| Naomi Klein: 'We must not return to the pre-Covid status quo, only worse' |
[13 Jul 2020|05:00am] |
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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/13/naomi-klein-we-must-not-return-to-the-pre-covid-status-quo-only-worse What kind of world will the coronavirus crisis leave us with? Interviewed for a Guardian Live event, the activist and author insists that the climate, equality and fairness must be at the heart of the post-pandemic recovery Katharine Viner: Hello, Naomi. How are you finding lockdown? Naomi Klein: For those of us who were teaching our students by Zoom, as I was – home schooling, doing that juggle and figuring out how to bake – we had it really cushy. Now I am back in Canada for the summer with my family, in quarantine because in Canada, if you come from the US, you have to be in very strict quarantine. I have not left the house in almost two weeks. I am actually developing some phobias about leaving lockdown. Continue reading...
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| Culture in the Third Reich by Moritz Föllmer review – when fascism stole the show |
[13 Jul 2020|06:00am] |
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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/13/culture-in-the-third-reich-by-moritz-follmer-review-when-fascism-stole-the-show This weighty study reveals how the Nazis exploited films and theatre to spread their poisonous ideology Even before the Nazis seized power in Germany in 1933, they had placed their tanks on the battlefield of the imagination. “Event culture” with darker undertones was in full swing. A heady mixture of pagan-inspired rituals, firework displays launched on river boats and rallies with folk music was the nationalist answer to the freewheeling modernism of the Weimar Republic. Moritz Föllmer is a heterodox scholar, who applies a sharp cultural lens to metropolitan life, politics and individual strivings and pastimes as the backdrop to disaster falling on Germany. The cultural offerings of national socialism, he believes, held such mesmerising appeal for so many Germans precisely because it commanded a range of tastes from middle-class conservatism to emerging mass culture – a combination that “mobilised vast energies” across the population by appealing to fustian sorts and neophytes alike. Continue reading...
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| Poem of the week: The Sparrows of Butyrka by Irina Ratushinskaya |
[13 Jul 2020|09:00am] |
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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/13/poem-of-the-week-the-sparrows-of-butyrka-by-irina-ratushinskaya The Soviet-era dissident writer’s defiant prison lyric has lost none of its immediacy
The Sparrows of Butyrka Now even the snow has grown sad –
Let overwhelmed reason go,
And let’s smoke our cigarettes through the air-vent,
Let’s at least set the smoke free.
A sparrow flies up –
And looks at us with a searching eye:
‘Share your crust with me!’
And in honourable fashion you share it with him.
The sparrows – they know
Who to ask for bread.
Even though there’s a double grille on the windows –
And only a crumb can get through.
What do they care
Whether you were on trial or not?
If you’ve fed them, you’re OK.
The real trial lies ahead.
You can’t entice a sparrow –
Kindness and talents are no use.
He won’t knock
At the urban double-glazing.
To understand birds
You have to be a convict.
And if you share your bread,
It means your time is done. Continue reading...
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| Women speak out about Warren Ellis: 'Full and informed consent was impossible' |
[13 Jul 2020|11:10am] |
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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/13/women-speak-out-about-warren-ellis-transmetropolitan Scores of women are publishing details of their relationships with the Transmetropolitan writer, who they say offered mentorship in exchange for sexual contact. But they don’t want him cancelled – they want a conversation ‘Stories are what make us human,” comics writer Warren Ellis told an audience on 28 April 2005, as that year’s Toronto Comic-Con began. “They’re an advanced form of play. Cats have play. Sometimes very sophisticated, dramatised forms of play. But they’re not communicated or externalised. So far, only humans use stories to dramatise the way they see the world.” Two days after that, on 30 April, a 23-year-old woman flew to the convention to surprise Ellis, whom she believed was her boyfriend. The pair had spoken on video chat and email regularly since they first met online in 2004, with some of their conversations lasting through the night. She alleges that Ellis, then 37, never told her that he had a long-term partner, and that he had asked her to keep their relationship secret because of his fame. They had sex in his hotel room that evening. Continue reading...
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