1984 ALL OVER AGAIN

Consider this one minute clip which was shown nationally once only:

But before that clip there was this:

“In small, clumsy letters he wrote: April 4^th, 1984”

In four days that fictional line of text will have been written exactly forty years ago. I recently had reason to go back and read George Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ again and it was somewhat of a revelation. The book has been read and analysed by many, it has contributed to the English language (e.g. doublethink, thoughtcrime, Big Brother is watching you) and dystopian political developments are sometimes described as Orwellian. To describe a real life situation as something out of ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ is bound to be an exaggeration as the world described in that book is awfully nasty (see Godwin’s Law), however, the book was a warning based on incipient trends Orwell observed in the real world as he wrote the book exactly 75 years ago. How have things gone over those 75 years?

I had forgotten how well-crafted the book was; it was Orwell’s last – he died a year after it was published, and he had honed his writing skills well over the years with a series of fiction and non-fiction works. Also, a core concept in the book, doublethink, is more extreme, and more subtle, than many commentators, and writers of sequels, have realized.

Most of my references in what follows are going to be to the United States because some dangerous tendencies which have always been bubbling quietly below the surface have suddenly emerged and are accelerating openly since Trump. There are also many of the same troubling developments all over the world, however – Russian elections and mysterious deaths, the developing cult of personality around Xi Jinping, women’s rights in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, escalating bigotry toward Muslims in India, the rise of neo-Nazism in Europe, the quietly desperate lives of too many Brits. All praise to the progressive elements in the United States and elsewhere who are fighting back against these troubling tendencies.

The United States has Stephen Miller, Clarence Thomas, Steve Bannon, Marjorie Taylor Greene and so many others. However they also have Bernie Sanders, Robert Reich, Andrew Seidel and Ketanji Brown Jackson, among others. Unfortunately, in other places in the world, we also have Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, Recep Erdogan, Pierre Poilievre, Benjamin Netanyahu and so on. It says something that after Trump was elected sales of ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ soared on Amazon. The book has been banned in parts of the United States which may have contributed to the increased sales. The fact that the book is not banned in Russia or China tells me that Putin and Xi Jinping are both smarter than American book banners.

In what follows, all page references are to the edition of Animal Farm / 1984 published in hardback by Harcourt, Inc., 2003.

1. THE TWO MINUTE HATE

“A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current” (page 101). During the Two Minute Hate the spectators are delighted as a lifeboat full of the children of enemy forces are slaughtered, and the spectators cheer as the camera follows the arc of a child’s severed arm flying through the air. On March 16, 1968, during the Vietnam War, American forces descended on the village of My Lai and killed between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians. During the massacre a number of females, some as young as twelve, were raped and mutilated before being killed. No enemy soldiers or weapons were found in the village. This massacre was defended by some back in the United States. Let it be noted that several Americans, most notably Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Jr., Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn risked their lives in an attempt to stop the massacre and the cover-up that followed. Many Palestinian children have been killed, some from malnutrition, in Gaza in the last five months, a sad state of affairs condemned by many Jews in Israel and elsewhere as well as by others.

MY LAI
By Ronald L. Haeberle – Copied from Krysstal.com, "The Acts of the Democracies" http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_vietnam_mylai.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=883801

2. WAR IS PEACE

“All that is needed is that a state of war should exist” (page 268). Orwell talks about how Oceania always needs to be fighting a war, not to win but to use up resources and consumer goods so that the populace back home will remain on the edge of despair and poverty and thus be barely able to even think about let alone foment rebellion. The United States and Russia fought a Cold War from 1945 to 1990. After that President Bush waged a War on Terror in the process going after weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist. Trump wants to wage war on all sorts of people, particularly immigrants. As Bob Dylan pointed out many years ago in his song ‘Only a Pawn in Their Game’, the powers that be who are responsible for things like economic inequity and anti-democratic behaviours like to manipulate the hegemony so that the wrong targets are under attack.

THE BERLIN CRISIS 1961 – SOVIET AND AMERICAN TANKS FACE EACH OTHER AT CHECKPOINT CHARLIE
By Ronald L. Haeberle – Copied from Krysstal.com, "The Acts of the Democracies" http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_vietnam_mylai.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=883801

3. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” (page 163). During the Two Minutes Hate (page 99) Goldstein, the enemy of the people, advocated for freedom of speech, the press, assembly and thought (remember the First Amendment to the Constitution?) and is ridiculed. Critical Race Theory and references to gender issues are banned in American schools, Trump attacks accurate media reports as fake news and he attempts to suppress it. When Trump held his photo op with Bible in hand (upside down) he first had the police fire on unarmed protesters assembled legally nearby, and he is on record as saying he wants the police to shoot protesters in the legs. Four unarmed students were shot dead by the authorities at Kent State on May 4, 1970 during an anti-war protest. Eleven days later two unarmed students protesting against the Vietnam War were shot and killed by the police at Jackson State College. Between 200 and 2600 people (depending on the source) died during the 1989 Tienanmen Square protests. There wasn’t much freedom of thought during the Cultural Revolution in China, either.

TIENANMEN SQUARE PROTESTS 1989
By Jiří Tondl (Blow up) – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68125236

4. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

“War is a way of shattering to pieces . . . materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, too intelligent” (page 267). Anti-science and anti-intellectualism is alive and well in the United States, something that Neil deGrasse Tyson has tried to raise an awareness about. There is data to indicate that Americans are very ill-educated and seem to be amazingly incurious and ignorant about other countries. The misinformation by those on the right about female biology has also put women’s lives in danger. Some people in power want to prevent students from learning about large parts of American history. Former Secretary of State and Housing Development Ben Carson insisted that the pyramids were built to store grain and not used as tombs for pharaohs. When Trump was President he thought Frederick Douglass was still alive, and later he thought that it was Obama who he beat to become president, and he didn’t realize that World War Two had already happened.

FREDERIC DOUGLASS 1884
By Unknown author – National Park Service, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54496858

5. PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

“ ‘Who controls the past’, ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ “ (page 119). Teaching Critical Race is not allowed in parts of the US. The 1921 Tulsa Massacre was erased from the history books for a century. Some Americans think that Britain stood alone against the Nazis (no they didn’t – many Canadian soldiers died fighting the Nazis alongside Britain for years before the United States entered the war which they only did when they were attacked directly) and the United States saved the day and won World War Two single handedly (no they didn’t). The United States won the War of 1812 (no they didn’t). The inventor of the light bulb was an American, Thomas Edison (ever hear of Joseph Swan? He wasn’t an American). The Wright Brothers accomplished the first flight in a heavier-than-air machine (ever hear of Gustave Whitehead? He wasn’t an American). When John Glenn died I heard it reported on an American newscast that he was the world’s first space traveller. No, his flight went up February 20, 1962. The first space traveller was the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin whose flight took place on April 12, 1961.

