democracy. So be careful about admonitions of judicial crackdowns even through art. For many are using democracy to destroy the social democratic consensus. And fringe leftist protests such as Just Oil are not much better.

    So, the legal arguments about disproportionately cracking down on violent or even peaceful protests certainly are no longer as clear-cut as the mural might suggest.

    In the robing room the venerable member concluded that perhaps an arbitral solution might involve a private settlement, i.e. a charitable gift. But none of that settles the regulation of the right to protest, which is now increasingly fragile.


    Feature Image: Banksy mural, 8 September 2025.

  • Managing Risk in Psychedelic Assisted Therapy: Lessons from Adventure Sports

    I spent twenty years working as an adventure sports guide.  In my early twenties, I was a whitewater guide on rivers like the Zambezi and White Nile in Africa. In my thirties I worked as a mountain leader, guiding trekking expeditions to Kilimanjaro,  Everest base camp, the Andes and the Himalayas. While it may seem that those working in such fields may be risk-takers, and it may have been true about me in my early twenties, the reality is adventure sports guides are constantly assessing risk, and are in some ways hyper-attuned to risk.

    For the past six years, as a psychotherapist and co-founder of Inwardbound psilocybin retreats in the Netherlands, almost a thousand people have come through our retreat processes. This article explores my perspective on risk from these differing viewpoints. While it may seem that these are very different worlds, I believe there are a lot of similarities between managing risk in adventure sports and in psychedelic assisted therapy.

    My own personal story is one of outward bound to inward bound- at the age of about thirty due to a series life crises (heartbreak, injuries and tragedies I witnessed in the outdoors) I began to look at more inward self-reflective practises such as meditation, yoga and therapy, which slowly and over time, led me to the work I am doing now, not in a planned way, but through the path of my own lived experience.

    As my time working as an outdoor guide was coming to an end, I began to be much more interested in adventure therapy than adventure sports. ‘Being in nature’ rather than ‘doing in nature’. This period coincided with my training as a psychotherapist and moving towards psychedelic assisted therapy.

    Since I was a child, there is something in me that was drawn to exploring the boundaries of my known world, and to going first, more by accident than design, whether that was the first descent of a whitewater river in Iran, or setting up Ireland’s first psychedelic therapy organization. Why that is, I am not sure, but it is in my nature, and I enjoy helping others explore their own personal limitations too and to grow beyond the boundaries of their known world. I do this work with psychedelics motivated by a belief, from my own lived experience and from what I have witnessed, that this work has the potential to relieve human suffering and improve people’s lives.

    On the Nature of Risk

    Life is inherently risky. We make decisions every day to take risks, and few would like to live in a zero risk world. Often, the most significant and rewarding achievements in our lives involve a degree of risk – whether falling in love or starting a business. But today we live in a very risk averse society. In other societies and cultures, through necessity, a higher degree of risk can be seen as acceptable.

    Scouting a rapid on the Blue Nile, Ethiopian highlands 2004.

    It is also true to say that as adventure sports guides or as psychedelic assisted therapists, we have an ethical duty of care to our clients. And so we also must protect ourselves and our clients, especially people who are vulnerable, from taking on too much risk.

    1. Psychedelic-assisted therapy is inherently risky.

    There are certain risks with psychedelic assisted therapy that do not come, or are greatly lessened, in other forms of therapy. These risks include the risk of psychosis or spiritual emergency (kundalini awakening), Hallucination-Persistent Perception Disorder, headaches, nausea, anxiety, dissociation, having a disappointing or underwhelming trip, the increase levels of transference and projection, ontological shock, the altering of metaphysical beliefs or spiritual beliefs, and the risk of being traumatized by a very challenging psychedelic experience. The more serious risks listed here are rare, but they do exist.

    Psychedelic-assisted therapy also has the potential to be, perhaps, more rewarding and beneficial than other forms of therapy. Therefore, we need to create a model of access that minimizes risks and maximizes benefits. We also need to take a critical attitude to what Timmy Davis of Psilocybin Access Rights calls “a hypertrophied risk aversion”.

    We witness this frequently on our retreats, where sometimes people have emotional breakthroughs and  process traumas that have been unprocessed for years or decades,  processing the ‘frozen present ’of trauma as Dr Ivor Browne called it. We often see incredible transformations on our retreats. Physical transformations- literally people looking different afterwards, like a heavy weight had been lifted off them. The stories of transformation and rebirth and redemption. The deep, real, authentic gratitude. Giving voice to those whose voice had been lost or forgotten. An inner change from ” a sense of hopelessness to a sense of hope”, as one of our clients put it on a recent integration call.

    The question, then, is how best to balance the risk/ reward ratio?  If psychedelic assisted has potentially life-changing therapeutic benefits,  what level of risk is ethically tolerable?

    1. We need, as a field, to accept the reality of these risks, not deny them or hide them, and to learn how best to mitigate them.

    There is sometimes a tendency in the ‘psychedelic renaissance’  for proponents of psychedelic assisted therapy to be messianical. It would be more prudent for us to acknowledge and accept the reality of these risks and take steps to mitigate them. We need, as a field, to be more open about talking about adverse experiences. Our job as those working in the field is to define, acknowledge, communicate and mitigate risks as best we can.

    1. The difference between risk and consequences

    Researchers such as Professor David Nutt have demonstrated that psilocybin, for example, has a very low harm score compared to other drugs. While the risks involved in working therapeutically with psychedelics may be low, the consequences may, on rare occasions, be high. It is important to distinguish between the likelihood or probability of a risk occurring, and the consequence or severity of that risk, which may be minor or major.

    Blue Nile, 2004

    In adventure sports environments, risk assessments fall within several broad categories, known as the risk likelihood/ severity matrix. This framework may be helpful for the field of psychedelic assisted therapy when thinking about risk. It is also important to consider potential benefits when talking about risk, and to consider the difference between perceived risk, and actual risk. There is also a clear distinction in risk assessment when making personal decisions, and when leading a group in the outdoors.

    Risk Likelihood/Severity Matrix

    a) The first category is low risk likelihood and low consequences. We could say micro-dosing falls into this category. Teaching novices in an adventure sports environment should fall into this category. In terms of the difference between perceived risk and actual risk, sometimes beginners learning a sport may perceive a high level of risk in a situation where the actual risk is extremely low, learning to climb on an indoor climbing wall, for example. Likewise in psychedelic assisted therapy, sometimes participants can present with increased levels of perceived risk, fear of the unknown. Managing people’s fears, anxieties and expectations is a vital part of guiding in the outdoors, as it is in psychedelic assisted therapy.

    b) The second category is low risk and medium or high consequence. I would put most psychedelic assisted therapy, when done in a carefully controlled set and setting, in this category. Guiding a group on Kilimanjaro would fit into this category. Statistically, Kilimanjaro is a very safe mountain for an almost 6000m peak, but, on rare occasions, the consequences can be high (heart attack or high altitude pulmonary or cerebral edema, which can be fatal).