When the Smithsonian Institute in 1995 constructed an historically accurate exhibit of the bombing of Hiroshima on the fiftieth anniversary of that event, Republicans and veterans groups called it unpatriotic, and when these groups threatened to implement substantial budget cuts to the institute the man in charge, Michael Heyman, reluctantly backed down and cancelled the exhibition. Some Republican politicians recently have declared that Slavery was a good thing for blacks, that it taught them useful skills. Many Americans believe that their nation was founded on Christian values when in fact some of the founding fathers were deists and non-Christians. Thomas Jefferson even put together the Jefferson Bible in which he pointedly removed anything metaphysical or supernatural from the text, including the stories of the miracles, and the all-important Resurrection of Jesus. Given that Christianity is based on blind belief in and obedience to a higher authority (and if you don’t you suffer eternal damnation), and that the American Constitution is based on freedom of thought and separation of Church and State, I’ve heard it argued that Christianity is unAmerican.

THE 1921 TULSA RACE MASSACRE
By Unknown author – Unknown source, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65817500

6. CHILD HEROES

“Nearly all children nowadays were horrible . . . hardly a week passed in which the Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak – “child hero” was the phrase generally used – had overheard some compromising remark and denounced his parents to the Thought Police” (page 110). The learning program known as PragerU is being introduced into some areas of the United States. That is an ultra-conservative program designed to turn children into obedient ultra-conservative adults who have been fed lies about slavery, climate change, immigration, the history of fascism and the LGBTQ community. In fact there is an active movement afoot which wants to either Christianize schools or just get rid of the public school system completely and replace it with a religious educational system, a system teaching young impressionable minds that abortion and contraception are sinful, that women must submit to men when it comes to living a good Christian life, that gay and trans people are sinners, and that authority figures can do no wrong. Wow.

The imposition of the Christian religion on the entire population has been accelerating, with a great deal of help from the Supreme Court ever since the appointment of several conservative justices giving it a six to three conservative to liberal balance. The court has blatantly and incorrectly characterized resistance to giving precedence to Christianity over non-Christians as being religiously intolerant. In the name of freedom of religion the court has been aggressively attempting to dismantle freedom of religion for Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, pagans and so on.

GRAFFITI AT SEINE-ET-MARNE, FRANCE
By Paterm – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21406993

7. FAHRENHEIT 451

“The hunting-down and destruction of books had been done with the same thoroughness in the prole quarters as everywhere else” (page 177). Book burning has a long and illustrious history around the world but its been picking up steam lately. Books on Black History, and books with gay or trans characters are being banned as conservatives have been vociferously taking over school board meetings, sometimes to the point of violence. As mentioned earlier, ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ has also been banned.

8. GIVE ME YOUR TIRED, YOUR POOR

“Foreigners, whether from Eurasia or Eastasia, were a kind of strange animal” (page 197) . . . “an old couple, who were suspected of being of foreign extraction had their house set on fire and perished of suffocation” (page 228). Trump’s perception of foreigners as criminals and animals who were poisoning the American system is well known. He talked about it when he announced he was running for the Presidency in 2015, and he has been getting worse recently, using phrases and ideas from the writings of Adolph Hitler, and unapologetically so.

MEIN KAMPF BY ADOLF HITLER
By Unknown author of dust jacket; Adolf Hitler author of volume – This image is available from the New York Public Library’s Digital Library under the digital ID 487722: digitalgallery.nypl.org → digitalcollections.nypl.org, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10043132

9. NEWSPEAK

“In Newspeak there is no word for ‘Science’ “ (page 269). In September 2020, when asked about the effect of climate change on California wildfires, Donald Trump said, “I don’t think Science knows, actually”. He has called climate change a Chinese hoax, and has stated repeatedly that windmills cause cancer. Too many people reject Science if Science tells them something they don’t like to hear. Science tells us that vaccines do not and never did cause autism but anti-vaxxers reject that fact. Science tells us to wear a mask during the Covid 19 pandemic but some who refused to wear masks maintained that there was no such thing as Covid 19. Religious extremists reject Evolution but when questioned they almost invariably demonstrate that they don’t understand Evolution. When meeting anti-Science people I’m tempted to demand that they give me their tablets, cell phones and cars (all provided by Science), and that they be banned from ever going to a doctor or receiving any kind of medical treatment (again, provided by Science). If you reject Science you don’t get to benefit from Science, thank you very much.

Some deeply religious people reject Science because a religious mind set is the opposite of a scientific mind set. Religion deals with certainty and Science tells us that there is data to either support or undermine a particular hypothesis. Newton’s scientific explanation for gravity was the best explanation given the data which was available in Newton’s day. When Einstein, centuries later, came up with an alternate theory the scientific community welcomed it and brought the Science text books up to date. Einstein’s theory is the best we have given what we know, and what we have confirmed using scientific methods. Einstein himself said that long after he was dead someone else would probably come up with an even better theory of gravity, and he was fine with that. After all, Einstein was wrong about Quantum Physics. Science is about probabilities, and that is frightening to some people.

ALBERT EINSTEIN, 1921
By Possibly Herman Mishkin – Official 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics photograph, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=458521

10. DOUBLETHINK

“. . . Two and two are four [said Winston]

“Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.” [said O’Brien]. (page 326)

Life in 1984 requires everyone party members to practice doublethink. It requires believing in two contradictory ideas simultaneously. You have to believe that Oceania is at war with Eurasia. If the authorities suddenly make a reference to the war against Eastasia everyone must immediately rearrange their thoughts and actually believe that Oceania is at war with Eastasia not Eurasia, and that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. You know that your thoughts are contradictory and yet AT THE SAME TIME you also have to somehow know that your thoughts are not contradictory. Doublethink is a subtle thing, but I think the following may be a list of examples of doublethink:

• The January 6^th insurrectionists were no different than curious tourists / the January 6^th insurrectionists were aggressive and destructive
• Immigrants are criminals / crime statistics show that when immigrants settle in an area in large numbers the crime rate does not increase
• The economy under Biden is terrible / the economy under Biden is doing great.
• The January 6^th insurrectionists cherish American values such as Law and Order / the January 6^th insurrectionists killed several police officers, and were seeking to execute Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi extra-judiciously.
• The United States lost the war in Vietnam / the United States didn’t really lose the war in Vietnam – they could have easily won but the traitors in the media and the treasonous woke anti-War movement forced the American forces to withdraw.
• Immigrants are lazy and unskilled animals / immigrants are coming in to steal our jobs (jobs that require a work ethic and skills).
• The United States is a democracy /no it’s not, in a variety of ways.
• Russia is a worker’s paradise / except for the rigged elections, and the enemies of Putin who keep dying under mysterious circumstances, and press censorship and on and on.

One wonders what Orwell would make of the world today. He had his shortcomings but he was a principled man, a very well-read and knowledgeable observer of politics and culture, and an enormously talented writer. ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ and ‘Animal Farm’ are his most famous works, but ‘Homage to Catalonia’, ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’, and ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ are also excellent, not to mention his essays and journals.

There are many insightful four word phrases in our language, e.g. THE DIE IS CAST and PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM. There is ELEMENTARY, MY DEAR WATSON from Sherlock Holmes, and BEAM ME UP, SCOTTY from Captain Kirk. The last words uttered by Shakespeare’s Hamlet are THE REST IS SILENCE. ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, unusual in its day, does not have a happy ending but the book’s purpose is to warn the reader so that the world described in the book will never become a reality. The Inner Party does indeed get inside Winston’s head. The last four words of ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ are HE LOVED BIG BROTHER.

THE RUSSIAN BEAR STALKING NORTH AMERICA

ALEXEI NAVALNY 2011 LEADING A RALLY IN MOSCOW
By Mitya Aleshkovskiy – This file was derived from: Alexey Navalny 2 (cropped).jpg, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=100162256

WHO’S NEXT?

Alexei Navalny was murdered on February 16, 2024. Vladimir Putin is almost certainly responsible. This has a direct political impact on North America that isn’t being talked about very much. Hundreds of people in Russia who publicly expressed their sorrow and dismay at Navalny’s passing have been arrested. One woman stood in negative thirty degrees Celsius holding up a sign that said, in Russian, “Who’s next?” Russian oligarch and Putin opponent Progozhin was murdered last August, chess grandmaster and vocal Putin critic Gary Kasparov may be next in line. Yet many Russians are fine with Putin’s leadership. Such matters are important. We know, for example, that Putin was instrumental in getting Trump elected in 2016 so he’ll most likely try to do the same later this year. Some people dislike President Trump for the way he handled the pandemic, for his foreign policies, and for his racism and sexism, but he can also do damage in less high profile ways. For example, he packed the Supreme Court and that same court is, by all accounts, about to nullify the cap on nitrogen-oxide emissions, having already started to dismantle the power of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Here are some thoughts on how all this is connected and why it is important now in terms of the future of the United States (and its neighbours). The forces on the right in the US are on the rise and the progressive forces on the left have an uphill battle because right now a lot of people would rather put their faith in Trump than Biden (just as right now a lot of people in Russia would rather put their faith in Putin than anyone else). One first needs to look back at the regime of Putin’s predecessor (and role model?), mass murderer Joseph Stalin, and the need of the Russian people for leaders such as Stalin and Putin.

THE GULAG CAMP PERM-36 FOUNDED IN 1943
By Gerald Praschl – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18353834

UNCLE JOE

First of all, Russia is not a Communist nation. It stopped even trying to be one exactly 100 years ago, in 1924, when Lenin died and Stalin took over. It was a brutal dictatorship under Stalin. Millions of people ended up in the forced labour camp system known as The Gulag, set up by Stalin, and many of those in the camps were political prisoners. Many of them also died through overwork under harsh conditions, beatings and malnutrition, and executions. The death toll estimates range from 2.3 to 17.6 million. Stalin’s rival Leon Trotsky was no angel but he wasn’t as bad as Stalin, and Stalin had him brutally assassinated in Mexico. The assassin used a mountaineer’s ice axe. Let’s also not forget how in 1946 / 1947 more than a million people died in a major famine made far worse by Stalin’s decision to stockpile food and export it rather than send it to famine-hit areas. Stalin was also the Russian leader when the Cold War started in 1945 and that war almost ended up destroying the planet during the Cuban Missile Crisis (about a decade after Stalin died).

Yet Stalin was viewed as a war hero in Russia, particularly when under his leadership the Russians defeated the Nazis in World War Two. What is sometimes forgotten is at what cost – more than a million people, soldiers and civilians, died in just one battle of that war, The Battle of Stalingrad. It is also forgotten that before the war Stalin was on Hitler’s side, signing a non-aggression pact with the Nazis, and Stalin only turned on Hitler when Hitler attacked Russia (just as the US only got into World War Two when they were attacked by Japan halfway through the war).

SOVIET SOLDIERS DURING THE BATTLE OF STALINGRAD
By RIA Novosti archive, image #44732 / Zelma / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15579770

The important point to take from all this is that Stalin was loved by the people of Russia, he was referred to lovingly as Uncle Joe, and he was admired for his strong will, forthrightness and decisiveness. Propaganda and the control of access to information can be very powerful. Recent reports out of Russia indicate that there is a resurgence in a love of Stalin and a re-writing of history. Some are saying, for example, that Stalin had no knowledge of the Gulag, which of course is nonsense. The Russians seem to love a strong man, a man with simple solutions, a man who is on the side of the people (or so he says).

I visited the Soviet Union in 1969 (Russia, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Ukraine) with two other university students at the height of the Cold War and though we were on the left we were quite aware that the Soviet Union was a brutal authoritarian state and not the worker’s paradise many other leftists wished it to be. Though our route was carefully controlled we were camping on our own (this was not a guided tour) and were free to speak to average Russians. One thing which surprised me was how many people in Russia, young as well as old, still expressed admiration for Stalin, and for what they saw as the so-called communist way of life. In reality we found, for example, that the food stores in Moscow were pretty bleak, and the standard of living outside the big cities was not very good at all. We also met some amazing students in Kyiv (it was known in the West as Kiev back then) and it breaks my heart when I see footage of the ongoing Ukraine War, and the bombing of areas of Kyiv I remember visiting.