    Kilimanjaro, 2018.

    c) The third category is high risk likelihood and low consequence. For example, climbing a challenging bouldering problem where the likelihood of falling is very high, but the consequences, falling a few meters on a protective bouldering mat, very low, at most causing a sprained ankle.

    c) And the fourth category is high risk likelihood, high consequence. This last category is usually reserved for people at the peak of their ability taking personal responsibility for their decisions who want to challenge their limits. This last category is unsuitable when guiding a group in an adventure sports environment, unless guiding at a very high end, such as guiding an expedition to K2, and would be unsuitable for psychedelic assisted therapy.

    A version of the risk likelihood/severity matrix.
    1. On the importance of screening

    Careful screening can lessen the likelihood of certain risks occurring. Screening and preparation was also very important in adventure sports, especially when guiding treks to remote high altitude locations, making sure people had the required level of fitness and no major health contraindications. On our psilocybin retreats we have recently been turning away approximately 60% of applicants. While this is necessary and makes sense from a risk management perspective, it is challenging from a business perspective, and also leaves a significant group of people in need of help without a therapeutic pathway. But we do this to reduce the possibility for ourselves, and our clients, from taking on things that we or they cannot handle.

    We work with what we call the ‘walking wounded’, the average human being with their hopes and fears and traumas, not with people in deep psychological distress or who are very unwell. Such individuals may be better off served in a medical model with more specialized care. It is also important for us to be aware of our limitations.

    However, careful screening is not foolproof, as sometimes clients do not disclose, or perhaps are unaware of,  or are in denial about, relevant psychological or medical issues. People sometimes can lie, even to themselves, especially if they are in deep need of help.

    Sometimes participants present on a retreat in a very different psychological mindset they presented with during screening and preparation.  We have found other factors than the usual contraindications to be relevant, such as presenting with an overwhelmed nervous system or in the midst of a major life crisis.

    One of the challenges of working with psychedelics is dealing with the unknowns of the unconscious. By definition, we do not know the contents of our unconscious mind. Despite careful preparation, sometimes people have experiences that they did not expect or were unprepared for.

    It may be that certain substances such as 5 meo DMT or iboga have higher risk profiles than, say, psilocybin. It may also be that certain substances have greater potential benefits for high risk cohorts of people,  such as iboga/ibogaine for severe addiction, and ketamine for suicidality,  which means the risk-benefit equation is different for those substances.

    I believe that the risk of being traumatized by a challenging psychedelic experience can be mitigated by skillful and dedicated integration. I have found that helping people find meaning in their suffering can change what was previously seen as a very negative experience into a positive therapeutic one. One senior therapist in the US  told me that he believed almost anything could be held therapeutically, depending on the capacity of the therapeutic team and the strength of the therapeutic container. While this may be true, it does not take into account just how challenging it can be to hold very difficult therapeutic processes for the therapists and participants involved.

    1. Informed consent

    One part of managing risk is making sure clients are aware of, and give their consent to taking on, the risks involved. One challenge is that it is difficult to fully communicate the changes that may occur as a result of a psychedelic experience to those who have never had a psychedelic experience. Perhaps some form of standardized consent procedure could be worth developing.

    1. We also need to acknowledge that sometimes there will be consequences as a result of those risks, and come up with ways of dealing with those consequences.

    As a field, we need to accept that despite careful screening and preparation, on occasion things may go wrong. The parallels with adventure sport are prescient. In the outdoors, despite careful management of risks, occasionally things go wrong. Over a 20 year period of working as an outdoor guide, especially in the dynamic environment of whitewater rivers, I saw a lot of things go wrong directly and indirectly. This naturally leads to increased risk aversion over time.

    Azores, 2011

    This can perhaps be best illustrated by the following story. I am not a very experienced offshore sailor, but on one occasion, I crewed a catamaran sailing from the Azores to the UK. Halfway across the passage, 1000 km offshore, we hit some heavy weather. I noticed that the skipper,  an incredibly experienced sailor who had circumnavigated the globe several times, including the Cape of Good Hope, was nervous, more nervous than I was as a novice sailor. When I asked him about it he told me that on his first transatlantic crossing, as a relatively novice skipper, he had felt no such fear. I understood why. From his vast experience, he had become more aware of what could go wrong than I was as a relative novice.

    Overtime, you become more aware from lived experience of what can go wrong and the possible consequences. Things do not always go as planned. Often accidents in the outdoors occur, not in high risk situations when people are pushing their limits and very focused, but often in situations where the likelihood of a risk occurring was not particularly high. When you witness and have to deal with the consequences of serious accidents in the outdoors, it changes something in you.

    Northern Norway, 2006.
    1. Consequences I have witnessed in low risk situations

    On two occasions I have witnessed people having experiences that could be described as spiritual emergencies which can look very similar to psychosis. Neither case involved a high dose psychedelic experience. One case occurred after a vipassana meditation retreat on Maui. No psychedelics were involved, but other powerful practices, such as kundalini yoga, were. The second case involved a low dose of psilocybin, not at one of our retreats, but at an indigenous style ceremony.

    In both cases, although the behavior involved was quite bizarre at times (such as talking to trees and persistent shaking and twitching over several days) these people could be held in a supportive and loving environment in nature for several days which was enough to ground them and bring them back to consensus reality.  Sometimes people need more time to come back from ‘between the worlds’ after powerful psychedelic experiences.

    1. My own experience

    In my own lived experience, I recall having persistent hallucinations, double vision, dizziness and vertigo for a week after a Bwiti iboga initiation. The experience was one of the most transformative therapeutic experiences of my life, processing layers of shame I never thought possible. Even at the time, I understood the difficulties were a part of the process. Sometimes the most rewarding things in life are not easy. That said, I was very glad when my eyesight and balance returned to normal!

    It is also important to recognize that these risks are ones we all face, whether in a clinical trial, a legal retreat setting or an indigenous ceremonial setting. The fact of the matter is that any of us working in this field face these same risks. Some of the most difficult and dangerous adverse reactions I have heard about occurred at ayahuasca retreat centers in Peru.

    My point is that extended difficulties after a psychedelic experience could equally easily occur on a clinical trial at Johns Hopkins, Imperial College London, at a legal psychedelic retreat setting,  an underground ceremony, or an indigenous ceremonial setting in the Amazon.  The sooner we collectively acknowledge these risks and potential consequences,  and are able to talk about them openly without shame or fear of judgment, the better. Otherwise, a culture of secrecy, shame, blame and judgment could emerge. What is not in the light, will be in the shadows, as it were. We need to create a culture of self reflection, acknowledging that we can all make mistakes. We need, as a field, to be more open about talking about adverse experiences.

    1. On the power of belief and focus

    When running a large whitewater rapid, we would spend as much time as necessary looking at the line and the risks involved, all of the consequences and potential worst case scenarios. Then a careful assessment would be made, based on all relevant factors including river water level,  skill level, the team and the safety set up involved, on whether to run the rapid, or not.

    Scouting a rapid, Northern Norway, 2006.

    But, and this is the important part, once a decision has been made to run a whitewater rapid, that decision was taken in full commitment, focussing fully in confidence on the desired outcome, with no focus on the worst case scenario. In other words, completely focusing on where you want to go, not where you do not want to go. Focusing on what can go wrong when running a whitewater rapid is an almost certain way to ensure a negative outcome.

    Below Victoria Falls, Zambezi, 2018.

    Perhaps this mindset has some parallels with psychedelic assisted therapy. In the early stages of screening and preparation it is important to address, communicate and acknowledge the risks involved, assessing if it is the right course of action for an individual to embark on.

    Once a decision has been made, in consultation with the participant, that the therapeutic process is suitable for the individual involved, then it is important to move forward with as little doubt as possible, creating the right mindset for a positive outcome. At a recent conference in the Netherlands, “Unveiling the mind: Convergence of Hypnotic and Psychedelic realities”, many speakers emphasized the power of suggestion and belief.

    For this reason, it is important to prime the participants mindset carefully, creating an atmosphere conducive to a positive therapeutic outcome. This can include preparing them in advance for difficult feelings to arise, and emphasizing the normality and purpose of these feelings. Acknowledging that while the process may be challenging, there is a reason for undertaking it. In my experience, once a meaning can be found in suffering, it can allow even the most challenging psychedelic experience to be seen from a positive therapeutic perspective. I often tell my clients that I don’t do this work because I enjoy watching people suffer, but because a light can be found at the end of the tunnel. Sometimes the most challenging psychedelic experience can be the most therapeutic ones.

    It is also important to be mindful that the pressure of making the right decisions can be a heavy responsibility for those working in the field, so creating multidisciplinary spaces for open discussion and supervision is essential.  I am sure I am not the only person in the field who feels this, very deeply at times.This is not something I hear talked about too often, just how challenging this work can be for the therapists involved.

    To conclude, as a field we need to acknowledge the risks and consequences of psychedelic assisted therapy, to agree on how best to communicate, address and mitigate them, to consider what levels of risk are ethically acceptable, to address how to manage consequences, and to consider the possibility of standardized screening and informed consent procedures. In this, we can learn lessons from other fields such as adventure sports.

    This piece was first published in Jules Evans Estatic Integration substack https://www.ecstaticintegration.org/

    Feature Image: An Ethiopian woman crossing a class 6 rapid on the Blue Nile with a new-born baby wrapped in her shawl. A fall here would have meant certain death for both of them.

  • Podcast: ‘Inside the Belly of the Beast: Reporting on U.S. Foreign Policy from Washington D.C.’ with guest Anya Parampil

    Listen to the second half on Apple Podcasts

    or

    Patreon

    As a journalist, Anya Parampil is unafraid of rattling the cage. She now writes for the Grayzone, founded by her husband Max Blumenthal in 2015, an online publication which aims to ‘break through any narrative of the day that is pushing the United States’ public in support of war.’ Previously she worked as a producer and broadcaster, then an anchor correspondent, for Russia Today (U.S.), from which she was fired, after refusing to accept restrictions on her reporting of U.S. foreign policy.

    In this podcast Anya likens writing about U.S. foreign policy from Washington D.C. to working inside ‘the belly of the beast’. Her work charts the policy machinations emanating from what she describes as a ‘deep state’ whose power, she argues, exceeds democratically elected politicians.

    Anya is the author of Corporate Coup – Venezuela and the End of US Empire (Or Books, New York, 2023), which dissects the motivations of the U.S. government, under the presidency of Donald Trump – directed in particular by figures such as John Bolton and Eliot Abrams – to sponsor a shadow government of Venezuela under Juan Guaído to challenge President Nicolás Maduro.

    As we approach another Presidential election, Anya sees little hope of a change in approach from the U.S. towards a country containing greater oil reserves than any other country on planet Earth. She maintains hope, however, that an alliance that includes isolationist supporters of Trump and progressive elements within the Democratic Party could in time tame the beast of this seemingly permanent government, and retains a faith that the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution on free speech will allow her to continue her work.

    Episode Credits:

    Host: Frank Armstrong

    Music:

    Loafing Heroes – ​​https://theloafingheroes.bandcamp.com

    Produced by Massimiliano Galli – https://www.massimilianogalli.com

  • Lessons from the Great Depression III

    Don’t you ever read the papers? Roderick Spode is the founder and head of the Saviours of Britain, a Fascist organization better known as the Black Shorts. His general idea, if he doesn’t get knocked on the head with a bottle in one of the frequent brawls in which he and his followers indulge, is to make himself a Dictator.’ ‘Well, I’m blowed!’ I was astounded at my keenness of perception. The moment I had set eyes on Spode, if you remember, I had said to myself ‘What Ho! A Dictator!’ and a Dictator he had proved to be. I could not have made a better shot, if I had been one of those detectives who see a chap walking along the street and deduce that he is a retired manufacturer of poppet valves named Robinson with rheumatism in one arm, living at Clapham. ‘Well, I’m dashed! I thought he was something of that sort. That chin…Those eyes…And, for the matter of that, that moustache. When you say “shorts,” you mean “shirts,” of course.’ ‘No. By the time Spode formed his association, there were no shirts left. He and his adherents wear black shorts.’ ‘Footer bags, you mean?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘How perfectly foul.
    P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters (1938).

    The above quote may offer a certain hope for those of us who see in each crisis a foretaste of worse to come; that hope is that Fascism can be undermined by ridicule – even while it is gaining traction – as long as a Dworkinian right to freedom of speech abides.

    But I next turn to a writer not noted for his sense of humour, George Orwell, who is central to our understanding the Great Depression, at least from a British vantage. His 1946 essay ‘How the Poor Die’ is a also crucial text for this austerity period, when social supports are being steadily withdrawn and a public health crisis looms large. Such are the consequences, unintended or otherwise, of an awful ideology that has put the NHS into freefall, and the Irish health service into near collapse.

    Animal Farm and 1984, with their simplification of language and distortion of truth from 2 =2 =5 to Newspeak – or in present parlance News International – are curiously prescient for our age. The Communist dystopia Orwell envisaged is not what we have now. Our own is of a different character altogether.

    Lowry, Laurence Stephen; Coming from the Mill; The L. S. Lowry Collection; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/coming-from-the-mill-162324

    Army of Managers

    The great painter of the Depression-era L.S. Lowry once remarked:

    A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.

    This is the kind of Stockholm Syndrome that we have witnessed throughout the pandemic, when even left wing parties previously noted for their resistance to corporate authority, rolled over to have their bellies tickled, as the one percent almost doubled their wealth.