UNCLE VLAD, THE DONALD AND THE RONALD

So, why does Trump like Putin (and other dictators), and why do so many people like Trump? It is perhaps for the same reason that Russians like Stalin. Desperate people in desperate times look for strong and powerful leaders, leaders who never apologize for bad decisions, people who promise better times. Trump looks up to strong and powerful leaders as role models, and desperate people look up to Trump. The irony is that focusing on Trump doesn’t make sense. If Trump hadn’t come along, but some other strong, forthright, unapologetic leader had come along instead, on the left or the right, many Americans would vote for him. In our gender biased world it would almost have to be a man because too many people see a strong, forthright, unapologetic female as somehow unnatural, as bossy and arrogant. That’s an attitude straight out of 1950’s America, and a lot of desperate people in the US would love to return to the 1950’s when everything seemed to be simple and predictable. They forget that the 1950’s were in fact a nightmarish hellscape for women, blacks, gays and Jews, not to mention Muslims and others who didn’t fit into the conservative mainstream. That’s why Nikki Haley never had a chance. That’s also why in the 1980’s people loved the confident, smiling Ronald Reagan enough to elect him to two terms and by any measure that was a disastrous time for the forces of progress and social justice.

As a ruthless former KGB operative, Putin is brutal but charming (he’s a pretty good piano player as well, by the way, but then so was Richard Nixon), Putin, like Trump, is street smart, and a vote for Trump is a vote for Putin and for people who think and act like Putin, and there are enough Americans who, like their Russian counterparts, are so desperate for a strong, simple, no-nonsense leader to simplistically solve their problems that they’ll vote for Trump. Trump’s people are good at manipulating the frustrations of the voters.

There are complexities at play as well of course. If Trump wins it won’t just be based on votes from fed up hero worshippers, but it will probably also be due to factors such as voter suppression, election intimidation, gerrymandering, low turnout, a cooperative Supreme Court and propaganda (e.g. that the American economy is terrible when in fact it’s great, or that Biden is demented and incompetent when in fact he’s pretty awful but he’s not demented and he’s far better than the alternative). Unfortunately, propaganda done well is very effective. There is the religious element as well. The rise of Christian Nationalism has led a lot of people to see Trump as a Christ figure, and one of the January 6^th insurrectionists carried a portrait of Jesus Christ wearing a MAGA hat. They see Christ as a warrior and they take their marching orders from the Book of Revelation rather than from the rest of the Bible.

Critics of Trump have pointed out examples of Trump’s incompetence. For example, more than a million people died from Covid 19, some unnecessarily due to Trump’s policies (though it’s complicated (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/10/us-coronavirus-response-donald-trump-health-policy ). But none of that matters. All of this can be rationalized away by someone who is desperately looking for a saviour and in their eyes Trump looks like the best candidate.

VLADIMIR LENIN – PAINTING BY ISAAK BRODSKY
By Isaak Brodsky – http://www.art-in-exile.com/forums/39783-post61.htmlh, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1398898

THE IDEALISM OF YOUTH

Russia has never been Communist (and the United States has never been a democracy) but young and idealistic political activists in the 1920’s who read the works of Karl Marx desperately wanted to believe that the seeds of utopian social justice had been sown by the Russian Revolution in 1917, a revolution that got rid of the despotic Czarist system.

If one reads works like Wage, Labour and Capital (by Karl Marx) or State and Revolution (by Vladimir Lenin), or even Foundations of Leninism (by Joseph Stalin) one discovers that a Marxist economic system is much fairer to the working class, that it gives ‘power to the people’ and is therefore hugely democratic, and is based on the principle “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need” which sounds like a pretty good idea. But then, like the dreams of the utopian socialists before them (Owen, Fourier, Saint-Simon), it all fell apart and millions died when people tried to implement Marxist ideas in real life. Many Western leftists didn’t want to believe it at first but before long the crimes of Stalin were too big to ignore. Slogans and good intentions were not enough. Orwell warned us with ‘Animal Farm’ and later ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’. Perhaps Lord Acton was right when he said that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

THE GREAT HELMSMAN

Then in 1949 Chairman Mao Zedong and the Chinese communists came to power in China. Just as Lenin wrote important theoretical economic and political works as well as fighting in the streets, so too Mao wrote significant economic analyses (e.g. ‘On Practice’ and ‘On Contradiction’, and his famous Little Red Book) as well as suffering the privations of The Long March. That lead to a new generation of idealists who knew that Russia was totalitarian and were looking for a new progressive Marxist leader and found it in Chairman Mao, the Great Helmsman. But then news trickled out to the West about the disastrous Cultural Revolution and the devastating Great Leap Forward and it soon became clear that it was happening again. Mao became the centre of a dictatorial cult of personality while paying lip service to Marxism, and it looks like Xi Jinping may be doing the same thing now. It seems that the ideas developed by Marx and Engels may have looked good on paper but not in real life.

It is always so laughable when Republicans talk about the evil Marxists in the Democratic Party. Of course it’s a good plan to do so because it’s popular with their base. However most members of the Democratic Party in the U.S. would be to the right of centre in Canada, France, Germany, England or Scandinavia. When Republicans talk about Marxism I want someone to demand that they tell us what works by Marx they have read. Das Kapital? Which volumes? The German Ideology? The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon? If they say that they haven’t read any Marx then tell them they don’t get to say anything about Marxism. Mick Jagger told John Lennon once that he needed to read Marx or stop pretending to be a Marxist – Jagger read Marx as a student at the London School of Economics.

COSMONAUTS LEONID POPOV, SVETLANA SAVITSKAYA AND ALEKSANDR SEREBROV
By Soviet Union Post – Scanned by Georg Pik, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6646755

BETTER DEAD THAN RED

In the United States everything is politicized along black and white lines. Democrats are evil and Republicans are good. Capitalists are good and Socialists are bad. Liberals and conservatives are incompatible. During the politicized sixties one of the slogans on the American right was Better Dead Than Red. There is no continuum. In most other developed countries things are more nuanced.

When the Soviet Union became the first nation in history to photograph the dark side of the moon in 1959 it was celebrated in Canada in school and at home as the great achievement that it was while in the U.S. everyone began to panic. The same thing happened with other Russian accomplishments – the first satellite – Sputnik, the first man in space – Yuri Gagarin, and the first two women in space – Valentina Tereshkova and Svetlana Savitskaya (I have posted previously at length about the deep misogyny of the American space program – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2021/07/31/negative-space/ ). Similarly, in Canada if someone is a good hockey player he / she deserves praise whether capitalist or communist, Canadian or Russian. As a kid I had friends who were avid fans of Russian hockey stars (e.g. Tretiak and Yakushev) as well as Canadian stars (e.g. Beliveau and Mahovlich). That’s because we were bloody hockey fans, not a bunch of knee jerk nationalists.