    Lowry, as much as Grosz and Dix, chronicled working-class existences in painting, but as a prose artist he also captured the era beautifully in Coming From the Mill (1930). ‘As I left [Pendlebury] station I saw the Acme Spinning Company’s mill,’ Lowry would later recall. Describing:

    The huge black framework of rows of yellow-lit windows standing up against the sad, damp charged afternoon sky. The mill was turning out hundreds of little pinched, black figures, heads bent down. I watched this scene – which I’d looked at many times without seeing – with rapture.

    His matchstick men and women are best seen in the Lowry Gallery in Salford near Manchester, an area much gentrified now but still recognisably working class. And if you turn away from the main paintings, one still finds the bitter fruits of economic depressions: drunken brawls and young children in virtual rags.

    Brave New World!

    Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) is a core text of our time. The soma-induced compliance replicates our non-critical consensus of disinformation. Bernard the anti-hero wishes to leave for Iceland, a psychological state many of us wish to flee to now. Like Wittgenstein, I have a preference for a good Fjord.

    In mainland Europe the contradictions of the European Depression are well etched by the greatest of all American writers, F. Scott Fitzgerald. He was an incurable alcoholic by the time he penned his second masterpiece Tender Is the Night, to mixed reviews, in 1934. The lead character Diver is redolent of a lost parvenu generation, a parable for how many of a certain class lose their way on the French Riviera.

    It is cautionary tale of a loss of relevance, context and credibility. In a way, we all must resist a decadent urge to act like Tory grandees on the fiddle amidst the booze at Number 10.

    And what about other European literature for those who want us to “stay safe by staying apart”? Well, the antisemitic Louis-Ferdinand Céline is responsible for at least two prose masterpieces of the Great Depression that lay bay his own hypocrisy.

    His 1932 Journey to The End of Night is a phantasmatic horror story chronicling the Great Depression. It contains a piquant quote that goes some way towards explaining his own moral descent: ‘I warn you that when the princes of this world start loving you it means they are going to grind you up into battle sausage.’ We ought to be wary of artists that achieve great success in their own time, or journalists for that matter.

    He also refers to the “necessary” distance the rich must develop from the sufferings of the poor:

    I hadn’t found out, yet that humankind consists of two quite different races, the rich and the poor. It took me … and plenty of other people . . . twenty years and the war to learn to stick to my class and ask the price of things before touching them, let alone setting my heart on them.

    Jean Renoir

    More than Céline, along with Albert Camus, the greatest French intellectual artist of that period was the film director Jean Renoir. His most significant film ‘La Règle du jeu’ is situated at the precipice of collapse.

    Set in an aristocratic milieu just before the outbreak of the Second World War, it is decidedly jittery, with a real sense of fin de siècle. We find attractive though silly people on the brink of a calamity. It seems now quite relevant as we face unprecedented times, where chaos and uncertainty rule.

    Renoir views the characters sympathetically with Octavia – the voice of moderation – central to the film. Renoir was acutely conscious of being on the brink of disaster, and expressed  an objective humanism with the famous line ‘that everyone has his reasons.’

    In the subjectivity of our time that quote remains a clarion call for a heightened perception of danger, especially as moral relativism gains traction.

    Renoir elaborated in commentary on the film that all cultures are cliquish and have their own rules and protocols of dealing with those who do not observe the rules of the game, or the rule of law. But that is prior to seismic change where brute force supersedes civility.

    Renoir touched a raw nerve. When it opened a right-wing French audience went berserk, in a way similar to the reception in the Abbey Theatre in Dublin to J.M. Synge’s The Playboy of The Western World in 1907.

    Renoir’s acid comment was in effect that these people were doomed, and that the audience reaction showed that ‘people who commit suicide do not do so in front of witnesses.’

    The film has an astute sense that class or poverty more than race or ethnicity is the ultimate determinant of social division. That idea remains vitally important in these absurd politically correct times, and indeed victimhood or assumed victimhood as it is now. Our priorities should be to maintain access to housing, health care and legal representation.

    Welles and Buñuel

    Another of the greatest creative artist of the twentieth century toured around Ireland at the end of the Depression, before taking a job at The Gate Theatre. Later, in ‘The Third Man’ (1949) he made a guest appearance as Harry Lime. One, less celebrated speech. captures the existential dilemma of our time

    If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax – the only way you can save money nowadays.

    This is a logic that appears to have been adopted by pharmaceutical companies in recent times.

     

    The great surrealist film maker Luis Buñuel was another of the great anti-fascist artist of the Depression-era.  He attacked the prevailing mores of clerics, sexual repression and state authoritarianism with utter clarity and savage wit. This led, unsurprisingly, to periods of exile from Spain and a final hideaway for eighteen years in Mexico.

    The stunning and very brave 1950 film about poverty and child criminality in Mexico ‘Los Olvidados’ (the Forgotten Ones) caused a sensation at the time. Its theme reflects a drift into criminality among the youth in many parts of London and Dublin. Today’s child poverty, exploitation, crime and even slavery were also a feature of the Great Depression era.

    Tell Me Why?

    How does Fascism come about? Well it’s a product of inequality and poverty. You could say: “It’s the economy dummy!” In the period we can find evidence of this emerging among the workers in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, or the disenfranchised on the streets of Weimar, or the representations of Orwell and Céline who suffer most due to the naked expropriation “adults in the room.”

    Economic depressions create conditions for fascism, or even the new-fangled corporate fascism of our age which represents a triumph of demagoguery and disinformation. So be wary of manipulation and stay flexible, if not unsafe. Facebook and the mass media augment Orwellian tendencies and a campaign of compliance and of induced consent is creating serf capitalism and a potential Malthusian population cull.

    Alas, there is no New Deal or Marshall Plan on the horizon. World leadership is lacking and often far from benign and corporate-led. Apart from resisting manipulation, what all of us at the sharp end of the stick can do is protest to avoid obliteration and not be participants in our own self-abnegation.

    Resist decadence if you can. Survive the new depression: this Great Reset Depression. It will require optimum coping skills not to be culled. And if all else fails, poke fun at the fascists and observe how uncomfortable they become.

  • Lessons from the Great Depression (II)

    Ger-mania…

    Extraordinarily, Germany appears on the brink of following the lead of Austria in mandating a vaccination against COVID-19, as segregation of the unvaccinated continues. We seem to have entered what Gore Vidal described as the United States of Amnesia, as all history is forgotten. So let us cast our mind back.

    I maintain the German Weimar Republic (1919-1933), more than even the U.S. Great Depression, remains the emblem of our age. The comparison is not exact of course, as all analogies break down through the shifting sands of time, but it is useful to review the literature of that period and draw parallels.

    After World War I, when misguided reparations, and a war guilt clause, were inflicted by the victors – with the French and Clemenceau in particular in the driving seat – Germany was crippled with war debts, but crept along until the banking collapse. The period up to 1929 and shortly afterwards was a triumph against great odds of a fledgling social democracy: the Weimar Republic.

    The period is associated with great creativity, and indeed became a synonym for decadence and sexual libertarianism, which made it a soft target for Nazi thuggery. The bonfire of the vanities and the burning of the books was the fascist exhalation of degenerate art.

    Likewise our own Age of Austerity in the wake of the Financial Crisis of 08 has destablised the social and economic structures. We also have had a period of relative freedom, despite the economic pain, but now operate in most countries under a grinding authoritarianism in the face of collapsing health care systems corroded by decades of neoliberalism.

    A begging disabled WW I veteran (Berlin, 1923).

    Tomorrow Belongs to Me

    The Bob Fosse film ‘Cabaret’ (1972) has the fictionally represented Christopher Isherwood in Weimar times represented as leaving Berlin after he hears the Nazi youth sing ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’, one of the most chilling songs in a popular film ever recorded; an even more sinister version of the Horst Wessel Song.

    In fact, in the book Goodbye to Berlin (1939) nothing quite as dramatic as that epiphany occurs, just the sense of the persecution of the Jewish community, Communists, dissidents and degenerate races in a sedulous and incremental fashion. This was a fascist authoritarian creep as economic destruction creates victims, but also the externalisation of hatred. The demonisation and demonetisation of the other, crucial also in our own age of unfettered rage and lack of moderation.

    Bertolt Brecht

    The Aesthetics of Resistance

    Peter Weiss made a similar point in his after the event masterpiece, The Aesthetics of Resistance, where in cold retrospect he saw how those with idealism were destroyed.  His masterpiece of memory ends with the execution of his comrades in the Frankfurt Trials; executed and left to hang on fishhooks.

    Bertolt Brecht also saw in genesis and with mystical precision the bloodletting to come in The Threepenny Opera:

    When the shark bites with his teeth dear
    Scarlet billows start to spread
    Fancy gloves though wears Macbeth dear
    So there is not a trace of red

    Now again many want no trace of red. Just bright blue colours. No shades of grey just sanctimonious conservatism.

    The sense of unfolding chaos at the effects of the Great Depression in Germany is well documented in Victor Klemperer’s diary Let Us Bear Witness dating from 1933. He was peculiarly well placed with a protected Christian wife and a Jewish convert to Christianity. Dismissed from his job; furloughed but not sent to a Concentration Camp.

    The rise of fascism was a consequence, then and now, of economic collapse and that is the difference between the American Depression and the German equivalent, but it was a narrow escape for America.

    Roosevelt as a social democrat saved America. but as Philip Roth’s excursus in counter-factual history amply demonstrates there was no shortage of fascist demagogues who could have unseated him, including the folk hero Charles Lindberg. Such is The Plot Against America, where a fascist becomes President. Not then of course, but now?

    But that is getting ahead of ourselves to the endgame. Let us at least anticipate and make plans in the light of a project endgame called The Great Reset, a phrase unerring close to the great leap forward as we enter Chinese corporate feudal times.

    The sense of impending chaos in the Weimar Republic is also well documented by caricaturists such as George Grosz, Otto Dix, and others, many of whose greatest paintings hang as a reminder in Berlin.

    If you look at Grosz’s inelegantly titled Pillars of Society (1926), with the subtitle Shit for Brains, you will see one of the paragons of virtue. It anticipates disaster as the economy collapsed, and the Nazi judges and commissars who would work hand in glove with their jackboot associates.

    Ripe for Collapse

    On its current trajectory, the EU, as Varoufakis recently indicated, is likely to collapse, sooner rather than later, with a pan-Germanic latter day Hanseatic League altready taking its place. Few should mourn it in Ireland and Greece where the social structure has been destroyed through the impoverishment of large cohorts of the population who have falled into homelessness. Ireland is now controlled by hedge funds as a kind of sub-Indonesian corporate client state.

    And what do corporate judges, bankers, lawyers, and politicians do? Well, enforce further austerity in the shape of lockdowns on a docile and far too accepting population. Socially distanced and self-isolated for the near future without a prospect of stability, a sustainable living structure, or affordable rent or housing.

    And what does Weimar art reveal about intellectuals? That they are useless panderers. The paintings of Otto Dix perfectly captures bohemian delirium and ineffectiveness.

    In effect our contemporary consensus neoliberal spouters are spectators on a society falling apart; the collective fiddling as Rome burns. McWilliams in his wine bar.

    So, hand in glove with economic collapse we witness the destruction of the very concept of human rights. The seepage of emergency powers and executive action, documented in the eariler period by the great jurist Carl Schmidt, with disproportionate and excessive measures. Just as the Reichstag fire was used to end democracy in Germany.

    As far as social and economic rights and Weimar was a disaster. Banknote were printed in billion increments with which you could barely buy a loaf of bread.

    Berlin Alexanderplatz

    Perhaps the greatest German novel of the Depression era is Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin, although his neglected earlier novel Mountains Oceans Giants also presages our times, with its harbingers of environmental collapse.

    Döblin also utilises other 1920s anxieties — Malthus, Suffragettes, miscegenation, decolonization — onto the 27th century where Europe is under siege from “hordes” of migrants “flooding” from the Global South. “India-China-Japan” rises as a rival bloc to the New York-London “Anglo-Saxon Imperium,” while fierce clans of women find success in an “unending struggle against patriarchy,” even preferring “taboo” relationships with the alien migrants.

    Science fiction then but becoming recognisable today. The demonisation and demonetisation of others and the migrant. Not one of us.

    Berlin Alexanderplatz was dramatized by Werner Fassbinder in the peritectic chronicle of its everyman German Franz Bide Kopf, convict, pimp, worker; through the swathes of the Weimar republic.

    It is at one level a chronicle of our own time. Dubious associations, flirting with fascism and in passages most relevant and redolent, a panegyric against erstwhile Communist friends, which shows how the everyman is seduced by Utopian ideals:

    We’ve got to have order, order, I’m telling you, order—and put that in your pipes and smoke it, order and nothing else . . . and if anybody comes and starts a revolution now and don’t leave us in peace, they ought to be strung up all along the street . . . then they’ll get theirs, when they swing, yes, sir. You might remember that whatever you do, you criminals.

    Law and Order the totalitarian clarion call. The most important passages are the slaughterhouse and abattoir scenes, which are most unsettling and relevant to our times. Equating the costing of microscopic slaughter of the animals with human slaughter. The expiration of man and beast, or cost-benefit analysis of life. Compulsory vaccination for the herd.

    The Weimar Republic echoes through the ages. and Germany is reverting primitively and Gothically. Atavistic tendencies can be seen with the arrival of compulsory vaccination and vaccine segregation. Austerity unleased dark forces, and there is no genuine social democratic corrective in sight. The Weimar republic ripples through the ages.