CANADIAN NORMAN BETHUNE AND A QUOTE FROM MAO ZEDONG’S EULOGY FOR HIM
By Anonymous(Life time: Unknown) – Original publication: Published as a posterImmediate source: https://chineseposters.net/posters/e3-760.php, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90647458

Idealism / the optimistic need to make the world a better place is a powerful and admirable impulse, particularly among the young. Norman Bethune happens to be admired in both Canada and China, with statues of him and schools named after him. He is buried in the Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery in Hebei Province, China. Also, don’t forget Pierre Trudeau’s adventures in Communist China before becoming Canadian Prime Minister, and his time in Castro’s Cuba after becoming Prime Minister.

Like many past dictatorships, Stalinist Russia attempted to control the behaviour of people. They could even use torture to make people confess to crimes they didn’t commit, but their victims were still rebellious inside their heads. The Chinese Cultural Revolution took things a giant step further, to where the goal was to control what people actually thought and felt. Orwell’s great insight in Nineteen Eighty-Four was in recognizing the immense gulf between these two goals. There are those on the right in the US who are simple authoritarians, but what scares the hell out of me is the recent emergence of forces in the US, often in the guise of religion and patriotism, to change how people think. Already politicians in the US (and possibly Hungary, Turkey, Poland and elsewhere) are doing things which a few decades ago would be perceived as horrendous and unacceptable. Now such behaviour (and, most importantly, the attitudes they reflect) are becoming normalized and acceptable. How far will that process be able to go? Orwell’s beautifully crafted dystopian warning in Nineteen Eighty-Four is more relevant today than it has ever been.

A FINAL UNSETTLING THOUGHT

There has been a great deal of press coverage in recent weeks about the almost half a billion dollars (if you include interest) in penalties levied against Trump. A story that has received far less coverage is the move a few weeks ago by the Securities and Exchange Commission to open the door for a merger between the Digital World Acquisition Corporation and the Trump Media and Technology Group. Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform, is part of the latter, and the merger can, by some estimates, be worth as much as four billion dollars. Even more realistic estimates say it will still be worth hundreds of millions to Trump. What many don’t realize is that there is a huge and growing grassroots network of local American media outlets spreading the MAGA lies primarily through Truth Social (all this is invisible on the national stage) and that may well be enough to get Trump re-elected in 2024. Do Not under-estimate Donald Trump. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

MERA JISM MERI MARZI

This translates as “My body, my choice’ and is used by Pakistani feminists during their annual Aurat March held every March 8 since 2018. Today (March 8) is International Women’s Day so this weekly post is one day early. This post is all about popular music but to start with, I note that one could do a lot of obvious non-musical things to honour International Women’s Day (though these are also things which one should be doing the year round) for example:

• Work for universal access to abortions and contraception and other reproductive rights, no questions asked
• Insist on effective disincentives to reduce domestic abuse
• Be aware of and vocalize against rape culture
• Celebrate the work of amazing women in various fields, much of which is presently trivialized or ignored completely. How many people have heard of Emmy Noether, Sofia Kovalevskaya or Lise Meitner?
• Support any and all feminist efforts enthusiastically, particularly if one is male

One of my areas of interest is music and there are many musical women whose work gives me great pleasure as a listening musician. Traditionally women have had to face many barriers in the music business, particularly when it comes to management and recording production. Women have also been discouraged from instrumentation though they are quite capable of greatness, as the few that have broken through have demonstrated. How many brilliant female drummers can you name? Electric guitarists? Keyboardists? Women are supposed to be content to sing, and maybe play a bit of acoustic guitar or keyboard, when it comes to popular music. Here are ten amazing tracks by ten accomplished women:

FIONA APPLE – Across The Universe

This is one of the most unusual and interesting videos I have come across. The song itself is a beautiful gentle laid back cosmological song wonderfully delivered with great irony while everything happening visually is the complete opposite of what’s happening lyrically. The most horrendous violence in the video is perpetrated by young males over the wistfully delivered line “Nothing’s gonna change my world”. Make of this what you will. Notice too what happens at the 1 minute 22 second mark. The song was composed by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and was recorded by The Beatles on the last album they released (Let It Be). The lyrics also include the Sanskrit phrase “Jai guru deva” which means “Hail the Divine Teacher” so it sounds like the sort of song George Harrison would compose, but the song is primarily a Lennon song. Here is the video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmlnO1EwCT4&ab_channel=fionaappleVEVO .

TAYLOR SWIFT – The Man

This video was written and directed by Taylor Swift. You’ve probably heard of her. She released her first CD way back in 2006. The song talks about serious gender issues without being serious but also without being disrespectful. The actor who plays the main character, The Man, who is in disguise, will surprise you. Watch the video first. The identity of the actor playing The Man is noted at the end of this post for those of you who are not Swifties.

JUDY GARLAND and BARBRA STREISAND

Garland, whose voice was incredible particularly in her prime, was certainly one of the many victims of Hollywood misogyny back in the day. She was called fat and “little hunchback” by studio executives, and she became addicted to drugs as a teenager when she was pressured by the studios to take amphetamines to endure the long hours making films and barbiturates to sleep when she could. She died 12 days after her 47^th birthday. Streisand’s life arc has been very different from Garland’s. Streisand has remained very much in control, and is a rare recipient of an Oscar (2 of them), Emmy (5 of them), Tony (1) and Grammy (10 of them), along with the Presidential Medal of Freedom and four Peabody awards. She was also the first woman to write, produce, direct and star in a major motion picture – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zixqi6TQKNU&ab_channel=EdFitzgerald

TINA TURNER – River Deep, Mountain High

Known as the Queen of Rock and Roll, Turner rose to fame as part of the husband and wife duo Ike and Tina Turner, with her high energy stage performances. After suffering domestic violence for years, she fled with 36 cents in her pocket, and divorced Ike in 1978. Despite having to pay off debts for cancelled shows, and living on food stamps, she continued performing and became far more successful as a solo act than she ever was with Ike, going on to win several Grammies and selling millions of units. She was also an established actor. She was particularly successful in Europe and Australia. She eventually took up Swiss citizenship, happily relinquishing her American citizenship, and married a German music executive. She also converted to Nichiren Buddhism and continued to live in Europe until her death last year at age 83.