    Feature Image: Joseph Goebbels views the Degenerate Art Exhibition.

  • Notes from a Segregated Island

    Your antennae are up months before it comes. You’ve gotten to the point where, if Leo Varadkar says something won’t happen, you brace yourself for its certain announcement, in good time.

    When the axe finally falls, you’re on holidays in Donegal in July, and the uncomfortable reality sinks in that the house and the rain-sodden outdoors will have to do you, pubs and restaurants will have to wait. Because you’ve long known that the game that’s made its way onto your table – one of freedom by way of the barcode – is one you won’t play.

    There are many quiet tears across the country, many tummies in a familiar pattern of churning, as a new breed faces an uncertain dawn. They’re greeted, at best, with a wall of silence, at worst with opprobrium and unflinchingly entitled judgement.

    The air of suspicion they have increasingly felt around them, in a quietly charged atmosphere that has made it harder to be in the thick of things, even among some cherished family and friends, has become solid and tangible.

    And yet the day is like any other, the view from the window just the same. Nothing but a simple QR code and a biddable hospitality sector, understandably desperate to re-open its doors, signals the birth of a new Irish underclass.

    Considered Thinking

    Research shows that people have many reasons for declining a medical intervention. These are mainly born out of considered thinking: medical history and experience, including vaccine-injury; research and knowledge of what is right for their own body; the practice of natural healing modalities as a first recourse to health.

    Gym membership cancellation rates at the recent extension of medical segregation to that sector suggest that those who have a strong investment in their wellbeing through exercise may assess the risk/benefit of Covid-19 vaccination in a different way to those who may be more vulnerable to Covid’s worst effects.

    There is no one-size-fits-all. Such is life. If we believe that this turns a vaccine-free person into a walking biohazard, perhaps we have bought into fear over an inspected view.

    We are now some twenty-two months into a pandemic that has fundamentally shifted the course of our existence. It is fitting to ask whether, along with a potentially very serious virus, we have also been visited by a kind of collective trauma, stemming from news streams delivering non-stop daily scrutiny of Covid-19, along with rolling curtailments of our lives and those of our children. Never before has an idea of safety been so rigidly attached to a single concept: being Covid-19-free.

    Serious Illness

    I don’t make light of Covid-19. I know what a serious illness it can be, particularly for those who are older or have underlying vulnerabilities. However, in a new world characterized by fear and caution – surrounded by visual reminders that something frightening is in our midst – I believe that something vital to a healthy society is being dangerously side-lined: the checks and balances necessary to healthy democratic governance.

    We are in the process of enshrining into law a piece of primary legislation, the Health and Criminal Justice (Covid-19) (Amendment) (No.2), granting the extension of extraordinary emergency powers to Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly, powers that prior to Covid-19 we never could have countenanced handing over to the State.

    These extend the medical segregation that has become normalised in society, where the paradoxically named “immunity certs” – granted after double vaccination to access supposedly inviolable freedoms – are widely seen as a reasonable and proportionate response to pandemic times, rather than a human rights’ issue in urgent need of inspection.

    Do we wish to live in a world where a person can be stripped of their basic freedoms because of their private medical status? A world where the unproven threat of asymptomatic transmission is greater than the threat of authoritarian, technocratic rule?

    (One where, in perhaps the greatest twist of all, those who have retained their “privileges” are of course no less immune from the Covid transmission chain.)

    Do we wish to be part of a society where, for instance, a medically vulnerable person who is not suitable for vaccination is left out in the cold – because GPs currently have no authority to grant meaningful medical exemptions?

    Do we want to raise our children in a world where a person who exercises their right to informed consent, as enshrined in every human rights in healthcare covenant since Nuremberg, can be readily pegged as plainly reprehensible?

    Sins of the Past

    In Ireland, we are thankfully now alert to the impacts of the sins of the past – where the “othering”, for instance of women and children in mother and baby homes, was an accepted thing – yet are we willing to face uncomfortable truths about our present?

    At this moment, we have effectively “othered” a cohort who are subject to a particular kind of derision. Ireland’s vaccine rollout, which sees the highest level of coverage in the EU, has not transpired into the panacea promised. Despite this, we see blame at times verging on incitement to hatred publicly levelled at those who choose not to or cannot, due to medical reasons, avail of this medical intervention. The failure of the medicine is somehow the fault of those who didn’t take it.

    Even as reputable medical journals caution against stigmatising the unvaccinated, the vaccine-free are relentlessly pegged as the scapegoat of this difficult episode, where goalposts keep shifting and promised remedies fail to deliver. Those in power conveniently use this to deflect from their own failures.

    “Anti-vax”, a dehumanizing, broad brushstroke term, has become common parlance. Nothing short of a creeping obsession has developed towards a group stigmatised with this label, among some of Ireland’s most trusted, supposedly liberal media commentators, and among some of our most powerful political voices.

    Terminology that casually stigmatizes people has the twin impacts of eroding human dignity while effectively silencing dissent and debate – two essential tools of a functioning democracy. And if the ensuing social media outcry was anything to go by, many found it chilling to witness Minister Donnelly level this term at a fellow deputy in the Dáil chambers, for presenting peer-reviewed scientific information.

    Taking one for the Team

    While we can casually cast blame, without evidence, upon the cohort who didn’t “take one for the team”, those who should actually be answerable almost two years in operate without meaningful scrutiny from either a critical media or political opposition. And here, I believe, is where we should all be looking to.

    We have empowered Minister Donnelly to strip some seven per cent of the Irish population of their basic social and civil rights. If this legislation extends until its “sunset” of June 2022, we will have placed a minority of Irish society at the back of the bus for almost one year. And who knows how much longer they’ll even be allowed to travel on the bus? If past form is anything to go by, we might then expect another piece of similar legislation to follow it.

    I struggle to understand how all this is compatible with a liberal democracy. As medical segregation and the removal of human rights flourishes across Europe, and our social credit becomes increasingly tied to barcode-accessed living, at what point do we begin to seriously look at the potential harms of this brave new world, for which we are hard at work laying down the building blocks?

    A medical officer having the power of detention over you, in an undefined “designated place”, if you are merely suspected of having Covid-19, is not democracy. Coerced medication is not democracy, and the championing of Covid Certs by Leo Varadkar, on the basis that it drove up vaccination rates, only celebrates this lapse.

    When does Emergency Phase End?

    Decision-making that impacts everyone in Ireland, taken by a group of eight middle-class, middle-aged white men, who fail to represent the cross-section of Irish society, including those most vulnerable to the effects of lockdown – working-class people, women, and other minority groups – is not democracy.

    Almost two years in, it no longer holds for our government to act as if we are in the emergency phase of the pandemic. This ongoing abuse of emergency legislation and power is causing untold damage to the communities trying to stay afloat around it.

    There is evidence aplenty now to begin an assessment of the broad impacts of pandemic measures, and this must be done with independent expertise provided by those who have not been at the helm. The bigger picture must now come into view. We need to properly consider the economic, social/cultural and in the context of overall healthcare.

    I believe, special attention must be paid to Covid-19 policy impacts on our young people. Strategies need to be rebalanced towards carving out a future that allows us to respond proportionately to the threat of Covid-19, while maintaining people’s human and civil rights, their entitlement to dignity and privacy, and ending a nasty division that has crept in with terrifying stealth, in a time of crisis.

    We need solidarity regardless of medical status. Please stand with me to reach out to your political representatives to insist they convey our call to reject segregation and division, and to demand checks and balances from a government that many increasingly see as being power-drunk at Ireland’s wheel.

    Ciara Considine is a book publisher, singer-songwriter (Ciara Sidine), civil rights activist and mother of two, living in Dublin.

    This article was first published in A Mandate Free Ireland, a weekly campaign newsletter, on 13 December 2021 (Click here to subscribe: https://tinyurl.com/2p8kvmw7).
    Featured Image: Daniele Idini

     

  • Lessons From the Great Depression (I)

    This is the first instalment of a three part essay on the legacy of the Great Depression..

    The Great Depression began in 1929, leading Wall Street bankers literally to throw themselves from windows. I was shown one such exit site on 45th Street 5th Avenue in Manhattan. Lives were destroyed as a favourable market collapsed. The fundamental point then, and now, about a favourable or unfavourable market is it is always an illusion. Smoke and mirrors.

    Bull leads to Bear and back, and that cycle since 2008 is certainly where we are again, as confidence is lost in markets and neo-liberal non-interventionism. The effect in 1929 emphasised how when America catches a cold Europe contracts pneumonia. In the 1930s, the fragile, well-intentioned experiment in Wilsonian democracy collapsed virtually overnight. Now the effect is global.

    We are now seeing unmistakable signs of stagflation and even hyperinflation, accentuated by the additional disease burden of the virus on health systems subjected to decades of sneaking privatisation; while health inequalities widen, as transnational organisations and Big Pharma – using so-called philanthro-capitalism as a front – collude at the expense of the population at large.

    The prospect looms of fuel and food shortages, decreased life expectancies – already evident before the pandemic – repossessions, and evictions, with limited support in countries without social democratic support structures.

    In terms of civil liberties, we are entering dangerous territory too, with compulsory vaccination and quarantines. A long winter is coming. And what are we to make of most non-essential court cases in the UK being adjourned until September of next year?

    The New Deal

    In 1932 at the height of its destitution, America elected its greatest ever leader the aristocratic bon vivant socialist Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), who brought in the New Deal to save the country from ruin.

    In contemporary America, no such leadership exists. Biden is no Roosevelt. He is unwilling to develop a true social market. All too many in America are ‘Bowling Alone’ as communities fall apart in a digitally mediated age of social atomisation.

    The Great Depression represented a failure of the American idea of government. Apart from a few dissenters, such as the legendary Supreme Court judge Oliver Wendell Holmes, the business of America has always been business, until it goes bust.

    In a tremendous refutation of free market economics in Lochner v. New York (1903) Holmes said: ‘The third amendment does not enact Mr Herbert spencer’s social statics’

    Holmes was at least a quasi-socialist, who corresponded with Harold Laski. But neither an intellect like him or a proper social democratic deal maker and integrator like Roosevelt is evident in American politics today.

    Obama received money and recruited Goldman Sachs alumni to his cabinet which is a bit like inviting a cuckoo into the nest.

    Studs Terkel

    Hard Times

    Another Chicago native and reporter of the last century, Studs Terkel chronicled American life in his book Hard Times, which is an oral history of the Depression era. Terkel argued that ‘the worst day-to-day operators of businesses are bankers,’ and quotes one source who has fallen on hard times:

    We thought of the poor, at that time, as quite divorced from us, who were not poor. By the exercise of one’s charity, life could be made all right. You would always have the poor with you, they were the unfortunate, and you made donations. You could handle them. It was mildly unpleasant, but not fundamentally upsetting. Now, for the first time, we face the dreadful reality that we are not separated. They are us.

    And another describes a scene of acute desperation:

    They would just walk all over and kill each other. They got more than they ever need that they would just step on anybody to keep it. They got cars, they got houses, they got this and that. It is more than they need, but they think they need it, so they want to keep it. Human life isn’t as important as what they got.

    Image (c) Daniele Idini

    Worse Still?

    I fear that this collapse will be on a greater scale. Indeed, despite deprivation, life expectancies actually increased in America over the course of the 1930s, but since the turn of this century epidemiologists have been predicing a decline.

    The successful application of the ideas of the master J. M. Keynes generated a worldwide social democratic model in the wake of the Great Depression, which became the consensus before the resurgence of neo-liberalism. This has undermined humanity since the late 1970s, and its effect now appear irreversible, given the absence of an alternative Communist model that compelled even governments devoted to capitalism to maintain a basic standard of living and healthcare.

    In contrast, the neo-liberal model of marketisation of human activity has intruded into all sectors of life. This has denuded and in some cases destroyed what Habermas describes as the public sphere.

    A set of unworkable ideas have spiralled out of control, and are generating a disaster. Liberal democracy is failing and becoming unworkable. In effect, the End Of History is the acceptance of discredited ideas, which have led us to this impasse.

    Capitalism is not working because capitalism is not allowing people to work. Joseph Stieglitz, a former economist for the World Bank remarked: ‘Socialism for the rich capitalism for the poor.’ And increasingly basic liberties are being sacrificed at the altar of security.

    Artistic Response

    More than statisticians or economists, artists convey the individual effects of world historical events such as the Great Depression.

    Although written in 1906, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is one of the core texts of the Depression, demonstrating the appalling work conditions in the Chicago meat packing industry. Many of his works including Oil, which became the film with Daniel Day Lewis ‘There Will be Blood’ attack unbridled capitalism and its depressing effects on the human spirit.

    Two crucial quotes from The Jungle are as follows:

    The rich people not only had all the money, they had all the chance to get more; they had all the knowledge and the power, and so the poor man was down, and he had to stay down.

    And

    Into this wild beast tangle these men had been born without their consent, they had taken part in it because they could not help it; that they were in jail was no disgrace to them, for the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded. They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars.

    Sinclair paints a familiar scene, now throw in the disinformation of our post-truth universe and you have a neo-liberal Molotov cocktail. At least at that time there was vibrant social commentary, and a less captured media.

    All little lives need protecting as Sinclair and above all John Steinbeck in his portrayals of the Okies in dustbowl America clearly recognised. His great novel The Grapes Of Wrath depicts a migration from the dustbowls of Oklahoma to California, which turns out to be no Promised Land, as any unionization or collective action is supressed, just as has been the case over the last thirty years.