CELINE DION – All By Myself

Here is a master class on incredibly powerful and subtle singing by Canadian chanteuse CELINE DION demonstrating that often there are a lot of complicated things going on when a singer sings that the audience is completely unaware of. I’m not a fan of this musical genre but if you aren’t either at least watch from the 2 minute 50 second mark to the 4 minute 50 second mark – it sent chills up and down my spine. To make my point I need to use some musical terminology – Dion’s rendition incorporates a modal mixture using a common note (E flat), and an enharmonic double chromatic mediant modulation going from G major to C flat major (yes, C flat, not B). The pianist is the legendary David Foster. Dion’s life has been filled with tragedy (she grew up in poverty, lost her husband to cancer, and is now dealing with Stiff-Person Syndrome) but her accomplishments have been many. Here is the performance itself – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT2gVblzFvY&ab_channel=CelineDionVEVO and here is a 27 minute excellent explanation of what’s going on by Adam Neely (you don’t need to know much about music theory to follow this) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epqYft12nV4&t=18s&ab_channel=AdamNeely .

THE ROLLING STONES / MERRY CLAYTON – Gimme Shelter

One of the best Rolling Stones tracks from their prime years was Gimme Shelter. The song features session singer Merry Clayton who out-sings Mick Jagger on the track. Here is the track followed by a three minute recollection by Merry and Mick about the recording session. Clayton was born on Christmas day which is why she was named Merry. Clayton’s voice is prominent at 2 minutes 30 seconds, 3 minutes 30 seconds, and 3 minutes 55 seconds.

The track – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbmS3tQJ7Os&ab_channel=ABKCOVEVO

The recollecton – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChONufP0FEs&ab_channel=LaurentArnaud

NATACHA ATLAS – Mon Amie La Rose

Atlas was born in Brussels to a British mother, and a father of Egyptian descent. She often sings in Arabic but also speaks French, English and Spanish. She is also an accomplished dancer. She was the United Nations Goodwill Ambassador at the United Nations Conference Against Racism, and is a vocal supporter of the progressive Zeitgeist Movement. Some of her recordings are wonderfully complex and intriguing musically (e.g. Hayati Inta) but here is a more accessible track:

GRACE SLICK – White Rabbit

Slick composed this song, recorded at the height of psychedelia in 1967. The song is about Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, a surrealistic literary classic popular back then, and the inspiration for other songs as well. Despite the bizarre elements in Alice in Wonderland, Carroll was a devout though somewhat iconoclastic religious mathematician teaching at Oxford, and a pioneer in the field of Symbolic Logic. Slick was one of the two most prominent female vocalists in the psychedelic era, the other being Janis Joplin. The guitarist on the far left (Paul Kantner) and the drummer (Spencer Dryden) are no longer with us. Here is the video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WANNqr-vcx0&ab_channel=dustasdu .

BEYONCE – Pretty Hurts

Everyone knows who Beyoncé Knowles is, how successful she has been first with Destiny’s Child and later on her own. She has a long list of awards, she has been phenomenally successful commercially, and she has broken new ground musically. She has also released a number of gender progressive songs, this one being the best one IMHO. Notice her impressive unaccompanied singing at the 1 minute 20 second mark (does she have perfect pitch?). The last fifteen seconds were unexpected – and it is priceless – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXXQLa-5n5w&ab_channel=Beyonc%C3%A9VEVO

ORIANTHI – Light It Up

Born Orianthi Panagaris, this Australian singer and songwriter is a phenomenal guitarist. Her technique is impressive and her creativity amazing. Her cover of the Jimi Hendrix track Voodoo Chile is, to my mind, better than the original, and I think the Hendrix recording is the best thing he did. She composed all the songs, and was the lead singer, on her debut album and played drums and guitar on most of the tracks. She also plays the piano. She has collaborated with many top names, including Michael Jackson. Traditionally women in the music industry have been aggressively encouraged to stick to singing but this selection demonstrates that women as instrumentalists are also incredibly good (note the solo starting at the 2 minute 28 second mark) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqOeugCxxVk&ab_channel=FrontiersMusicsrl .

SURPRISE BONUS

Some incredible playing here (and good singing), from Japanese bass virtuoso Juna Serita, delivering some great funk. The drummer is the incredible joyous Kawakami Mayumi (she goes by the stage name Mimi) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2CWirEskL8&ab_channel=JunaSerita .

The man in Taylor Swift’s video The Man is played by Taylor Swift herself.

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY 2024

BANNED AID – A guide to the banning of music. Part 5 – RELIGION

Previous posts:

Part 1 – Racism – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2024/01/13/banned-aid-a-guide-to-the-banning-of-music-racism/

Extra post – Bitch I’m back like J.Christ –

Part 2 – Politics – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2024/01/27/banned-aid-a-guide-to-the-banning-of-songs-part-2-politics/

Part 3 – Illegal Substances – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2024/02/03/banned-aid-a-guide-to-the-banning-of-music-illegal-substances/

Part 4 – Gender – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2024/02/24/banned-aid-a-guide-to-the-banning-of-music-gender/

RELIGION IN GENERAL

I have heard it said that atheists are people who have read the Bible, and theists are people who have had the Bible read to them. Several atheist bloggers have talked about having strongly religious upbringings and after a careful examination of religious doctrine and sacred texts, and an acquisition of scientific and critical thinking, rejected their religion. Chumbawamba even released a song dealing with a situation much like this – CHUMBAWAMBA – We Don’t Go To God’s House Anymore – “Well driving on, I tasted sweet salvation / As we sung away the pulpit and the past”. The song references Damascus and Malatesta. On the road to Damascus, the capital of Syria, is where St. Paul was converted to Christianity as described in the Bible, in the Book of Acts, chapter 9, Verse 10. Enrico Malatesta (1853 – 1932) was an Italian anarchist and revolutionary socialist. Here is the track – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1JawSJJggE&ab_channel=p00k .