     

    More relevant than even Sinclair or Steinbeck as an evocation of the Depression-era in America is a book by James Agee, and photographer Walker Evans called Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, first published in 1941. The phrase originates in the Jewish religion. The complete sentence is: ‘Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and the fathers that beget them.’

    The book, partially governmentally funded, chronicles dustbowl America. Evans adds the pictorial record of the devastation wreaked by the great economic depression in the dustbowl.

    From the pictures of Walker Evans it is noticeable how grim the faces are. The anguished expressions on children is particularly harrowing. Lives lost by neglect and the degradation of poverty.

    It’s A Wonderful Life

    Austerity

    It is well documented how austerity in our present age has killed people by stealth through the gradual removal of social supports. Lawyers and NHS workers might share the same fate. Whatever ramparts of social protection that previously existed are being whittled away by Covid. And

    Any yet we cannot give up. Produced and directed by Frank Capra in the wake of World War II, ‘It’s a Wonderful life’ is about a good banker memorably played by Jimmy Stewart, who helps people to build new homes.

    Capra, made many great films, but ‘It Happened One Night,’ which came out at the height of the Depression captures a spirit a popular spirit of defiance. So there is cause for optimism in poor folk.

    Featured Image: Lunch atop a Skyscraper, Charlie C. Ebbets, 1932.

  • Covid-19: The View from Turkey

    On March 11th, 2020 the first case of Covid-19 was diagnosed in Turkey, followed by the first mortality on March 15th. Then on April 1st Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced that cases had spread all over Turkey. So how has the pandemic been managed since? And how have measures affected people.

    A total of 5.34 million cases have been diagnosed by May 2021, with 48,795 people losing their lives. Various measures have been implemented in Turkey, with opinions divided on whether they have been too harsh or too lenient.

    The first restriction was placed on air travel, with the installation of thermal cameras on airlines. As of March 11th, 2020 flights from China to Turkey were put on hold. Also, an attempts were made to allow Turkish citizens to return to Turkey from Iran, but with an obligatory 14-day quarantine period in a government facility.

    Afterwards, passengers returning from Umrah for religious purposes were allowed to quarantine at home. This brought opposition amidst fears the disease would spread. In response student dormitories were used for those returning from Umrah. There was, however, a reaction to this from both students and those placed in quarantine, especially as the students were suddenly removed from their dormitories.

    Restrictions were also imposed on overland travel. The borders with neighbouring Iran were closed. After the initial period, restrictions continued to be imposed on various flights and areas within a framework of broader rules. In addition to the use of masks and similar precautions, the Ministry of Health in Turkey launched a mobile health app that was supposed to be used by everyone, called HES (Hayat EveSığar – Life Fits Into Home). This made access to airlines and similar places easier. However, question marks lingered around how well the system worked.

    Specific precautions were also taken in public areas as well. Schools, sports competitions and cultural and artistic events were suspended. Online education modules were offered to students. Restaurants, cafes and bars were also forced to close, and asked to switch to takeaway.

    Offices were recommended to work remotely. However, many workplaces unable to do so at that time attempted to protect themselves through their own initiatives.

    Restrictions were also imposed on working hours as a precautions for employees, although, measures were not followed strictly by many employers. The situation caused financial difficulties for many companies, especially restaurants and cafes. Many claimed that that the government support packages were insufficient.

    Alongside this, citizens aged sixty-five and over were asked to ‘cocoon’ from March 22nd, 2020. Those under the age of twenty were also subsequently required to quarantine. Later, a 48-hour lockdown was declared in thirty-one provinces. This was announced by the Minister of the Interior Süleyman Soylu just two hours before it applied, which caused a certain degree of panic.

    People rushed to markets and shops in surprise, and the crowds of people were unable to maintain social distance as crowding ensued in many markets and bazaars, which led to the resignation of the Minister. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan refused to accept his resignment however. So the Minister kept his job.

    On May 10th, 2020, the transition period to a controlled social life began. However, in reality for many the transition period had already been happening, as many, old and young had refused to obey the prohibitions in the first place. Retail stores in most shopping malls across Turkey were allowed to open from May 11th.

    On July 1st, 2020, venues such as cinemas, theatres, and cultural and artistic centres opened in accordance with various rules. Later, on July 21, 2020, restrictions on the hours of businesses such as cafes and restaurants were also lifted.

    By mid-July, however, case numbers has doubled, but this did not translate into an increase in the number of patients in hospitals. For this reason, the public began to question the authenticity of the number of cases.

    At the same time, the Minister of Health’s statement that only those who show symptoms should be considered sick created a question mark in people’s minds.

    On January 1st, 2021, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca stated that fifteen people had been detected with the so-called U.K. variant. As a result, the Minister of Health temporarily halted all arrivals from the U.K. By January 2nd, 2021, variants of the Covid-19 virus first detected in the U.K., South Africa and Brazil were discovered for the first time in Turkey. This has heightened anxiety in many people.

    From the beginning of 2020 vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech, SinoVac, Moderna, Sputnik V and AstraZeneca became available around the world. Two vaccines were offered in Turkey, first SinoVac and then Pfizer/BioNTech.

    This led to questioning as to which one was more effective, and what were the side effects. Especially on social media, many articles and appeared about the side effects. Many worried about being vaccinated, while others wanted to get vaccinated as soon as possible.

    The government set up a priority list for who should be vaccinated. President Erdoğan himself received a first dose when the social vaccination process began on January 14th.

    Then, more than 250,000 health workers received their first dose. The vaccination process continued in line with the groups determined after health workers: people aged 65 and over started to be vaccinated according to their wishes.

    With the vaccination process being carried out through family doctors, some complained about over-crowding and disorder. Many just wanted to get their vaccinations and return home as soon as possible.

    Over time, teachers, soldiers and policemen were offered the jab. Afterwards, the vaccination process continued with the determined priority groups.

    A total of over 34.8 million doses of vaccine have been administered in Turkey. The number of fully vaccinated people stands at 13.8 million out of a population of over eighty million.

    However, the public has been worried about this vaccination process, and continues to be, amid rumours the vaccines don’t work, and worries around side effects.

    As in many countries, the pandemic has witnessed a shift towards online work in Turkey. Businesses and individuals have developed remote working methods. Transactions such as online meeting, e-commerce, onlinebanking and digital payment have increased.

    In short, we can say that Turkish people have moved more and more online. Also, in this period, with longer periods spent at home, many have also developed an increased interest in cookery, sharing recipes online for bread, yogurt and other dishes.

    Moreover, various hobbies such as sports moved online, as people got used to innovating. Despite social distancing and the use of masks, people have continued to live their lives. But normal activities are still missed. Everyone is certainly looking forward to the end of this process and full normalization!