Are songs like this dangerous to the religious community? Should they be banned so that people won’t hear them and turn away from religion? Is turning away from religion necessarily bad?The principle of freedom of religion / freedom from religion is a good one but some extremist Christians think that freedom of religion means that Christians get to be in charge but non-Christians don’t. They want to be able to ban songs like this one. They also think that they can say anything horrible they like about Islam or Judaism or atheism and no one gets to criticize them. If they do get criticized they cry about having their freedom of religion suppressed. That’s not how freedom of religion works. Here are some examples of religiously controversial songs which Christian extremists have banned or probably would like to ban:

1. JUDAS – Lady Gaga – This was banned because it was said to be disrespectful of Christians. She was not allowed to perform the song in Lebanon.
2. THE BALLAD OF JOHN AND YOKO – The Beatles – The line “The way things are going, they’re going to crucify me” from this Beatles song got that song banned in some parts of the United States. Remember, too, that Lennon and the Beatles faced death threats and boycotts when Lennon said “The Beatles are more popular than Jesus” and American religious fanatics twisted that into Lennon supposedly saying that The Beatles were better than Jesus, something he never said. First, he was talking to a British journalist about British fans. Second, he said it with sadness, not as a boast. Third, when it was published in Britain everyone basically just ignored it. Fourth, given Beatles record sales, and attendance at Beatles concerts versus church attendance, Lennon was probably right. Finally, if a person follows a particular religion and a second person says something negative about that religion, what does it tell you about the first person if their first reaction is a death threat? It probably tells you that they’re pretty insecure about their religious beliefs. It may also tell you that they’re unstable and violent and need therapy and / or imprisonment, and their views on religion may not be particularly worthwhile.
3. Lil Nas X has released a pair of extremely religious songs, accompanied by two well done music videos, which have caused outrage in the American religious community. So much so that I devoted an entire post to those two songs (see above for the link).
4. GOD – John Lennon. This is another John Lennon song whose message can best be summed up by this line from its lyrics: “God is a concept by which we measure our pain.” In the song John basically tells Beatles fans to grow up and stop worshipping The Beatles. Unfortunately, that is a message that many Beatles fans to this day, 54 years later, can’t accept. The song, however, has Lennon saying that he also doesn’t believe in The Bible or Jesus (or Buddha, Mantra, Gita and so on) which some religious zealots didn’t like. Here’s the track – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCNkPpq1giU&ab_channel=JohnLennon-Topic
5. ALWAYS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE – Monty Python – “For life is quite absurd / and Death’s the final word”. This is from the final scene, the crucifixion scene, of the film Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the best thing the Pythons ever did, IMHO. According to interviews, the Pythons started out to make a film mocking Jesus but discovered that he actually had some good things to say so they completely switched their focus and made a film about the followers of Jesus. The Jesus figure in the film is treated with respect. However, the film, brilliantly written and executed, is scathing in its sometimes subtle and humorous condemnation of hypocritical religious authorities, so it was banned all over the place by religious leaders, which basically proved the point of the film. In writing the film script the Pythons actually read various religious documents, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, which makes sense as five of the six Pythons are high achieving successful graduates from Oxford and Cambridge University. Some religious leaders condemned the film while openly admitting that they hadn’t seen it. Draw your own conclusions. At one point Python John Cleese publicly announced that he wished to thank all those who banned the film because that probably doubled the viewership and hence increased the money he and the other Pythons made from the film. The track – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJUhlRoBL8M&ab_channel=Melonhead622
6. IMAGINE. John Lennon. Lennon was an atheist and his biggest post-Beatles hit was this song but in some places in the American south the song was banned because it infuriated various evangelical groups because of the following lines: “Imagine there’s no Heaven, it’s easy if you try / no Hell below us, above us only sky”.

There have also been all manner of either atheist, rationalist, humanist or even anti-theist songs. I described a few above off the top of my head but there are so many of them. Here is a link to a web site listing two hundred songs about atheism, secularism, skepticism and related matters – how many of these should be banned? Any of them? – https://www.michaelnugent.com/atheism/atheist-songs/

Here are a handful of songs from that site – should any of these be banned?

• GOD’S SONG by Randy Newman – “How we laugh up here in Heaven at the prayers you offer me” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwC1HDaw6s8&ab_channel=RandyNewman-Topic
• CHARLIE (i.e. Charles Darwin) by Chumbawamba – “Steer a course for a brave new world / Of common sense and wonder” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUZimSEpZ0U&ab_channel=Pete
• I THINK HE’S HIDING by Randy Newman – “Now I’ve heard it said, that our Big Boy’s dead / but I think He’s hiding”
• OLD MAN by Randy Newman – “There won’t be no God to comfort you / You taught me not to believe that lie” (by the way, Newman turned eighty himself a few months ago)
• DEAR GOD by XTC – “And all the people that you made in your own image see them fighting in the street / ‘Cause they can’t make opinions meet about God”
• BIG SKY by The Kinks – “Big Sky feels sad when he sees the children scream and cry / But the Big Sky’s too big to let it get him down”
• A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Tom Lehrer
• A RATIONAL RESPONSE by Greydon Square
• THE GOOD BOOK by Tim Minchin
• NOTHING FAILS LIKE PRAYER by Dan Barker
• THE ABSENCE OF GOD by Rilo Kiley

ANTISEMITISM

Since the advent of the Gaza-Israeli War on October 7, 2023, a lot of both antisemitism and Islamophobia have been emerging in terrifying ways. Does music play a part in all of this? Remember that one can condemn the actions of Israel as a political power without being antisemitic, but as soon as you condemn the actions of Israel as a JEWISH political power you have become antisemitic, and antisemitism kills innocent people. There are many Jews who condemn the actions of Israel.

The suppression of Judaism, and the many pogroms which meant death for many Jews, have been going on for centuries and its most horrific manifestation was the Holocaust. Should pro-Holocaust antisemitic lyrics be banned as hate speech? Do antisemitic lyrics incite violence towards Jews? Some recent examples of antisemitic lyrics:

1. Michael Jackson’s song THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT US contains the lyric: “Jew me, sue me, everybody do me / Kick me, Kike me, don’t you black or white me”. He later apologized and removed the offending words, but the American band Saliva and the European band Beast in Black both covered the song leaving the words in. The origins of the word ‘Kike’ are complicated ( see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kike ).
2. Jay-Z’s song STORY OF O.J. includes these lyrics: “You wanna know what’s more important than throwin’ away money at a strip club? Credit / You ever wonder why Jewish people own all the property in America? This how they did it” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICmI82aB1LA&ab_channel=PublicEnemyVEVO
3. Rapper Lupe Fiasco, in his 2016 song N.E.R.D., includes these words: “Artists getting robbed for their publishing by dirty Jewish execs who think that it’s alms for the covenant” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13BHVkQUX_s&ab_channel=Guti
4. As recently as 2022 the K-pop group EPEX released the song ANTHEM OF TEEN SPIRIT which uses the phrase “Crystal Night” which is a reference to the Nazi pogrom known as Kristallnacht and in the video accompanying the song the members of the group are dressed in Nazi style uniforms. Kristallnacht occurred on November 10, 1938, and overnight 267 synagogues and over 7000 Jewish businesses were destroyed, and 30 000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
5. The artist Payday Monsanto (Payze Duezz) released the song GOY BOY which includes the lyrics: “Prove to me the Holocaust ain’t a fraud / And I’ll give you a six million dollar reward”. Approximately six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust.
6. David Irving is a Holocaust denier. A kippah is a brimless cloth cap traditionally worn by Jewish males. POTUS, of course, stands for President Of The United States. Take a listen to the following by rapper B.o.B., the song is Flatline, and note the lyrics on the screen at the 1 minute 35 second mark – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UONq1fYWYO0&ab_channel=RealHipHopLyrics .
7. White supremacist neo-Nazi death metal punk bands on the rise in Europe have come up with some pretty nasty antisemitic rhetoric of their own. Some of their songs are original, and some are hate-filled parodies of existing songs. Here are nine examples out of hundreds out there:

• White Hot Takes – LAMPSHADE CASE – a parody of Green Day’s song Basketcase (When Karl-Otto Koch was commandant at the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp there were many stories about the sadism towards prisoners exhibited by his wife Ilse Koch. One often repeated story was that she had tattooed prisoners killed so that she could make lampshades out of their tattooed skin. It was later found that the stories could not be substantiated with evidence).
• White American Youth – WHITE POWER
• Morrakiu – IN THE JUNGLE – a parody of the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight
• Evil Skins – ZYKLON ARMY (Zyklon B is the cyanide-based gas used in the extermination camps in Nazi Germany).
• Hannah Pearl Davis – WHY CAN’T WE TALK ABOUT THE JEWS? (This song is dedicated to white supremacist Nick Fuentes. Fuentes is a well known Holocaust denier who has called for a holy war against the Jews, and he was also a dinner guest of Donald Trump.)
• IronMensch – BOMBS OVER ISRAEL
• White American Youth – AMERIKKKA FOR ME
• Daimon – ESOTERIC HITLERISM
• White Hot Takes – OVENS OF AUSCHWITZ (Auschwitz was a complex of over forty concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Poland. Of the 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz, 1.1 million were murdered. 960 000 of those were Jews. Many were killed in the crematoria).

ISLAMOPHOBIA

Islamophobia has been on the rise since the beginning of the recent Israel-Gaza War. Please take a look at the following lyrics:

• Those who cast an evil eye on our religion (i.e. on Hinduism), we gun them down
• India is for the Hindus, mullahs [Muslims] go to Pakistan
• Why don’t you go and die! Make your mosque somewhere else, this place is for Ram
• Leave India you tricksters

These are from a current genre of music in India known as Hindutva music which has recently become incredibly popular with millions of followers. It is Islamophobic music and it has facilitated actual physical violence perpetrated by Hindu gangs against the Muslim minority. The lyrics spread hate-filled misinformation about Islam. There is a rise in Hindu nationalism and right wing Hindu activists actively oppose what they call a ‘love jihad’, that is, they physically prevent Hindu women from having relationships or marrying Muslim men and the government ignores the Hindu nationalists, refusing to enforce laws which prohibit their Islamophobic behaviour.

Things are heating up. About a month ago Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened a new Hindu temple (Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir) in Ayodhya (the birthplace of Rama, a principal Hindu deity). Seven thousand politicians and celebrities from across India participated in festivities. But that temple was built on the Babri Masjid which was a mosque which right wing Hindu nationalists destroyed in 1992, killing 2000 Muslims in the process. Islamophobia kills. On the day of the opening of the new Hindu temple Muslims were advised not to wear clothing that identified them as Muslim, not to travel by car alone, not to travel by train, and so on. After permission was granted to build the new Hindu temple calls went out demanding that other mosques across India be destroyed. To make things more complicated the Babri Masjid, built back in 1528, was built on the site of a Hindu temple which had been destroyed by Muslims. The Hindutva ideology (India for Hindus not Muslims) is spreading, and Modi has an election coming up soon that he wants to win. Coincidence? Hindutva music is playing an incendiary role in this spread of hatred against the 200 000 000 Muslims in India.

White supremacist bands are often neo-Nazi Christian nationalists and their main non-Christian targets are Jewish people, but they are also Islamophobic. Two examples of Islamophobic white supremacist band tracks are Islam is Dead (from the band Cold Cry / Mogh) and Jihad (from the band The Kovenant). Seeds of Iblis have recorded several Islamophobic songs, including From Mecca to Johannam, Behind the Horns of Allah, Islamophobia, and Sura 9 (a sura is like a chapter in the Qur’an).

Frank Ocean’s song Bad Religion uses religion as a metaphor for unrequited love and some Muslims have said that the song’s lyrics are Islamophobic, for example: “He said ‘Allahu akbar’, I told him ‘Don’t curse me . . . If it brings me to my knees it’s a bad religion” (Allahu akbar means ‘God is most great’). When RM (real name: Kim Namjoon) of BTS recommended the song he was rebuked for being anti-Muslim but he is Muslim himself. You can decide for yourself – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9Fbnp4Kilk&ab_channel=Iambaldsowhat%3F

Fortunately there have also been songs critical of Islamophobic culture. The music album Philia released by the organization Artists Rise Against Islamophobia contains 20 tracks attempting to combat Islamophobia in a civilized way. The band Genocide has also released the song Islamophobia – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzUxpaLrJ9s&ab_channel=GenocideRap , and Lowkey released this softly sad defence against Islamophobic music, a song entitled Islamophobic Lullabies – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LN4dq8YnYk&ab_channel=GRMDaily

The Islamic culture has a smaller footprint in North America than it does in the Middle East. I also do not speak the languages which dominate that region. It would seem to me that there are probably many other Islamophobic songs that I, as a comfortable Canadian senior citizen, am unaware of.

In the one month period, from October 7, 2023 to November 7, 2023, the first month of the Gaza-Israeli War, there have been 1283 incidents of Islamophobia in the United States, an enormous increase over previous months, according to the Council on American Islamic Relations. One six year old child was savagely stabbed to death because he was a Muslim child. Christopher Hitchens has remarked that religion poisons everything. Was he correct?